I, Eliza Hamilton

by Susan Holloway Scott

  Of course, my sister had just described this very party of her own, and certainly the capital—which I heard had become a sad and empty place—would benefit from having her in charge of official entertainments. I thought of Mrs. Adams with her sharp tongue, proudly plain and old-fashioned, and then Angelica as she sat beside me, dressed in a provocatively sheer white dress with a diamond necklace and earrings, and towering white plumes in her artfully curled hair.

  “At least Mr. Jefferson as vice president remains in Philadelphia,” she continued. “He can be depended upon to offer a certain level of elegance and civility to the capital city.”

  “Not now,” I said. My sister continued to retain a favorable impression of Mr. Jefferson that was entirely at odds with my own, although I prayed that with time she’d come to see the man for the false, conniving rogue that he was. “I’ve heard that Mr. Jefferson has so completely assumed the guise—and surely it is a guise—of the plain and honest Democratic-Republican that he wears only rough homespun and answers his door himself, his hair unpowdered and unkempt.”

  Angelica’s eyes widened. “That does not sound at all like the gentleman I knew in Paris!”

  “I have it on the best authority.” I nodded sagely, making little jerks with my fan for emphasis. “I know you believe that the politics in London are especially uncivil, but you’ll soon see that the style here in America is every bit as ferocious, and marked with backbiting, lies, deceit, and ill will. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to have Alexander removed from it.”

  The sorrowful truth was he’d not so much withdrawn from politics, as politics had removed from him. Although Alexander had resigned from his post in the cabinet, he had harbored hopes that he would continue as a kind of advisor to the new government, as he’d done during the final year of General Washington’s term. He hadn’t confessed as much to me, but I recognized the signs, and I would have been surprised had it been otherwise. The arrangement would have made perfect sense, too. President Adams had decided to keep the cabinet members chosen by President Washington, and those men were not only staunch Federalists, but Alexander’s friends. My husband had had every right to expect them to reach out to him for help addressing difficult problems, for the good of the country as well as the Federalist cause.

  But so great was President Adams’s dislike and distrust of my husband that he wanted nothing to do with him. Further, he seldom consulted his own cabinet, either, effectively excluding them from his circle of counselors, too. Every attempt my husband made to contribute was sharply rebuffed, or even ignored outright. After being involved and consulted on every major decision for so many years, my poor husband had overnight become an outcast.

  His pride was badly wounded, as anyone’s would be, and he couldn’t help but feel unappreciated and unloved. He tried to look for other diversions. He concentrated on his legal work. He doted on our children. We spent considerable time in the company of the Churches. Because Mr. Church had lost his much-desired seat in Parliament shortly before returning to America, and he and Alexander commiserated on the gross unfairness of their mutual governments, and the idiocy of those now in power.

  It was about this time that I arrived home one afternoon to find a foreign gentleman, colorfully dressed, just departing our house. This in itself was not unusual, for New York was a cosmopolitan city, and many visitors from abroad came to call upon my distinguished husband. But this one was in turn distinguished himself, or at least he’d made himself out to be so to my husband.

  “Do you know who that man was, my dear?” Alexander asked, his excitement clear. “None other than the great Roman-born sculptor Giuseppe Ceracchi, a master-carver in marble. He has just undertaken an important work capturing the likenesses of the greatest men of our time, to be on public display in a gallery, and has begged my indulgence to be among them.”

  “As you should be,” I said, pleased for his sake. Roman-born master-carvers in marble were unknown in America, though the Churches had several fine examples of marble sculptures in their home. “Will it be a kind of portrait, then?”

  He nodded with satisfaction. “Each gentleman is to be captured in the manner of an ancient senator, as is fitting for our republic,” he said. “Ceracchi has arranged a makeshift studio in his lodgings, and I must go to him for sittings.”

  “That is fitting,” I agreed. “You’ve borrowed the names of so many ancient Romans when you’ve written your various essays that you might as well pose as one.”

  He grinned, likely intrigued by the notion. Alexander had sat for the best painters from our country including Charles Willson Peale and John Trumbull, and his likenesses hung in several public buildings as well as the one by Peale that hung in our parlor across from my own by Mr. Earl. But in all of these he’d been shown wearing his customary dress.

  “Must you wear a toga,” I teased, “or some other heathen costume? Will he swaddle you in an old bedsheet before you strike a dramatic pose?”

  “Oh, yes, imagine me striding down Broadway on my way to the Forum,” he said, waving his arm in a grand oratorial style, “frightening every horse and chicken in my path!”

  We both laughed heartily at that. However, when at last the carving was done and delivered to our house some months later for safekeeping (Mr. Ceracchi’s original scheme of a collection of similar busts to be displayed to the public remaining as yet an unformed dream), I didn’t laugh, but was instead moved to tears.

  Mr. Ceracchi had in fact shown my husband as an ancient statesman, in a head-and-shoulders portrayal that Alexander said was called a bust. His hair was shown cropped short, a style I’d never seen him wear, but looked very noble and Roman, and which served to set off my husband’s forthright profile to perfection. He looked steadfast and determined and confident, with the merest smile playing across his lips, exactly as I thought of him. Despite the blankness of the white marble, I judged it to be one of the best likenesses of my husband, and the most lifelike, too. Mounted on the column that Mr. Ceracchi had thoughtfully supplied, the bust had a prominent place in our parlor, and over time it became one of my most treasured possessions.

  It was a good thing we were so pleased by the finished work, too, for our happiness helped ease the shock of Mr. Ceracchi’s next delivery, a month later.

  “My God, Betsey,” Alexander exclaimed, coming to find me with a newly opened letter in his hands. “The audacity of the rascal!”

  “Which rascal, my dear?” I asked, a reasonable question where my husband was concerned.

  “Ceracchi,” he said, his face flushed. “He has presented me with a bill for his services for making the bust, as a ‘favor to me.’ I ask you, what manner of favor costs six hundred and twenty dollars?”

  I gasped with dismay, for that was a very significant sum to our little household. “Six hundred and twenty dollars! Will you pay it?”

  “I fear I have no choice,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s no doubt that we accepted the bust, and that we were pleased by his workmanship, for we’ve shown it to every single person who’s entered our house. No, I must pay him, though I shall consider it a lesson to myself to be less susceptible to Roman flattery, and to arrange all terms beforehand, especially with artists.”

  Most of our days, however, didn’t include marble busts or audacious foreign sculptors. Instead we settled into a quiet routine that pleased me well. Each morning I’d be first at the dining table in our front room—my chair pulled back to accommodate my growing belly and the child within it—whilst Alexander finished dressing and preparing his papers for his day either in court at his office.

  Our younger sons James and John, washed and dressed for the day, would join me, and while I cut and buttered neat slices of bread for their breakfast, they’d take turns reading aloud, a kind of informal lesson that Alexander had devised to begin their days in an educational manner. For John, who was still learning to read, a chapter from the Bible would be challenge enough, while James, who before long would be f
ollowing his older brothers into Reverend Frazer’s tutelage, would read a selection from Dr. Oliver Goldsmith’s History of Rome. Angelica and Fanny would often appear then, too, and Alexander himself would soon join us to drink his coffee. Then everyone would be off to school and employment, and the day would begin in earnest.

  Alexander and I were especially proud of our oldest son, Philip, who was to enter Columbia College in the autumn as a student, the same college that Alexander himself had attended when it had been known as King’s College before the Revolution. I do not know who was made the happier, father or son, by this significant achievement, and Alexander was eagerly offering every kind of advice to Philip about how and what to study.

  But despite this domestic contentment, and even though Alexander’s role in the Federalist government had diminished, the Democratic-Republicans refused to believe it, and leave my husband in peace. They still considered him a dangerous adversary, one who needed to be destroyed, and that summer he and I both learned the depths to which his enemies would sink.

  It began innocently enough. A small advertisement in the newspaper for a series of pamphlets caught Alexander’s eye. It wasn’t the title—The History of the United States for 1796—that attracted his notice, but the eager promise from the author that the pamphlet would include fresh revelations about the tenure of the last treasury secretary.

  “I wish you would ignore it, Alexander,” I said when he showed it to me. “You know as well as I that it’s only going to be yet another version of the same old lies.”

  He’d continued to scowl at the page, as determined as any terrier.

  “Most likely, yes,” he did admit. “But ignoring the lies can also be perceived as being unable or unwilling to refute them, and therefore they become accepted as truth.”

  I handed the paper back to him. “You were investigated twice by Congress, and nothing untoward was found,” I said. “I do not believe the efforts of this James Thomson Callender, whomever he may be, can rival those of a Congress filled with Democratic-Republicans.”

  “Callender is one of Jefferson’s lesser pawns,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if Jefferson sponsored the entire series of pamphlets.”

  “Please, Alexander,” I said. “You’re no longer in office. They can’t hurt you now.”

  “It’s better to be certain,” he said doggedly. “I’ll send a clerk to buy them tomorrow so that the publisher won’t know of my interest. Most likely the pamphlets will be exactly as you say, nothing new, but I cannot in good conscience make that assumption.”

  The pamphlets were duly purchased the next day, and duly read by my husband, who studied them with far more care than they merited. There was in fact nothing new: the same old empty accusations of misconduct by the same men—James Reynolds and Jacob Clingman—that had led to the investigations by Congress. He was accused of financial speculation, of using his position to fill his own pockets, of taking bribes to fill that non-existent account in the London bank. There were also the equally tired hints of licentious behavior, doubtless added to titillate readers and beguile them into their purchase.

  Despite my pleas for common sense, Alexander was unable to ignore this, and insisted on defending himself in a letter published in the Gazette of the United States. Nor could he resist adding a few lines to discredit the two men who were the sources of the inaccurate reports as being in the pay of the Democratic-Republicans.

  “You know you’ve only made it worse,” I said when he proudly showed me his letter printed in the paper. “Now people will be curious to see what has so inflamed you. You’ve likely earned Callender fifty more sales from this letter alone.”

  The letter gave Callender much more than mere sales. It gave him the confidence to make even more outrageous claims. He accused Alexander not only of professional misconduct, but of infidelity to me as well. He promised that in his next round of publications he’d prove his allegations in the form of confidential letters that he’d obtained from official sources. The letters were from James Reynolds, who claimed to be Alexander’s agent in these same nefarious deeds.

  And now I finally understood why Alexander had become so irritated. I didn’t believe the accusations, knowing them to be lies, but like Alexander, I hated the idea that this rogue Callender could continue to play the gadfly in the public press. Yet the more Alexander railed against Callender, the more the man’s accusations grew, so many that it became difficult to keep them straight.

  A week later, Alexander stayed at his office longer than usual, having been compelled to work extra hours for a pending case. It was a hot, heavy July evening, the air so still that even breathing was uncomfortable. The children were already in bed, and I sat alone in the parlor beside the open window that overlooked our backyard, striving to ease myself as ever I could. I was regretting my decision to remain in the city until after my baby was born, and I longed for the relative cool of The Pastures.

  I heard Alexander arrive in the hall below, and looked expectantly toward the stairs. As soon as he entered the bedroom, I knew from his expression that there’d been another salvo in the press. Without any greeting, he handed me the newspaper to read the latest remarks from Callender. I scanned them quickly, every sentence stinging with malice, while he stripped off his coat and waistcoat and tossed them on the back of a chair. He scarcely waited until I’d finished before he began his explanation.

  “You see how it is, Betsey,” he began. “The letters Callender mentions were highly confidential, and date from 1791, six years ago. Only three men had access to them, and I’d stake my life that the one responsible for giving them to Callender is Monroe.”

  “Mr. Monroe!” I exclaimed. “But why would he do this now, so long after the events?”

  “Because he blames me for his recall from the pleasures of Paris,” he said, beginning to pace the parlor before me. “There were many other voices besides mine offended by his inappropriate behavior as our envoy. You must recall it, Betsey: how the man was slavering over the Jacobins as much as Jefferson himself, praising their bloodthirsty actions when he was supposed to be stressing American neutrality. It was the president’s final decision to do so, yet according to Monroe, Madison, Jefferson, and Burr, now it seems I am the one who must be punished with this outrage of lies against my honor and my name.”

  “Do you know that for a fact?” I asked, incredulous. He was sufficiently angry that he’d fallen into his courtroom manner, explanation laced with recrimination, which I always found extremely difficult to combat. “That the four of them have met to conspire against you over this?”

  “I have heard such a meeting took place, yes,” he said. “They all have a hand in this, and they’re quite blatant about it. But it is Madison who has betrayed me the most, colluding with a low worm of a man like Callender.”

  “What is the nature of these letters that makes them so confidential?” I asked. “Or is it information to do with the government that I’ve no right to know?”

  “They are—or were—confidential to me.” He paused, obviously weighing his words. “They are the work of an insidious rascal named James Reynolds, who sought to inveigle me into a speculation scheme. He claimed to have proof that I enriched myself through abusing my position in the Treasury, and attempted to extort money from me to keep quiet.”

  I nodded. More lies, I thought unhappily, more lies, the heavy air made warmer still by these never-ending, hateful revelations of yet another conspiracy to tatter my husband’s good name and honor.

  “As a gentleman, Monroe swore to me to keep knowledge of the letters secret,” Alexander continued, his pacing grown so heated that his shirt clung to his back in the hot room. “Instead he obviously had copies made, which he has now given to Callender for publication. For the sake of his party friends, Monroe has broken his word, and yet pretends ignorance. He is a scoundrel, and a villain.”

  “Oh, Alexander.” I sighed, and rubbed my temples. I was eight months with child, an
d this was all more than I wished to endure. The entire situation had become exactly the morass that I’d feared it would, sucking everything in our lives into its greedy maw. “What have your friends advised?”

  “They say the same as you, Betsey, that I should turn the other cheek and ignore it.” He shook his head, and I knew he’d likely shaken away that advice in exactly the same way. “They say this is a battle I will never win, and only drive myself to madness by trying to answer all the claims they make against me.”

  “Then why don’t you listen to them, Alexander?” I asked. “If you stop answering their accusations, the entire affair will fade away on its own. We could take the children and go to Albany, and stay there until this little one is born next month. By then, this pack of lies and ugliness will have collapsed in upon itself, and have been forgotten.”

  He stopped pacing and sighed, his head bowed.

  “I wish that I were as certain that it would, my love,” he said mournfully. “This entire affair torments me relentlessly, and I’ve no idea what course would be best.”

  “We can go to Albany,” I said, pleading. “We’ll stay there where it’s green and cool, away from New York.”

  I could see him considering, and then slowly he shook his head.

  “I must face this, Betsey,” he said. “I can’t run away. They’ve called me many things, but I won’t let them call me a coward, too.”

  “My own dear husband,” I said. “You’ve always been the bravest man I’ve ever known.”

  His courage, his honor, his integrity: these had always been the things that mattered most to him, and to me as well. Perhaps this had gone too far for him to back away now. Perhaps it truly was time he took a stand and defended himself.

  He stopped before my chair with his arms hanging at his sides, his entire being so sadly tormented that it grieved me to see. I reached out and took his hand, linking his fingers into mine. My hands were swollen from the heat and my pregnancy, and my wedding ring with our two names was tight on my finger, yet to me it had never held more significance than it did that night.