“You are under no obligation to return to him, Eliza,” my father said sternly. “No one will fault you for it after this. You will do better to remain here, and send for the other children as well.”
“Thank you, Papa,” I said, but I knew it would be for my heart, not my father, to decide.
* * *
As I soon learned, there was little public sympathy for my husband, and less forgiveness. People were alternately shocked, appalled, or scornful. One or two of Alexander’s oldest friends applauded his courage, but for the most part he was skewered and ridiculed. Few saw the malicious hand of the Democratic-Republicans at work, and concentrated instead only on the sordid affair with Mrs. Reynolds. Yet each word of mockery and criticism began to strengthen my resolve that Alexander and I would confront this together. Who would dare fault him if I were at his side?
But there was no such decency to be found in the Democratic-Republican newspapers. Echoing their malevolent masters, they attacked not only Alexander, but me as well. They accused me of being not his lawful wife, but only one more lascivious sultana in his harem. They chided me for tolerating what I hadn’t known had happened. In language stolen from the Holy Bible itself, they chastised me: “Art thou a wife? See him, whom thou hast chosen as thy partner of this life, lolling in the lap of a harlot!”
Yet their harangues didn’t shame me, so much as anger me on my husband’s behalf.
The first week of September, I returned home to New York, and to him.
He and Philip were waiting on the same dock as when they’d bid us farewell. Although Alexander and I had agreed not to write to each other while I was in Albany, I had heard by way of my sister Angelica that he’d been thoroughly miserable, battered by his enemies, the newspapers, and even well-meaning friends over the pamphlet.
As the sloop pulled close to the dock, I stood on the deck beside the rail, rocking back and forth with little William in my arms. There’d be no missing me: I wore an extravagantly foolish hat that my mother had insisted on buying for me in Albany, with wide red silk ribbons like streamers that tossed around my face. The closer we came, the more I tried to gauge Alexander’s humor. I could see he’d his customary half smile, but I sensed that he was as uneasy about greeting me as I was him.
He was the first up the gangplank, bounding on board to reach me with a younger man’s agility. He came striding to me with purpose, and just before he reached me he swept off his hat, and stopped.
“Good day, Mrs. Hamilton,” he said, his eyes searching mine. “Welcome home.”
All I could think of at that moment was how glad I was to see him. I reached up, rested my free hand on his shoulder to steady myself, and kissed him awkwardly on the cheek. He smiled, and I smiled and for now that was enough.
* * *
Despite the trouble that Alexander’s pamphlet had brought us, in the end it did accomplish what he’d set out to do. His reputation at the Treasury was again secured, and considered beyond reproach. If in the process he was now considered a libertine and an adulterer, then he (and I) accepted it, our heads high.
Others did not. President and Mrs. Adams were particularly outspoken in their name-calling, practically hissing like snakes in their vehemence as they defamed my husband as the most lubricious and lewd rake in the country.
But likewise we learned who our true friends were: Robert Troup, Gouvener Morris, Rufus King, Robert Morris, Robert McHenry, and many more besides, from the Treasury, from Congress, from the legal profession, and even from his long-ago days in the army and at King’s College. These gentlemen rallied about us and supported Alexander, choosing to value him for his many qualities rather than cast him aside for a single misstep. There were even rumors that, with relations between our country and France deteriorating, Alexander might be called back to service in the government, his talents and experience too useful to be ignored.
The greatest among these loyal gentlemen showed his loyalty to my husband in an unexpected way. From President and Mrs. Washington came the gift of a splendid silver cooler for holding wine, and a note with a pledge of friendship and regard that I treasured always:
I pray you to present my best wishes, in which Mrs. Washington joins me, to Mrs. Hamilton and the family, and that you would be persuaded that with every sentiment of the highest regard, I remain your sincere friend and affectionate honorable servant.
Somehow we managed to escape the dismal days of that summer, and I could only praise God and His mercy that we had. In September I held a small dinner that was also a kind of thanksgiving, with the Churches, our own family, and several of our closest friends besides.
Yet even among the feasting and merriment and toasts, I fretted over my oldest son, Philip, who’d been included in the party. He was excelling at his studies at nearby Columbia, and there was every expectation that he would follow in Alexander’s path and triumph in the law. As proud as I was of him, I worried that, also like his father, he worked too hard to the detriment of his health, and on this night he seemed quiet and pale, and thoroughly unlike his usual high-spirited self. He’d developed a hacking sort of cough as well, and as mothers will, after the cloth was drawn I drew him aside from the others to make inquiries and press my palm to his forehead.
“I’m perfectly well, Mamma,” he said. “I’ve much to do for my recitations, but it’s nothing that can’t be completed in time.”
“I don’t like the sound of that cough,” I said with concern. “I don’t want to think of all you boys coughing away like that together in class.”
He smiled, albeit too wanly for my tastes. “I assure you, I will be fine,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, I believe I’ll beg off the brandy tonight, and retire for the evening. My head aches as well, doubtless from too much reading.”
“Or too much stale beer in a tavern last night,” I said. “Go upstairs to bed, and I’ll make your apologies.”
But by morning, he’d no interest in eating, and he’d a fever and soreness in his joints. I sent first for Dr. Bard, who then sent for Dr. Hosack, the professor of medicine from the college. He confirmed that a number of students had been taken ill with bilious fever, and immediately assumed the care of our son. Complaining and determined to continue his studies, Philip requested his books be brought to him so he might read in bed. Our other children were banished from his company for the sake of their health, though Angelica insisted on standing at the door of his bedchamber and singing foolish songs to cheer him.
Within two days, he’d worsened further. The ache in his joints had grown more acute, he’d chills along with the fever, and the window shades were drawn against the sun since bright light had become unbearable to him. Now there were no books read, nor foolish songs sung to him; instead we all whispered, and walked softly.
“I do not wish to leave the boy in this condition,” Alexander said after he visited Philip to say good-bye. The carriage was already waiting in the street to take him to Hartford in Connecticut, where he was to represent the state in Federal Court; a long ride under any circumstances, but especially now. “You must make sure to send for me if there is any change.”
“You know I will,” I said, glancing fearfully back toward our son’s room. “I trust Dr. Hosack’s skill, but we both know how unpredictable fevers can be.”
It was experience I wished we didn’t have. I watched as Dr. Hosack tried different remedies to no avail, recognizing each of them in turn: the flannel cloths, the different medicines and elixirs, the brandy and the leeches and the cold baths and warm.
By the end of the week, our son was even sicker, and with a grim face, Dr. Hosack informed me that the fever had assumed a typhus character that was often fatal in young persons. He sent a courier racing to Hartford to bring Alexander home. He wouldn’t have done that had there been any hope of our son surviving, and I grew distraught with fear and dread, and thought of how my sister Peggy had lost her two oldest children to fevers, too. When I sat beside Philip’s bed, he no longer
knew me. His handsome face was gaunt and ghastly, his breathing was ragged. His skin was covered with a ruddy rash, and was like fire to touch. When I begged for something to do to help Philip live, Dr. Hosack told me to pray.
In the evening, Alexander still had not returned. Philip was delirious, thrashing about and babbling incoherently about a dog we’d had when he’d been a boy, an old friend from Albany, a girl he’d met at last week’s assembly. Then as abruptly as the delirium had begun, it vanished, and he became deathly still, without a pulse, and his eyes rolled back in his head.
I wept, distraught, so sure was I that he would die, and the doctor ordered me away from the room so that I wouldn’t witness my son’s agonized death. My sister Angelica came and sat with me, holding me as we prayed together for my precious boy.
From desperation the doctor tried one last cure, a bath not of cold water, but of warm, and infused with Jesuits’ bark and rum. Philip seemed to improve, and the doctor ordered him removed and rubbed briskly with rough cloths, and the immersion repeated. He improved still more, and though he was so weak he could scarcely raise his eyelids, he recognized me, and smiled. Now I wept for joy, and praised the doctor as our son’s savior.
It was well past midnight and I was still sitting drowsily beside Philip’s bed when Alexander finally returned. I roused myself and met him by the stairs, where his steps were heavy and his shoulders bent with grief. He’d been delayed along the way by overflowing streams, and feared he’d arrived too late to bid farewell to our beloved son. When I told him that Philip not only lived, but seemed improved, he wept, and rushed to kneel at our son’s bedside. He saw for himself that this was true, and when he learned all that had been done on Philip’s behalf, he went to the room where Dr. Hosack lay resting and woke him, insisting on thanking the good doctor himself for preserving our child.
To Dr. Hosack’s amazement, for the next fortnight Alexander put aside his legal cases, and instead devoted himself entirely to nursing our son back to health. I wasn’t surprised, for I’d seen his tenderness and dedication in tending his sick family before, and even been the beneficiary of it myself. If he’d not chosen the field of law, I do believe he would have made a physician of the first order, and done even more good in the world.
When at last our son was clear of danger, Alexander and I sat beside his bed together one evening, watching over him as parents who’ve been newly reminded of the fragility of their children’s lives, and the mercy of God’s grace. Yet Alexander’s thoughts were even darker, and in a way I’d never expected.
“All the way from Hartford, I grieved,” he said, his voice low so as not to wake Philip. “I felt sure we’d lost him, and it would have been entirely my fault.”
“No, it wouldn’t have,” I said. “You can’t blame yourself. Dr. Hosack said there were several other boys in Philip’s class ill as well, and they took the fever from one another.”
“That’s how it appears,” he said, “but I would have known otherwise. It would have been fate, pure and simple. His death would have been my punishment, retribution for how grievously I’d wronged you.”
“Don’t even think such things, Alexander,” I said, horrified. “It was the other boys who made Philip sick, and Dr. Hosack and God’s will that restored him. There was no fate, no retribution, and I won’t listen to you speak heathen nonsense like that again.”
He didn’t answer, content to watch our son instead, and uneasily I knew he remained still convinced of his blasphemous superstitions.
And from what befell us all later, perhaps in the end he was the one who was right.
* * *
Although in theory Alexander had retired from the government, throughout 1797 he continued to be an unofficial advisor in ways I didn’t entirely understand.
When Mr. Adams had been sworn in as president, he’d planned to maintain the country’s strict neutrality with the French government. But as the year progressed, this became an increasingly difficult position to maintain since the French government itself seemed to change as fast as the leaves on the trees. The leaders in Paris who welcomed American diplomats one week were fresh victims of the guillotine the next, and were replaced with another set of Frenchmen determined to scorn everything American. The American delegates were denied access to the true men in power, and were forced to make their negotiations through three buffoonish underlings—Jean-Conrad Hottinguer, Pierre Bellamy, and Lucien Hauteval, whose true names were replaced with the coded initials X, Y, and Z, men who extorted bribes and made other outlandish demands to the Americans. Like characters in some silly French opera, X, Y, and Z became universally loathed and declaimed in American newspapers, the only French names that ordinary Americans could both pronounce and despise. As if this all weren’t enough, a powerful new general with no ties to past regimes had emerged, a man named Napoleon Bonaparte, who seemed to be the only leader in France with a definite plan of government, albeit one that had all the earmarks of a dictatorship.
French privateers plundered American merchant shipping, claiming their entitlement from the Jay Treaty with England. Merchants in the states of New England as well as in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, that contained the home ports of much of lost shipping, were justly outraged, and demanded that the president take action, while the southern states, with less to lose and led by Mr. Jefferson, continued their infatuation with the French Jacobins, preferring them as allies, no matter how volatile or violent their actions.
Making matters even more difficult for President Adams was the continued devious and underhanded behavior of the Democratic-Republicans, especially Mr. Jefferson. Not only did he illegally meet with French diplomats in Philadelphia, falsely representing himself as part of the current government, but he also sought to undermine President Adams and his cabinet by telling the French how weak the Federalists were, how they’d soon be out of office, and how if the French quickly declared war on Britain, America would come to their assistance.
Thus, while President Adams was attempting to maintain a neutral stance, he was also quietly creating an American military presence as well in the event that the country was finally drawn into a war with France. This, then, was where my husband proved so invaluable. He’d experience at building and supporting a military force that dated back to when he’d been an aide-de-camp for General Washington, and he’d continued his efforts through the Whiskey Rebellion. There wasn’t another man in the country with this kind of expertise, nor one who possessed the organizational skills combined with the ability to negotiate the twisted layers of bureaucracy with ease. He also spoke, wrote, and thought in French.
As a result, Alexander’s opinion was often sought by members of the cabinet and Congress, and his advice taken—likely far more often that President Adams himself ever realized. Alexander, too, being acutely aware of public opinion, wrote a fresh new series of essays called The Stand, in which he supported a standing army to defend the country. To accomplish so much would have been remarkable under any circumstances, but all this occurred during the same time as he was embroiled in his personal conflicts with Mr. Madison, composing the pamphlet regarding Mrs. Reynolds, and coping with the serious illness of our son.
The talk of war with France continued on with little or no resolution, and thoroughly agitating my husband in the process. I was grateful to see the end of 1797, and had hopes that 1798 would be much more fortuitous for everyone I loved most. I occupied myself with my family’s affairs, encouraged my children’s accomplishments, and cautiously rebuilt the love and trust with my husband.
But then in early May, the idle talk of war over suppers became a frightening reality. The afternoon was warm and sunny, that season when spring has just begun to cede to summer. The days were at last sufficiently warm to make the white muslin dresses that fashion demanded agreeable, and as my sister Angelica and I stepped from an apothecary shop, the straight skirts of our dresses fluttered around our legs and over the tops of our heelless slippers in
the breeze. I don’t recall what our conversation might have been—some idle foolishness—but in the pause between our words, I heard the first loud explosion in the distance.
We stared at each other, startled and unsure.
“Was that thunder?” asked Angelica, holding her hand on her straw hat as she tipped her head back to study the sky. “I’d think it too fair a day for a lightning storm.”
“It’s not thunder,” I said slowly. It had been many years since I’d heard this distant, ominous, thunderous roar—all the way back to the Revolution—but once heard, it’s a sound not easily forgotten. It was also a sound I’d hoped never to hear again in my life.
“It’s gunfire, Angelica,” I said. “Cannons. I recall it from the army.”
Angelica’s eyes widened. “Gunfire! How can that be here in New York?”
Even as she spoke, the sound came again, the rumbling roar of great guns in unison, echoing from across the water. It wasn’t close—no ship was firing broadsides directly into the city—but it was still far too near for a country that claimed to be neutral.
Other people had paused as well, their conversations stopped and their business halted as together we all strained to listen, making the city strangely quiet and ill at ease.
It came again, echoing from the harbor to the east and the oceans beyond.
“The French,” I said automatically. “It must be the French.”
“But here?” Angelica said, her voice trembling with anxiety. “I cannot believe it.”
My sister and I parted then, she returning to her husband and family, and I hurrying to Alexander’s office. I didn’t doubt that he would know about the guns, and as soon as I appeared, he ushered me quickly into his own room, and shut the door.
“Did you hear,” I began, but he quickly finished my sentence.
“The broadsides.” There was a renewed energy to him that I hadn’t seen for years, an animation to his gestures and brightness to his eyes. “Yes, everyone in the city heard them, didn’t they?”
I, Eliza Hamilton Page 46