My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  An easy thing for him to say, I thought. “Still, we should like the option. And as you’ve been the inadvertent cause of this business, it’s incumbent upon you as a man of honor and sensibility to come forward in a manner that would shield me.”

  I didn’t hesitate to appeal to his honor now. But again, I shouldn’t have, because his eyes flew wide. “I am the cause of this business? Oh no, madam. It was the scoundrel to whom you pledged your troth who exposed you to this. Not me.”

  Scoundrel. A word that betrayed utter contempt. The sort of word that could start a duel. The word was nearly a slap to my cheek. And perhaps I needed a good slap to bring me to my senses.

  “Are you enjoying having me at your mercy, a damsel in distress?” I asked. “Do you wish for me to beg?”

  Monroe pinched at the bridge of his nose. “Good God, I could never enjoy causing you distress.”

  “But if I’m a casualty of your partisan revenge, it doesn’t trouble you?”

  “That’s not the way of it. In truth, I have no desire to persecute your husband, though he justly merits it.”

  “Does he?” I asked, bristling. The offense Alexander committed was against me. What right did Monroe have to judge him? “He’s innocent of the charges that Mr. Jefferson’s faction lay at his feet.”

  “Not according to the latest tale told by Mr. Reynolds.”

  A flash of rage burned through me at the implication that my husband’s word should weigh no more than that of a low-bred villain who played the pimp for his own wife. That my brilliant husband stood upon the same footing as this insignificant little fraud . . .

  A champion of equality might see it that way, but that wasn’t why Monroe put my husband into the same category. It was because Monroe considered himself a member of a club to which a bastard-born foreigner might never truly be admitted, no matter his merits and talent. James Monroe was born on the right side of the blanket, with a speck of dirt in Virginia to call his own, and he thought that made him better.

  “My husband is not capable of corruption.”

  Monroe stared as if he couldn’t quite believe a woman would challenge him this way. “I presume you didn’t know he was capable of adultery, either. I wish the public might behold in Hamilton that immaculate purity to which he pretends. But, my lady, we both know he pretends. And even if I were tempted by your friendship to say otherwise, I have other friends to whom I am obligated.”

  “Other friends? Mr. Jefferson, I presume.”

  He didn’t answer, and he didn’t have to. For partisan politics had become so strident and divisive that even someone as honorable as James Monroe refused to do what was right because it would cost him politically. He didn’t want to offend Jefferson. He couldn’t afford to offend Jefferson.

  The thought of such craven calculation made me angry enough to spit. And perhaps a little petty, too. “Do you know, Mr. Monroe, that I’ve always dismissed the gossip that you were in Jefferson’s thrall? I was foolish enough to defend you when Federalist ladies said that it’s to Jefferson that you owe the whole of your advancement. And that you and Madison vie for his approval like royal courtiers.”

  Monroe stiffened. “I’m afraid the hour grows late and our interview must come to an end.”

  I was not finished. “I refused to believe that while my husband suffered yellow fever, you sat at a table and toasted to my husband’s speedy demise.”

  “I did not join in that toast,” Monroe snapped.

  My heart sank, because I’d never truly believed the toast took place at all. Now, at his admission, the flame of rage scorched my cheeks, and where I would normally restrain myself, my voice boomed low like a cannon. “It seems I have been very mistaken about you, or you have changed very much. Because the James Monroe I thought I knew, the Hero of Trenton, was not the sort to sit back in cowardice and allow such a toast to be made in his presence.”

  He flinched, but I could draw no satisfaction from it.

  Because I knew that accusing him of cowardice blew to bits whatever remained of our friendship, though clearly there was nothing to salvage. Monroe was a Virginian before he was an American. Maybe he was even a Jacobin before he was a Virginian. And I believed that like the rest of Jefferson’s detestable faction, if it ever came to a guillotine blade above my neck, Monroe would let it fall.

  What else could I think now?

  Which made him an enemy.

  My husband’s enemy. My enemy. An enemy of the country that once called him a hero. And realizing it, I could no longer bear the sight of him or his dimpled chin.

  Refusing assistance, I wordlessly snatched my bonnet and pushed myself up to go. I was halfway to the door when he said, “Betsy, please. Stop.”

  I did not stop. I did not even look back. “I am Mrs. Hamilton. I leave you to your conscience, sir . . . if you can find it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The public has long known you as an eminent and able statesman. They will be highly gratified in seeing you exhibited in the novel character of a lover.

  —JAMES CALLENDER IN AN OPEN LETTER TO HAMILTON

  July 1797

  New York City

  ANGER HAD SOMEHOW given me a vim and vigor no pregnant woman in her ninth month ought to feel.

  “Church,” I said with a nod as I came upon him sitting at his breakfast table when I arrived to collect my children.

  My brother-in-law pinched the bridge of his nose, as if staving off a hangover from a late-night card game. He jolted at the sight of me, and though he was never a man for endearments, he cried with cheer that rang falsely in my ears, “Eliza, my dear! I hope you’re feeling well.”

  I gave what I’m sure was a brittle smile. “I’m feeling as well as can be expected.”

  “Good, good,” Church said, his gaze falling almost involuntarily to where, amidst polished silver trays, a bowl of sugar, and discarded floral teacups, a newspaper lay open. “You mustn’t let the opposition distress you. Not in your condition.”

  I suppose he meant well.

  After all, men could work themselves up into killing rages, but women must never be distressed. But if he thought our political parties were merely in opposition, trading places like the Tories and the Whigs in England, he was blind. “The men opposed to my husband are nothing but a knot of scoundrels. Their words make not the slightest impression upon me.” I snatched up the paper and pressed it into his hand. “And this is fit for nothing but use in the privy.”

  Church barked with laughter as I went in search of my sister, bracing myself against her pity, or some inevitable story about licentious Englishmen or permissive French marriages that she might offer to comfort me.

  Like her husband, Angelica was not an early riser. She was still in some elegant state of undress—a white gossamer chemise, a dark braid of hair over one shoulder—when I found her in the carefully sculpted English garden snipping roses so viciously that leaves dropped like rain.

  “Were you never going to confide in me about Hamilton’s harlot?” she asked.

  I’d braced myself against her pity. I had not anticipated wounded feelings. I suppose I should have. Not only because Angelica tended to put herself at the center of things, but also because I had wronged her, after a fashion. “I didn’t dare confide it in a letter,” I said, and that was true. For letters could be intercepted.

  I’d been desperate for my sister’s comfort four years ago, but by the time she’d returned, I hadn’t any desire whatsoever to reopen the wound. And yet, there was another guilty truth. My sister had bared her soul to me about her troubled marriage, but I hadn’t wanted to reveal myself. She’d trusted me with her vulnerability, but I’d kept mine hidden. Perhaps I’d taken some satisfaction in thinking that though my sister was wealthier, more formally educated, and more beautiful by far, my marriage was happier. I’d finally bested her in something. I hated to think this about myself, but I couldn’t entirely deny it. Still, in the end, I’d chosen loyalty to my husband over lo
yalty to my sister. And that she would simply have to understand.

  Perhaps she did, because Angelica put her hand atop mine. “My poor, sweet Eliza. All husbands stray.” A little dazed, I nodded as she uttered the words I’d imagined her saying all those years ago. “I know how tender your heart is, and how easily wounded you are, but—”

  “I don’t believe I am easily wounded.” That was a different sister she remembered. I’d changed, and I wanted her to know it. So I told her the rest.

  “Oh, to confront Monroe!” She put down her shears and the basket of roses and drew me down onto a marbled bench. “I would applaud if I didn’t know this will come to no good. That half-wit fancies himself to be a useful acolyte in Vice President Jefferson’s destructive ambitions.”

  Her habitual contempt for Monroe didn’t surprise me, but her contempt for the vice president caught me by surprise. “I thought you counted Mr. Jefferson your friend.”

  “Semper Fidelis, Eliza. I am a Schuyler, too. I will always take my family’s part over that of even the most charming friend. If Mr. Jefferson wished to stay in my good graces, then he ought not to have set his partisan lackeys against your husband. Now it’s war.”

  I laughed, a little darkly, but for once, she was the one in earnest.

  “My dear, it is war. Other women have suffered the pain of infidelity. But you’re suffering the penalty of being the wife to the greatest man of his generation and perhaps the greatest of our age. You’d never have suffered this if you hadn’t married so close to the sun. But then you would have missed the pride, the pleasure, the nameless satisfactions.”

  I knew how much my sister admired Hamilton. How the two of them shared the same interests and more traits of character than a casual observer might expect. I’d predicted she’d take his part. And I thought I might bristle when she did, but in the balance of things, she was quite right.

  She took my hand. “Let the children stay with me a while longer. You should go home to Papa. Away from the heat of this city. Away from the malice of society. Trust me, you don’t want to be here while tongues wag in every coffeehouse, people tittering behind the pages of their gazettes as you pass by.”

  As the days passed, the thought of escape became ever more tempting, especially when Hamilton rode off to Philadelphia to chase down Monroe, all to no avail. My husband felt forced now to make a public confession and therefore wished for me to have our baby in Albany.

  “It’s for the better,” Alexander said. “As I imagine that you cannot much like the sight of me at present.”

  I settled beside him on a trunk he kept at the foot of the bed. “You imagine wrong.” After all, it seemed as if some different man had broken my heart. And in any case, that heart was four years mended. Alexander and I had each grown, together, into new people. Better people. Though I would never reconcile myself to the cause of the change, I couldn’t be sorry for it. We’d made of our marriage vows a more sacred thing than when we first spoke them. And this child in my womb, who would join us in only a few weeks, was the living proof of that. “Though, Angelica thinks it would be easier for me to explain to Papa.”

  At the mention of my father, Alexander actually shuddered. “How glad General Schuyler will be for setting aside his reservations in giving his daughter in marriage to a man of low birth . . .”

  I wanted to reassure him that my father would forgive him, but I couldn’t be sure of that. What I said instead was, “Perhaps we mustn’t explain anything to Papa. Or to anyone. Your accusers are not entitled to a reply.”

  Hamilton nodded, folding his hands together. “And yet, the country deserves to know its system is not a corrupt scheme to line my pockets, otherwise these Jacobins will dismantle it and the American experiment will fail.”

  He’d convinced himself this was one more sacrifice he must make for his country. But I thought, Give the mob this drop of blood and it will only whet their appetite.

  Before I could say as much, he added, “If I don’t answer these charges of corruption, they’ll take my name. I cannot save my private reputation, and perhaps I don’t deserve to, but at least my public honor may be preserved. Which is all I have to give our children. Our children ought to always be able to hold their heads high with pride.”

  “And they shall,” I said, though I fretted at the chime of the clock that announced Philip was quite late in coming home from an outing with his friends. “Whether or not you dignify this with a response.”

  My husband rubbed at his cheek, which was darkened by a shadow of stubble. Circles darkened his eyes, too. “I would like to believe that, but I remember what happened when my mother was accused in court of whoring and she did not see fit to dignify it with a response . . .”

  All at once the specter of a woman long dead rose between us again. His mother had condemned her children to a life of illegitimacy by letting the accusation pass. Perhaps that is why Hamilton never, ever, let anything pass . . .

  And knowing this, I would not ask him to.

  He caught my fingers between his and sighed. “The rest of the children can stay here with their governess, but let Philip take you to the Pastures. For your sake and his. He’s almost a man grown, now. His friends will have heard the gossip. I do not wish for him to feel compelled to defend me. Or maybe, I cannot bear to face his disappointment . . .”

  Downstairs, we heard the door open and close, then footsteps trudging up the stairs that could only belong to a troubled boy. Perhaps my husband was right. “But I worry to leave you now, Alexander. Especially now.”

  My husband took a breath. Then another. “Eliza, if you stand beside me the public will eviscerate you. With such men as those hounding me, nothing is sacred. Even the peace of an unoffending and amiable wife. They will hurt you because of their fury against me.” He took my face in his hands and stroked my cheeks tenderly. “No man who loves his wife could wish this upon her. No loving father could wish his child born into such circumstances. I realize that I have forfeited my right to command you as a husband, but I command you in love to go. To take care of yourself, to keep up your spirits, and to remember always that my happiness is inseparable from yours.”

  Stand by him and die, renounce him and live.

  Once, I wondered what I would have done if I’d been caught in such a conundrum. I did not face death, of course, but the choice before me seemed strangely similar, and the answer no clearer or easier now.

  * * *

  August 1797

  Albany

  The river washed over my bare feet with a pleasant coolness, my petticoats bunched up at my knees. Seated on the dock next to Papa, who held a fishing pole in his hand and wore a broad straw hat upon his head, I squinted into the bright sun and imagined I was a girl again. Perhaps my father was imagining it, too, because, puffing his pipe, he put a worm onto the hook for me, as if I didn’t remember how to do it.

  A week before, Hamilton had seen me and Philip off at the sloop, simultaneously solicitous and morose. And Angelica dashed off a note that same night to tell me that my dejected husband had gone to her house thereafter and stayed well into the night, unable to speak of anything but me.

  Meanwhile, we all tried to speak of anything but him.

  On the deck of the sloop, my fifteen-year-old son treated me as if I were made of glass. Philip had become a man already, I’d realized with a motherly pang. He took his quick wit and devilish smile from his father, but the rest of him was all Schuyler. Tall, dark, and loyal. Having been commanded by his father to watch over me in my delicate condition, my son carried my bags, fetched lemonade, and played games of backgammon with me in our berth at night.

  My family was even more solicitous in Albany. Mama had everything ready for me—sweet herbs for my pains, pastries for my cravings, and the Bible from which she read to me. Peggy came to help me birth the babe and told my son what great things were expected of him at Columbia College, where he was soon to enroll. Papa tried to distract me with talk of canal projects
and the Indians.

  Even Prince, now a bit bent with age, said to my son, in a whisper meant for me to hear, “Master Philip, of all these Schuyler daughters I helped bring up in this house, your mama was the one who gave me the fewest white hairs.”

  Philip always cringed to be called Master, as it did not rest easy with him that his otherwise heroic grandfather still kept a few plantation slaves in his service. And so he took the extra pillows from Prince’s arms and said, “Well, my mother wouldn’t want to give you any more white hairs climbing those stairs, so let me get her settled.”

  On the night that my labor pains began, my father finally raised the subject. Bending to kiss me, he whispered into my hair, “My dear beloved child . . . rest easy in knowing that no one of merit believes this filth in the newspapers.”

  I dreaded to tell him the truth, and weeks after birthing a wondrously healthy little boy named William, I still did not know how. Finally, sitting beside Papa on the ferry dock with fishing poles, I blurted, “I’ve forgiven Hamilton.”

  My father bit the clay pipe between his teeth, his lips thinning as understanding dawned that Alexander was guilty. At the prospect of my father learning the truth, my husband had shuddered. The censure of the country, he believed he could withstand. My father’s judgment was another matter altogether. And I began to fear it, too, because for a few moments, the only sounds were the rush of the water. The cry of a peregrine falcon hunting overhead.

  “Elizabeth,” Papa finally said. “When you were born, I was an officer in the king’s army—a young soldier of three and twenty. I knew next to nothing about little girls. Less of nursing, or lullabies, or medicines. That was your mama’s domain.”

  I smiled a little to think he’d ever felt ill-equipped.

  But my father didn’t smile. Instead, he shook his head. “I knew only that as a father, it was my duty to protect you. With sword or musket or my own life if it should come to it. And this I have tried to do. When I gave you to Hamilton, I thought I had secured for you a life of security, love, and happiness. I chose a man I believed would defend you, and your heart, as I have always tried to do.” His mouth tightened, ruefully. “I did not choose your sisters’ husbands. But I chose Hamilton.”