Hamilton and Peggy!

by L. M. Elliott

  Finally, Hamilton confessed that he simply could not remember. “Clearly a moment of madness on my part. Please tell me why our meeting was almost a nightmare?”

  Now Peggy frowned slightly as memories of the injured at Albany’s hospital rushed into her mind. “It was in Albany. At the hospital. I was speaking with General Arnold and—”

  “That was you?” he asked with genuine surprise. “I am very sorry, Miss Peggy, but”—he gestured toward her as he continued—“you look very”—he paused—“very different now, mademoiselle.”

  Peggy flushed. “It is Angelica’s dress,” she blurted.

  “Ah, it has her . . . aura. But it is most becoming on you, Miss Peggy. You will most certainly achieve what I had hoped with your presence—denying your sister’s absolute sway over our hapless officers by dividing our attentions.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Peggy answered without thinking. She had become so accustomed to playing second fiddle, to Angelica especially.

  He cocked his head. “You are too modest.”

  “Not really,” Peggy said with a small laugh. “Just honest. And speaking honestly, you might remember that day we met, I was rather annoyed for my father that you did not bother to go see him in Saratoga when you visited General Gates. It was my father who set up our army to be able to vanquish Burgoyne. You know that, don’t you?”

  Hamilton was taken aback. “I . . . I . . . my mission was so rushed, Miss Peggy. And politics . . . Congress . . . your father at that time . . .”

  “Was persona non grata?”

  Suddenly, Hamilton looked very young as the realization sank in that he may have once deeply insulted the father of the woman he was now courting. “I hope General Schuyler will not hold that against me.”

  “Papa is not like that.” She paused, noting Hamilton called her father “general” even though he no longer served as such. “That is if we—his three Graces—tell Papa not to be.” Peggy was not ready yet to make things easy for this man in his pursuit of Eliza. The aide-de-camp had much to prove.

  Hamilton considered her a moment before speaking again—clearly unsure of stratagem. He chose sincerity. “I will depend upon your mercy, then, Miss Peggy. Because surely no man has been as struck through with love as I am with admiration and feeling for your sister’s generosity of spirit and beauty.”

  Well, she thought, no verbal strutting in that, no claiming that against his better judgment was Eliza luring him into love—as he had bantered in his letter. She’d give him a chance at least.

  Hamilton clearly observed Peggy soften. “Have we negotiated an alliance, then?”

  “I will discuss it with my sisters, my fellow Graces,” Peggy quipped, defaulting to ballroom playfulness. “Perhaps we must cast dice to read the future regarding you. Will there be some at the card tables tonight?”

  Hamilton followed her lead. “If not, I will ride to the soldiers’ huts to find some! May I escort you to your sisters, Miss Peggy? You must not stand in this corner, hiding your glory.” He held out his hand.

  She took it. As they crossed the sanded floorboards of the recently built army storehouse that would serve as the night’s dance hall, Hamilton added, “We must find you an appropriate suitor. No Hephaestus for my Aglaea.”

  Peggy made a face. “I would hope not! The deformed, cast-off lover of Aphrodite? Wasn’t he her half brother, too?”

  Hamilton laughed outright. It was an honest laugh. Peggy liked it.

  “I can see finding an appropriate match for you is going to be quite the challenge, Miss Peggy. But tonight will be a good start. Tonight’s snowfall seems to have kept most ladies at home. They are not blessed with the Schuyler sisters’ intrepidness. There are a mere sixteen ladies to almost sixty officers. I hope you are ready to dance.”

  “Oh, look!” Eliza caught her breath and squeezed Peggy’s hand. “The general!”

  At the threshold stood His Excellency, General George Washington. The room hushed.

  Tall, broad-shouldered, lean, with long-stretched, muscular legs, Washington towered over all the other men in the room. He bowed his head to the assembly, noble yet unassuming, as he quickly began the circuit of greeting everyone. On his arm, barely reaching his chest, was his diminutive wife, Martha, or Lady Washington, as the soldiers fondly called her. She was slightly plump, and her heart-shaped, dimpled face carried a sweet impishness in it.

  “I so wish to be like her,” Eliza whispered as she waited with Peggy and Angelica for their turn with His Excellency. “She is kind to everyone, even preening fools. Aunt Gitty told me that when Mrs. Washington made it through the snows to camp, all the Morristown ladies donned their most elegant dresses and jewels to call on her. They arrived at the arranged time and there she sat, in a very plain brown dress of homespun, a neat frilled cap on her head, and no ornamentation except a miniature portrait of her husband hanging from her neck.

  “Mrs. Washington was knitting stockings for the soldiers!” Eliza laughed lightly. “The ladies were quite stunned that she was not all done up as they. But Mrs. Washington was her amiable, cheerful self, chatting about her pity for the poor, naked soldiers, and ‘my old man,’ as she calls His Excellency. Her knitting needles were going the whole time, a ball of yarn in her outside pocket. She was careful to make her guests feel at ease with her welcoming conversation. Yet they were ashamed of their idle hands. They left and immediately started up several sewing circles.”

  Eliza beamed, bouncing slightly on her toes as the Washingtons neared. “Oh, and she also told me that she keeps more than a dozen spinning wheels going round the clock at Mount Vernon. Imagine. We must talk to Mama about doing the same in our barn. Mrs. Washington has learned to design her own dresses, too, with what can be found here in our states. No reliance on Europe. We can do that, Peggy. She made two dresses of cotton, striped with silk—the stripes coming from ravelings of old, crimson damask chair covers. Isn’t that marvelous!”

  “Hmpf. Well, I don’t think I will be making gowns for myself out of frayed furniture,” mumbled Angelica. “And someone should tell her to take that enormous satin bow off the bodice she wears tonight. It does nothing for her figure.”

  Eliza and Peggy looked at her with shock. Their eldest sister’s sense of humor had always been rapier sharp, but never catty, never envious or mean.

  Noticing their surprise, Angelica murmured, “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  “Eliza, my dear.” Martha Washington held out both hands to clasp Eliza’s and kissed her on the cheek. “You look absolutely radiant. I’m sure our Alexander is swooning. There is much talk about you two among the general’s family.”

  Eliza blushed.

  Martha Washington turned to Angelica. “Mrs. Carter, what a lovely dress.”

  And then she came to Peggy. “This must the youngest of the Schuyler sisters. Your sister brags much upon your talents, child. I look forward to our friendship.” She turned to her husband. “Mr. Washington.”

  “Yes, my dearest?”

  “This is Philip Schuyler’s third daughter we have so looked forward to meeting.”

  Peggy felt her knees go weak as His Excellency approached, took her hand, and bowed. “I am relieved to see you have made it here safely, Miss Schuyler. I hope your trip was not too taxing. Although I can imagine the dangers and the discomforts you experienced. I am truly sorry that we are not able to better guard and maintain the roads for our fairest visitors. The best we have been able to do is send the infantry out to tramp down the snows so sleds can pass.” His voice was resonant, deep, but breathy, as if he pulled in air with effort. Peggy knew his brother had died of consumption, and the general’s face was pockmarked, a lingering sign of having survived smallpox. Don’t let this man become ill, she thought. The country would not survive General Washington dying.

  Aloud she demurred, “No, sir. Not too uncomfortable. The trip was simply long.”

  “Ah, you are as your uncle described—a spirited young woman. Bravo
. He is quite proud of you, you know. And protective. Good Dr. Bones was beside himself when he learned that you had embarked on this journey. I thought he might demand I send out a regiment to collect you.”

  “Dr. Bones?”

  General Washington nodded. His smile was drawn tight across his lips—he was reputed to rarely laugh outright or grin, but he was clearly entertained with a memory of her uncle. “We call him that because of an amusing song he sings to lift our mood. I don’t know what we would do without his medical acumen and his jokes.”

  “He is a man of great mirth, indeed, sir.” Peggy marveled at how Washington looked at her so deferentially, so full in the face with his gray-blue eyes, as if he had all the evening to spend listening to her, as if there were not dozens of far more important guests impatiently awaiting his attention. “I should not monopolize you, Your Excellency.”

  “I suppose you are right. And yet truth be told, I would far prefer retreating to a corner to talk with you, your sisters, and my beloved wife. May I beg a dance with you later?”

  Dancing with His Excellency, the supreme commander of the War of Independence, the man all fighting Patriots depended on to lead them to victory, to protect them against starvation and disease, and to save them from hanging as traitors! “Yes, please, sir,” she answered.

  General Washington bowed again with sincere courtliness. Seemingly unaware of—or perhaps studiously ignoring—the effect he had on people, His Excellency moved on to the next group eagerly awaiting an audience with him.

  To begin the dancing, Washington led Lucy Knox, the wife of his trusted artillery general, out in front of the assembly for a minuet.

  “Now there is someone worth talking to,” Angelica said to Peggy. “Mrs. Knox is quite the scholar. Everyone in Boston talks about it. That’s how she met her husband. She frequented his bookshop constantly. He advised her on what to buy and read next. He is a self-made intellectual, you know. His knowledge of cannonade and warfare is completely gleaned from reading books. Isn’t that marvelous—a wondrous irony if ever there was one given how he has bested the most trained of British artillery units. Mrs. Knox’s father, on the other hand, was a royal provincial governor of Massachusetts. He was incensed when his daughter fell in love with a poor man—no pedigree or breeding, a mere merchant. And a Patriot! Her parents completely disowned her when she married. Lucy gave up everything—wealth, her family—for love.”

  “For love of General Knox?” Peggy couldn’t help her surprise. It was a marvel much discussed that Knox weighed something like three hundred pounds while the Continental Army starved.

  Hamilton was standing beside the sisters and the Cochrans and laughed at Peggy’s astonishment. “One cannot predict love, Miss Peggy,” he said.

  Eliza blushed again. Peggy realized her sister was going to be blushing on and off all night long.

  “Aye, child,” Cochran chimed in. “For his part, General Knox is besotted with his bride, despite her dollop of autocratic tendencies and fits o’ passion. He is a good soul and laughs along with jests at his expense. The night before we attacked those blasted Hessians at Trenton, our men stood for hours. Standing in sleet, wet to the bone, waiting to cross the Delaware River clogged thick with ice, in nothing but rowboats—their apprehension grew like a rising fog. His Excellency sensed it and dispelled their fears by teasing General Knox. Before setting foot into a boat in which General Knox already sat, His Excellency prodded him with his boot. ‘Shift yourself over, Harry,’ he said, ‘but do it slowly or you’ll swamp the boat. And don’t swing your’”—Cochran winked for the word—“‘or you’ll tip us over.’”

  Peggy laughed. She knew she shouldn’t at such off-color jokes, but she delighted in her uncle’s outrageous sense of mischief.

  “Dr. Cochran!” protested Aunt Gertrude.

  “Now then, Gitty, it’s just a bit of fun that His Excellency did a-purpose to help the lads laugh a bit. The question—‘What did the general say?’—went down the line of those poor, freezing bastards, followed by hearty laughter and renewed energy.”

  “Honestly, husband,” she reprimanded him. “The girls.”

  Cochran winked at Peggy as the military band, augmented with some fiddlers, French horn players, and flutists from Morristown, raised their instruments.

  According to custom, the musicians were waiting for Mrs. Knox to select her music. A ball’s opening minuets followed a strict, formal ritual. The ranking gentleman and the most important lady present danced first, followed in descending order of social standing by other couples, one after the other. Each pair danced solo, performing for the assembled watchers. It was theater not for the fainthearted. A minuet’s steps were complex, intricate, requiring the two dancers to move in symmetrical patterns across the entire dance floor, away and then back to each other—so there was no hiding mistakes or clumsiness during those five minutes of music. Dancers were expected to glide as if they skated along ice, four steps to six beats of melody, while never breaking their gaze from each other and ignoring the witnessing throng that analyzed and gossiped about them.

  “Watch this,” murmured Hamilton with obvious awe. “His Excellency is as good a dancer as horseman.”

  Mrs. Knox called an old favorite, the “Philadelphia Minuet,” and the musicians began a 3/4-time melody that Peggy knew well from her dancing classes. Mrs. Knox and the general did “honors” to the crowd and then to each other—sinking, slowly, by bending their knees, heels together, their arms extended slightly in an open arc, like birds sunning their wings. Then they promenaded, his right hand palm up holding her left hand, palm down. Forward then backward in small tiptoe steps, a pause as a foot was held up, heel down, another slight plié bend of the knees, and repeat.

  Halfway through the minuet, they drifted apart, mirroring each other in Z patterns that pulled away to opposite corners of the floor. A few elegant jetés switching from one foot to the other midleap, a few hops ending with one foot extended, toes pointed, always on the beat, always exactly together.

  Finally reunited, hands held, General Washington returned Mrs. Knox to their opening position, parading backward, to conclude with an elegant bow.

  Everyone applauded. Women sighed and murmured how they hoped the general would ask them for a dance as they awaited the next brave pair to step onto the floor. General Greene led out Widow Ford, whose home served as headquarters. Washington took the floor again with the vivacious twenty-four-year-old Caty Greene. Senior officers performed one after another, and then it was the turn for the next tier of importance, the general’s “family”—his five aides-de-camp. There was a long silence and pause as his cohorts turned to Hamilton.

  “Go on, Hammie. The general typically puts you at the head of our table opposite him. So you must have rank,” prodded Tench Tilghman. Peggy had recognized him instantly—he was the Marylander who Washington had sent to Albany five years earlier to help Schuyler negotiate an alliance with the Iroquois Confederacy. His hair was now graying, and the ten or so years’ difference between him and Hamilton showed clearly.

  “Yes, you’re our little lion,” teased Robert Harrison, another thirtysomething Marylander on the general’s staff. He elbowed Hamilton.

  “Of all of us, you best know the ways of Cupid,” added an Irish-born doctor named James McHenry, who now acted as secretary to Washington. “And what better way to show it than by the minuet.” He ribbed Hamilton. “Besides, your head is totally in the clouds these days, my friend, so you will float across the floor.”

  Eliza blushed.

  “It is true, my dear.” Martha Washington took Eliza’s arm. “I heard from one of the Ford children . . .” She paused and explained to Peggy, “Mrs. Ford is kind enough to rent her house to the general for his headquarters, but she and her four children remain in residence as well. Her eldest son told me that Colonel Hamilton shares our daily password with him so the boy can visit friends in the village and still gain entry to his own home after dark. These poor villager
s, we certainly disrupt their lives.”

  “Madam, I beg you not to share this story; it will show me for the fool I am,” Hamilton pleaded.

  “Oh, you must tell, then, Lady Washington!” said McHenry.

  Martha laughed, like a charming little bell pealing. “It seems our Colonel Hamilton’s mind—which we all so admire—completely failed him after a visit with our dear Eliza. He was so preoccupied he could not remember that day’s password. Had Master Ford not snuck out and whispered it to him, our guard would never have let Colonel Hamilton reenter. He would have spent the night like that tomcat I named after him, yowling at the perimeters of the house, looking for a way in.”

  Hamilton’s friends guffawed and punched his shoulder.

  “A tomcat?” Peggy asked.

  “Yes, Miss Peggy,” Harrison answered. “Our young squire has been looking for love ardently.”

  “And now, it seems he has found it,” Martha concluded. “Come, Colonel. The minuet awaits you.”

  Peggy stepped back so nothing but air stood between Hamilton and her sister. Yet Hamilton hesitated. Peggy suddenly realized there was a shadow of panic on his face. Did he know how? There was no faking a minuet, no way to simply mimic a partner’s movements. One had to know the steps, had to have internalized the rhythms, as they weren’t always obvious with the music’s phrasings. Peggy knew nothing about Hamilton’s background—whether he would have had the advantage of a dancing master. She glanced at Eliza.

  Her sister’s luminous rich-brown eyes were fixed on Hamilton’s and radiated reassurance. Eliza nodded ever so slightly at him, smiled, and mouthed, “It’s all right.” Hamilton took a deep breath and took her hand.