It was magic.
Eliza swept out onto the floor with a poise that stunned Peggy. Such confidence—the likes of which she had never witnessed in her middle sister before. As Eliza turned, the pleated train of her à la française dress sailed in pretty swells behind her, like a swan on still waters. At first Hamilton moved with stilted, stiff dignity. But with each lilting phrase of the flutes, each near pass with Eliza, each momentary brush with her beautifully billowing skirts, each fleeting touch of hands, he gained a buoyancy, a beauty of step that was breathtaking. Their movements gained harmony until together, Eliza and her suitor embodied the musical metaphor of courtship that the minuet was first designed to celebrate and display.
It was all palpable, poetic urgency as they slowly spiraled toward each other in gradually shrinking circles for that exquisite moment they touched, right hand to right hand. Two delicious rotations with their hands held and then the bittersweet agony of withdrawing, hands still outstretched and beckoning, a plea for reuniting, before they had to repeat those separating snake patterns of steps away from each other. Even then, never did their gaze break—Hamilton’s an insecure hunger, Eliza’s a shy acceptance. When they did their final honors to their spellbound audience, Peggy could see that Eliza and Hamilton breathed in-out, in-out in tandem—the strings of their souls now tuned to match each other’s pitch, their hearts’ pulse now beats of the same melody.
The poise Peggy had noted in Eliza—it wasn’t mere confidence, she realized. It was the power of love, the largesse gained by coaxing out the best of another human being, the promise of being there during dangers and unknowns, the leap of faith needed to take a risk together. In that minuet, Peggy witnessed her sister give her enormous heart to Alexander Hamilton.
No one dared follow that heart-wrenchingly gorgeous minuet. So the band struck up a lively 6/8-time piece called “Lady Washington’s Quick Step” for the contredanse, or “country dances”—where couples danced together in long facing lines, men on one side, ladies on the other. For hours Peggy danced. Hop-step-step, forward-back, clap-clap, circling and changing places, skipping down the outside lines, weaving and threading through chains of dancers.
Laughter, breathlessness, joy. This was what she had been craving.
She danced with Tilghman, Harrison, another aide-de-camp named Robert Kidder Meade, the captain of Washington’s personal guard, Major Gibbs, another dozen lads whose names she never caught, and His Excellency’s very own nephew, a tall, pretty boy named George Augustine. Hamilton partnered her twice as well, but mostly he tried to occupy Eliza.
Around midnight, General Washington asked for Peggy’s hand to a dance. Trembling at the honor, Peggy followed him to the lead couple position, at the top of the two lines. There, it was her privilege to call the song. She hesitated—many dance songs had been renamed to political references or to honor battles. Her choice would be akin to a man making a toast. She caught Angelica’s eye. Her sister stood with Hamilton in the third couple position. Angelica returned her gaze quizzically, as if to say, Everyone’s waiting, little sister.
Peggy looked back to the general, and with her chin lifted and her eyebrow raised, she called for “Burgoyne’s Defeat.” Even over the fiddlers, she could hear it—the general chuckled. So clearly he did know that her papa had contributed just as much as Gates to that critical battle!
The next eight minutes were perhaps the best of her life to that day. She and His Excellency—the legendary General George Washington—joined hands with the couple next to them, circled to the right, then to the left, let go, cast off so that she and the general walked down the outside of the two lines, to rejoin at the funnel’s bottom and parade back through. Then they moved down to the position of second couple for the repeat. As she joined hands with Angelica for a four-person circle, her big sister leaned over and whispered, “Excellent choice!”
For such a tall man, Washington was remarkably light on his feet, catlike in grace, and completely delighted with the spritely melody. Peggy memorized the feel of every turn, every bow, every skip with him. She knew that if they all came out of this war, independent, alive, and whole, she would recount the privilege of “getting a touch of General George Washington”—as all the women that night called the experience of dancing with the man in whom they placed all their hopes and trust their very lives.
At the end of their dance, she was limping a bit. She had been dancing for hours at that point. She didn’t care. But General Washington did. “Miss Schuyler, I must insist that you sit for a moment. We have taken advantage of your generosity. You dance with such grace and good humor, we have all forgotten that you arrived just this evening, after hours of hard, cold travel. You must be exhausted.”
“Oh no, sir, I could dance for hours more.” She beamed up at him.
“Then I defer to your mercy, for my legs are fatigued.” He guided her to a chair.
She knew it was a gracious lie and sat gratefully.
“Gentlemen,” Washington called, holding his hand up to silence the musicians. “We must pause for a moment to allow our gallant ladies to catch their breath and our wonderful musicians to rest their fingers.”
All sixteen ladies smiled with relief, and suddenly looked tremendously tired. As they fluttered into seats, Washington announced, “I have been waiting to bring out my punch until such a break.” He motioned to the servants standing along the walls, who promptly carried in a large bowl. “A glass for everyone, and then a toast.”
When everyone held a tin mug or glass filled with aromatic liquor, Washington raised his and said, “To liberty, our fellowship, and most particularly tonight to the ladies who braved the fiercest winter of the century to bring us happiness.”
“Hear, hear!”
One sip and Peggy’s eyes watered and throat burned.
Tilghman, Harrison, McHenry, and Meade had all ended up standing near Peggy and Angelica. Tilghman noticed her grimace at the punch. “Be careful of that, Miss Peggy, there is quite a bit of whiskey, rum, and Madeira in that.”
She sniffed at it, preparing to try again, and decided against the adventure. “Perhaps I’ll just hold it,” she said.
“Oh, I’ll take that off your hands,” said McHenry. “We mustn’t waste such excellent spirits in this awful winter.”
The aides noticed Eliza and Hamilton across the dance floor, talking.
“Hamilton’s a gone man,” quipped Harrison.
“How could he not be?” said Tilghman. “Miss Eliza has the most lively dark eyes I have ever seen. They radiate good temper and benevolence.”
Angelica and Peggy looked at each other knowingly. They had suspected in that visit Tilghman made to Albany that he was smitten with Eliza.
“Poor Cornelia,” Tilghman murmured. “I hope Alex didn’t break her heart.”
“I warned her,” brayed McHenry. “I told her that one man is oft more dangerous to a woman than a whole army. And I could tell she was a passing fancy. She has turned, as I suspected into, ‘a mere rant, th’effusion of a brain oppress’d with love’s distempered train.’”
“Quoting yourself, Mac?” Harrison asked with a laugh.
“Ah no. ‘Twas penned for Hammie by our dear friend Samuel Blachley Webb last month. It is nicely turned, so I memorized it. He wrote all the right sentiments: ‘She’s but—sweet sir, nay do not fret, She’s but—a beautiful brunette.’”
Peggy did not like this McHenry at all. Was he the source of Hamilton’s letter calling love a weakness? Who was Cornelia? And what about Hamilton’s flirtation with Kitty Livingston that Benedict Arnold had mentioned?
But before Peggy could ask the aide-de-camp who he was talking about, before she could rise up to protect her sister, the music started again. McHenry pulled Peggy back into the crowd, as people again gathered to frolic on the dance floor.
Peggy tried to keep her eye on Eliza, to gauge her interaction with Hamilton. But her watchful eye was always drawn to Angelica, even within the lovely sea of dancers. Angelic
a kept surfacing like a beautiful shimmering fish. Her dress was slim and form-fitting despite her recently giving birth to a baby girl and the most elaborate of any that night—a cream-tissue taffeta shot-through with silver metallic threads, its skirt ornamented with ribbons of twisted silk gimp. Peggy wondered fleetingly where Carter was—in the flurry of getting her primped and dressed and into the sled and back into the snow for the ball, Peggy hadn’t thought to ask.
Of course, that night, since there were four men to each woman, the ladies partnered with many officers besides their husbands. So Peggy wasn’t shocked that Angelica danced with the same abandon and flirtatious effervescence she had before she married. Not even when she noticed Hamilton draw Angelica in a bit too close as she pirouetted under his arm, not even when they lingered in that allemande turn, when couples’ arms entwined in a pretzel-like clasp. That night, against the bitter cold dark of the worst winter anyone could remember, snow falling yet again, and the sure knowledge that come spring, their desperate fight against the British would renew, everyone danced with a do-or-die kind of exuberance that might have scandalized in peacetime.
At two a.m. the revelers scattered through the snow back to their quarters, the ball over. Peggy, Angelica, and Eliza bundled together in their sled, exhausted, Eliza flushed with the kiss Hamilton had pressed to the palm of her gloved hand. As their sleigh pulled away, they could hear Washington’s aides-de-camp defiantly singing to the heavens the Patriots’ cheeky takeoff on the British grenadiers traditional fight song:
“Vain Britons, boast no longer, with proud indignity,
By land your conquering legions, your matchless strength at sea,
Since we, your braver sons, incensed, our swords have girded on . . .”
As the male voices reached the song’s final line, Peggy linked arms with her sisters, and laughing with rebellious abandon, the Schuyler women shouted with them:
“Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, for war and Washington!”
Eleven
Early Spring
Alexander Hamilton to Eliza Schuyler
Amboy, New Jersey, Thursday Forenoon, March 17, 1780
If I were not afraid of making you vain, I would tell you that Mrs. Carter, Peggy, and yourself are the dayly toasts of our table . . . though as I am always thinking of you, this naturally brings Peggy to my mind who is generally my toast. Capt Beebe is here and talks of her sometimes; but I won’t give my consent to his being her favourite. I don’t think him clever enough for her; he sings well and that’s all.
ELIZA WAS SPRAWLED ON HER STOMACH ON THEIR bed, reading aloud from Hamilton’s letter. Pausing, she looked up to ask, “Which one is Captain Beebe, Peggy?”
Peggy was trying to remember herself. “I think he is an officer in the Corps of Sappers and Miners. I only danced once with him. A sweet but rather short, stocky man. Talked a bit about the importance of trenches.” She made a face. “Not exactly scintillating. But he did have a lovely voice. I recall that now. He sang for the assembly when His Excellency gave the musicians a few minutes to enjoy some grog and let their fingers rest.”
“Oh, was he that man who sang that heartbreaking love song?” asked Eliza.
“I thiiiink so?”
“Awwwwww.” Eliza put her hand over her heart.
“He most certainly was.” Angelica spoke up. “And he completely sank the mood with it, remember? A sapper and miner, indeed. Best beware of him, Peggy, he’s a sap, all right.”
The girls laughed. Peggy was overjoyed to hear the carillon peal of their joint amusement once more. How she had missed the sound of her sisters’ mirth and their interconnected thoughts—like the harmonies and synonymous beat of a song. It was a hard price to pay for growing up—not hearing that daily. Was romance and marriage really worth splitting and scattering the three of them? Angelica’s husband certainly was not convincing her that the bittersweet sacrifice was worth it. And Peggy still wasn’t positive that the jocular Alexander Hamilton was devoted enough for the loyal and loving Eliza.
Angelica was pacing, lightly rocking her four-month-old daughter, who slipped in and out of slumber peacefully. Her firstborn, a two-year-old named for their father, was toddling about the bedroom, protected from being hurt if he fell by a padded, helmetlike pudding cap.
Peggy sat cross-legged in a settee, rubbing her toes to push out the ache in them. The pain was getting more frequent and more annoying and frightening. She needed to ask her uncle about it. The discomfort was jabbing, knifelike, in her joints. Just like Papa. But she said nothing, not wanting to disturb their sisterly conclave. She had so missed them.
Angelica’s lullaby rotation brought her to her youngest sister’s side. She reached out with her free hand and fondly twirled one of Peggy’s curls. “Just think, little one, General Washington’s aides-de-camp toasting you. You are quite grown up now.”
“Indeed she is! Perhaps I should be jealous that Peggy is, hmm . . . wait a moment . . .” Eliza looked down to the neat handwriting: “Alexander says, and I quote, This naturally brings Peggy to my mind who is generally my toast.”
Angelica abruptly let go of the tendril of Peggy’s hair with what felt like a little yank. Peggy frowned and rubbed her scalp, saying, “It is only because he thinks he has enlisted my help in his courtship of you, Eliza.”
“Does he say anything about the prisoner exchange he is negotiating?” asked Angelica. “Mr. Carter is hoping a friend of his will be released. He thinks he can cajole the man to help procure supplies for General Washington from the islands. They were childhood friends in England.”
“Wouldn’t that be treason for a British officer to engage in trade and smuggling to the Patriots’ benefit?” asked Peggy.
“Only if he returns to Great Britain after the war.” Angelica laid her daughter in an awaiting cradle. “Besides, it’s simply good business, my husband would say,” she added with a sigh, straightening up.
“When does Mr. Carter return to us?” Eliza asked.
“Not for a while. The winter has been so harsh he has to travel farther and farther south to find any provisions at all.” She wandered back to the window and gazed out, again petting Peggy’s hair absentmindedly. “Lord, Lord, it looks like it might snow once more. Isn’t it almost April?”
Peggy and Eliza exchanged a raised-eyebrow look at Angelica’s uncharacteristic melancholic tone. Both of them were growing worried about their beautiful eldest sister’s happiness.
After a moment, with forced lightness, Angelica asked, “What else does your ardent suitor write?”
Eliza read on: “The express arrived with your dear billet under cover of one from your guardian. I cannot tell you what extacy I felt in casting my eye over the sweet effusions of tenderness it contains. My Betseys soul speaks in every line and bids me be the happiest of mortals. I am so and will be so. You give me too many proofs of your love to allow me to doubt it and in the conviction that I possess that, I possess every thing the world can give.”
“Oh my, Eliza.” Peggy sighed now. “That is quite beautiful.” To herself, she added a mark in the positive column in her tally of whether Alexander Hamilton was worthy of her loving sister.
But Eliza looked stricken.
“What is wrong with you, you silly goose?” Angelica asked. She crossed the room to sit beside Eliza on the bed.
“I should never have let you tell me what to write in my last letter, Angelica. I will never pen something as good. He will discover me a fraud!”
“It won’t matter once he is allowed to hold you in his arms, and . . .” Angelica trailed off with a mischievous smile.
Eliza turned absolutely crimson. Then she whispered, “But maybe he won’t want me if I cannot keep up with his wit. Oh, Angelica, you can’t ever leave us again. You must stay and help me know how to speak to him.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Eliza, just speak from your soul,” Peggy reassured her. “That is poetry enough. Your sincerity is one of your greatest charms, and
carries a beautiful eloquence, because it is genuine.”
For a moment Eliza brightened. Then Angelica asked, “Has Alexander spoken to Papa yet?”
“I . . . I don’t think he has. He planned to stop in Philadelphia either on his way there or back from the prisoner exchange.” She glanced down at the letter and skimmed it. “Surely he would have mentioned meeting with Papa if he had.” Her face puckered up again and she burst into tears.
Peggy made a what-are-you-doing face at Angelica and added herself to the bed’s pile of Schuyler sisters. “You mustn’t be so afraid, Eliza. You’ll worry yourself sick. Honestly, if this man doesn’t approve of your words, he doesn’t deserve you and you don’t want him. There are plenty others who would find your words intoxicating honey.”
That statement turned out to be worse than what Angelica said. Eliza wept in earnest now. “But I don’t want any other man. I love Alexander—since the moment I saw him.”
“Oh dear,” Angelica murmured. She gathered Eliza into her arms. “Then you shall have him, my pet. I will teach you how to write playful letters, so that you can write them on your own as second nature. Letters that promise much but not all. Letters that tantalize enough to keep him feeling not quite satisfied and needing to continue his pursuit. It can be as simple as where you place a comma. For example, place one between an adjective and Hamilton’s name in a formal phrase. Instead of starting your letter ‘my dear sir,’ write it this way: ‘my dear, sir.’ It will catch him off guard. He’ll start looking for other little hidden endearments.
“Now that won’t be so hard.” She pushed Eliza’s hair back from her pretty, tear-streaked face. “Will it?”
Eliza smiled and shook her head.
“Angelica, honestly, leave her be!” Peggy pleaded. “Eliza’s own sentiments are perfect.”
“Oh, it’s all right, Peggy,” Eliza said. “I’m grateful. And once . . . once Alexander and I are married . . .” She paused and her voice hushed. “Once we’re married, we’ll be together and I will be able to show him how much I love him.”
Hamilton and Peggy! Page 14