Hamilton and Peggy!

by L. M. Elliott

  “Oh really, little sister?” Angelica teased.

  “I didn’t mean that! I meant . . .” Eliza sat up, clasping the sacred letter. “I mean like this. Listen to this next part: ‘The good Meade had the kindness to tell me that you received my letter with apparent marks of joy and that you retired with eagerness to read it. ’Tis from circumstances like these we best discover the true sentiments of the heart.’”

  Angelica laughed again. “So he has spies watching you. That’s good!” Then she shook her head. “Those aides-de-camp are such a pack. Lord knows how they will survive being separated when he weds you.”

  “Papa will say yes, won’t he? Alexander isn’t exactly, isn’t . . . he is new to America. He has no connections.”

  Angelica snorted—a most unladylike and unusual sound coming from her. “No connections? Alexander has His Excellency’s ear. He is probably the most trusted aide in Washington’s family. Of course Papa will approve.”

  “Eliza, listen to me,” said Peggy. “No, better yet, listen to what Hamilton just wrote you. You don’t need to worry. You don’t need to deal in flirtation or artifice. He loves your—how did he call it—the true sentiments of your heart.”

  “You can say that, Peggy, because you are as clever as Angelica. And it’s not just me who is intimidated by his intellect. Remember that sweet letter I received from Kitty?” Eliza bounced off the bed, nearly knocking down little Philip on her way to the writing desk. She pulled out a letter from their friend and distant cousin. “Let’s see.” She quickly read the paper. “I have purchased your apron . . . no, no, not that part . . . here: assure Colonel Hamilton of my best wishes . . . . I would endeavor to say something in behalf of this poor letter, pray do not let Colonel Hamilton see it. His forte is writing I too well know, to submit anything I can say tonight to his inspection . . .”

  Angelica waved her hand in dismissal. “I love dearest Kitty, but she is in danger of turning into a simpering old maid.”

  “Angelica!” Eliza and Peggy exclaimed at the same time.

  “Well, she is.” Angelica shrugged. “Kitty is closing in on twenty-nine years of age, isn’t she? She had her chance with Alexander, back when he had just arrived from Saint Croix and was studying at Elizabethtown Academy and staying at their house. He told me he wrote her the most ardent letters at the beginning of the war, calling her goddess, damsel, promising to attack windmills in her service. And she spurned him. Her loss. He now belongs to you, ladybird.” She pointed to Eliza.

  Peggy burned to ask Angelica why Alexander Hamilton—their sister’s lover—was telling her about his past love affairs. Clearly the man was a gossip. But what was Angelica up to with such conversations? Did she always have to insert herself in every situation and relationship around her? Besides, Hamilton had written wanting Peggy as his confidante, hadn’t he? Peggy felt a sudden swell of her childhood competitiveness with Angelica. She didn’t like the feeling at all.

  “What about Cornelia Lott?” Eliza whispered.

  So that was the Cornelia whom McHenry had referenced at the ball while Eliza and Hamilton danced their mesmerizing minuet. Peggy sat up.

  “She is Caty Greene’s close friend. Why do you ask?” To Peggy, Angelica seemed suddenly evasive. Her nonchalant question was clearly hypothetical since she kept talking. “Now, that Caty; there is someone who made a rather remarkable marriage in her General Nathaniel Greene, don’t you think? A man fifteen years older than she, not particularly well-educated. He wheezes and walks with a limp. And he’s a Quaker, mind you! Who could have foreseen that a man coming from the pacifist Society of Friends would take up arms and become one of our most important and brave generals? General Washington has great faith in him. They have become close friends. Clever girl, that Caty . . .” Angelica trailed off, lost in thought.

  Now Angelica was going to imply that the totally delightful Caty Greene was cunning in her affections? Why was she being so peevish? “I don’t think there was anything calculating in that match, Angelica. I think the general adores her and she just fell in love,” said Peggy. “I really like Caty. She’s completely engaging in conversation, and has such a joyous nature. Warmhearted and exuberant. But there’s nothing frivolous about her. Frankly, she reminds me of you.”

  The look Angelica gave Peggy was so sad it took her breath away.

  “Yes, I suppose,” Angelica murmured. She stood and smoothed out her petticoats. “Now, to your reply, sweet Eliza. Take up your quill. Let’s think of winter and the cold of separation. How, when dear Hamilton returns, spring will bloom, and in your heart . . .” She smiled. “What? What would you say? Think about the promise, the flowering, the flush of life hiding beneath those wretched snowbanks longing to be awakened.”

  Eliza dipped a quill into her inkwell. “Oh goodness.” She looked up in surprise. “The ink has frozen!”

  “Then we will warm it up by the fire and melt it with the heat of your thoughts,” Angelica quipped.

  They all laughed—that wondrous chime.

  As Eliza stirred the hearth’s fire to make it roar, and Angelica held the inkwell near the flames, rubbing and rotating it in her hands to unstop the liquid, Peggy returned to the window.

  A few days before, through the frosty panes, she had been able to hear, very faintly, fifes and drums in the distance. But not military parade music. Jigs and “Yankee Doodle.” General Washington had proclaimed a day of rest to celebrate St. Patrick’s holiday and to honor the parliament of Ireland for its own growing protests and potential revolt against the tyranny of Britain. The general had even given the men a hogshead of rum to enjoy.

  Nearly a quarter of the soldiers shivering and starving and stubbornly surviving the winter in log huts they’d built in nearby Jockey Hollow were recent Irish immigrants. Their loyalty to America’s cause would certainly strengthen with Washington’s tribute to their heritage and his applauding their home country rattling England’s chains.

  Her uncle Johnny had also shared with Peggy a startling fact that he had come to recognize as he kept records of all the illnesses and the men he treated in the hospital. His journals revealed that nearly three out of four men in the Continental Army had been born someplace other than America—England, Ireland, Germany mostly. Many of them were paid substitutes for rich men who were born in the colonies and with roots dating back a few generations. Africans—slaves and freemen both—were beginning to fill the ranks as well. The enslaved were promised freedom papers after the war.

  The American Army may have begun with homegrown Patriots and their eloquent writings or audacious protests, but it was becoming a fighting force of immigrants—like Alexander Hamilton.

  Peggy looked toward the Ford Mansion, sitting atop the hill outside the small courthouse town of fifty houses and two churches. She knew that in its first floor things were happening! Washington and his aides were receiving and writing letters, worrying over dispatches, pleading Congress for money to clothe and feed the soldiers, trying to convince locals to sell them meat or eggs or dried fruit at a reasonable price, speculating about what the British forces might be up to in New York City, perhaps even planning the spring’s first attacks on the Redcoat strongholds.

  How she longed to be part of that! Not worrying over the wording of love letters and whether a man would find them engaging enough.

  She sighed heavily.

  “What’s wrong?” Eliza looked up from her letter, uncertainty on her face again.

  Peggy smiled at her. “Nothing. Just thinking about . . .” She searched for a plausible fib. “I was remembering . . .”

  “Captain Beebe?” Angelica quipped.

  “No!” Peggy gazed back out the window, finding her cover. “I was remembering the story Kitty told in that letter. About those two British regiments raiding their home.”

  “Oh yes, wasn’t that just awful,” breathed Eliza. “Thank God their father escaped capture. Can you imagine how terrifying that would be?”

  “Yes, their po
or family,” murmured Angelica. “Ever since their father became the Continental governor of New Jersey, their house has been repeatedly attacked and pillaged.”

  “Didn’t Kitty say the rogues have even stolen all the house’s door hinges to melt down for musket balls?”

  “I was actually marveling at how Susannah kept her head to save her father’s dispatches,” said Peggy.

  Her sisters laughed.

  “She always has been frisky, that one!” Angelica commented with obvious respect.

  During a recent raid, infuriated that Governor Livingston had escaped into the night, British soldiers ransacked the house looking for any letters or records that would reveal Patriot secrets. To stop the Redcoats threatening her family, Susannah offered to help them look. She led them from place to place, finally coming to the locked secretary where she knew her father filed his precious correspondence. Standing with her back to it, Susannah pleaded with the soldiers to spare her secrets, that she had hidden there love letters her parents knew nothing of. If they promised to leave those notes alone, she would take them to her father’s important papers. Beguiled, the Redcoats nodded and followed her to the library, where she climbed a ladder to the highest shelf and pulled out old law briefs her father had written before the Revolution’s outbreak, neatly bound and official-looking.

  “Wouldn’t you have loved to have seen the look on those Redcoats’ faces when they opened the governor’s old law papers and found they had been bamboozled?” laughed Peggy. “And by a girl!”

  Even though Peggy jested, Susannah’s little triumph was an important one. Having watched her papa carefully veil the wordings of his communiqués with General Washington in case of interception, and seeing how excited Schuyler was when his spies like Moses Harris brought him messages that revealed British plans, Peggy knew how vitally important Susannah’s save had been. Her clever ruse had probably protected information about Patriot troop numbers, encampments, ammunition levels, where they got their supplies, where their scouts patrolled—all insights that could have helped the British or their Loyalist allies plan ambushes or kidnappings.

  “I wonder if I would have been that ingenious,” she wondered aloud. “That defiant.”

  “You?” Eliza asked with a grin.

  Angelica laughed. “Oh yes, baby sister, you would be. We have no doubt.”

  Twelve

  Spring

  Philip Schuyler to Alexander Hamilton

  Philadelphia, April 8th, 1780

  Dear Sir

  Mrs Schuyler . . . consents to Comply with your and her daughters wishes. You will see the Impropriety of taking the dernier pas [elopement] where you are. Mrs. Schuyler did not see her Eldest daughter married. That also gave me pain, and we wish not to Experience It a Second time . . . I shall probably be at Camp In a few days, when we will adjust all matters. . . . Beware of Communications to this quarter which you would not wish the world to know. This hint will prevent you from writing but by a safe hand.

  I am Dr Sir sincerely Yours &c &c

  Ph. Schuyler

  “DO NOT WORRY, MY BOY. YOU HAVE MANY OTHER, far superior talents!” called George Washington. He tossed a leather ball up and down in his hand, waiting for his nephew to take position for a throw. Hamilton had failed to catch any of the general’s passes and given up.

  “That’s right, Hammie. Such as whistling all the tunes of love,” cooed McHenry.

  “Or walking on air,” teased Harrison. “Our little lion has exchanged his roar for wings.”

  Hamilton flung himself down at Eliza’s feet. “Do you witness this? For you, my charmer, I endure such abuse.” He laughed as he spoke, but Peggy detected a pink glow of embarrassment on the aide’s creamy complexion as he mumbled, “It’s not as if I had time for ball games while working my mother’s store.”

  Peggy was learning quickly about her soon-to-be brother-in-law. How sharp his mind, how quick he was to romanticize or to take offense, how passionate, poetic, and mercurial. He was orphaned early on the Caribbean island of Saint Croix—abandoned by his father, and his mother later dying of fever. An immigrant trying to make his own hard-won name, Hamilton was the epitome of what America promised. But Peggy hadn’t before thought about the day-to-day impact of such a harsh and lonely childhood—like not knowing how to toss a ball back and forth because no one had taken the time to simply play with him.

  Hamilton noticed Peggy’s gaze. He smiled back, chagrined, recognizing she had heard his grumble.

  General Washington pulled back his arm and hurled. The ball flew, fast and straight like a rifle shot. His nephew sprinted back and back, then jumped up to grasp the hurtling ball, crashing onto the ground with laughter.

  “Good Lord, what a pitch His Excellency has,” exclaimed McHenry.

  Martha laughed. “Don’t ever let him lure you into a game of billiards. Or a sword fight. He does both as well as he throws. Oh, and he has been known to wrestle friends to win arguments. A negotiation he learned during his time exploring and surveying the Ohio wilderness with Seneca and Delaware Indian guides.”

  Washington strode over to his nephew and pulled him off the ground, clapping him on the back. “Well done!”

  The aides-de-camp applauded.

  “He makes it seem so easy!” Hamilton complained.

  “Never mind, dear boy,” Martha said to him. “Mr. Washington is just letting off a little steam.” She looked back to her husband. “Playing catch reminds him of what we are fighting for—peace and family, home. He misses Mount Vernon horribly. He has not seen his own home for five years now.”

  “Oh my, how sad,” Eliza murmured.

  Martha nodded without stopping her sewing. “He’s not the only one who mourns his absence from home.” She paused, wistful, then made herself speak lightly. “Even his dogs! Lord love them, how his hounds look for him—Venus, Truelove, Madam Moose, Tippler, Vulcan. Oh, what a bad dog that Vulcan is—he stole an entire ham right off the table one time. I wanted the general to chastise him roundly and all he did was laugh.” Martha chortled. “He simply has a soft spot for children and dogs.”

  “I can testify to that.” Hamilton spoke up. Rolling to a sitting position, he turned to his fellow aides. “Do you remember that ridiculous little terrier wandering between the lines during the Battle of Germantown?”

  “Remember? I was the one who had to walk it back,” protested Meade.

  “You made quite the sight walking under a flag of truce with that tiny, hairy dog tucked up under your arm,” Hamilton joked.

  “A perfect target I was!”

  “A target of ridicule most like!” Hamilton countered.

  The men roared.

  “Sirs, what are you talking about?” Martha asked.

  “He didn’t tell you, madam? General Howe’s dog got loose and ran away from the British camp and ended up in ours. We wanted to keep it as a trophy to demoralize Howe—print far and wide that even his dog chose liberty over British tyranny! But your husband insisted he be returned. His Excellency took the animal to his tent, fed it, brushed it, and wrote a note to his enemy saying that the dog had accidentally fallen into our hands and that he had the pleasure of returning it to the general with his compliments.”

  Martha nodded. “That sounds like my old man. And very like him not to tell of such an act of kindness.” She pulled in a long, deep breath. “Can you smell that wild rhododendron? How it reminds me of Virginia along the Potomac.”

  They all breathed in together at her prompting.

  It was indeed a glorious spring day, the air balmy. Pink dogwood trees wreathed the hills encircling Morristown and seemed to be popping open with perfumed jubilation before their very eyes. Overnight, meadow grasses had turned from ashen winter gray to lush emerald. Washington and his family couldn’t help being beckoned by such weather. They’d spilled out of the Ford Mansion to bask in the warm afternoon sunshine, escaping for a few hours the blizzard of dispatches that were only increasing as the roads thawed a
nd the likelihood of British attack grew.

  Washington’s mood had lightened considerably that week because he had finally received a communiqué from the Marquis de Lafayette. The gallant young French aristocrat general had returned to the French court at Washington’s request to beg assistance of the king. During one of his nightly visits to the Cochrans’ parlor, Hamilton had shared that Lafayette was safely back on American shores, having crossed the Atlantic without being captured by British ships policing the coast. He was making his way from Boston to the army’s New Jersey headquarters.

  Washington had cried when he read that letter, said Hamilton, without any trace of jealousy in his voice. Peggy had noted it, impressed. So he was capable of loving a friend selflessly. Another mark in her tally in favor of her sister’s suitor.

  Hearing the men laughing in the meadow like schoolboys at recess, the Schuyler sisters had come out to watch, bringing their own stitching with them. Martha had enlisted their help in producing linen shirts for foot soldiers. Now that the snows had finally melted, she had been able to find some linsey-woolsey for the task. They sat on stumps with Martha while the aides-de-camp sprawled along the ground beside them, happily chewing on new-soft blades of grass. Washington and his nephew continued tossing the ball.

  Obviously flustered by Hamilton’s nearness and more accustomed to stitching decorative embroidery than utilitarian seams, Eliza pricked her finger with her needle. She gave a little yelp of pain. Hamilton pulled out his handkerchief to wrap it and kissed the tiny wound.

  Peggy sighed impatiently. She was truly glad to be doing something useful for the threadbare Patriots—especially when remembering those starved sentries the night her sleigh approached Morristown. But, oh, how she itched for some task more intellectually stimulating than sewing. Her gaze wandered, catching Hamilton as he slid his hand under her sister’s hem and crept it up her shoe to gently caress Eliza’s ankle. He was trying to be secretive but Eliza certainly wasn’t helping with that. Her pretty face was crimson.