Page 14 of My Dear Hamilton
Chapter Twelve
April 1781
De Peyster’s Point, New York
T WO MONTHS LATER, I wondered if I would not have fared better against cannons myself.
Martha Washington’s advice had helped me to see that my soft words and touches could moderate my husband, at least a little. By making of myself a soothing presence, I’d gently persuaded Alexander to accompany the general to Rhode Island to serve as interpreter in the strategy discussions with the French officers, for Alexander’s mastery of the language exceeded that of all the other American members of Washington’s staff.
I accomplished that much.
But after that, Hamilton left Washington’s service, just as he said he would.
And now he appeared to be taunting our commander.
His Excellency had refused my husband a promotion partly on the grounds that he was indispensable at headquarters. Well, now we were gone from headquarters, but living in a little brick and stone house directly across the river from Washington’s dwellings.
Our new home at De Peyster’s Point—our first household together—was little better than a fishing shack, without so much as a dining table. It was drafty, the roof leaked, it stunk of dead fish, and the only way to get to it from headquarters was by way of a little rowboat. But it had one winning feature as far as my husband was concerned.
Namely, that George Washington couldn’t look out his window without seeing us there.
Day in. Day out. Our presence—in plain sight—was to remind the general that Alexander Hamilton was available for a promotion, but until he got one, he would remain just out of reach.
For my part, I’d promised that I would live anywhere with Hamilton, and I took genuine pleasure in transforming the shack into our home. This was not, after all, a boardinghouse where we must be careful not to move anything. No, this was the first place I might decide for myself how to arrange our few sticks of furniture, where to store silver, where to hang linens, and what to store in the larder—for we had no servant with us to do it for me.
And not even Mama would swoop in and dictate how everything should be.
So, armed with bucket, a brush, and some precious lye soap acquired at far too great a price, I cheerfully scrubbed our new home from floor to ceiling. I made countless trips to the river to get wash water. And when I hung my petticoats on the line, I’d wave, quite ruefully, to Martha Washington across the way, imagining she was doing the same.
It was all a great deal more challenging than I expected. The fire needed to be tended all day if we were to have anything to eat. And having never managed a household by myself, much less attended to all the chores, there were a few mishaps. My first attempt at cooking fish resulted in a charred mess and a burned hand.
“This is no place for my gently bred bride.” My husband said this while kissing my blistered fingers, as if to make them all better. Then his eyes fell upon the wash bucket where I’d been on my hands and knees scrubbing mud from the floor. And later that night, when I collapsed in an exhausted heap beside him in bed, he asked, “Why don’t you return to your father’s house in Albany before he sees what I’ve reduced you to?”
Because you aren’t the only one with too much pride, I thought.
My aunt Gertrude had said I was no milk-and-water miss. Well, I wasn’t about to be a milk-and-water wife, either. “Others make do with less. So can I. I don’t want to leave. My place is at your side in service of the cause.”
Besides, I could hardly make him see reason if I was far away.
“So you are a Roman wife,” he said, more than a little pleased. “But I’m not entirely without hopes we’ll soon have peace. Then you must submit to the mortification of enjoying mere domestic happiness. This I know you will not like, but we cannot always have things as we wish.”
I laughed at his optimistic teasing, then said, “Martha Washington stays with her husband through hardship and I intend to stay with mine.”
By mentioning Mrs. Washington, I also hoped to remind him of all the people who sacrificed their comfort and personal desires to remain at Washington’s side. But what he seemed to take from it was a reminder that Martha Washington had servants and I did not. A thing remedied the next day in the form of a young enslaved Negro woman Alexander hired from her master. Though I was happy for the help, I didn’t know if we could truly afford a servant and was surprised to feel discomfited at being entirely in charge of supervising one. I’d grown up in a house run using the labor of slaves, but they’d always been Papa’s slaves. Certainly, they’d tended to me, but as a child living under my father’s roof I’d not been given a choice in that.
Now, I had a choice. Though she’d only been temporarily hired out to us by her owner, this was the closest I’d ever come to being a slaveholder in my own right.
And I found that I did not like it.
I did not like it at all.
Not when I thought about the black soldiers at Morristown. Not when surrounded by soldiers preparing to die for the cause of liberty and independence. In any case, I didn’t share my misgivings with my husband because he’d done me the kindness of giving me exactly what he’d thought I’d wanted and needed, likely against the pangs of his own conscience.
I was only just beginning to see the inherent contradiction between the ideals we said we were fighting for, and the reality of slavery in our daily lives. Hamilton had opened my eyes to it.
But I wasn’t sure what to do about it.
We were, I suppose, both of us, still a ways from a full awakening.
***
I T MUST NOT be thought that Hamilton was idle at De Peyster’s Point.
Quite the opposite. While my servant and I cooked and cleaned and caught fish in the cold brackish water, Hamilton cast about for any sort of opportunity fortune might cast up. Not only pestering Washington near daily to give him command of troops, but also writing other generals, too, in the hopes they had some leadership role for him in the forthcoming campaign. He even wrote to my brother-in-law, who apparently informed Angelica of his ambitions such that she became anxious to exert her own influence on his behalf.
“Good news,” Alexander said one day as he came rushing in the door, tramping spring mud all over the floor. Rain had fallen for two straight days, causing the river to overflow its banks and making of our yard a quagmire. “Betsy, if you will hear—”
I held out a hand before he could cross the room. “I would love nothing more than to share in your good news, my dearest husband. After you’ve removed those boots.”
A stack of books and papers in hand, he appeared completely confused, and he finally peered down at himself, as if he’d momentarily forgotten he had feet. With a chuckle, he juggled his load and pulled the tall boots off, and I wondered if he’d finally been given his command . But Alexander said, “Congress has acted as I hoped they would. Robert Morris has been appointed as superintendent of finance.” My husband had not been much impressed, in early March, when the Articles of Confederation were finally ratified, thinking them far too weak a system. But now he was hopeful and nearly vibrating with excitement. “Finally, we shall have men of the first abilities, property, and character in charge of the departments of the executive.”
I smiled and said how wonderful it was, though this was not the sort of news that excited me. And as he sat, I took in the pristine spines of books sprawled across the table to find a series of what appeared to be philosophical texts on government and economy. Price’s Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, in two volumes. Hume’s Political Discourses . Postlethwayt’s The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce . Beawes’s Lex Mer catoria Rediviva .
Given this reading material, I was happy to leave him to it!
But when I returned a short time later, I found that he’d discarded his coat and loosened his cravat. Ink dotted his fingers and smudged his cheek, and his hair had the appearance of having been blown by the wind from the way he raked his hands through it when deep in thought.
“What are you working on so feverishly?”
“A letter of congratulations to Mr. Morris,” he said, working with an intensity I’d never seen in another—not even my father. His focus unwavering, his quill scratched fast against the page. It was strangely enthralling to watch. Utterly appealing.
I blinked at the stack of thick leather tomes and what looked to be at least ten pages of writing. “A very long note of congratulations, I should say...”
“Well, I’m also sending him my thoughts on the topic of establishing our economy,” Hamilton said with the same nonchalance with which another might talk about the weather or the price of tea. “Betsy, if we win this war, we turn to the great project of building a nation where none has yet existed. Rarely does man kind have such an opportunity, nor such a burden. We must get it right .”
Clearly Hamilton believed he knew how to get it right.
And I listened as he told me all he’d learned of world finance when, at the age of fourteen, he’d worked as a clerk at an export and import company in St. Croix, trading sugar, timber, cattle, and even slaves. I hadn’t realized he had such a passion for finance—or really, that anyone could have such a passion for it. Truthfully, it was a passion I didn’t share. But I listened in rapt attention because it was one of the few times Alexander ever spoke about his childhood, and the hard lessons it impressed upon him.
Lessons he was very keen to impart to his new country.
Even then, as a starry-eyed newlywed, I feared there might be some manner of hubris in a lieutenant colonel with no expertise in finance other than his own experience as a fourteen-year-old clerk condescending to write the new superintendent of finance an economic manifesto. But at the time, having mostly witnessed the soldier in Hamilton, I was also much intrigued by the scholar. More importantly, his enthusiasm for the project of building a nation—for thinking ahead—helped give me much-needed courage that we would win this war.
And with a little hubris of my own, I asked, “Is there... something I can do to help?” He’d already refused a bowl of fish stew for dinner, as if he couldn’t take even a moment away from his pen in exchange for a spoon. And now he was rubbing with one hand at the back of his neck, as if it pained him. When he glanced at me quizzically, I suggested, very tentatively, “I see that you’re copying your notes and calculations. Maybe I could do the copying for you.”
“You want to write for me,” he said, arching a brow. “Like a clerk?”
“I should rather be your long-suffering and extremely loyal aide-de-camp,” I replied.
He smirked at my impudence. “Your simmering disapproval of my decision to leave the general is duly noted.” I started to object, but he held up a hand. “That was not a point subtly made, my love. And I intend to thoroughly punish you for it by accepting your offer.”
I felt a little thrill of excitement. When I’d thought of being his partner, I never imagined being so directly involved in his work. To be a patriot in heart and sentiment, but also in deed and ink. “Just tell me what to do.”
Before long, I had a stack of pages in front of me. While Alexander wolfed down his dinner and worked out more calculations, I copied his notes for hours, concentrating on penmanship, until my eyes glazed over from recording lengthy discussions of generating revenue, paying for the military, currency depreciation, foreign credit, and instituting a national bank. But his long complicated calculations made me think of Papa’s love of equations, and I smiled at the comparison.
When I had written my twelfth full page, I set down the quill but found that my hand had cramped in a curled position. I laughed as I rubbed at my palm and fingers. “How do you do it?”
Hamilton’s brow furrowed. “Do what?”
“Write so much. Some days the only time you’re not writing is when you’re asleep. Why, I’ve even seen you writing while saddled upon a horse. Yet, after just a few hours at the task, my hand feels as though I’ve suddenly developed rheumatism.”
He frowned and made as if to set aside his work. “I’m sorry, love. You don’t have to continue.”
“No, please,” I said, smiling. “I want to help. I only mean to convey my admiration, Alexander. You are remarkable, truly.”
Slowly, he settled back into his chair. “Remarkable? How?”
“Oh, Mr. Hamilton, what I’d known of you pales in comparison to what I’ve learned this night. Why... I begin to think you’re a genius . And I say this as the daughter of a man who has always delighted in calculations and equations and theory and philosophy. I may not understand all your work, but I recognize the cleverness... no, the brilliance behind it all the same.”
And it was true, because to my mind it appeared that Alexander was in the process of single-handedly laying out the foundations for everything the American union might yet become, of creating the better world he’d promised to create. That might have been the proud wife in me speaking, but I didn’t think so.
His brow lifted, as if in surprise, but then wariness settled into his blue eyes. “Are you still teasing me, Betsy?”
“No, my dearest, I’m trying to tell you that in spite of my simmering disapproval of your decision to leave the general, I am so very proud of you.”
Alexander ducked his chin and cleared his throat, as if embarrassed or overwhelmed by my compliment. Had no one ever said such a thing to him before? Or had no one made him believe it? I couldn’t resist the urge to make sure he knew the truth of my feelings.
I moved to him, crouched by his knees, and peered up into his handsome face. “I am so very proud to be your wife.”
He grasped my hand hard where it rested on his leg, and when he looked at me, his gaze was filled with a depth of gratitude that made me fall a little more in love with him, and it stirred a longing in my body.
Tentatively, I reached for him until I captured his mouth with mine. The soft contact was like putting a match to kindling. It unleashed something within him—in truth, within us both. He took me to our bedroom, whispering, “I need you, Betsy. How I need you.” Warmth bloomed inside me at the sentiment, and then flared hotly as my husband grasped at the material of my skirts. “I just need...”
We came together desperately, frantically, but I’d never felt more loved and cherished.
Afterward, he turned to me, his arm cradling my neck. “I wish I’d met you earlier. That you’d been at home that first time I visited your father in Albany. I wish I knew you even when you were a girl—”
“You wouldn’t have looked twice at me then,” I teased, though I believed it to be true.
“You’re wrong. I’d have loved you, and wished to learn everything about you. I’d have tried to be worthy of you that much sooner and been a better man for it. You ease me, Betsy. My mind races, but your touch calms me. My thoughts fly, but your presence allows me an escape. I want nothing more than to please you in return. In your eyes, I wish to be the most amiable, the most accomplished. And when I’m not, I will endeavor to make up for all I lack with love.”
I pressed my lips to his. “You are the most amiable.” I kissed him again. “And so very accomplished.” Again. “And even more handsome.”
How strange it was to reassure a man whom every other woman in the world seemed to desire. His smile grew as humor slid into his gaze. “How handsome?”
I feigned exasperation with a roll of my eyes, but couldn’t hide my grin. “Are you fishing for more compliments?”
“From the mouth of my angel? Always.” His touch turned hungry once more, and his lovemaking that night won me over again and again with the belief that Alexander Hamilton—this brilliant, complicated, flawed man— needed me.
And I needed him, too.
Heeding Lafayette’s words, I’d done what I could to encourage him to return to Washington’s service, but now I thought better of it. If my husband wished to resign his commission in the army, I would encourage him to do so. Because I had now glimpsed the statesman in him, and I knew he would blaze a trail of glory in whichever path he chose.
Besides, it was much safer, I thought, to be a statesman than a soldier.
How naive I was.
***
“ W ELL, YOU’VE FINALLY done it, Ham,” said Tench Tilghman, with a lingering cough. With the coming of summer, I’d left the door open to a breeze, and now looked up to find the colonel’s height filling the entryway of our home, an expression on his face that warred between admiration and annoyance. “You’ve forced the great man’s hand.”
“What?” Hamilton asked, rising up hastily from the table where he was composing political essays on the defects in the Articles of Confederation.
But Tilghman, perhaps vexed that he’d been forced to cross the river in a rowboat just to deliver this news, was in no hurry to satisfy my husband’s curiosity. Instead, he turned his attentions to me and grinned, tipping his hat. “I shouldn’t have been so long without seeing you, Mrs. Hamilton.” He glanced out the window at the river he’d just rowed across. “It’s only that your jealous husband put an actual gulf between us.”
I laughed, and offered to have our servant fetch him some porridge. But Alexander thumped the table impatiently, “Out with it, man. What news?”
“Washington is not about to let you resign your commission as you’ve tacitly threatened to do,” Tilghman replied, and I could see that was the part that annoyed him. “So you’re getting your command.”
My husband tensed. “Tell me.”
“A New York light infantry battalion.”
The glee that broke out on Alexander’s face defied all description. He was, thereafter, in a celebratory mood, and invited Tench to stay for a meal. The next morning, my husband was eager to meet with the generals about the long-awaited battle and left early, finally, and at long last, crossing the river back to headquarters.
And I was absolutely nauseated over the thought of him finally going off to fight. I couldn’t tolerate my breakfast, and could only nurse a cup of tea until the nausea passed. It took three days in a row of this same discomfort before I counted back to my last monthly courses and it finally dawned on me.
I was pregnant. I was going to have a baby.
I debated when to tell Alexander about my suspicions, wishing to be more certain before I raised his hopes. But my husband forced my hand, just as he’d forced Washington’s.
To take command of his troops, Hamilton needed to ride south, and this time, he couldn’t have me with him. We’d all assumed that the summer campaign would take place in New York, but new intelligence from Lafayette—which I later learned had come from a Negro spy the marquis had recruited—suggested that we might better gamble it all in Yorktown, Virginia.
Whichever choice was made, Hamilton would have to be ready to ride into battle in an instant. Which meant we had to say our good-byes.
Oh, God. What if he doesn’t come back? What if he never meets his child?
As I had this thought, my husband came immediately to my side. “Betsy, dearest angel, what is it? You’ve gone so pale. Are you still unwell?”
“No,” I said, gulping a deep, steadying breath. “Well, perhaps a little.”
Alexander frowned. “I’m calling for the doctor. But let’s get you to bed first.”
“That’s not necessary,” I said, letting myself be pulled from the chair. “Alexander—”
“I’ll row out and retrieve him right away,” he said, a tinge of panic to his words. “It won’t take long. I promise.”
“I’m not ill,” I said abruptly, rushing to allay his fears. “I’m pregnant.”
Alexander froze. As my announcement sank in, my hands went to my belly. His gaze followed, and then he was looking at me with the purest expression of wonder I’d seen on any man’s face. “You’re pregnant.”
“You’re going to be a father,” I said, heart beating hard against my breast.
Slowly, Alexander placed a hand atop my own, and when he lifted his eyes to mine, they were glassy with joy and awe. “I’m going to be a father.”
Smiling, I nodded. And then we were laughing and embracing even as Alexander asked a hundred questions and insisted all over again that I needed to lie down. That night, I whispered into the darkness, “Whatever happens, you must come back to me, to us.”
Alexander pulled me tight against him. “Oh, Betsy. It costs me a great deal to be absent from you, but I promise we won’t be separated for long.”
I tried to believe him.
The next day, as he put me in the carriage for my father’s house, his expression a mask of regret, he said, “I miss you already.”
“As do I miss you.” Tears stung my eyes, but I wanted to be strong for him, when all his focus needed to be on the coming fight. “I love you,” I said, then insisted more fiercely. “Come back to me.”
“I will,” he whispered, his voice strained. He closed the door and tapped on the side of the carriage, and it lurched to a start.
And I could only hope that in having unleashed the forces of war, my husband would not, like Phaethon, be struck down for hubris in his quest for glory, our dreams of the future mere ashes for me to mourn.