Page 22 of My Dear Hamilton
Chapter Twenty
June 1789
New York City
W ELCOME TO THE menagerie,” I said to James Madison as a cacophony of our chickens squawked in their pen in the yard. There were advantages to living across the street from the busy Federal Building—for example, when my husband left the house to attend business there, he wasn’t far—but it was also too easy for him to return home with colleagues.
One hot summer afternoon when my daughter was shrieking at the top of the stairs because one of her brothers had taken her ribbon, I was obliged to receive Mr. Madison. As I wrangled the children, he glanced out the back door—propped open to permit a cooling breeze—and asked, “Is that—”
“The neighbor’s monkey,” my husband answered, with more gravity than I would’ve expected. He led his friend into the yard for the shade of a tree. “It keeps climbing over the fence to taunt the chickens.”
I watched the men settle themselves, fretting over Alexander’s pensiveness. And I took them some lemonade. “Is anything the matter?”
The men exchanged a glance that made my stomach drop. “Washington has fallen ill,” Alexander said, glumly. “They say it’s anthrax. I worry for the man, of course, but more than that, too. What comes of the Constitution if he dies?”
Madison’s expression was equally grim. “The crisis this could bring about in our public affairs may be insurmountable.” It was already bad enough, he explained, that our countrymen were getting into tavern brawls over whether we should prefer to trade with the British or the French. The only thing everyone agreed on was George Washington. “If Washington dies, we’re to entrust the whole enterprise of the federal government to a man lambasted as His Rotundity, the Duke of Braintree?”
John Adams, he meant. And yet, was the possibility of the president’s death not the entire purpose of having a vice president? So my prayers, when I made them, were not for the Constitution. I prayed for the president and for Martha Washington. Because how would she bear it if her husband were to die?
Leaving the men to talk, I sent Jenny to fetch more water and cut lemons to fill a pitcher for more lemonade—all this before greeting Angelica at the front door and hefting fourteen-month-old James into my lap to nurse.
I told my sister the news, then shook my head. “Mrs. Washington must be frantic. I should like to visit her to offer comfort or assistance.”
“I’ll go with you,” Angelica said.
But I wondered if a visit with the president’s lady was truly possible. Because Mrs. Washington’s position meant that things had changed between us. At her receptions, I always found the president’s lady seated atop a dais, her round face smiling benevolently down upon us from beneath a modest powdered coiffure and lace veil. And there she regally received each lady in turn.
The first time I’d seen her that way, I realized, with a start, that Martha Washington and I might never again be easy and familiar together. She was the closest thing we had to royalty. There must be a distance now, I thought, almost sadly. And as I made my way to the dais to present myself, I’d been acutely aware that I’d never attended a royal court. I hadn’t known how low to drop or how long I ought to hold the curtsy. In the end, I’d grasped my skirts and endeavored to a posture between obsequiousness and mere respect, hoping, quite sincerely, that I wouldn’t somehow teeter off my embroidered silk shoes.
Much to my relief, when I rose, Mrs. Washington’s smile had widened. Almost a secret message just for me, as if to reassure me that a friendship remained. But that friendship would never be the same because she was now, more than ever, a public figure. Every gesture and smile a reflection upon her husband until the day he died, which I prayed would not be soon.
“President Washington simply must recover,” Angelica decided, making herself helpful by brushing little Fanny’s curly hair. “And he will. At the inaugural ball he looked as strong and vigorous as ever. So right now I refuse to worry about anything but you.” She nodded toward the babe at my breast. “I don’t know how you manage all this. And you’re expected to host a dinner tonight besides?”
I nodded, eyeing a gown piled atop the chair that I needed to mend before I could wear it. “Some gentlemen are coming to arrange for the care of Alexander’s legal practice when he takes up his new position.”
Angelica sighed. “This won’t do. It’s too much for you without more servants. It’s too much for Jenny. It isn’t seemly for the wife of such an important man to scrub floors next to her maid. It wouldn’t be fitting for the president’s lady to stoop to it.”
In light of the current crisis, I could scarcely imagine such a position. Certainly, I didn’t want to imagine it. “I am not the president’s lady.”
“But you might be, one day,” my sister replied with a sly smile.
My mouth went dry, for the situation cast Angelica’s comment in a too-calculating light that made me uneasy. And it was more proof that, though I was coming to better understand my husband’s ambitions, sometimes it seemed as if my sister sympathized with those ambitions more than I did.
I didn’t want to be the wife of the secretary of the treasury, much less the president’s wife. And I shuddered to think I might ever find myself in Martha Washington’s position. Especially given what she was facing now.
Perhaps sensing my panic at the idea, Angelica sighed and said, “Oh, Betsy. You blanch when you should blaze! If Hamilton must entertain, have him take his guests to my lodgings where servants can wait upon them as befitting the household of a great man.”
Oh, the relief of that idea. I couldn’t deny that the elegance of my sister’s household was more in keeping with expectations—to say nothing of the absence of children, chickens, and monkeys.
Though, on this particular afternoon, with such grave news hanging over our heads, the monkey looked to be having a salutary effect on the men. For when I went out to refill their glasses, I found my husband and Mr. Madison, heads close together, laughing and teasing the creature as it swung from the tree by its tail and pelted them with leaves.
“Where did the little devil come from?” Madison wanted to know.
“Our neighbor won the monkey from a sailor in a card game,” my husband explained.
“A British sailor or a French sailor?” Madison asked, archly, as if ready to come to fisticuffs about it. Whereupon they both laughed before their conversation turned to finance and Alexander’s upcoming position—topics that had me retreating back into the house.
The next afternoon, Angelica and I tried to call upon Mrs. Washington, only to be denied access, as I feared. The street had been roped off so that carriages would not disturb the president’s rest. I returned home early, dejected, only to find the house strangely empty and quiet.
“Jenny?” I called, but when I had no answer, I guessed she must have gone to the market.
It was too soon for Alexander to be home, and yet, from up the narrow stairway, I heard my husband’s voice, soft and tender, speaking of love.
Not stopping to remove my hat and gloves, I climbed the stairs and cautiously pushed open the door. There I found Alexander seated on the floor of our bedroom, rocking little Fanny in his arms where she slept, his lips pressed to her hair as he murmured that he would love and care for her.
“What’s happened?” I asked. “Has she fallen ill, too?”
Hamilton didn’t look up. Perhaps he couldn’t. “Her father is dead.”
Oh, poor orphaned girl! I didn’t ask how. I supposed it didn’t matter. What did matter was that my grief-stricken husband looked nearly as broken and vulnerable as when he’d received the news of John Laurens’s death.
His voice catching, Alexander said, “Her sisters are still too young and impoverished themselves to take care of her. I know it’s too much to ask...”
I knelt and pressed my forehead to his. “You needn’t ask. We’ll keep her. We’ll love her as our very own. Why, with those bright black eyes of hers, Fanny could pass for my daughter.”
He peered at me, tearily. “I fear it’s too much of a burden on you, my love.”
“A small burden when compared to the ones you shoulder,” I said.
For it was in his pain for this little girl, and the obligation he felt toward her, that I finally understood his calling. Not just to help provide a future for the child of one fallen comrade, but to provide for the children of all of them. The ones who had been orphaned in a war he helped unleash, in battles he helped plan, and mutinies he put down. He was, I knew, trying to keep the promise he made to make this a better world.
And, I felt sympathy for all that my husband was trying to do.
Fortunately, by the grace of God, the skill of the doctors, and the stoic disposition of the president, George Washington sur vived his ordeal that summer. But the scare made us all realize how much the country needed this man.
And I embraced the fact that the country needed Alexander Hamilton, too.
***
With special trust and confidence in the patriotism, integrity, and abilities of Alexander Hamilton of the City of New York in the State of New York, I have nominated, and by and with the advice and consent of the senate, do appoint him Secretary of the Treasury of the said United States.
— G EORGE W ASHINGTON
September 13,1789
New York City
Dinner parties and balls filled our evenings, now that Alexander was a member of Washington’s new cabinet, and at every one I reveled in having Angelica’s tutelage in becoming the socialite wife of an important man. I studied my sister as she conversed in French, made literary allusions, shared gossip—always the gentlest kind—and carried herself with an air of dignity and charm.
And while the wit and guile of society would never come as a natural talent to me, I began to understand it as a craft that could be practiced . Especially when I had such a good and loving teacher as my sister.
But our celebrations were abruptly cut off by a pair of unexpected blows.
After seven months in New York, Angelica received word that her children were ill. Frantic to hold her babies in her arms—even if it meant returning to John Church—my sister made haste to sail back to England. An ocean would again separate us, and she’d be in her husband’s grasp. He could keep Angelica from us forever if he wanted. That was a husband’s power.
And I was devastated to think I might never see her again.
“Take heart, my angel,” Alexander said, to soothe me. “Your sister wants to live here in America, near to us. And she is precisely the sort of woman who knows how to get her way.”
He meant to make me laugh at the idea that it was Angelica who would make Church bend to her will, as she so easily bent everyone else to it. But I couldn’t even smile. “What if her ship is lost? What if—”
A thousand calamities seemed possible. But I cut myself off from expressing any of them when my sister’s carriage pulled up in front of our house. I did my best to dry my eyes, wipe my tears. But when she’d finished kissing all my children farewell, Angelica drew me aside and smoothed at my cheeks with her thumbs. “You’ve been crying.”
“No,” I said, trying to be brave for her sake.
“I really hoped I’d taught you to lie better than that,” she said, a little teary herself. “Your eyes are bloodshot and your nose is red and my heart is breaking to leave you.”
“I know you must go for your children’s sake, but I’m going to miss you terribly. I’ve been so happy these months. We’ve all been so happy together, and now what will I do?”
“Now you will shine, Betsy. You’ll become all you were meant to be. You and Hamilton both. And I couldn’t be prouder of either of you. You’re making a new country, and I’m only sorry I cannot stay to be a part of it.”
Angelica was proud of me. I hadn’t realized, until that moment, how much I had longed to hear it.
And my lower lip began to wobble until she said, “Oh, you really must stop looking at me that way. You’re going to make me cry, too, and it will ruin my powder.”
For her powder’s sake—and for my own dignity—I didn’t dare see her off at the pier. Instead, we said our farewells in my parlor, and then my husband, young Philip, and the baron took her to the ship. Meanwhile, I retreated to bed, felled with an ache in my heart and my head.
That night my husband was forced to finish the letter to Angelica that I’d started, sharing in my misery at her departure. As if the loss of her was as genuine a wound for him as it was for me. Which made me love him even more.
“I fear I’ve lost an ally, not to mention a friend,” he confided one morning soon after.
Fighting my own fears that I would never see my sister again, I whispered upon our pillow, “She’ll always be an ally. Always your friend. Always your sister, even if an ocean away.”
With a huff, Alexander clamored from the bed. “I meant Madison. I would never have accepted this office if I didn’t believe I had his firm support.”
Jemmy Madison, now not just a congressman from Virginia, but the most influential congressman besides, had unexpectedly pulled his support from Alexander’s financial plans.
On top of the loss of my sister, Madison’s desertion was as depressing as it was confusing. “Did he say why?”
“He thinks it unjust that speculators might get a windfall from buying up debt from ignorant country folk, but that’s just how investment works. He’s letting Jefferson’s ideas about the nobility of the simple yeoman farmer sway him away from financial reality.”
Jefferson had only recently returned from his post as minister to France to take a new position in the president’s cabinet. But already Alexander was wary of Jefferson’s influence and perhaps he was right to be. Jemmy seemed to idolize his fellow Virginian, with whom he shared a friendship long before we met.
I had worried, once before, that Jefferson might come between Madison and my husband.
And it was vexing to think my fears could be coming true.
How many times had I hosted Jemmy Madison in my home? How many times had I admired his tender touch with my children? He’d become a friend to me. Worse, I realized belatedly, he’d become a brother to Alexander.
So the relationship simply must be salvaged. Trying to soothe my husband’s temper over breakfast, I pointed out, “Madison opposes only part of your plan, doesn’t he?”
Hamilton rattled off a list of reasons why even that disagreement was intolerable. “Debt and credit are an entire thing . Every part of it relies on every other part. Wound one limb and the whole tree shrinks and decays,” he said, waving an impatient hand. “No, Jemmy’s opposition to me is a perfidious desertion of the principles he was solidly pledged to defend.”
I let him vent his spleen and, with Mrs. Washington’s wise advice in mind, I tried another tactic. That my husband was a man of studied principles, I knew without question, but I also wished that he could occasionally muster a modicum of forbearance for the foibles of others. One that might preserve one of the most important friendships in our new nation. Just this once. “So, Madison has been corrupted?” I asked.
My husband slanted me a glance. “I wouldn’t go so far as that.”
“He’s a madman, then? One day working with you side by side, then changing his mind on a lunatic whim...” Alexander didn’t answer, which was, in itself, a concession. And when I noticed Jenny smirk knowingly as she refilled his coffee cup, I pressed the point. “Did Mr. Madison hit his head and damage his brilliant faculties?”
Hamilton grumbled. “You make too much of his faculties. Although Madison is a clever man, he is very little acquainted with the world.”
“That may be true. But it is still no personal opposition to you. What reason would he have, other than a difference of opinion?” I let the question hang there as Hamilton finally calmed enough to resume eating the stewed apples on his plate.
“He has no personal reason to oppose me. None that he should be aware of anyway.” He said the last quietly, in a nearly absent fashion, then winced, as if he’d not meant to speak it aloud. My raised eyebrow must have demanded an explanation, because he sighed. “Last year, when Madison introduced his foolish ideas about the Tariff Act, I whispered in a few ears and made some obstacles for him. Perhaps he found me out.”
“Oh, Alexander.” My husband was a strategist, and the legislature was his game board. He was certainly not the only one to engage in backstage dealing, and his machinations were more honorable than most. This wasn’t the first time his secret schemes created mistrust amongst friends. But there was nothing to be done for it now. “What does the president say?”
“He urges me to compromise with Madison.”
I smiled, as so often George Washington and I saw things in the same way.
“So then do that, Alexander. I’ll host a dinner,” I suggested. It would be a great deal easier if Madison had a wife—the friendship of women being a necessary lubricant to remedy social frictions—but the Virginian was too mannerly to refuse our hospitality, and I felt certain we could win him back. “I know just the occasion. A party for the new secretary of state.”
***
L ATELY ARRIVED FROM France, Thomas Jefferson appeared worldly and elegant in a fashionable dove gray satin coat and fine French lace cravat as he presented himself at my threshold. His tall frame filled the doorway, making Madison seem even shorter by comparison.
“Secretary Jefferson, what a pleasure it is to see you again,” I said, welcoming the men in from the October chill. “And Mr. Madison, it’s been too long.”
“Your invitation was most welcome, Mrs. Hamilton,” Jefferson said with a little bow. Wisps of silver shot through the Virginian’s ginger hair, but otherwise he looked much the same as he had all those years before in Philadelphia.
Madison bowed, too, and spoke with even more formal reserve than normal, a thing that concerned me. “Mrs. Hamilton. Thank you, as always, for your hospitality.”
“Of course,” I said, showing them into the dining room, where I’d worried over every detail. Angelica had told me that Jefferson was a connoisseur of fine wine, so I had Papa come and bring his best Madeira. I knew, too, that the new secretary of state ate little meat, so I planned a menu with an abundance of peas, greens, and vegetables of every variety. I had Jenny set the table with my finest dishes, and everything was so perfect that Angelica would’ve been proud of me. “Mr. Jefferson, how is your lovely daughter Patsy?”
Jefferson’s smile revealed great fatherly pride. “Patsy has recently married. She’s Mrs. Randolph now.”
“Well, then we shall add that happy occasion to our list of things to toast this evening,” I said.
“A happy occasion indeed, madam,” said Jefferson just as Alexander entered the room and greeted our guests. Though Jefferson accepted the seat of honor at the table when my husband made a show of offering it, he said, “Please, there’s no need for formality among old friends, which I feel us all to be, given our past acquaintance and all your sister-in-law has told me of you. In fact, Mrs. Church sent as a gift to me a copy of The Federalist that your amiable wife inscribed for her.”
Perhaps it was my own vanity in remembering my part in the publication of those essays that made me ask, “Have you had the opportunity to read them?”
“Indeed,” Jefferson said with a smile. “I found it to be the best commentary on the principles of government ever written.” The praise should have made Alexander smile, but neither Madison nor my husband seemed at ease.
Fortunately, Jefferson’s good social graces smoothed things over quickly, and he and Alexander fell into such deep discussion and swift agreement about coins and the mint that they did indeed seem like old friends.
I was glad for that, but the true aim of the occasion was to mend fences with Jemmy Madison, who hung on Jefferson’s every word. When Madison’s eyes lifted to the ceiling at a particularly loud shriek from the children’s nursery, I moved in to say, “My apologies. I believe that’s my daughter. I’m told that little girls are soft and manageable creatures, but mine has a war cry that would make an Iroquois chief proud.”
Madison chuckled at that, but no more. The man had accepted my invitation, as I knew he would. Yet, again and again, I found it difficult to draw Jemmy into conversation. How had a political disagreement about economic policy so chilled our friendship? Perhaps Alexander was right, and Madison had learned about my husband’s machinations against his tariff.
While I worried for Madison’s mood, Jefferson opined on the virtues of the French people. “I’ve been fortunate to see in the course of fourteen years two revolutions as the world has never seen before.”
Jefferson had a way with words that excited within me the idea that we were living in extraordinary times. My husband, by contrast, seemed less inspired by France’s attempts to throw off their monarchy. “As a friend to mankind and liberty, I rejoice in the efforts,” Alexander said. “But I fear much for the fate of those caught up in it.”
Specifically, we worried that harm would come to our friend Lafayette, who was championing the revolution in France. We knew the righteousness of his cause, but the stories of violence in Paris frightened me. I did not believe the French nobles would give up their privileges so easily. And it seemed to me as if the French revolutionaries themselves were beginning to fracture into dangerous rivalries.
But Jefferson sipped appreciatively at the Madeira and asked, “Why should you fear it, Secretary Hamilton?”
To my great vexation, my husband’s eyes traveled the length of the table and settled on Madison. “Because we should all dread destructive and petty disagreements amongst those who once stood united...”
My wine lodged itself in my throat, and only with a cough, and some difficulty, did I manage to swallow. If I’d learned anything about Virginians it was that a thing must be approached with them from the side. So why did my husband insist upon a frontal assault? Hadn’t my work in hosting this party been aimed at Alexander’s reconciliation with Madison—if not out of regard for their friendship, then at least in consideration of the fact that he was the one man who could thwart my husband’s plans?
Mr. Jefferson smiled indulgently, appearing to take no notice of the undercurrents. But there was a shrewdness in his eyes that made me think he missed nothing. “I think the present disquiet in France will end well. The nation has been awakened by our revolution, they feel their strength, they are enlightened, their lights are spreading, and they will not retrograde.”
His words caused a swell of patriotism within my breast. “I have always believed our revolution would be a force of good in the world. That all our suffering and privations would mean more than a new nation for us, but also a new age for mankind.” And I thought that Jefferson—a man with such vision—should be a natural ally for my husband; surely he would understand the magnitude of what Alexander was trying to do, and help in it.
“Well said, Mrs. Hamilton.” Jefferson gave an extraordinarily sunny smile that filled me with pride.
I was, in fact, so swept up in Jefferson’s idealism and charm, that I understood how Madison could be enthralled by the force of that man’s character and charisma. Though I didn’t know it then, that force, which made Jefferson so effective as the voice of our revolution, and so rousing as a politician and the father of a political party, was something, like love, quite beyond reason .
Like the earth’s own poles, Jefferson and my husband had the power to both repel and attract, and I realize now that Madison was trapped between them, pulled to Jefferson as much, or maybe even more, by that force of charisma as by any alignment of their ideals.
But at the time, I only knew that I wanted these men to remember all they had in common, and I lifted my glass in abandonment of all etiquette. “To the revolution, to independence, and the Constitution. And to the men at this table, all of whom made them possible.”
At that, Madison seemed to soften, giving me a private little nod as he joined in the toast. Alexander seemed more cordial, too. “And to the women as well,” he said, generously. The good feelings that finally surrounded us persuaded me to henceforth adopt a policy for the dinners that took place at my table: no man’s politics should be held against him, and all were welcome.
Conversation flowed with more ease after that, and when Hamilton saw Madison and Jefferson out, he made an invitation of his own. “Gentlemen, let’s do this again. Just the three of us. I have some thoughts on the matter of a national capital. Perhaps we can reach a compromise...”