Page 25 of My Dear Hamilton
Chapter Twenty-Three
R EYNOLDS. R EYNOLDS. R EYNOLDS.
As I kneaded dough, I couldn’t get the name out of my head, sure I could place it. Maria Reynolds was a harlot, my husband insisted. A woman whose husband prostituted her. A woman beneath my contempt. I imagined her as a dainty sparrow of a thing. The kind who might flutter about, as if with a broken wing in need of tending. Ought I do the same when the investigators came to my house?
I was broken in earnest. Heartbroken. And perhaps, if I showed that heartbreak, it would evoke sympathy. Or perhaps it would subject me to their laughter.
James Monroe would never laugh at me, I thought. In loyalty to my husband, I’d never attempted to untangle or name my feelings for Monroe or his for me—but I’d always believed our connection to be deeper and more complicated than friendship. Monroe was the first man to stir romantic feelings in my breast—a man with whom I felt a kinship in wanderlust and passion for the cause.
He would have never broken my heart. Nor would have Tench Tilghman, for that matter. If I’d made a match with either of them—good soldiers, solid gentlemen with respectable upbringings and a concern for morality—I wouldn’t be suffering this now.
But I’d chosen Alexander Hamilton .
A fact I reminded myself of as I methodically scraped the loaf of sugar for a confection I couldn’t taste, for the world had become devoid of flavor. I could scarcely see color, which made it a trial to choose what to wear. If I wore something dark and plain, would the investigators feel sorrier for me? Or perhaps I should wear my gauzy white dress, the one that left less of my body to the imagination, so they’d think my husband a fool for betraying me.
I was never a beauty. It was only that, until a few days ago, Alexander had made me feel like one. Now I felt like nothing.
That night the investigators came to my house, just as I’d suggested. Two legislators I knew by name only, a treasury official, and James Monroe. While my girls played by the fireplace with their new toys—brought by Sinterklaas in burlap sacks days before—I welcomed the men into the house with a plate of rye-flour pepernoot cookies, fragrant with cinnamon, anise, and clove.
“Compliments of the season,” Monroe drawled, with a very formal bow that seemed somehow at odds with his brown hunting boots and the black tricorn beaver felt hat that was swiftly going out of style. Meanwhile, my boys ran about like rowdies, led by a laughing, taunting ten-year-old Philip, pelting one another with extra pepernoot they’d stolen from the kitchen, which was not strictly the custom. But I was too weary to take a firm hand with them, especially when I had grown men to manage.
“Coffee?” I asked Monroe, forcing a smile.
“What else?” Monroe chuckled softly, as if a little abashed to be upon this errand. And as if, perhaps, he thought I didn’t know why he’d come. Clearing his throat, he said, “Mrs. Monroe sends her warm regards.”
“And I return mine. I hope to see your wife and your darling little daughter at a holiday tea after church this Sunday.” Monroe’s smile warmed so I added, “We’ve come such a long way from an army campfire, haven’t we, Senator Monroe?”
“Indeed we have. How young, hopeful, and idealistic we were...”
“I am still hopeful,” I said, filling his cup to the brim just as bitterness filled me up inside.
Once I’d finished serving refreshments, Alexander stood, ready to furnish all the information they could require to acquit him of a crime—receipts of his blackmail payments, I assumed—so I retired from the room and kept the children quiet upstairs.
It was quiet downstairs, too. Maddeningly so. I didn’t know what to make of it, especially when the men remained closeted together much longer than I thought necessary. Indeed, the interview seemed to go on and on until I grew weary watching the hands on our grandfather clock move.
When, at last, I heard the scrape of chair legs on wood—the sound of a meeting reaching its end—I hastened downstairs again. Alexander should have seen the men off. But I’d persuaded him that I should be the one to do it. And so I forced myself to say a kindly and proper farewell.
Given what my husband had just told them, I wasn’t surprised that the investigators whom I didn’t know well couldn’t meet my eyes. But James Monroe’s face burned scarlet at the sight of me and he lingered in the doorway long after the others departed, a sheaf of papers under his arm.
With a shake of his head, he began to stammer. “I—Mrs. Hamilton—Betsy...”
It’d been a long time since he used my name with that soft southern drawl. The intimacy of it seemed somehow improper. But the sound of it carried genuine sympathy. Oh, why had I feared the men’s laughter instead of their pity? Pity was worse. Far worse. Especially from him.
Though I wanted to flee, I somehow made myself stand there and say, “I trust you’re satisfied with my husband’s innocence on the charge of corruption?”
Monroe’s color deepened, if that was possible, at the word innocence . In fact, he cast such a bloody-minded look in the direction of the study that I feared it’d all gone badly. “Secretary Hamilton has provided me with exculpatory documentation and we will not make any report to the president at this time. I believe your husband will acknowledge that our conduct toward him has been fair and liberal—and that he could not complain of it.”
Oh, Alexander would complain of it. But he should be grateful for Monroe, who actually cared whether or not he complained. And I could see that Monroe cared very much.
“Mrs. Hamilton, please believe that I wish you every happiness.”
Monroe had flushed at the word innocence, but I now blanched at the word happiness . He noticed and all pretense fell away. Either I was no good at pretense, or he knew me well enough to realize that I was aware of my husband’s infidelity.
“You are a kind, lovely, and charming woman and you deserve much better than—”
“Pray don’t say another word,” I whispered, wilting with humiliation. Why did I think I could do this? Why did I think I was strong enough? To my horror, tears welled before I could blink them away. “I should plead for your discretion as a gentleman on behalf of my husband, but in truth, I beg of you, for myself—”
“Dear God, to see you cry,” Monroe said, setting down the papers and reaching inside his sleeve for an embroidered kerchief, which he offered me at once. “Insofar as is in keeping with my duty, the papers will remain sealed . As will my lips, for your sake. You have my word of honor.”
His kerchief smelled faintly of tobacco and pine and I let out a tiny sob into it full of relief and sorrow. It would be better if no one knew what Hamilton had done. No one. Not my friends. Not my parents. Not even Angelica, for such things could never be entrusted to a letter across the ocean. So the only person to whom I could confide was James Monroe.
“The tears will pass,” I said, trying for bravery. “It’s only the lingering shame.”
“Not your shame,” Monroe said, his fists tightening, as if he meant to turn, march back into my husband’s study, and beat him.
“Nevertheless, I don’t know how I can bear it.”
Monroe didn’t have to be told how society looked upon a wife who wasn’t enough to satisfy her husband.
Not enough. Not enough. Not enough.
As these words battered my insides, I felt undone. Quite low. Indescribably miserable.
Vulnerable in every way.
And so I was grateful when, with exquisite chivalry, Monroe drew my hand to his lips for a gentlemanly kiss. “The girl I met in Albany who could gamely drink some poison concoction without complaint, play a ruthless game of backgammon, and set off into the wilds in a sleigh—that girl could bear anything.”
“That girl is long gone.”
“She’s still here,” Monroe said, offering a tender smile and pressing my hand, for just a moment, to his heart. “Where she will always reside. My dear friend, I’ve held on to those memories, and I urge you to hold on to them, too.”
My breath evened at the unexpected intimacy, at the strong pulse beneath my palm, at the knowledge that there were paths in my life I had not taken and the glimmer of hope that even if I couldn’t see past my own sadness now, there might still be new paths to discover. “Thank you,” I whispered.
Monroe nodded, gravely. “Your husband is the luckiest of men, and I hope, at long last, he realizes it.” He didn’t need to give me that one small bit of flattery; perhaps he shouldn’t have. But it was a mercy, and it gave me the strength to dry my tears. When I was composed again, I found a plate for him, covered in a white linen napkin. “Pastries for Mrs. Monroe.”
He smiled when our fingers brushed lightly as he took the plate. “Perhaps we can all share them together in more sociable circumstances.”
Alas, there would never be more sociable circumstances for us. Not ever again.
***
April 1793
Philadelphia
Vive la République!
While I made my way through the crowds, church bells rang, cannons blasted, and Philadelphians sang in honor of the French, who had outlawed the monarchy, beheaded their king, and now found themselves at war with Great Britain.
In spite of our old treaty with France, President Washington had declared American neutrality in this war, but everywhere I went, my countrymen took up the cry of our old allies.
Vive la République!
On this day, the celebration was for the arrival of a frigate the French had taken from the British. Upon her coming into sight, thousands and thousands of the yeomanry of the city crowded the wharves and, when the British colors appeared reversed, the French flying above them, people burst into peals of exultation.
But I wasn’t in this squalid part of Philadelphia to celebrate.
I’d come for a less dignified reason, one that wisdom should have cautioned me against. In the aftermath of my husband’s betrayal, I’d spent a dark miserable winter on my knees in prayer. Now springtime had stolen upon me, insulting me with its showy, colorful, perfumed glory.
And I had to see her.
I had to see Maria Reynolds.
Men stray, my sister Angelica would’ve told me. I could hear her words as if she were standing beside me, warning me to leave off this nonsense. It’s in their nature. You’re making too much of it. Your husband still loves you, and you’re lucky to have him!
Certainly, since Hamilton’s midnight confession, he’d been solicitous, sharing in the care of the children, staying home at night, and sheepishly turning down meetings with colleagues in deference, he said, to his growing and hitherto too much neglected family .
But in recent weeks, more confessions had spilled from his lips. It was not, as he’d first intimated, just one night with this woman. For nearly a year he’d gone to her bed, and I, the trusting fool, had never suspected. And when I demanded to know why he’d not simply told me everything all at once, he said, “ I thought you might take easier to a thing if it was gradually broken to you, my angel. ”
Which left me to wonder what other painful revelations remained.
I knew my husband regretted this woman. I also knew most wives overlooked infidelity. Only a select few divorced. But in New York State, adultery was the only grounds upon which a woman could seek a divorce. And I will not say I didn’t flirt with the thought at night, in our now very cold bed.
But to what end? It wouldn’t undo the pain. And who would I be if I wasn’t Alexander Hamilton’s wife? Weeping into the kerchief Monroe had pressed into my hand while offering comfort and strength, I felt as much a stranger to myself as Hamilton was now to me. I scarcely spoke to my husband, beyond that which was necessary for the children’s sake. And I felt too exhausted to care for my own dignity. The need to see Maria Reynolds became a compulsion—perhaps as powerful as the one that led my husband to her in the first place.
Which was how, after a few discreet inquiries, I found myself at the corner, near the public square, staring up at Maria’s window in the house she shared with men it would be too kind to characterize as genteel boarders. Her curtains had been thrown back, allowing me to watch her brush her long hair. Fair hair. Would it have been better if she’d been a brunette?
Maria was beautiful. Young. And, overtaken with some sort of madness, I meant to confront her. I would shame her—make her feel the shame I felt. I would demand to know why she’d hurt my family and wrecked my happiness. Pushing through the crowds, I marched up the stairs to her weathered, red-painted door.
But as I reached for the knocker, the dark spell was broken by the laughter of a little girl coming from her window. Her daugh ter . A poor innocent child with an unfeeling father, a harlot for a mother, and no future whatsoever.
Oh, the folly in coming here! It crashed over me in another wave of shame.
To stoop to converse with a prostitute. To demean myself. If I couldn’t forgive this, then I must forget it. Forget her. And be gone from this place before someone wondered what the wife of the treasury secretary was doing lingering near what must have been known as a bawdy house.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t easy to leave. Not with the parading crowds. I was forced to combat the press of bodies, the scent of sweat, the indifferent shuffling of so many feet, vivid memories of the Doctors’ Riots making me anxious. To break free of the crowd, I’m afraid I wielded my parasol with unladylike force, but there was no fighting the rush of so many.
Vive la République! Vive la République! Vive la République!
I was swept along the streets of Philadelphia for half a block before I was rescued—veritably plucked from a churning sea of people—by a very tall, freckled man in an exquisite French suit with fine lace cuffs. “Why, Mrs. Hamilton,” Jefferson drawled, gently pulling me to the relative calm of the corner curbside where he stood with James Madison. “What a surprise to see you here...”
My heart sank. I could think of no two persons I should least like to have discovered me so near to Maria Reynolds. And my mind spun with a persecuted turn, not unlike my husband’s. Hamilton had said that his political enemies lured him into the scandal, and I’d dismissed it as a paranoid and egotistical excuse. But if his foes learned of the affair, they might use it.
I wanted to trust that these Virginians were gentlemen—that they’d never serve us up to the public. But if my own husband couldn’t be trusted, why should I trust anything? Or anyone.
“I—I was on my way home,” I said, trying to catch my breath, hating the edge of fear in my voice, and unable to think of an able lie that would avert their suspicions. If they had suspicions.
By God, what a misery to think like Hamilton, wondering at some poison in every person’s smile! I felt guilty for it when Madison offered me an arm with genuine concern. “Are you quite all right, Mrs. Hamilton?”
“Just alarmed by the crowds,” I said.
The cultured Secretary Jefferson casually pressed his back against the bricks, as if he cared little for keeping his satin coat clean. From his lofty height, he surveyed the vista with eyes he shielded from the sun and pronounced, “There is no need for alarm, madam. Why, I think I spy your boy just across the way, having hoisted himself onto a barrel for a better view.”
“My boy?” I asked, sure he was mistaken.
“Young Philip,” he said, pointing. “There with my youngest daughter Polly. Perhaps we may make a match of them.”
It was meant in jest. And yet, I didn’t laugh. “My son should be at home.”
Jefferson gave a sunny smile. “Ah, but it’s too marvelous a day to be inside. The spirit of ’76 is in the air.”
The spirit of revolution, he meant. And I was struck with the impression that Jefferson still fancied himself a revolutionary in search of a tyrant to tear down instead of a statesman charged with a new government to build. Thus, with a meaningful look at Madison, I couldn’t help retorting, “I prefer the spirit of ’87.”
That was the year we forged a Constitution, and I doubt Madison missed my meaning. “Either way,” Jemmy replied. “A marvelous, celebratory day for the revolution.”
He spoke of it as if it were ongoing. As if the French Revolution was a part of our own. And I knew I should have nodded politely and made chitchat about the weather. But nearly confronting Maria had left me agitated enough to say instead, “I’m afraid I cannot celebrate violence.”
“Oh?” Madison asked, because inside that owlish head was a whirling brain that missed nothing. He knew that I had cel ebrated our soldiers, our war, our victories, and he probably thought me a rank hypocrite. “Despite the follies and barbarities in Paris, the French Revolution has been wonderful in its progress, and stupendous in its consequences.”
He was wrong. The French Revolution was devolving into anarchy.
I knew—certainly I knew—not to argue with these men. Especially here and now. How often had I counseled my husband to govern his tongue? And yet now, unmoored by my anger at my husband, mine flew free. “It certainly is stupefying that a revolution inspired by our own should turn upon those who fought heroically in the cause of our freedom. Rochambeau and Lafayette both in prison.”
At the mention of Lafayette, Jefferson’s voice gentled and his clear blue eyes filled with sympathy. “Mrs. Hamilton, my own affections have also been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause. But the liberty of the whole earth depends on this contest. And rather than it should fail, I would see half the earth desolated. An Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than it now is.”
Though the season was not cold, gooseflesh rose on my arms. What a strange man to be so courtly, so charming—and so blithely condemn half the earth in pursuit of a philosophical ideal. Chilled to the bone by this remark, I glanced, disbelieving, at Jemmy Madison, who had the grace to wince.
As the crowds celebrated a new sister republic with a cannonade, all I could think of was the French king’s downfall. This same king who’d come to our aid in the cause of independence. A king who’d put his fate into the hands of his people. The people who claimed to love him.
And he’d been cruelly betrayed.
I’d read in the papers that the French thronged to watch King Louis die, and cheered when the blade fell and severed his head. They stuffed the king, head and all, into a box. And, afterward, the peasants wanted cuttings of his hair, scraps of his shirt, anything to mount upon a mantelpiece as a trinket. The public wanted to consume him. Like the hounds of hell, they even knelt and lapped up the king’s blood.
Here in America, some called that justice. And I couldn’t help but shudder, because I wore round my neck a pendant with a trinket of George Washington’s hair—a man who’d just been unanimously reelected to the presidency and sworn in for his second term but was now derided as a tyrant in the making. Perhaps even by these very gentlemen standing beside me on the street corner who I wanted to trust would never serve us up to a slavering public.
What a high-minded thing revolution had seemed when it started; but now I wondered if, in trying to bring about liberty, we’d instead opened the gates of endless war, bloodshed, and immorality.
***
“ T HEY’RE THROWING A ball for the French ambassador, Citizen Genêt ,” Lucy Knox huffed, perusing the lemon cake on Martha Washington’s table before returning to her knitting. We Federalist ladies were always knitting, though I worried how easily it could all unravel.
A country. A reputation. A marriage...
We were discussing the French ambassador, who was recruiting troops to fight for France in defiance of President Washington’s Proclamation of Neutrality. And radical Francophiles in our country encouraged it!
“Surely you’re mistaken, Mrs. General Knox,” Abigail Adams replied, peering over the length of her sharp nose. “These democrats wouldn’t host a ball. A ball is too aristocratic. It’s to be an elegant civic repast that just happens to be held in the city’s largest ballroom where they’re going to hand out liberty caps and sing ‘ La Marseillaise .’”
The ladies laughed, except for Lady Washington and me. Be cause all I could think was that if French revolutionaries could kill a king and his ministers, Americans could kill a president and his treasury secretary...
Shrewdly eyeing the way my hands had stopped working my knitting needles, Abigail said, “Mr. Adams tells me we have our own Robespierres, but fortunately for us, they cannot persuade the people to follow them.”
Thin-lipped, Lady Washington replied, “I’d never have guessed Vice President Adams to be such an optimist.”
This did make me sputter with a laugh. A bitter one. Because the people seemed entirely persuadable, especially as so-called Democratic Clubs sprang up around Philadelphia based on the French Jacobin model. And I began to think nearly treasonous thoughts about this experiment with self-government. My husband couldn’t even govern himself. Not when passion took him. What hope did the common citizenry have of making wise decisions for themselves?
My fears seemed justified when, a few weeks later, ten thousand people were in the streets of Philadelphia threatening to drag Washington from his house and force us to join France’s war against England. Outside our door men shouted, “Down with Washington!”
They seemed to believe that by keeping America out of a costly foreign war, we were betraying our sister republic in France; that President Washington had turned his back on the values of the revolution. And I dared not go out, not even for church. Not when, clutching broadsheets depicting our president being sent to the guillotine, the mob screamed, “Enemies of equality: Reform or Tremble!”
Instead, I kept the curtains closed and read the Bible to the children upstairs where we’d gathered them, afraid and trembling, into our bed. Nearly nine years old, our daughter Ana was close to hysterical. Fanny, only a few months younger, sucked her thumb, as was her wont when she’d been a babe. While I rocked the littlest ones in my arms amongst a mountain of blankets Al exander had made for the boys, Ana cried, “Will they behead the president?”
“I will never let such a thing happen,” Alexander reassured us, very gravely. “Not while I draw breath.”
I knew that was true. But so, too, did anyone who wished to drag George Washington to the scaffold.
Which was why they would come for my husband first.
Having finally coaxed the children to sleep in our bed with their favorite Dutch stories of elves and river Nixie, Alexander and I retreated to the divan in the back parlor, where a few candles still sputtered in the braziers on the wall. The protesters would return at dawn, but now, in the blessed quiet, I asked, “Are you not weary of all this?”
“More than you can know. Truly this trade of a statesman is a sorry thing. But I cannot quit it. Otherwise, what’s to become of our fame and glory?” He gave a wry grin, one of his most appealing. “How will the world go on without me? I am sometimes told very gravely that it could not.”
He wanted me to laugh with him. But I didn’t. It’d been his habit for months now to crawl into bed with one of the boys at night, claiming that their sleep was troubled or that he didn’t want to wake me. This was the fiction—the polite lie—that allowed us to go on as if all was well. There was no intimacy between us now, and so I wanted no more lies, either.
“All you do is fight,” I whispered. “You fight Jefferson, you fight Madison, and Burr. You fight the Jacobins, the Clintons, the Livingstons, the newspapers, the Congress, the French ambassador—”
“And I beat them,” Alexander replied. “You mustn’t fear, my love. I will defend you and the children to my last breath.”
He said this with fierce devotion, leaning over to kiss me. And I could hear my sister say, Ah, Betsy! How lucky you were to get so clever and so good a companion.
But I whispered, “I could leave you.”
I startled as if the words had come from someone else’s mouth.
Hamilton startled, too, his eyes ablaze. “What?”
I straightened up, and this time I spoke clearly. “I could leave you.” I’d scarcely allowed myself to acknowledge these thoughts much less speak them aloud, but now the words mutinied upon my tongue, beyond my command. “A divorce would be a scandal, but some society ladies quietly abandon their husbands if they have the means and inclination.”
Perhaps Alexander hadn’t believed his sweet, docile wife could contemplate such a thing because he paled. “Betsy, of all times to even muse—”
“Papa would take me back at the Pastures,” I said, idly twisting the interlocked gold bands of my wedding ring as my voice gained strength. “And his grandchildren, too. I am not without options. There’s only one thing that compels me to live with you, to cook your meals, to tend your house, to warm your bed. To admire your brilliance. To stay with you, at your side, even against a mob . And that one thing is a love you have sorely abused.”
In a flash of temper, he snapped, “There is also the matter of marriage vows.”
“Vows you failed to honor,” I shot back.
My shot must have hit its mark, because he buried his guilty face in his hands. Still I gave him no quarter; he was, after all, the one who taught me that if blood must be drawn, you must strike at the most vulnerable place.
“You say you were lured to that woman’s bed. Maybe you believe it. But I know better.” His shoulders tensed, as if he would argue, but I stopped him with one word. “ Reynolds .” I spit the name, dragging in a few ragged breaths. “I couldn’t place it at first. It buzzed about like a gadfly, stinging me until at last I remembered, all those years ago, how you went to taverns seeking out the man who’d passed a slander about you...”
I stood up from the sofa, arms crossed over myself as I paced.
“ A nobody, you said at the time. A ne’er-do-well named James Reynolds , from whom you could have no satisfaction. And yet, you wish me to believe it’s only by happenstance that, years later, you fell into bed with that man’s wife?”
Alexander colored. “How can you believe otherwise?”
“Because there’s one thing I know about you.” I whirled on him. “You never forget an offense. Maria Reynolds was the wife of a man upon whom you wished revenge. And a relation to the Livingstons, too. She was an opportunity to strike a blow against several enemies at once, so you took it. Never mind the blow you dealt me. As long as you had satisfaction.”
A long silence followed. One so long that I didn’t know whether to fear the chasm between us or welcome it. In the end, he denied nothing. “Betsy, I can never cease to condemn myself for this folly and can never recollect it without disgust, but you cannot wish to subject our children to a childhood of separation and insecurity.”
His childhood, he meant. The one that had left him with these dangerous vulnerabilities and destructive compulsions.
But I wasn’t the one to subject them to such a possibility, so I said, “I wouldn’t wish that. Yet, in trying to cure you of your fear of abandonment, I’ve somehow convinced you that you may do and say anything, and your Betsy will stay loyally at your side. I convinced myself, too. But I think it better, in times like these, for us to acknowledge that marriage is a choice, one made, every day, anew. And trust me when I say I don’t know which choice I shall make come morning.”