There were Schermerhorns, Lawrences, Rhinelanders, and Wattses, and Abraham de Peyster, whose namesake ancestor had donated the land on which City Hall was built (not to mention the Hamiltons’ own house), and of course a few inescapable Van Rensselaers and Livingstons, who were all related to each other in one way or another, and indeed to everyone else seated at the twenty-five-foot-long dining table the Rutherfurds had set up in the galleria. There was even Pieter Stuyvesant, great-great-great-grandson of the last Dutch governor of the colony of New Netherland, who was at least eighty years old. Like his namesake, he spelled his name with an i, spoke English with a Dutch accent, and in a truly eerie coincidence, sported a polished walnut peg leg that rattled the china in the cabinets as he clomped through the Rutherfurds’ exquisite parlors. Though unfailingly polite, he still seemed to regard everyone as a step beneath his station. (“If the blood in this room were any bluer,” Eliza whispered to Alex at another point in the dizzying tour, “we could have used it to dye the uniforms of the Continental soldiers!”)
But of all the guests at the dinner, Alex’s favorites were John and Sarah Jay—although to Alex she would always be Sarah Livingston, eldest daughter of William Livingston, the governor of New Jersey and the man who had sponsored Alex’s passage from Nevis to the northern colonies. Alex had had a crush on her and her sister Kitty as a boy; but as the years passed and Eliza supplanted all others in his heart, he thought of the Livingston sisters as his own kin, the sisters he never had. He was thrilled that Sarah had made such an advantageous marriage. The Jays were perhaps not quite at the level of society as the Van Rensselaers and Schuylers—John’s family were Huguenot merchants, having fled Catholic oppression in France a century ago—but in the New World, one didn’t have to have a title before one’s name to be welcomed into high society.
Gold and silver earned in trade was every bit as shiny as inherited wealth, and spoke to a family’s cleverness and industry besides, and not just the blind cosmic luck of being born into the aristocracy. John was a decade older than Alex, and also a lawyer—“one more and we could start a boxing club,” he joked, which prompted Sarah to say, “Lawyers? Boxing?” and break out into laugher. John had studied with the renowned Benjamin Kissam, as had Lindley Murray, and, like Alex and Gouverneur Morris, was a graduate of King’s College. Alex was pleased to learn from John that their alma mater, which had been closed during the British occupation, was slated to reopen in the spring, and under the non-royalist name of Columbia College.
But what really drew him to John was the older man’s belief in the urgent need for a strong central government to unite the thirteen states, built around a code of laws—“a Constitution, if you will”—that would ensure that whether a citizen was in the Carolinas or New Hampshire or Virginia or Maine, the citizen would enjoy the same privileges and share the same responsibility as any American.
“Local pride is fine,” John Jay said at one point. “Each state, each county even, has its specialty. But if we are New Yorkers first, or New Jerseyites—”
“Jerseyans,” John Rutherfurd interjected.
“—if we are New Yorkers or New Jersayans first, we are Americans last and always. Virginia has its tobacco, Carolina its cotton, Maryland its crab, Massachusetts its miserable winters”—laughter all around at this observation—“but all of them have the American spirit, which is the spirit of freedom of industry and quiet but unshakeable piety. We judge a man not by his name or lineage, but by the accomplishments of his own hand and mind.”
“And what, pray,” Helena said, “do you judge a woman on? The cut of her dress, or of the figure beneath it?”
John reddened, as did several of the other men, while the women at the table all shared a knowing glance.
“Certainly, you would not say that beauty is a detriment for a woman to possess?” John said when he could speak again.
“I would say that it is a distraction,” Helena replied, “and just as arbitrary a measure of her quality as a man’s surname.”
More laughter from the women and red faces from the men. Then, Alex was surprised to hear Eliza say, “I do not think any woman at this table would disagree with you, but I do think yours is a statement only a beautiful woman would dare make out loud.”
It was the line of the evening, and it made the rounds of society parties in that mysterious way news travels, always arriving at whatever drawing room or dining table the Hamiltons found themselves at. For Alex, it was something of a relief not to have yet another gray-wigged, gray-shouldered matron or half-drunk dry goods merchant sporting a military-cut suit that had never seen combat say, “Are you the Alexander Hamilton who served with General Washington?” and then press him for story after story about the American savior. Now it was, “Oh, are you the Eliza Hamilton who stole the stage from Helena Morris at her own party? I’ve heard so much about you.”
Eliza, confident but fundamentally shy, now found herself at the center of social groupings rather than on the fringes, and though she managed to hold on to her modesty, she also embraced her new role as a “woman of society,” as she termed it, smirking a little as she said it, as though the term were somehow improper.
“People used to say that I married you for your name and money,” Alex jokingly grumbled one night as they made their way wearily home after yet another late-night party. “Now they say that I married you for your beauty and charm. I can only wonder what on earth they think I bring to the union.”
Eliza couldn’t resist teasing him. “You are very good at holding doors and umbrellas, and in a pinch you can lace a corset, too. A girl could do worse.”
Alex made her pay for that quip all night long.
20
Weeping Widows
Ruston’s Ale House
New York, New York
February 1784
As busy as their social lives were, Alex wasn’t on his way to a party a few nights later. Instead he was en route to his star client’s home. Ruston’s Ale House occupied the first floor of a three-story building, rather like Samuel Fraunces’s Queen’s Head Tavern just a few blocks away on the corner of Pearl and Broad. The second floor was taken up by rooms to let, some of which housed guests who stayed for months at a time, while others were rented out on a night-by-night basis. The third floor of the spacious building was given over to an apartment for Mrs. Childress and her two children. Alex passed through the bustling inn quickly. By now the barmaids recognized him and, after requesting that a pint of stout be sent upstairs—it was a cold evening after all, and he needed something that would stick to his bones—Alex quickly ascended the two flights. The staircase was quite narrow and abutted the building’s main chimney, so it was quite warm as well, and by the time Alex reached the closed door, he was rather flushed. He pulled the chain and heard the tinkle of a bell from within the apartment.
After some moments Mrs. Childress answered the door herself. She had long since let go of her domestic servants, and ran the ale house and inn on a skeleton staff. The inn itself was still quite busy, but the interest on the loan she had taken to purchase the Baxter Street building that had been seized from her, as well as the distillery equipment therein, ate up all her profits.
“Mr. Hamilton,” she said, her pale face lighting up, “I did not expect you until tomorrow. Do please come in.”
She stepped aside and Alex entered the spacious foyer. The Childresses’ building occupied a corner lot, with rows of windows down two sides, and received as much light as the late February afternoon could offer.
Mrs. Childress led him into the parlor, a large room fronted by three tall windows framed by heavy draperies in a bronze-and-blue damask. She indicated a tufted sofa and took her place on an elegant, if well-used, Windsor chair to one side. She wasn’t wearing one of her all-black mourning gowns today, but a midnight-blue dress with a black ribbon sewn so elegantly into the sleeve that it might have been mistaken fo
r decoration.
“I am sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Childress,” he said. “I did not realize you were having a private day.”
“Oh, your visits are never a disturbance, Mr. Hamilton.”
Alex wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw a touch of color appear on Mrs. Childress’s cheeks. He apologized for the time once again; it was after four and the sun was setting, and only one lamp was lit in the room.
A knock sounded at the door, which opened immediately, letting in a barmaid who carried a pitcher in one hand, two glasses in another. “Some stout for Mr. Hamilton,” she said, setting it down on the table. “I took the liberty of bringing two glasses.”
“Thank you, Sally. Would you like a bite to eat, Mr. Hamilton? The cook made a Yankee pudding today that will warm you through the coldest snowstorm.”
“Well . . .” Alex meant to dine at home with Eliza, but Yankee pudding wasn’t in Rowena’s repertoire.
“Please bring a plate up for Mr. Hamilton,” Caroline directed. “And some of those scones as well.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The maid hurried out.
“May I?” Alex indicated the pitcher of ale.
She nodded, her eyes shining with plaintive yearning. It was as if the only thing she had left to offer were her hospitality, and she were desperate that it be sufficient.
I suppose I must seem like her last chance, Alex thought to himself. Then again, I suppose I am her last chance.
“In fact, I have come here about court.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Childress sipped at her stout as delicately as if it were a glass of tea. “Has there been movement?” She said the word tentatively. It was a term she had picked up from Alex.
“In a manner of speaking. A judge has been selected, and a date for the hearing to commence.”
“Oh. Well, that is good news, isn’t it?”
New York City’s courts had been in chaos since the end of the occupation. Nearly two-thirds of the sitting judges, and an equal proportion of counsel, had been loyalists, and under Governor Clinton’s new laws all of them were summarily fired. The positions were being filled quickly—too quickly, Alex thought. Lawyers who barely had a few more years’ experience at the bar than he did were being named judges, the final authority in matters of law that they hardly understood.
“Mr. Hamilton?” A shadow clouded Caroline’s fair skin. “If you don’t mind me saying, you don’t seem particularly happy.”
Alex bit his lip. “It is not my intention to alarm you, Mrs. Childress. It’s just that the judge, Lewis Smithson, who has been selected to oversee the case is a recent appointee of Governor Clinton’s.”
The mere mention of the name Clinton made Caroline frown.
“I see,” she said, as if she already knew what Alex was going to say.
“Judge Smithson is not well-known in the city, but he is known to be . . . not exactly sympathetic to loyalist causes.” Alex had considered using the word hostile, but thought it too pessimistic.
“I see,” Caroline said again.
“I do not want you to give up hope,” Alex said now, putting as much vigor into his voice as he could. “There is nothing to suggest that Judge Smithson’s personal beliefs will bias him against either the rule of law or the evidence. He is inexperienced, yes, but the people who have met him say he is an honorable man. I am convinced that the soundest arguments, not to mention common sense, will carry the day.”
“Inexperienced” didn’t quite cover it: Though in his fifties, Smithson had been a member of the bar for less time than Alex had. It was Alex’s understanding that he had been a farmer before.
Caroline was trying to remain calm, but there was a tremor in her hands as she took a long sip of her beer, and then another.
“So it essentially comes down to whether you are a better attorney than, what do you call it, opposing counsel?”
Alex couldn’t keep a smile off his face. “You will forgive me for singing my own praises, but I have no doubts as to my own abilities as a rhetorician, either in print or orally.”
“I am sure your opponent—my opponent, dare I say—must think the same things about himself.”
Alex nodded, almost sheepishly.
“Opposing counsel does not lack for self-confidence.”
“You speak as if you know him.”
“Indeed, I have supped with him twice in the past week, once at the home of John and Sarah Jay, and once at his own home. He is an amiable fellow and quite charming, but strictly entre nous, he wins more cases on charm than on knowledge of the law.”
“It seems to me not to matter if he wins by fair means or foul. It is still a loss for me.”
“Why, Mrs. Childress!” Alex said, only half pretending to be affronted. “You speak as if you think there could possibly be a better lawyer in New York than I!”
Caroline didn’t seem to realize that Alex was joking to try to set her at ease. Indeed, she looked aghast that he might think she doubted him.
“Oh, Mr. Hamilton, I could never doubt you! You are my last—my only hope! My life and the lives of my children are in your hands!” she said, nervous fingers kneading at the worn fabric of her dress.
To his surprise and consternation, Caroline suddenly leapt from her chair and knelt, prostate, at his feet. “I will do anything, anything you need!” she cried. “Anything you want, I am yours. Just ask!” She stopped her hysterics for a moment and turned to him with suddenly sly look. “Anything.” It was more than clear what she meant by “anything.”
Alex shifted uneasily in his seat. He had to make clear that such advances on her part were unwarranted and more important, unwelcome. While he had always been happy to flirt at parties with married and unmarried women, there was only one woman for him, forever, no matter what temptations might lie in his path now, or in the future, and should he ever fail Eliza, he would never betray her soul. With a stab of guilt, he realized he’d spent more time with Mrs. Childress than Mrs. Hamilton lately, and vowed to ameliorate the situation as soon as he could—as soon as this case was won, of course. A man had his responsibilities, not least among them securing his position and ensuring the household bills were paid.
“Mr. Hamilton?” Caroline asked, batting her eyelashes as she knelt at his feet.
“Please, there is no reason for such dramatics. I beg you, please get back in your seat, Mrs. Childress, there you go. Do not fear, and do not doubt me. I have nearly as much invested in winning this case as do you. I will not fail us.”
His client resumed her place across from him and pretended nothing had happened, which Alex was happy to do as well. And he realized he should wrap this up and return to his patient wife, as soon as possible.
“But no one can predict the law,” Caroline said. “And the mood is so poisoned against us! Can they not see that we are all Americans, no matter how we became so?”
“They will see it by the time I am finished,” Alex replied. “I don’t care if I have to talk for two hours, or four, or the entire day. You shall have justice. I,” he added in a firmer voice, “shall have victory.”
There was a knock at the door then, and Sally entered with a covered tray, which she set on the table beside the glasses of beer, then opened to reveal a large plate of Yorkshire pudding and roast smothered in gravy, along with a pair of scones glittering with sugar.
“Will there be anything else, Mrs. Childress?”
Caroline was still too overcome to speak in a normal voice, so Alex thanked the maid and sent her away. He insisted she eat some of his meal to calm herself, and took his leave.
“I hope you will forgive my outburst,” Caroline said as she walked him to the door. “It has just been such a trying time this past half year.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” Alex said, putting on his hat. “Our court date is in four weeks, but you will see me many times before t
hat, I’m sure, as we go over the facts of the case one last time, and review your testimony.”
She crossed her arms. “You know, Mr. Hamilton, besides my children, seeing you is the only thing that brightens my day.”
Alex ignored the comment. “Good night, Mrs. Childress,” he said, in a professional tone. “I will see myself downstairs.”
Caroline suddenly remembered something. “You never did tell me the name of opposing counsel.”
“Didn’t I?” Alex said. “He is a former colonel I knew slightly from my days in the army. His name is Aaron Burr.”
21
A Change of Venue
Debtors’ Prison
New York, New York
March 1784
If the time Eliza spent at debtors’ prison made her a little uncomfortable, there were other factors in its favor. The walk was not long, the weather was becoming increasingly fair, and the sitting itself only took an hour. Yet over time, Eliza came to realize that the preliminary sessions with the charcoal stick were not so Earl could “learn how her face painted,” as he put it during that first meeting, but so that he could drink up half the contents of the flask she had brought him, which settled the tremors in his hands.
Although she and Peggy and Angelica had all had fun at parties, the Schuylers were by and large a temperate family, and Eliza had never encountered someone who didn’t simply enjoy alcohol, but actually seemed to need it. She had always thought her mother a bit of a fuddy-duddy whenever she cautioned against “the vice of excessive drink,” but she could hear Mrs. Schuyler’s warning voice in her head whenever she placed Alex’s flask into Mr. Earl’s trembling fingers.