2
“Lovely Lasses Left”
Columbia College
New York, New York
June 1785
Since his practice had expanded, Alex moved his law office to a new building just around the block from the Hamiltons’ home on the corner of Wall Street and Pine. As a consequence, he was happy to relinquish his study on the second floor to be his brother-in-law’s bedroom. The Hamiltons still had another bedroom for guests, and should Alex need privacy he had only to nip out a five-minutes’ walk to his own quarters. In fact, he was there, or deeper in the city, at least twelve hours a day, and sometimes more, so he hardly noticed the loss of the room at home, which had mostly become a catch-all for abandoned furniture, Eliza’s old dresses, and extra crockery.
The following morning, Alex took his breakfast at home as usual, then went upstairs to give Eliza a kiss before heading to work. It was but eight o’clock when he prepared to leave—early for many people, though late for him. Late for Eliza, too, who usually breakfasted with him before he left, lest, as she said, she didn’t “see his face in the daylight.” She, Alex, and John had enjoyed a quiet evening at home the night before, but there had been much family news to catch up on, and the talk—and the wine—had flowed liberally until well after midnight, so no wonder she was tired. Johnny, too, was still abed, though as Alex recalled, he had never particularly been a morning person.
When he got upstairs, though, Alex found that Eliza was awake and looking rather wan. He smiled wryly at her as he kissed her forehead, which was warm, though not feverish. “Are you all right, darling?”
In answer, she whimpered a little. “My stomach was feeling queasy again, as it is now.”
Alex thought back to the evening before and remembered that Eliza had in fact picked at her food, declaring the leg of lamb not to Rowena’s usual standards. Yet the leg of lamb had been succulently tender. Perhaps Eliza was truly ill.
He pulled a glove off and laid the back of his hand against Eliza’s forehead. Warm, yes, but she was well covered by her nightdress, cap, and bedclothes, so that was hardly surprising. There was neither the telltale flush nor perspiration of a fever, and the brightness in Eliza’s eyes was the flash of pique—an industrious woman, she hated to laze about—rather than delirium.
“Should I call the doctor? I hate the thought of you being sick.”
For the first time that morning Eliza smiled and patted her husband’s hand. “I think it’s just something I ate. I really must speak to Rowena about taking more care at market. I don’t know how you managed to eat so much of that lamb last night. Why, I wondered if it had been fresh when she bought it, it tasted so rank to me.”
Alex held back his response. He had thought the lamb particularly savory, as had John, who wolfed down three servings to Alex’s two, but instead of pressing the issue, he just said, “Well, let’s be gentle with her. She is heartsick for Simon, and understaffed as well.”
“That is the only reason why I didn’t reprimand her last night, even if I thought I’d been poisoned.”
Alex fought to keep a grin off his face. It wasn’t like Eliza to be so dramatic, and he found himself enjoying it—he was usually the one whining in their household. “Drayton is due today or tomorrow, so things should settle down soon. But I’ll have a brief word with Rowena before I go to work. Tell her to keep the ‘poison’ to a minimum.”
Eliza peered at him to see if he were teasing, but then her face went even paler. “Oh no! I was meant to take Johnny to the Columbia campus to meet Brockholst Livingston!”
“Don’t you worry, dear,” Alex said quickly. “I shall take him. What time was the appointment?”
“Not till ten,” Eliza said.
“Ten! It is half eight already, and Johnny is still asleep.” Alex gave Eliza another quick kiss and hurried across the hall to Johnny’s room. He knocked on the door but received no answer. He pushed it open and peered into the gloom—the room faced north and the velvet curtains were drawn as well. The sour smell of alcohol filled the room. Alex noted a three-quarters-empty bottle of wine on the table beside the bed. No glass was visible.
“Johnny,” he said, “it is time to rise. You are due at Columbia in a little over an hour.”
No words came from the prostrate figure, but a white hand reached out and pulled the pillow over his rumpled head.
“John!” Alex said more sharply. “Brockholst Livingston is expecting you promptly at ten. It wouldn’t do to keep such an important man waiting.”
“If cousin Brock was an important man,” came a muffled voice from under the pillow, “he wouldn’t work at a school. He’d run an estate like a real gentleman.”
Alex was unaware that Brockholst Livingston was Johnny and Eliza’s cousin, but all these old families of New York had intermarried so many times it was more than possible. Still, General Schuyler had entrusted Alex and Eliza to see his eldest son through college—and he was paying the school good money for the boy’s tuition—and Alex was not going to fail his father-in-law.
He strode to the bed and yanked the pillow from Johnny’s head. “Up. Now. Or I pour the contents of the washbasin over your head.”
“The washbasin’s empty,” Johnny mumbled.
Alex glanced around the room. “But the chamber pot’s not.”
Johnny leapt from bed and began dressing.
WHILE JOHNNY WASHED and dressed, Alex dashed off a half dozen missives to the clients he was supposed to meet that morning, pushing back their appointments to the morrow. “Simon!” he called as he finished the last of them. “I need you to deliver—”
He broke off when Rowena’s sad face appeared from the dining room, where she had been polishing the silver after breakfast.
“Simon is off at the Beekmans’,” she said in a voice that could have been describing his death from a slow, wasting disease. “Perhaps I can be of service, Mr. Hamilton?”
“No, no,” Alex said, “you are much too busy with your regular duties.” He offered her a wan smile. “I know you miss him, but think how happy he must be in the open air.”
Rowena did her best to smile back. “I received a letter from him yesterday—Miss Jane Beekman was nice enough to scribe it for him—that says he is in the saddle every day. It is like an Eden to him, but a mother can’t help but miss her only child.”
“Yes, well,” Alex said, wanting to be understanding, but also not wanting to lose a hundred pounds in business, which, among other things, paid his grieving servant’s salary, “perhaps you can visit him tomorrow. Eliza, Mr. Schuyler, and I can fend for ourselves, you know.”
“Oh, I don’t like the thought of someone else in my kitchen. I have things just so, you know.”
“No need to worry about that. Mrs. Hamilton’s many virtues do not extend to the culinary arts. We shall probably just take our meals at the Stork and Whistle.”
The Stork and Whistle was an inn on Fulton Street, and the only establishment Rowena liked her master and mistress to patronize, because the woman who ran the kitchen was a friend of hers. “Oh, Glynis will be glad to have you! And thank you, Mr. Hamilton! I do so appreciate it!”
Rowena disappeared, and Alex ran upstairs to fetch Johnny. He was shocked to find him once again facedown on the bed, though at least he was fully clothed.
“John Bradstreet Schuyler!”
John sat up with a start, glancing nervously in the direction of his chamber pot. “What, what? Are the redcoats back? Point me to those lobsterbacks and I’ll shoot the lot of ’em!”
Alex couldn’t tell if Johnny had been dreaming or if he was having him on. “If you don’t mind,” he said. “Pull a brush through that hair, grab your hat, and let us be off. Daylight’s burning!”
“I find that the day gets on just fine whether I deign to notice it or not,” Johnny said as he stumbled out of his bed, pulled his fingers through his unruly dark locks, and clapped a hat over them. “Lead on, General.”
BRIGHT SUNLIGHT GREETED them as they walked out onto Wall Street, which was bustling with pedestrians, carriages, and men on horseback going about their business.
“Egads!” John said, pulling his hat lower over his eyes. “Are we in the south of New York or the south of Italy? My God, that sun is bright!”
“I find that the same sun shines on New York as shines on Albany,” Alex couldn’t resist saying. “Tell me, Johnny, is it possible that you are a little the worse for wear this morning?”
“I beg of you, please, call me John. No one called ‘Johnny’ can command the respect of his peers, let alone of the fairer sex.”
Alex rolled his eyes even as a smile crept onto his face.
“Now, then,” John continued. “If you are asking if I drank too much last night, the answer is of course not. I am no wastrel. If you are asking if I feel like the Revolutionary War is still being fought inside my head, though, then the answer is yes.” He squinted in pain. “It is a naval battle, with lots of cannon and rough seas to boot.”
Alex had to chuckle at the boy’s ingenuity. “We did celebrate your arrival a little too heartily, I’m afraid. Do not think every evening is quite so festive in the Hamilton house.”
“What? I loved it!” John said. “A couple nippers of sherry and I’ll be good to go for another round.”
Alex shook his head. He didn’t remember little Johnny being quite so . . . boisterous when he was young. But then, he himself wasn’t a rich man’s son. When he was John’s age he had already moved from Nevis to St. Croix and back again, been abandoned by his father, orphaned by his mother, and sponsored for a life-changing scholarship to the northern colonies by William Livingston, the governor of New Jersey. Though he knew little about the world back then, he understood that he was on his own, and that he and he alone would determine whether he succeeded or failed. John had better learn some discipline soon, Alex thought, or he would find himself back in Albany sooner than he realized.
Oh God, he thought, I sound so old.
Just then they passed a pair of girls walking the opposite direction. Servants likely, to judge from their simple gray garments. The pair were about John’s age, and dressed lightly on account of the day’s warmth, with only shawls and lace sleeves covering their shoulders. John all but stared as they walked past, then turned and watched as they walked away. “Somebody call a policeman, because they just stole my heart!”
“Ouch,” Alex said. “That line hurts me more than your headache hurts you.”
John laughed. “I’ve been told I come on a bit strong, but what can I say? I’m a lover of the ladies. Always have been.”
“Always? You’re seventeen. How much loving have you done?”
“I know Albany isn’t exactly New York City, but we still have our fair share of misses. As I recall, you found your own in our neck of the woods.” He patted Alex on the shoulder as though they were a pair of war veterans reminiscing about their days under fire. “Never you fear, brother, I’m well experienced.”
“I’m less afraid of your lack of experience than its opposite. Do I need to be concerned here, John? I am entrusted with your protection, after all. It is hard for me to imagine just how . . . disappointed General Schuyler would be if I wrote him to say that you had to get married in a hurry.”
“The only thing you need to worry about is the trail of broken hearts I plan on leaving in my wake. But don’t you fret, Alex. No one’s going to be throwing their noose around me before I’m ready.”
Alex grunted.
“But seriously, how do you stand it?” John said, making eyes at another young woman across the street. “I mean, this city is a virtual banquet table of female delights.”
“I’m not certain you’ve noticed but I am married to your sister. ‘For all time.’”
“Right. But still. We’re men, right? It’s in our nature to—”
Alex pulled up short. “If you think I won’t wash your mouth out with soap right here on the street, young man, you are sorely mistaken.”
John’s voice was guileless when he answered, but there was a wicked gleam to his eye. “You carry soap with you when you walk around?”
Alex took John’s head in his hands and turned it to a shop window.
SOAP
ALL TYPES
INCL. LYE
“This is New York. You can get anything you want, anyplace you want it, anytime you want it. Including lye,” he added in a threatening tone.
John just stared at the sign for a moment, as though he were having trouble reading. Then he laughed. “Fine, fine. I was just teasing. I’m new here, remember? It’s all a bit overwhelming.”
John affected a naïve tone, but Alex suspected it was just an act to placate him. Still, anything to get the boy to stop talking about women as though they were side dishes. John was clearly a self-possessed boy, and a smart one, but he had a lot to learn if he was going to make it in New York. Alex wasn’t sure if he was prepared to be the one to teach him, but if he didn’t who would?
“It’s but a few minutes more to the college,” he said. “Come, let us hurry so we’re not late.”
AFTER BEING CLOSED for seven years due to the revolution and the occupation of New York City, the former King’s College had reopened as Columbia College in the state of New York just last year. The story had it that when Mayor James Duane learned that DeWitt Clinton—the son of Revolutionary hero James Clinton and the nephew of Governor George Clinton—was going to university at the College of New Jersey in Princeton, he persuaded the university to reopen so that New York wouldn’t lose one of its first citizens to a neighboring state. With help from the governor (who had appointed himself chancellor of the reopened school, a largely honorary position, though it came with a nice stipend, which Clinton, as governor, had awarded himself), the university’s handsome Park Place campus was cleaned up, and the school opened its doors to nine students—the inaugural class of 1798, which included his nephew DeWitt. John Bradstreet Schuyler was to be part of the class of 1799, which had swelled to ten.
The campus was on a lovely bluff west of City Hall Park overlooking the Hudson River. Three acres of grass and trees, half wild after nearly a decade of neglect under British occupation, surrounded a single long, low building, nearly a city block long, a tall cupola rising out of its center like a domed vault.
John whistled as it came into view. “That is a big building,” he said.
“Eventually, it is to be complemented by three more, forming a quadrangle,” Alex said, pointing at the future buildings’ locations.
“A quadrangle, you say?” John said. “Is that like a fancy rectangle?”
Alex started to explain the concept, then saw the look on John’s face.
“You are so serious,” the young man said. “We should take this act onstage. We’d make quite the comic duo.”
“I do hope you’ll curtail the jokes while we meet with Mr. Livingston. First impressions are rather important.”
“Oh, I’ve met Brock a couple times. I think he was at Peggy’s wedding, although who knows? There had to have been fifty Livingstons there, and I was well sauced.”
Alex could hardly believe his ears. The Schuylers were such a reserved family, full of quiet probity. True, the elder girls had something of a mischievous streak about them, but it was all done in innocent fun. Whereas it appeared little Johnny Schuyler had grown up to become a positive Lothario.
Alex pulled up short on the path leading to the College Hall’s front entrance and placed his hand on John’s shoulder. In his head he’d imagined that he’d be looking down on the boy’s face, but he was disconcerted to discover that his young brother-in-law was a good inch taller than him.
“Forgive me for speaking bluntly,” he said. “But I must insist that that when we take our meeting with Treasurer Livingston you avoid any mention of inebriated evenings or, or romantic adventures. If you are unconcerned with your own reputation, at least think of your esteemed family’s.”
He made his voice as stern as he could. There, he told himself, that should settle the boy down.
John looked at him incredulously. Then, to Alex’s shock, he doubled over in a fit of laughter so violent that Alex thought the boy was going to fall to the ground.
“Oh my Lord, you’ve been a lawyer too long!” John managed to spit out between laughs. “‘Curtail any mention’? ‘Inebriated evenings’? Is this how you wooed my sister? I don’t know how she controls herself.”
Alex started to protest, but John put a hand up. “Alex. Please. I’m John Bradstreet Schuyler, eldest son of General Philip Schuyler.” He passed his hand down his body, pointing out the excellent cut and fabric of his suit as well as his lean but sturdy physiognomy and aristocratic face, with its strong jaw and elegantly narrow nose. Even his hair, so cavalierly combed, managed to look debonair.
John flashed a wide grin at Alex. “Henry Brockholst Livingston doesn’t stand a chance against me.”
“Wait,” Alex said. “Treasurer Livingston’s first name is Henry? As in the third son of Governor William Livingston of New Jersey?”
“You didn’t know?” John once again doubled over in laughter. “That’s hilarious!”
“He was already at school when I first arrived in the north and took up residence with the Livingstons. They always referred to him as Henry.”
“Well, it’s Brock now.”
“Somehow I doubt he goes by—”
“Brock!” John interrupted. “Hello! Brock!” he yelled at a dark-robed figure trotting up the path.
The man turned. “Johnny boy! Is that you? Excellent! I was afraid I was late.”
As he approached them, Alex saw that the man’s wig was slightly askew on his head, his cheeks unshaven, and one of his collars on his shirt flapped above the top of his robe. All in all, he looked nearly as disheveled as John.
The two clapped each other in a hug. “Good to see you again!” Brockholst said. “I can’t tell you how happy I was to learn that you’d opted for Columbia. Just between you and me, DeWitt Clinton can’t hold his liquor. I need someone who knows how to have fun.”
“Brocky, this is—” John began.
“Oh, I know this knave,” Brockholst said with a leer. “Alexander Hamilton, who tried to woo my sister Susannah once upon a time. Or was it Catherine? Or was it both of them? Better lock up your sisters, John,” he added with a wink.
“Too late,” John said. “He already snagged Eliza.”
“Another good one off the market,” Brock said. “Never you fear, John, there are still plenty of lovely lasses left in the city for both of us.”
“‘Lovely lasses left.’ It sounds like the beginning of a beautiful story,” said John. And, throwing their arms around each other, John and Brock sauntered breezily toward the building, heads close together in conspiratorial whispers.
Alex had no choice but to hurry after them.