3
A Stranger in the House
The Hamilton Town House
New York, New York
June 1785
Meanwhile, back at 57 Wall Street, Eliza lingered in bed for much of the morning, catching up on her correspondence. For the past several months, she had been working to facilitate the placement of several orphans into good homes or churches. She saw her husband’s face in every orphan and was determined that no child would be abandoned as he had been. She would have loved to take in each and every one of them into her own home, childless as they were, but decided it would unfair to choose just one or two to save personally, and so she devoted herself to all of them.
New York City lacked both a foundling society and an orphanage, and too many poor children whose parents had been taken from them by disease or war ended up fending for themselves on the streets if someone didn’t take them in. Eliza had only last week placed a six-year-old girl with a lovely family who ran a prosperous farm not far from the Beekmans, and now there was a sweet lad of just four whose mother, a fallen woman unable to identify the boy’s father, had been taken away by the pox at the tender age of twenty-two.
As it happened, Eliza knew that Michael and Prudence Schlesinger, a young couple she had met in Trinity Church, had lost their own son to fever half a year ago. She did not think that Augustus, as the orphaned lad was grandly named, could ever take the place of their Joshua, but surely, she wrote to them, this was the Lord’s way of helping them through their grief? The boy was currently staying in the church’s rectory, and on her visit there she had him dip his hands in watercolor paint and impress his prints on a sheet of parchment, which she had sent to the Schlesingers. They were so tiny, so delicate—how could they fail to melt Pru’s and Michael’s hearts?
She was aware it was a stopgap plan. In a city as large as New York, Eliza knew there were far more foundlings and orphans than were being brought to her attention, and eventually a home would have to be built for them, so they could be fed and clothed and educated in comfort until they were placed with families of their own. But for now, if she could match young Gus with Pru and Michael, she would consider her morning not entirely wasted.
As a precaution—she didn’t want to risk becoming more ill or infecting her friends—she sent her regrets to the Van Cortlandts, telling them that she wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t up to dinner that evening. (In Simon’s absence, she had to send Rowena with the note, along with her letter to the Schlesingers, which didn’t please her cook at all. An hour later came Joanna Van Cortlandt’s gracious response: “I completely understand, my dear. Take a day in bed—I find it always helps!”)
Eliza had procured a copy of Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe some weeks ago, the latest fancy, and began indolently cutting the pages open to read it, but soon gave the task up: the dusty paper tickled her nostrils, which somehow upset her stomach even more. She set the book aside and closed her eyes. To her surprise, she fell asleep again.
But Eliza was too used to activity to pass an entire day in bed, and thankfully, when she woke after noon she felt refreshed. Stirring herself, she arose, washed, dressed, and decided to take herself to market on Rowena’s behalf (and also to avoid another batch of not-quite-right eggs or questionable lamb). Rowena was getting ready to head out when Eliza came into the kitchen and told her cook that she would do the shopping herself. Though Rowena protested that she always preferred to choose her ingredients herself, it was clear she was feeling overwhelmed without her son’s aid and appreciated her mistress’s offer.
“If you go the stall on the corner of Beaver and Broad, the man there will kill the chicken for you, so you don’t have to do it yourself. If you tell him Rowena sent you, he might even pluck it for you.”
“Oh, Rowena, you flirt!” Eliza teased. “I am perfectly capable of plucking a chicken.”
Rowena practically guffawed. “You’ll forgive me, Mrs. Hamilton. You are a hale lass for a gentlewoman, but you are barely capable of plucking out a wig, let alone a chicken.”
“You slander me, Rowena,” Eliza said, but she knew her cook was right.
Though she left the town house with a bounce in her step, two hours later she was back, sapped of energy. Eliza entered through the kitchen, dropped her baskets on a table, then made her way upstairs to the rear parlor and collapsed into its softest chair. There was a volume of Richardson on the side table—Alex was reading it—and she picked it up with the intention of peeking in, but when Alex came home around eight, he found her fast asleep in the chair with the book closed on her lap.
“Thanks for losing my page,” he said with a grin. She had looked so serene when he walked in, he hadn’t meant to rouse her. But the opportunity to tease his dear wife was just too irresistible.
“It’s Richardson,” Eliza said drowsily. “Every page is the same. Some poor maid is pretending to fend off the advances of her master, but secretly hoping the mistress will die so she can marry him and take her place. Just once I’d like to read a story where it is the man who is poor and is making love to a woman to try to get her property.”
Alex laughed. “That would require a change in property laws, among other things. Thanks for spoiling the plot, too.”
“Ever the lawyer,” Eliza said, rolling her eyes. “How did Johnny fare today?”
“You mean John,” Alex informed her. “He’s asked us not to call him by his family nickname anymore. He’s not here?”
“I don’t think so?” Eliza said. “Unless he snuck in while I was sleeping. But if he did I’m sure he’d have drawn a mustache on my face or something equally as sophomoric.”
“I left him at the college this morning. Somehow I failed to realize that Brockholst Livingston is also Henry Livingston, Governor Livingston’s son.”
“Yes, that’s why I was originally going to meet with him instead of you. Brocky used to follow me around like a puppy when we were children. I figured I could dispose him favorably toward John.”
“John seems to have that angle covered,” Alex said. “I am not sure if we are sending him to school or merely to a fraternal organization.”
“Hmm,” Eliza said. “Should I be worried?”
“Oh, he’s probably just running errands in anticipation of his classes. It’s a new city and he doesn’t know where everything is. I’m sure he’ll be in shortly.”
And just then the door opened and John came in, a sheepish smile on his wine-stained lips. When prompted for details of his day, he explained that he had stopped for a bite to eat at a charming inn and met a passel of “capital fellows” as well as “a few charming lassies.” One thing led to another, and here he was, a few hours later than expected, though “none the worse for wear.” He had supped at the inn, and if Alex and Eliza didn’t mind, he was going to take himself straight to bed. Without waiting for an answer, he staggered up the steps. A few moments later, they heard the creak of bedsprings as he fell into bed, they could only assume still fully clothed.
“None the worse for wear?” Alex quipped. “We’ll see if he’s still singing the same tune in the morning!”
THOUGH JOHN SLEPT in till half past ten, when he did finally wake, he was as energetic as a five-year-old. He wolfed down a few slices of hearty bread slathered with butter (as Rowena had already departed north to the Beekman farm to visit Simon), then announced he had to buy books for class, and vanished out the front door. Alex said he had a half day’s work to catch up on because of yesterday’s college visit, and headed out shortly after, leaving Eliza alone in the house. Her stomach was churning. Despite the fresh eggs she’d purchased yesterday, Rowena still managed to sour them before she headed out that morning. Or perhaps it was not Rowena’s cooking at all that had turned her stomach? Perhaps—could it be? But after so much heartbreak, to even think the thought was to jinx it, and so Eliza banished it from her mind.
“Sod all,” she said out loud. “This time I really am taking the day in bed.”
It felt positively sinful to crawl back between the covers at eleven in the morning. Her mother was a firm believer that “idle hands make for the devil’s work,” but she believed even more strongly that an idle mind was a truly dangerous thing. Daydreaming was an invitation to free-thinking; novel-reading was even worse since it gave picture to heretofore unimagined ways of life. To hear Mrs. Schuyler tell it, all of humanity had lived in sensible brick houses (though perhaps not quite as stately as her own) since Adam and Eve left the Garden, and the goals of any good housewife should be kept to seeing that the floors were waxed, the plate polished, the table surrounded by only the most desirable dinner guests, and the nursery stocked with a fresh infant every fourteen to eighteen months. Eliza had the shiny floors and shinier silver; her dining room rang with the voices of the men and women who were creating the United States of America out of the disparate and constantly squabbling thirteen colonies. Only the nursery remained starkly empty.
Eliza heated some water, made a pot of herbal tea, and brought it up to the bedroom, where she plumped the pillows so she could sit up comfortably. Moll Flanders sat on the bedside table expectantly, but she opened a drawer and pulled out a passel of letters instead. Intrigued as she was by the story waiting between the book’s pages, she hadn’t the energy to devote to such a strenuous pursuit and decided to focus what little strength she had on family matters.
Ever since her own brood had started to arrive, Angelica’s stories of London were equal parts lords and ladies and soiled nappies; Peggy’s letters from Rensselaerswyck had their own tales of infant joy: she and Stephen had welcomed daughter Catherine—named after both their mothers—just a few months ago. Eliza had meant to cheer herself by revisiting her deeply missed sisters, at least in prose, but all the stories of new toys and new dresses and first steps and first words left an ache in her heart that was more painful than her restive stomach.
Of course, these days she had been keeping herself busy with church and the orphans and arranging her and Alex’s social calendar to benefit both his career and her charity work, but she had always expected that by now these activities would be arranged around her duties as a mother. Without that missing piece, her life seemed a bit hollow somehow.
“You’re letting us down,” she said, wagging her finger at her stomach, which rumbled in reply.
In truth, though, the inactivity felt like a necessary respite after the day-in, day-out hustle of the past year and a half. The Hamiltons barely had a moment to themselves since Alex’s career had taken off, and if their social life was electrifying, it was also so all-consuming that Eliza hardly had time to realize just how tired she was. No wonder she hadn’t been able to conceive. Her poor body needed energy, and it was all going to carrying her from luncheon to play to ball to bat mitzvah (a moving Jewish ceremony that Eliza’s acquaintance Ruth Levy invited her to, to celebrate her daughter Sarah’s coming of age), and back again, in an endless cycle of gaiety.
As she thought back to the joyously exhausting barrage of events, she basked anew in the quiet of her bedroom. One solitary day away from all that was just what she needed! To close her eyes and sleep with the warm sunlight on her face was simply heaven!
But only an hour later she was up again. Sleeping all day just wasn’t in her. She was a Dutch vrouw to her core.
She decided to call on the Schlesingers to see if they had given her proposition any thought. Perhaps—oh, but this was mischievous!—she would stop by the rectory first and fetch little Gus to come with her. No one could resist the boy’s plump cheeks and flashing eyes. She had half a mind to adopt him herself, even though she had promised herself not to choose favorites.
Eliza threw open a window and stuck her arm out. The day was as warm as it looked, and grabbing her lightest lace shawl more for decoration than for cover, she raced down the stairs, already anticipating the smile on Gus’s face when she greeted him at the rectory. On second thought, she decided she would just pop in and say hi. It wouldn’t be fair to take him to the Schlesingers’. If they said no, it would be too painful . . . for Gus and for her. Even if he didn’t understand exactly what was happening, the sadness would be palpable. Children pick up on those kinds of things.
I must have a treat for him, she thought, and so she continued down to the kitchen to search for some cherries or grapes. The faint smells of bread and meat and butter tickled her nose as she pushed open the door—
“Oh!” a voice exclaimed.
“Oh!” Eliza echoed, startling at the sight of a strange boy of about sixteen or seventeen sitting on the lip of the butter churn: “Who are you?!”
“E-e-excuse me!” the boy stammered. “I thought Mrs. Wilcox was expecting me but she—”
“Mrs. Wilcox? Rowena? How do you know her? And why are you in my kitchen?” Eliza demanded.
“As I said, I thought I was expected. I mean, I was sent for—”
“Sent for? By Rowena?” Suddenly it hit her. “Are you Drayton?”
The boy nodded his head vigorously, then, for good measure, bowed. “Yes, ma’am. Drayton Pennington, at your service.”
“Oh!” Eliza said nervously. “Well, I must say, you gave me quite a start. I had completely forgotten you were coming. As has Rowena, apparently.”
“I—I’m sorry, ma’am. I—I guess I can go home and try again some other time.”
Eliza grinned at the good-natured boy. “As I recall, home is the Ohio Territory. It seems a rather far distance to go just because someone is not here to greet you.”
“Indeed, yes, ma’am, I suppose it is. I, um, I guess I could go back to the river and wait where the boat left me. When—that is, do you know when Aunt Rowena will be back?”
“Not till the morrow, I’m afraid. We’ve sent her off to visit Simon in the hopes that she’ll stop mooning about.”
“Simon!” Drayton’s face brightened. “He was barely born when we left. I’m glad to hear he’s doing well. He was a sickly child, you know.”
“Well, he’s healthy as a horse now, and riding them all the time, too, if the reports from Mount Pleasant are to be believed.”
“Mount Pleasant, ma’am?”
“Never mind about that. Well, no, if you’re here to become a footman, then you must learn who’s who so you can greet them properly. Mount Pleasant is the estate of the Beekman family. The pater is Jonas and his wife is Catherine. James and Jane, their eldest son and daughter, are Mr. Hamilton’s and my good friends.”
“Jonas, Catherine, James, Jane,” the boy repeated gamely, as though it were multiplication tables. “And pardon me for asking, but you are Mrs. Hamilton, yes?”
Eliza slapped her head. “How very rude of me. Here I am grilling and lecturing you, and I haven’t even introduced myself.” She took the last step into the kitchen and walked toward Drayton with her hand outstretched. The boy didn’t exactly shrink into the wall, but he looked as if he wanted to. “I am indeed Eliza Hamilton,” she said, taking his limp hand and squeezing it in hers. “I am very pleased to meet you. Mr. Hamilton and I are so grateful that you’ll be joining us and Rowena.”
“I, ah, thank you, ma’am. Mrs. Hamilton,” Drayton said. When Eliza let go of his hand, he stood there for a moment, then bowed again. She supposed that he had never met a lady on the frontier.
“That’s quite enough with the bowing,” she said with a smile. “We run a proper house, but we’re not royalty. We’re all Americans now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the boy said, though Eliza could see he was resisting the urge to bend forward yet again.
As she inspected him, she saw that he was a well-made boy, obviously used to heavy farmwork, but there was also a sensitivity about his eyes and mouth. She had worried that a farm lad was no more suited for the job of footman than Simon, but now she thought that perhaps Rowena’s sister had chosen wisely. The boy was shy, but he was also curious and alert, which were fine traits to have in the city.
“Well,” she said, “I have an errand to run, and you are no doubt tired from your long journey. The larder’s through there, and beyond are the servants’ bedrooms. Yours will be the second door on the right. Help yourself to some food and take rest as you desire. We’ve already purchased some fabric for your uniform, and we’ll get you measured up on Monday.”
“Uniform, ma’am?” Drayton said, as Eliza wrapped a couple of scones in a napkin for little Gus and put them into a small basket.
“Yes, your livery. Also, I don’t know if you’re a reader, but there is a nice selection of books in the parlor upstairs. Feel free to help yourself.”
And, waving at the bewildered-looking boy, she headed out into the day. How funny to think that the big, awkward, but somehow self-possessed boy in her kitchen was once a little boy as tiny as Gus. A baby. Would there ever come a day when she would have to look up into her own son’s eyes?
“God willing,” she said aloud, then hurried on to the rectory before the Schlesingers’.
THE ERRAND WAS a qualified success. Pru and Michael were far from finished with their mourning for Joshua, but they were also full of love and lonely for a child. Both had married late—they were already in their thirties—and time was running out for them to start a family. They couldn’t agree to adopting Gus sight unseen, but they said that if Eliza brought him to church on Sunday they would meet him with open hearts and open minds. Eliza returned home with a spring in her step.
That night she dreamed that her mother wrote her a letter. It was written on an elaborately folded, extremely heavy piece of parchment, and it took Eliza forever to open it without damaging the creamy linen. When, finally, she managed to get it open, she was surprised to see that the letter contained only a single line—but then, in the way that dreams do, the line blurred before her eyes, and the next thing she knew, she was awake in bed beside Alex, her cheeks streaming with tears.
But this was no melancholy dream—they were tears of joy. She had no memory of what had been in her mother’s letter, but she knew it was glad tidings nonetheless.