15

Bonds of Sisterhood, Part One

The Hamilton Town House

New York, New York

January 1784

Meanwhile, a week or two after Alex got his first client, one afternoon, Eliza found herself in the middle of her dining room, pensively studying the silver serving dishes displayed on the walnut cabinet. The four-legged covered platter with its intricate repoussé lid—large enough to hold four chickens, two geese, or a whole turkey—occupied center stage on the eye-level shelf, flanked by a pair of four-pronged candelabra that had been made by Paul Revere himself. On the next shelf down was a large oval salver stood upright on a carved ivory stand to better show off the illustration intricately etched into its base, which showed the Pastures in all its glory and remarkable detail, right down to the panes of the windows and the mortar between each brick.

To one side of the salver was a pedestaled cake plate, while the other side was occupied by a medium-size soup tureen, which, while round like the cake plate, had four legs and thus did not create the most symmetrical of arrangements. There were a pair of large porcelain serving platters from the famous Bow porcelain factory, but Eliza was skeptical about mixing silver and china, and, as well, the pattern on the platters was a dark burgundy and made little statement except in the brightest daylight—not exactly ideal ambiance for a dinner party. Not that she had any plans to throw a dinner party, of course.

Alex spent so much time in the office in the past month it was hard to plan a social gathering, let alone a dinner à deux, since he was often home long past mealtimes. She was alone rather often, hence the ten minutes she had just spent staring at a motley collection of china and silver. When they lived at the Pastures and Alex was busy at work or war, she had her family to spend time with. But here in New York, she was all by herself, and there were only so many different ways one could arrange one’s dishes.

Eliza had been under the presumption that once they had a home of their own, they would have more time for each other, but with Alex consumed with his work, it appeared the opposite was true. For the first time in her life, she was truly lonely. Without her sisters around her to tease her, the young ones running around, and her mother fussing, she found her life very empty indeed. She understood that Alex was working hard for them—for their future—but she wished he would come home earlier once in a while. He had already given the early years of their marriage to the war, and now it seemed, he would give these years to his work.

She perked up at the thought that while she didn’t have family around, they could make new friends in New York. Alex had expressed a fondness for the idea of a dinner party, recalling the intimate yet lively gatherings he had experienced at the home of William Livingston when he first came to the United States, not to mention any number of occasions at the Pastures—“Although your mother does seem to prefer a ball to a seated affair,” he had joked.

At any rate, if and when they began entertaining, Eliza wanted the house to look its best, and as she studied the cabinet, she contemplated the radical step of removing all the silver and replacing it entirely with patterned china. Her parents had gifted them a mismatched if numerous assortment of pieces, but each was fine in its own way. Plus, she and Alex acquired quite a few nice specimens since their arrival in New York, including the prized set of Crown Derby they purchased on the day of General Washington’s farewell. None quite matched the others, but this might give the effect of a curated collection accrued over time rather than an assortment of hand-me-downs, which is what, for the most part, it actually was. It would be a little bohemian, and quite possibly outré, but she and Alex were young, after all, and did not need to decorate like a pair of sixty-year-olds.

“It cannot hurt to try,” she said out loud, though there was no one else around to hear her speak. Indeed, the house had been empty a lot lately, despite Rowena’s and Simon’s cheerful presence as they were often out on some errand or another. Alex’s work with Mrs. Childress had brought in a dozen more clients, all former loyalists whose property had been seized. He had taken them all on, but the bulk of his attention was devoted to the Childress case, which he thought stood the best chance of securing some kind of compensation for the plaintiff, and would thus serve as a precedent for subsequent cases. Eliza was not fully versed on the legal intricacies of the case, but she had met Mrs. Childress once in Alex’s office, and immediately saw how such a woman could appeal to a jury. She was refined, independent, articulate, and attractive as well, even in her shabby widow’s weeds.

A little too attractive, Eliza couldn’t help thinking, but tried to suppress the jealous instinct. She had married a brilliant, ambitious, and charismatic man, and she did not want to hold him back. She trusted him with her heart, and she knew that his heart was hers alone, in that she was fully confident.

She had just finished removing all the silver dishes from the cabinet and pulling the china from its various shelves and cubbies in the kitchen and crowding the dining table with them when the front door knocker thudded hollowly from the hall. Rowena had gone to market, which, given the still-erratic state of food supply in the city, could take the entire day. Simon was hiding in whatever nook or cranny he secreted himself in when his mother was out, so Eliza hurried to answer the door herself, assuming it was another maid of some lady or other who wanted to leave her card to arrange for a social date. Wives of the men who’d served with her husband, as well as friends of her parents.

There was no reason to be lonely when she could answer these social calls and fill her days making new acquaintances, and Eliza decided she would do just that starting tomorrow.

She pulled the door open and, as she expected, a woman’s form greeted her. Eliza immediately noted the luxurious fur of the hat and stole protecting its owner against the January cold. But her head was turned to the southeast, looking down toward the water, so at first Eliza couldn’t see who her visitor was. One of those women who doesn’t send her maid to do her calling, Eliza thought.

But not even she was prepared for the face that greeted her when her caller turned toward the opened door.

“Peggy!” Eliza threw her arms around her sister without thinking. “Oh my darling, you cannot imagine how wonderful it is to see you!”

“Eliza!” Peggy returned the hug with as much enthusiasm as her sister. “How are you, darling?”

“Good, now that you are here!” Eliza felt a rush of joy at seeing her beautiful sister once more, and so unexpectedly. She ushered Peggy in and closed the door against the frigid air. “It’s so nice to have company after being alone in the house for weeks and weeks.”

“What? Weeks? Where’s Alex?” Peggy asked, frowning from underneath her rather fantastic hat with a profusion of ostrich feathers.

“Oh, you know. Seeking out clients and trying to understand all the new statutes Governor Clinton keeps passing has Alex quite busy.” An image of Mrs. Childress’s pretty blond-ringed face flashed in her mind, but she banished it immediately. “What with the vagaries of establishing a law practice in a city and state that is daily rewriting its laws, he is practically there day and night.”

Peggy peered into the house, as if she might see Alex hard at it. “But surely you can just pop in to see him for coffee now and then to make sure he pays attention to you?”

Eliza looked where Peggy was looking. “Oh, you think Alex’s office is located in this house? My dear, have you never been in a city home before? Only the wealthiest of the wealthy can afford that kind of capacious residence. Here the rooms are stacked on top of each other like dovecotes, with the kitchen in the basement and the bedchambers on the top floor, and all the receiving rooms sandwiched between. He maintains a study here, but it would be inappropriate for seeing clients, as they would have to tramp through the front parlor.”

“You mean this is . . . all . . . of the house?” Peggy seemed to think Eliza was putting her on.

“Peggy! This is considered a very fine home in New York City! It’s not large, but we have three floors. And come summer, the garden in back will be lovely. We can’t all marry Rensselaers, after all. Speaking of which—where is Stephen? And, forgive me for being abrupt, but, what are you doing here?”

Peggy looked simultaneously confused and coquettish, as if she had scored some kind of secret victory. “Didn’t you get my note? I wrote nearly two weeks ago to say that we were coming down.” As she spoke, she unbuttoned her cloak and held it out absently for a footman who never materialized. Eliza took it herself, hanging it in the small wardrobe they’d acquired, and led her sister into the living room. She took Peggy’s amazing headgear as well, and marveled at the towering creation.

Eliza shook her head. “I know that New York is supposed to be a cosmopolitan city, and we live but one block from City Hall, but I’m afraid it is only half domesticated. The British left it in such a state of disrepair as boggles the mind, and it is still very early in the redevelopment process.”

Peggy followed all this with a frown of confusion. “I take it you mean that my letter didn’t arrive,” she said when Eliza was finished.

Eliza laughed. “Only messenger-delivered mail has arrived for the past three weeks.” She indicated a sofa, which Peggy ignored, taking in the whole of the room with a few sweeping glances that made Eliza acutely conscious of the smallness of the room as compared with the great salons of the Pastures and the Van Rensselaer manor house. “But the city has other charms.”

“Like fine china, I see,” Peggy said, walking from the drawing room into the dining room. “This piece is lovely,” she said, holding up a fluted gravy dish covered in lilacs so lifelike you could almost smell them. She glanced at the empty china cabinet. “Rearranging?”

“It’s tricky,” Eliza said. “We have not quite enough pieces to fill the cabinet the way Mama does, but we still want things to look nice.”

“Well, I think they look nice on the table. You should leave them there.”

“On the table? But how would we eat?”

“Why, with them, of course.”

Eliza shook her head. “I know you are the unconventional sister, but this is a little . . . je ne sais quoi, even for you.”

“And you’re the smart sister, but you are not following my meaning. Leave them on the table because we’re having a dinner party!” said Peggy.

“A dinner par—you mean, tonight?”

“Why not? Stephen and I have no other plans. We’re staying with Helena and John Rutherfurd. Do you know them? Helena is the daughter of Lewis Morris of Morrisania, just north of Manhattan. I guess they used to own New Jersey or something? They sold much of it to the Rutherfurds, so I guess Helena is bringing it back into the family. And Helena’s uncle Gouverneur Morris is visiting. I say ‘uncle’ but he’s her father’s half brother and is not even thirty. He’s quite handsome. If I were still single, or you were . . .”

“Peggy! You scandalize me.” Eliza was looking around the dining room with its dishes scattered everywhere, wondering how it could possibly be readied for dinner. “But Rowena has already gone to market,” she protested weakly. “She will not have shopped for such a large party, if there is even that much food to be found.”

“Not to worry. I’m a Van Rensselaer now. Stephen knew about the shipping interruptions in New York, and brought along, oh, I don’t know, a lot of food. Like a whole cow and a whole pig and chickens and turkeys and ducks, and, well, pretty much anything an invading army might need. Oh, that was a bit crass of me. Too soon?”

Eliza just grimaced at her sister’s humor. “But how will we get it here? Rowena cannot possibly—”

“You must have some kind of help, don’t you?”

“Rowena’s son, Simon . . .”

“We’ll send him over with a note. The Rutherfurds have a houseful of servants. They can easily bring over what we need.”

“But Alex will not know about tonight—”

“The boy—Simon?—can tell him. Is Alex’s office far from here?”

“It is just off Hanover Square on Stone Street.”

“Which could be in Philadelphia for all I know, but I’ll assume it is close by.” When Eliza still hesitated, Peggy grabbed her hand. “Come now, sister. You’ve have been in this city for well over a month. It seems like an easy place to disappear into. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Eliza hung fire for one more moment. The thought of a party excited her to no end, but to plan it without Alex seemed a bit of a betrayal. What if he was too tired when he got home to enjoy it? But she knew that it was more likely he was as frustrated by their routine as she was, and the surprise would delight him to no end. And who knows what sort of contacts or clients he might pick up?

At last she nodded her head eagerly. She rang the bell, and a (long) moment later, Simon’s footsteps could be heard on the stairs. The towheaded boy, not yet ten years old, appeared in a wrinkled blue velvet jacket that had been hastily buttoned over much rougher homespun garments. Rowena had recently started training him for eventual service as a footman, a career that Eliza didn’t think suited him at all. He was athletic and outdoorsy and had a sure hand with animals. At the very least, he should work in a stable, but Alex had said he was the type to run off at sixteen like a modern-day Daniel Boone. From the state of Simon’s hands, it was clear he had been working with what he called his “kit”—a motley assortment of leather and metal that he used to repair tackle for the local stable.

“Yes, Miss Eliza—I mean, Mrs. Hamilton?”

While Peggy wrote a note to Stephen explaining what was needed, Eliza told Simon of his errands. Then, while Peggy told Simon where the Rutherfurds lived, Eliza penned her own missive to Alex.

Darling Husband—

A remarkable surprise has occurred! Peggy and Mr. Van Rensselaer have arrived in town, apparently in advance of a note from them alerting us to their appearance. They are staying at the nearby home of Mr. and Mrs. John Rutherfurd, and I have invited them over for dinner tonight (by which I mean, as you can probably guess, that Peggy invited herself for dinner, and I could not talk her out of it). They will be bringing their other houseguest, a Mr. Gouverneur Morris, who I believe worked with General Washington, and it should be quite a festive evening! Stephen has brought plenty of victuals, and Peggy says that she has brought her new maid as well, who can wait at table so poor Rowena isn’t overwhelmed.

Our first dinner party! And in New York City! I do hope you’ll be able to leave the office a little earlier this evening! A home never truly becomes a home until you share it with other people!

Your loving,

Eliza

Simon looked thrilled by the prospect of an errand out of doors, not to mention out of the kitchen, and hastily donned his overcoat and dashed off.

Eliza and Peggy passed the rest of the afternoon catching up over a pot of mint tea. “So how are you, truly?” asked Peggy. “We have missed you.”

Eliza choked back a half sob and tried to cover it up with a laugh.

“Why, Eliza! Is it as hard as all that?”

Eliza shook her head. “No, no. I have missed you so much, that is all—it feels as if we are so far away from each other now. I wanted to live on my own so much, but now that we do, I miss our family.”

Peggy nodded in sympathy. “But Stephen and I will come into town often, so we shall see each other more than we wish,” she said with a naughty smile. But she kept Eliza’s hands in hers, as if to reassure her sister that while she might be alone in New York, she was not alone in the world.

“How is life in Rensselaerswyck Manor?” she asked Peggy, who had been living there now for half a year.

The house was only half as large as the Pastures, Peggy said, but practically empty by Schuyler standards. Stephen’s father, Stephen II, had died at the age of twenty-seven, when Stephen was just a boy, leaving two other children besides his namesake eldest son: Philip, who was two years younger, and Elizabeth, which prompted Eliza to quip that in all of upper New York State there seemed to be only half a dozen names: John, Stephen, Philip, Catherine (Stephen’s mother’s name as well as their own), Elizabeth, and Margaret, with a couple of Corneliuses and Gertrudes thrown in for good measure.

Elizabeth Van Rensselaer was ten years younger than Peggy and “a jolly fun girl,” though not “half as bright as my Eliza,” but what Peggy really missed was the sound of little children playing. At her words, Eliza found herself blinking back tears. She too missed the sound of children’s voices playing games and making plans . . .

Mrs. Stephen Van Rensselaer II was not yet fifty, yet she had the air of a woman “twice her age,” and while she had remarried a Reverend Eilardus Westerlo, she was still referred to in Albany society as “Mrs. Stephen II.”

“When I mentioned that Papa was the first man in the United States to bring the Ruins of Rome wallpaper back from Europe,” Peggy said, laughing, “I thought Mrs. Stephen II—she insists that I refer to her as such—was going to crack her teacup, so white did her knuckles grow! You are so lucky, Eliza!” she continued. “The house I share with my husband will not be ours until Stephen comes of age, so we have two more years in the smaller cottage on the property before we can move to the Patroon’s manor house.”

While they talked, Peggy began idly returning the silver to the display cabinet. To Eliza’s delight, her sister put everything back exactly as it had been, the four-legged serving dish flanked by the candelabra, the illustrated salver bookended by the cake plate and soup tureen. “Such lovely pieces, and so nice to have things that mean something to you rather than to some relative long gone from this world!” Eliza blushed and didn’t say anything, happy that she hadn’t had time to replace all the silver with china as she’d planned.

About a half hour after Simon had gone, Rowena returned. The housekeeper’s face went ashen when Eliza told her of the dinner plans, but then she steeled herself and muttered, “Just leave it to me, Mrs. Hamilton,” before disappearing into the kitchen.

About an hour after that, a stout woman dressed in the drabbest of drab browns appeared. Improbably, her name was Violetta. She was Peggy’s new lady’s maid, a fixture from Stephen’s youth, who looked as though she’d be more comfortable gelding calves than adjusting a corset. (“But you’d be amazed at what she can do to a wig with a teasing comb and lard,” Peggy enthused. “Her creations are positively sculptural!”) Violetta brought two boys from the Rutherfurds with her, and after a brief consultation with Eliza (“I will make do with what I have to work with, Mrs. Hamilton”), had the lads shifting furniture about like a general rearranging wooden soldiers on a painted map, banishing Eliza and Peggy to the second floor.

It wasn’t until they mounted the second-floor landing and Eliza caught a glimpse of herself in one of the two-year-old dresses that were her usual outfit around the house that she realized she still had to come up with something to wear. Peggy, of course, looked exquisite. You’d never know she’d just spent three days on the road. She was wearing a spring-green gown, with delicate pale yellow embroidery and tiny but detailed pink and periwinkle flowers. She wasn’t wearing a wig, but it didn’t matter with Peggy. Her raven tresses seemed only to have grown more lustrous, and her coiled braids, though probably meant to be practical for travel, still managed to give her the regality of a Greek statue.

Eliza, on the other hand, had been living without a lady’s maid for the first time in her life, and had been doing her hair by herself for nearly a month. She had wound it up in the simplest bun, with but a few spiraled wisps to frame her face. Alex, who never shied away from pomp and circumstance in public, said he much preferred this look for day-to-day life and endearingly called Eliza his “sweet peasant girl.” But she knew that such a look would not do to entertain guests like the Rutherfurds and Morrises, who, if not quite as wealthy as Schuylers and Van Rensselaers, were nevertheless important local gentry.

But before she could wonder how to rectify this alarming situation, Peggy was pushing her down on the simple cane-bottomed stool Eliza used as a tuffet in front of her vanity. She grabbed a brush and comb from the Spartan surface of the table, pulled the pins that held Eliza’s hair, and met her older sister’s eyes in the mirror before them.

“You cannot imagine how long I’ve waited to do this.”

Eliza couldn’t help but blanch. “You’ve never styled your own hair in your life!”

“Silly, I’m not going to do this alone,” Peggy said, as Violetta entered the room with crimping irons and powder.