18

Prison Portrait

Debtors’ Prison

New York, New York

January 1784

The debtors’ prison in which Ralph Earl was incarcerated stood at the northern end of the Fields, the large park near the top of the city between Broadway and the Boston Post Road. It bore the unimaginative name, “Debtors’ Prison.” Before that, it had borne the equally unimaginative and even more inexpressive name, “New Gaol,” but despite these failures of nomenclature, the building was a handsome three-story stone structure with a dormered attic floor, above which stood a large, graceful octagonal cupola. In a more bucolic setting, the building might have been mistaken for the country house of a member of the gentry, but the whipping post and pillory that stood just to the side of the entrance overshadowed any genteel feeling that might have been engendered by the stately architecture.

“Begging your pardon, m’lady,” called the burly, Irish-accented man seated behind a desk at the far end of the lobby before Eliza had taken two steps inside, “but p’raps you’re, well, lost?”

Eliza resisted the urge to shout her answer down the long, narrow anteroom, which smelled equally of smoke, cabbage, and a third element that Eliza didn’t want to put a name to. (Suffice to say that it reminded her of the errand she’d made Alex perform before he came to bed last night.) She lifted the skirts of her overcoat and gown a little higher and strode toward the attendant across the not-particularly clean flagstone. Perhaps she had agreed too readily to Alex’s request last night—that man and his kisses!

What was she doing here? Why had Alex sent her here? Was this even safe?

“Miss?” A tankard of dark liquid sat on the desk, which was strewn with what looked like a week’s worth of newspapers—there had to be at least twenty pages—and the remnants of what might have been a mutton sandwich, or perhaps mutton stew.

“Good afternoon,” Eliza said. “My name is Eliza Hamilton. I am here to see Mr. Ralph Earl.”

“Oh!” the attendant said. “I should have guessed from the dress. Pretty color,” he added, standing up. “What d’ye call it?”

“Um, pink?” Eliza said, wondering if this was a trick question. She looked down at the hem of her gown where it peeked out beneath her overcoat. Though the lobby was dark, the visible fabric was still, clearly, pale pink.

“Well, yes, o’course, pink. But champagne pink, y’think, or p’raps coral? Or, you’ll pardon the impertinence, good old-fashioned sow’s ear? No disrespect meant, o’course. The hue of a sow’s ear is of unparalleled delicacy, if you ask me.” While the attendant was making these bizarre pronouncements, he was leading Eliza down a hall and through an imposing if unlocked wooden door that looked to be at least four inches thick, with a small iron-barred window set in it at eye level. The hallway beyond retreated into darkness.

“Mr. Earl’s been teaching me the names of colors,” the attendant said as he led Eliza up a flight of stairs. “I always thought there was just five or six myself. Y’know, blue and green and red and the like. But there’s hundreds. Thousands even. I think my favorite’s periwinkle. The name, I mean, though the color’s nice, too. Little cool for someone with your complexion, you don’t mind my saying. The sow’s ear warms your skin tone right up.”

“I do think I prefer champagne or coral,” Eliza said now. “No offense to you, or to pigs that matter, but they are not something I often think of wearing.”

“Sure, sure,” the attendant said good-naturedly. “Pig makes a fine leather, actually. Very durable. Good for boots. Also wine sacs, though I s’pose m’lady drinks from crystal, or at least pewter. Well, here we are,” he said unexpectedly, pulling a good-size collection of large iron keys from a pocket and jangling one loose. He fitted it into the iron-framed keyhole, turned it forcefully, and pulled the door open.

“Here you are, m’lady,” he said, flourishing a hand toward the open portal, through which Eliza could see naught but a stone wall.

She hesitated, then took a deep breath. What on earth have I gotten myself into? Before she could cross the threshold, however, the attendant’s arm came down and blocked her way, nearly landing on her chest.

“Now, you wouldn’t be carrying any weapons, would ye? Any knives or pocket-size pistols?”

“What? Of course not?”

“No files or rasps for sawing through bars?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“No poison secreted in a vial of perfume so that the prisoner can take the easy way out?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, O’Reilly,” a voice called from within. “Let the poor girl in before she poisons you.”

The attendant smiled sheepishly. “Just doing my duty, y’unnerstan’. No one would ever think a manifest lady like yoursel’ would break the law.” He stepped aside. “Regulations require me to lock the outer door. I’ll be back in one hour to let you out.”

“A-an hour?” Eliza said nervously, even as a pat of the attendant’s hand was propelling her into the little room. The only answer she received was the sound of the door slamming behind her.

“Well, I guess it’s just the two of us now.”

Eliza whirled. She expected to see someone right behind her and was surprised to discover that the cell she was in was a room divided by a wall of iron bars. The voice came from a man who was standing on the far side of them, in a tiny nook that held nothing but a narrow cot, a small table with a four-tiered candelabra, and an easel. At the foot of the bed stood a dark vessel that, at first, she took for a chamber pot, but then realized was actually a small brazier, the only source of heat in the windowless room.

Oh, and the man of course.

He was tall and much younger than Eliza had expected—not yet thirty, and handsome, with rather long angular features made all the more rakish by the shadow of a beard that grazed his hollow cheeks. He was clothed in expensive-looking, if somewhat wrinkled and stained, white silk breeches with a matching silk shirt and a rather . . . pronounced chartreuse overcoat adorned with three of the eight gold buttons it should have had. In lieu of shoes, he was wearing socks—from the shapeless appearance of his feet, she guessed several pairs. Yet despite the silliness of his lumpy feet and missing buttons, he still struck a debonair, indeed flirtatious figure. She couldn’t help but notice, despite her being a married woman. Said marriage and beloved husband being the reason she was here in the first place, of course.

Smiling crookedly, the man extended his arm through the bars.

“Ralph Earl, at your service, madam.”

Eliza took a moment to calm herself, then, stepped forward and took his hand. “So nice to meet you, Mr. Earl. My name is—”

“Your name could be none other than Eliza Hamilton,” Earl said in a leading tone.

Eliza smiled nervously. “How did you know?”

“Your husband has been very complimentary about your appearance, although I dare say he did not quite do your beauty enough justice.” He shrugged.

While Eliza was flattered, she was also a little taken aback by his aggressive flirting. Thankfully, the painter soon changed the subject.

“I wonder,” he added in a somewhat keener tone of voice. “Did he happen to send anything with you?”

“Oh yes,” she said then. She reached inside her coat and pulled out a small flask. “He said you would appreciate this.”

Earl accepted the bottle with somewhat shaky fingers, pulled the cork from it, and took a long—quite a long—pull. His eyes closed, and a contented sigh passed from his mouth. Then he took a second, shorter nip and stowed the bottle inside his coat.

“It gets so chilly in here,” he said, patting the bottle beneath his breast pocket. “This helps.”

Eliza did not find the room too chilly, but she had just been outside, where the breeze was stiff and the ice hadn’t melted on the streets for the past three days.

“You will forgive me if I seem rude, Mr. Earl, but you are not what I expected of a, of a—”

“A man in prison?” Earl said in a self-mocking tone. “I have done my best to pretend that I am in the salon of some elegant hostess in Philadelphia or Paris—or Albany,” he added with a wink, “and, God willing, I will one day again, soon enough. Please,” he said, beckoning toward a chair on Eliza’s side of the bars. “Be seated. I feel as though I am conducting an interview.”

Eliza unbuttoned her coat but, seeing no place to hang it, kept it on and sat in the chair, an elegant piece of carved oak covered in dark tufted damask that would have been at home in one of the salons Mr. Earl had just described. A heavy brocade curtain hung behind it, cleverly draped so as to reveal the gold fringe at its borders yet still hide the rough stone of the wall.

After taking another pull from his bottle, the artist sat down on the edge of his cot, his back ramrod straight. A stick of charcoal appeared in his hand, which only now did Eliza realize was stained with soot, as if he had been practicing his craft all day. His hand began to fly across the pad propped on the easel, which was turned in such a way that she was able to see his hand move yet could not see the results of its actions.

Several moments passed in silence. Eliza was afraid to speak lest she disrupt his concentration.

“You will forgive me for diving in immediately,” Earl said at length. “Normally I would make some excuse about the light going quickly on winter afternoons, but of course we are all candles here. And thank heavens, too. The cells with windows may be filled with light, but they are unconscionably cold. All you can do is watch yourself freeze to death. No, here we are merely racing against Mr. O’Reilly’s return.”

“Of course,” Eliza said. She felt somewhat out of sorts, even though this is what she had come here for.

“May I suggest that for your next couple of visits you wear something more comfortable? Though that gown is beautiful, and you are a vision in it, I will not be ready for oils for at least a few days. I must first learn how your face paints.”

“My face paints?” Eliza laughed nervously. “Unless I were to take the brush between my teeth, I do not think it will paint at all.”

Earl smiled at her quick wit.

“There are some faces, you see, that seem to lose their plasticity when they are drawn and become all rigid lines and a single dimension. Others lose precisely this definition and become nothing more than flesh-colored blobs, as lifeless as death mask. The painter has to discover the contours—the concavities, the convexities!—with good old-fashioned chiaroscuro, and fill them with the most quotidian shading before advancing to the tint of blush. The goal is to find the balance between the permanent, arresting shape that can fill a frame for centuries, and the breath of life that will ensure that no one forgets the subject was once a living, breathing beauty.”

Eliza had been drawn and painted before, but mostly by Angelica and Peggy. But this was a different experience entirely. Earl’s eyes roamed her body with a directness that would have been improper in any other situation (and in fact felt a little improper in this one). She had a sudden sense of her face as a thing apart from her, an intricate mask mounted before her cranium. But at the same time, she felt that mask growing hot with a blush.

“Do I—do I need to remain still, or is it permissible for me to speak?”

“From what Mr. Hamilton has told me, it would be a crime to silence you. He has told me that your beauty is only matched by your brain. Given that my sole conversational partner for the past eight months has been Mr. O’Reilly, I long for tones more dulcet.”

“He’s been learning his colors, though.” Eliza smiled. “Coral and champagne pink and his favorite, periwinkle.”

“It takes a true innocent to make a word like periwinkle sound scurrilous!” he said.

Eliza sat quietly, thinking that she had determined to do useful work instead of being merely decorative, and yet here she was sitting for a portrait. But she was helping somewhat, wasn’t she? Giving this man a job of some sort? And doing what her husband bid her?

A few minutes later, in one quick motion Earl sat back from his easel and turned it toward her. The light from the four candles shone directly on the page, yet it still took a moment for Eliza to make sense of the wavering black lines that floated on the yellow parchment. It seemed impossible that anyone could have captured a likeness so quickly, and in so few strokes. Then she gasped.

For there she was. Her posture—the line of her back, the set of her shoulders, the demure press of her knees beneath her skirts, the drape of her silken gown and woolen overcoat. It was remarkable. With just a few hash marks and wavering strokes he had managed to capture the pattern in the lace covering her décolletage. And with seemingly imperceptible shadings, he had brought out the moiré luster in the dress itself. Yet even more incredible was the way in which he captured the flesh beneath the garments. Just looking at it deepened her blush.

The three eldest Schuyler sisters (well, not so much Peggy) were a fair hand at capturing what they called “outlines,” which is to say the silhouettes of draped skirts, but when you looked at them you never got the sense that these garments were actually being worn by a human being. They could have been filled with air or straw. But Earl’s drawing somehow captured the tenseness of Eliza’s stilled legs and the constriction in her chest from trying not to breathe, or not to expand her rib cage when she did so.

She was so taken by the masterful way her body had been depicted that she almost didn’t notice her face. Then she caught herself staring into her own eyes. Saw the curiosity there, and the amusement, and even the intelligence. It was as if she had caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror before she had time to compose an expression. She flushed to think of herself that way, but she hadn’t drawn the picture after all.

She was suddenly conscious of eyes on her, and looked up to see Earl staring at her with a gesture that was both proud and questioning, as if he knew he had done a good job but was curious what sort of effect it had had on Eliza. It was almost as if he were wondering what sort of hold it might give him over her.

But Eliza was so taken with the sketch that all she said was, “Oh, Mr. Earl! It is remarkable.”

“Bah!” Earl said, grabbing the bottom edge of the page and flipping it over roughly, exposing a fresh sheet. “It is all wrong. Your face looks as though you had just looked up from a psalter when it should be as if you had just read an account of a shipwreck or a great battle or the moment when Romeo holds a sleeping Juliet in his arms and mistakes her for dead. We start again! But first—”

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the flask Alex had sent. After a long drink, he sighed contentedly.

I’ll have to bring a bigger flask next time, Eliza couldn’t help thinking.

“It gets so chilly in here,” he said, then wiped a few beads of sweat from his brow and started drawing again.