I, Eliza Hamilton. Susan Holloway Scott
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my father tended to his political business: plays and musical gatherings, teas and suppers held by friends old and new, sermons to heed on Sundays, shops to visit, and parks to stroll. Because of Papa, I received more invitations than I could accept.
There was another side to all this company and entertainment, however, and I found it both discomfiting and disrespectful. While in Morristown, where everyone I met was connected in some fashion to the army and to His Excellency, the talk had always been of the deprivations our troops endured, especially during this winter’s storms and hardships, and how little support the general and men were receiving from Congress. But here in Philadelphia, the home of that same Congress, the conversation over tea and supper was of how the army scandalously squandered whatever was granted them by the magnanimity of Congress, and worse, how much His Excellency exaggerated the needs of his forces to squeeze more from Congress.
None of this was true. In fact, the truth was quite the opposite of these assumptions, and I didn’t like how these fine, wealthy Philadelphian ladies made such free assumptions. I didn’t like how they sat before their warm fires and whispered about soldiers who had spent the winter shivering in makeshift cabins, and soon would be heading off to risk their lives once again on the behalf of us safely at home.
I knew the truth, because I’d witnessed it myself, and I knew many of the officers they slandered, including the one I loved. I was my father’s daughter to the core, and to his delight (and Alexander’s, too, when I told him), I spoke up as often as I could in those elegant drawing rooms and parlors, and corrected as many ladies as I dared. It wasn’t in my nature to keep still in the face of falsehoods. I doubted they believed me, as people who are misinformed seldom do, and I’m certain they considered me ill-mannered, but at least I had not given the impression of agreeing with them through silence.
Was it any wonder, then, that I soon tired of Philadelphia? What my father had intended as a pleasurable journey quickly came to feel more like a punishment, keeping me farther away from Alexander.
I missed him more than I’d believed possible. He filled my thoughts awake, and my dreams when I slept. I was certain I heard his voice and his laughter from the next room, or his footfall in the hallway. Whenever I glimpsed an officer in a uniform like his in the street, my heart beat faster until he turned, and I realized the man’s face was not the one I wished most to see.
My only solace came in Alexander’s letters, speaking to me across the miles. I replied as swiftly as I could, filling them with pledges of my own love and devotion. But instead of bringing him the same comfort I took from his letters, mine seemed only to make his doubts grow.
He took my brevity as a sign not of my lack of talent for letter writing, but proof that I was enjoying the pleasures of the city and forgetting him. It wasn’t so much that he was jealous, or picturing me in the company of other gentlemen. Instead he worried that I’d had time to reconsider my love for him, and that I’d decided he lacked the qualities I required in a husband.
He tried to cover his fears with playful witticisms, but I wasn’t fooled. Already I knew him so well, my dear Alexander. No matter how I reassured him, his uneasiness persisted in the saddest way possible, telling me he’d understand if I cast him away for being too poor. I was at a loss for how a gentleman who could bravely command a regiment in battle could feel this unsure of his own considerable merits. There was one sentence in particular that struck me with its truth, and reverberated within my heart—“You must always remember that your best friend is where I am”—and that made me long to fly to his side to reassure him both of his worth, and my love.
He was indeed my best friend, and all I wished was to be where he was.
On my last day in Philadelphia, I made one final call on a lady who sorely needed company. By rights Mrs. Peggy Arnold and I seemed fated to enjoy each other’s company, we’d that much in common. We were close in age, and her husband, a major general, had served with my father, who held General Arnold in the highest regard for his bravery and military prowess in the northern campaigns.
But General Arnold had not fared as well in his most recent post as the military commander of Philadelphia, however, and had garnered so much ill will among the citizens that he had been compelled to resign. Worse still, he had recently faced a court-martial over his behavior while in the post, and though he’d been acquitted, the rumors continued to the extent that he had left the region until matters settled. He’d also been forced to leave Peggy behind, who had only just given birth to their first child, a son.
It was a sad story all around, and when Papa urged me to call upon her for the sake of good will, I happily agreed. How could I turn away from the opportunity to congratulate another lady on her safe delivery, and to welcome the blessing of her new baby into the world?
But when I called upon Mrs. Arnold, she appeared in low spirits, and to take little joy in her babe, who slept in a beribboned cradle beside her chair. Although she received me dressed in fashionable and costly undress—a pink silk jacket edged with fur over a quilted silk petticoat, a profusion of lace around her neck and elbows, and her hair lightly powdered—her eyes still carried the exhaustion of her recent confinement, and her entire posture drooped beneath the misery of her separation from her husband.
“Please forgive the meanness of my situation, Miss Schuyler,” she said with a weary wave of her hand. “Until my husband summons me to our new home, I am forced to remain in this place as if I were a prisoner.”
“Not at all, Mrs. Arnold,” I said. Her description surprised me. The house was hardly mean, but pleasant and well furnished. Papa had told me that with her husband away, she was residing here in the home of a friend, and while I thought this an ungrateful way to repay the friend’s hospitality, I was willing to ascribe it to the changeable nature of new mothers.
“Surely you must be in Heaven itself,” I continued, “so long as you have this little cherub at your side.”
He was a beautiful baby, with wisps of golden curls and full cheeks like his mother’s. If I were in her position, I would indeed feel blessed to have such this perfect reminder of my husband and his love, especially in the middle of a war. I’d often wondered if Alexander’s son would resemble him: would he inherit his father’s golden red hair, his smile, his blue-green eyes that were as changeable as the sea?
“My darling little Edward,” Mrs. Arnold murmured, and sighed as she glanced at the sleeping baby. “How fortunate he is that he knows not the persecutions his poor father has endured!”
“You must be brave, Mrs. Arnold, for your child’s sake and for your own.” As a soldier’s daughter, I knew the importance of being stoic. “Your husband would wish that for you.”
“Alas, my poor husband.” She drew a lace-trimmed handkerchief from her sleeve and daubed prettily at her eyes. “He has so many enemies! It wasn’t enough that he became a cripple in the service of his country. His enemies now hound him wherever he goes, and will not rest until he is completely ruined.”
I was beginning to suspect her sorrows were for effect and that she might make a better actress on the stage than a general’s wife, yet again I granted her the benefit of the doubt.
“Surely things will soon improve, Mrs. Arnold,” I said. “Now that the court-martial is over and your husband is acquitted, he can again resume his duties with the army.”
“You don’t understand my husband’s situation, Miss Schuyler,” she said with another great sigh. “The acquittal means nothing. The villains in Congress and in the army will continue to plot against him and deny his hopes for promotion and reward. If only he had friends he could trust!”
“But he does,” I said. “My father speaks of General Arnold as a hero, and he and His Excellency both wish to help your husband to restore his reputation as quickly as possible.”
She sighed again. “You father is an honorable gentleman, yes,” she admitted. “But if there were someone closer to His Excellency, someone able to sway him in favor of my husband, someone who was constantly in his company.”
She looked at me expectantly, as if