Hamilton Alexander - Eliza Hamilton: the extraordinary life and times of the wife of Alexander Hamilton

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Gallery Books

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New York, NY 10020

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Copyright 2018 by Tilar Mazzeo

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Gallery Books hardcover edition September 2018

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Jacket design by Donna Cheng

Jacket art by Alan Dingman

Author photograph: courtesy of the author

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mazzeo, Tilar J., author.

Title: Eliza Hamilton : the extraordinary life and times of the wife of Alexander Hamilton / Tilar J. Mazzeo.

Description: New York, NY : Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., [2018] | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018008245 (print) | LCCN 2018026003 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501166327 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501166303 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler, 1757-1854. | Hamilton, Alexander, 1757-1804Family. | Politicians spousesUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC E302.6.H22 (ebook) | LCC E302.6.H22 M29 2018 (print) | DDC 973.4092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018008245

ISBN 978-1-5011-6630-3

ISBN 978-1-5011-6632-7 (ebook)

For Adelaide, Xavier, and Frankie

Love is the whole history of a womans life; it is an episode in a mans.

G ERMAINE DE S TAL ,

The Influence of the Passions (1796)

E liza blushed. It was a beautiful letter.

Beyond the window of the front parlor of the Schuyler family home in Albany, the autumn leaves were crimson and gold, and now and then she could catch a glimpse of some small boat or another tacking back and forth, slowly beating its way against the river current. The lawns of the house ran down to the river, and in those days, the Hudson was a frontier highway.

It would be dark soon in the afternoons. Winter was coming. Never before had Eliza looked forward so eagerly to winter and its bitter chills. This year, December would bring Alexander.

Eliza and her mother were already busily planning the wedding. When the snows did come at last, Eliza knew already: they would exchange their vows in front of this window.

She touched the letter tenderly. Would it be too vain of her to read it again? At the Dutch church on Sunday mornings, where Eliza sat in the family pew with her parents, the minister warned against the sin of vanity. But no young woman in love could resist another look at such a letter:

I have told you and I told you truly that I love you too much. You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think any thing else. You not only employ my mind all day, but you intrude on my sleep. I meet you in every dreamand when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness. Tis a pretty story indeed that I am to be thus monopolized, by a little nut-brown maid like you and from a statesman and soldier metamorphosed into a puny lover. I believe in my soul you are an inchantress; but I have tried in vain, if not to break, at least, to weaken the charmyou maintain your empire in spite of all my effortsand after every new one I make to draw myself from my allegiance my partial heart still returns and clings to you with increased attachment.... I will not be delayed beyond November.

A nut-brown maid. It made Eliza smile to remember.

It was a reference to a popular folk song of that same titleThe Nut-Brown Maidrevived in music books in the 1760s and 1770s. All last winter and into the spring at the camp in Morristown, she and Alexander had sung that old duet in Aunt Gertrudes front parlor. Eliza had plucked out the notes of the ballad on the pianoforte. Alexander had brushed close to her as he turned the well-worn pages, using any excuse to be romantic.

Alexander, his voice rich and deep with feeling, had sung the part of the lowly knight, in love with a barons daughter. Alone, a banished man was the knights mournful refrain at the end of every stanza. When Alexander sang the words, there was weight and feeling. Eliza knew that Alexander felt alone in America and an outsider.

Her familys embrace would change that. And so she had sung the part of the loyal nut-brown maid, whose refrain was I love but you alone, looking into his eyes so he would know how much she meant it.

Werent his long, poetic love letters another way of Alexander singing that same part in their ballad? The words were different but not the meaning. Over and over, Alexander, the outcast knight, wanted her reassurance. I love but you alone were the words he wanted.

Eliza always tried her best, but words were not her strength. Separated by war and not yet married, she and Alexander hadnt seen each other in months. Eliza fiddled with the pen in front of her now. Busy voices and an industrious clatter drifted in from other quarters of the house. She should be helping her mother and her sister make the last of the preserves and put up the winter canning. Early October was a busy season for an agricultural plantation on the edge of the New York wilderness.

Alexander had complained, however sweetly, at the end of the letter before her, reminding her, I ought at least to hear from you by every post and your last letter is as old as the middle of September, and she couldnt deny that she had put off writing. Each time she composed in her mind the first sentence, self-doubt gnawed at her, and she blushed again, thinking of how poorly she spelled and how awkward her expression was. She showed her love better in the little gifts of affection that she carefully embroidered and in tender gestures.