Angelica was only nine, yet she so loved music and playing that I never had to urge her to practice. To be sure, the new piano—now the centerpiece of our parlor—would inspire anyone. Alexander had charged my sister Angelica to find the best possible instrument in London for a young lady, and she’d happily obliged, sending an elegant rosewood instrument inlaid with scrolling vines that was as lovely in appearance as it was sweet in sound. All of our children, including Fanny Antill, had been given music lessons, but only Angelica had true talent. She’d always been a quiet child, small and dainty, and in our house filled with noisy boys, she’d found both her voice and her retreat in music.
I smiled as I listened, touched by her solemn determination, and remembering how as a girl, I, too, had wanted my pieces to be perfect before I performed for my parents’ guests. Angelica was already dressed for our gathering in a white muslin dress with short puffed sleeves, and the ends of her pink silk sash trailed down over the piano bench. Her dark hair was knotted high on her head, although little wisps had already begun to escape as she played.
I turned as Alexander came down the stairs, and I pressed my finger over my lips so he wouldn’t interrupt Angelica’s playing. He smiled, and joined me to listen, and when our daughter finished, he applauded loudly. She turned and smiled shyly, blushing with pleasure.
“Bien fait, ma chère fille,” he said. “Bien fait en effet.”
“Thank you, Papa,” she said, sliding from the bench to join us. “I wanted to learn another but—”
“En fran?ais, Angelique, en fran?ais,” he said mildly, smiling as he corrected her. “C’est la règle pour ce soir, oui?”
She smiled, and curtseyed prettily. “Oui, Papa.”
I smiled, too, for though I’d never learned to speak French properly myself, I’d heard enough from Alexander over the years to understand much of it. He’d reminded Angelica (who, like our older sons, was learning the language at their father’s insistence) that tonight she was to speak only French as best she could. This was no mere display of genteel accomplishment, but a special consideration to our guests, one that I wished I could do as well.
I was certain our guests would appreciate it. Philadelphia had become a haven for French persons fleeing the Revolution in Paris—émigrés, they were called—and we were entertaining a dozen of them at our home tonight, as we tried to do at least once a week.
Like all good Federalists, Alexander and I had no sympathy for the barbaric Jacobins who were destroying France in the name of revolution, or the rule of the vengeful, violent mob with its guillotine. I couldn’t begin to imagine the horrors that many of these émigrés must have witnessed. Some had belonged to the highest ranks of French society and were known to my sister Angelica and Mr. Church from their time in Paris, and they sent these poor souls to us in Philadelphia, knowing that my husband not only could help ease their arrival, but also spoke their language.
In their haste to escape, many of the émigrés had been forced to leave their belongings behind, and they arrived on our shores nearly destitute. Once-grand ladies who had attended the martyred French queen now stitched men’s shirts, and former noblemen were reduced to teaching American children how to dance. To me the saddest were the new widows with children, often sent away as a last gesture of love by fathers who were later executed on the guillotine before the howling mob. The plight of these ladies grieved both Alexander and me deeply, and while I collected clothing and food, he contributed with his usual generosity to their welfare.
There was no such sympathy to be found among the Democratic-Republicans. Alexander had predicted that although Mr. Jefferson had left his post and the capital, he would still exert considerable influence on his party, and that prediction was completely accurate. From distant Monticello, he let it be known that he found no fault with the bloody reign of Madame Guillotine, and in fact encouraged it as a necessary purge of corruption. He dismissed the memory of how our own revolution would not have succeeded without the assistance of the old regime of King Louis or from nobleman like the Marquis de Lafayette, and instead pressed to make alliances with the bloodthirsty Jacobins.
As was usual with Mr. Jefferson, such blunt and wrongful thinking could only put America herself in peril. When the excesses of revolution forced Great Britain into a war with France, President Washington was wisely adamant that our country remain neutral, and refused to let us be drawn into favoring one side only to anger the other. Our country was still too fragile and without either a standing army or a navy to engage in a war. As Alexander urged, too, peace was the only course that made sense. To this end, the president had sent John Jay as an envoy to Britain, and James Madison as ambassador to France.
Briefly Alexander himself had been considered for the post in London, a possibility that had excited me no end. Angelica and I had often dreamed of such a reunion, imagining us together with our families in cosmopolitan London. I hadn’t seen my sister in nearly five years. Her letters made little secret of how being the wife of a member of Parliament held no pleasure for her and how much she envied me being wed to the chancellor of the exchequer (playfully using the English term for Alexander’s position), and we both longed for the day when our husbands’ lives might bring us back together. Alas for our giddy dreams: the president finally decided that my husband was too important to him and to the government here in Philadelphia, and could not be spared to go abroad.
Most likely he couldn’t. As disappointed as I was (and my sister was devastated), my husband’s talents were so varied, and spread so thin over so many different areas within the government, that his absence could well have been detrimental to the running of the entire machine of state. The Democratic-Republicans complained incessantly of how Alexander wielded too much control and made too many decisions for any single man, but I doubted they’d any true notion of exactly how many demands were placed upon his capable shoulders every day.
And yet he wouldn’t have wished it otherwise. Not only had he become indispensable to the president, but through his ability and relentlessly hard work, he had made himself the second most powerful man in the country.
I couldn’t miss the strain of this enormous responsibility. There were new lines carved deep around his eyes, and his hair was beginning to thin and creep higher on his forehead. He worked too late, took too little exercise, and seldom slept enough. While he’d always been a devoted father, he constantly regretted not being able to spend more time with his children and with me, and that, too, only added more pressure to his burden.