The first involved one more French émigré, escaped from the horrors of the Terror in Paris to wash up upon our welcoming shore. Georges Washington Gilbert de Lafayette was no ordinary refugee, however. He was the fifteen-year-old son of the Marquis de Lafayette, one of my husband’s closest friends and fellow officers from the Revolution. President Washington had regarded the marquis almost as a son, and in gratitude the marquis had named his only son after the then-General Washington.
But the Jacobins had treated the elder Lafayette most barbarously. Not only had he been separated from his family and imprisoned, but his wife and their two young daughters were imprisoned as well, while his grandmother, mother, and sister had all become victims of the guillotine. Only his son had escaped capture with his tutor, Monsieur Frestrel, and had made their way to Philadelphia. At first General and Lady Washington had welcomed the pair to the President’s Residence, but their presence created a diplomatic quandary. The boy was a refugee, and if he was given sanctuary in an official residence, he could single-handedly corrupt America’s careful neutrality. When the president asked if we, as private citizens, might shelter him instead, Alexander agreed in an instant. There was always room for another, or two, in our house.
As could only be expected, Georges was shy, thin, and melancholy, and for the first weeks in our house, he followed me about like a lost puppy. Georges’s English was better than my French, though I soon found the best way to communicate with him was through apples, gingerbread, and slices of pie with cheese, the common language of all boys. Although he and our son Philip were close in age, they could not have been more different in temperament. Yet when Philip came home from boarding for the holidays, Philip and Georges became fast friends. For Alexander, who justly feared for the marquis’s life, the friendship between their sons had an almost noble and poignant symmetry that, out of the boys’ sight, made him weep.
The second, and final, service that Alexander performed for the president proved to be perhaps the most enduring of their long time together. The president wished to deliver a farewell address to all citizens. The address would be published so that it could reach as many citizens as possible. Its message would reflect not only the president’s Federalist beliefs, but also his trust in the Constitution. The president wanted it to serve as a call for citizens to put aside their divisive quarreling, and come together in a single, strong, unified country—the country he had always envisioned, and the country he had served not just as president, but also as commander-in-chief during the Revolution.
The president had always realized he’d no natural gift for composition, and required the assistance of another to give shape to his ideas. When he’d considered not running for a second term in 1791, he’d shared his notes with Mr. Madison, then in the president’s favor as a fellow Virginian, and he’d written a first draft that had subsequently been put aside. Now, however, the president naturally turned to Alexander to write this important document, giving him not only his own notes, but also the old draft penned by Mr. Madison.
Because it was important that the country believe the address was the president’s own words, Alexander took great care to compose it in secret in the evenings, away from the constant bustle of clerks, clients, messengers, and students that filled his law office. Instead he wrote the address entirely at his desk at home, and he was adamant that I sit beside him.
Writing at home also meant he could be informally dressed, as was often his custom for serious writing, in an old silk dressing gown over his nightshirt. It was early August when he began, and the windows to his library were thrown open to let in any cooler air that might come our way. Through a trick of the evening breeze, we could smell the saltiness of the harbor in the air that ruffled up from the water along Wall Street, and hear the bells on the ships tied up at the docks. Beside the open window, fireflies brushed against the wide green leaves of the mulberry bush, bright dots of light in the night.
“I have to consider that many people will have the address read to them, much like a sermon,” he explained, tapping the end of his pen against the edge of the desk. “The words must sound as well upon the ear when spoken aloud as when read.”
I nodded, curling my bare feet beneath me in the chair. I’d brought a stocking to knit while he wrote, mindless handwork that wouldn’t take from my concentration or require light, for the two brass candlesticks on his desk were for him, not me.
“Commence when ready, Colonel Hamilton,” I teased, lowering my voice to make it sound masculine and military. Even though writing the address was a serious matter, sitting here with him reminded me of all the other papers and essays and reports he had composed with me over time, especially when we’d first been wed.
He smiled warmly at me, likely thinking back to that time, too. “I don’t believe a lieutenant is necessary tonight,” he said. “Rather you must be to me what Molière’s old nurse was to him.”
I nodded eagerly, for he’d explained this story to me so many times that it had become part of his writing ritual, too. Apparently, the French playwright Molière had read his work out loud to his old nursemaid, relying on her ear to tell him if the words sang as they should or not.
“Mais oui,” I said, two of the few French words I knew, and he chuckled. He held up the small sheaf of papers that was Mr. Madison’s draft.
“We won’t be requiring these,” he said, pointedly putting them aside on a nearby chair. “I fear Madison’s words are much like him. Stolid and heavy, yet without much substance.”
“You don’t need them,” I said confidently. “You’ve plenty of words of your own.”
“That I do,” he said, dipping his pen into the inkwell, and I realized his thoughts were already gathering. For a long moment, he held the pen poised over the paper, and then began to write, saying the words out loud for me to hear as my needles clicked away their stitches.
“Friends and fellow citizens,” he began. “The period for a new election of a president—no, of a citizen—to administer the executive government of America—”
“Perhaps it should be the ‘United States’ instead of America,” I suggested. “If he wishes to urge the country toward unity, then it cannot be stated often enough.”
He nodded without looking away from the paper before him. “The executive government of the United States . . .”