Alexander prided himself on being a gentleman of his word, and as soon as he was done with Congress, he made arrangements for us to move from Albany to New York City. The last of the British troops sailed from the harbor on November 25, 1783, and the wagons with our belongings had rumbled up before our new home soon after, during the first week of December.
Alexander had even kept his long-ago promise to me of a house on Wall Street. Ours was number fifty-seven, an agreeable brick house of three stories with a small balcony, and far more pleasant and commodious than any other place we’d yet lived. Beside it was number fifty-six, which Alexander used as his office. Wall Street was wide and comparatively untouched by the war, unlike so much of the rest of the city. We weren’t quite at the most fashionable end of the street (where Colonel and Mrs. Burr lived), but the other houses, offices, and shops around us were all well kept and neat. There were even a few buildings that retained the stepped roofs preferred by the Dutch, a familiar sight to me from Albany, and one that made me smile as if seeing old friends.
So handsome was our new house, in fact, that when we first arrived I suspected its rent was more than Alexander could comfortably afford. He had just completed a year earning very little as a delegate to Congress, and a year before that in recovering from the war and in studying for the bar, as well as his negligible position of tax-receiver. To be sure, his prospects were excellent. Because by law no lawyers with Tory sympathies were now permitted to practice their profession, there were fewer than fifty attorneys in the entirety of the state. Any lawyer with ability, education, and a modicum of luck was bound to prosper, and Alexander possessed all of those qualities in abundance, plus an invaluable reputation as a patriotic hero from the war.
But prospects did not pay the grocer or the butcher, nor satisfy the hairdresser who came each morning to tend to Alexander’s hair, nor even the laundrywomen who washed our stockings and linens. Like most wives, I was not privy to the details of my husband’s financial affairs, but I suspected our humble resources were stretched as far as they could be and perhaps beyond. Finally one morning while he was dressing for court I dared to ask if this were the case, and whether I should be making any extra economies in our household.
“My dearest wife,” he said, clearly startled I’d broach such a subject, and a bit wounded that I had as well. “How has this concern arisen? Have you wanted for anything? Have I not provided for you and our son as I should?”
“No, no, Alexander, not at all,” I said quickly. “But if there is a need to be frugal whilst we establish ourselves here in this place, I shall happily oblige.”
“There is no need for any obliging, Betsey.” He smiled as he finished buttoning his waistcoat, and came to kiss me. “I don’t want you worrying about such trivialities, especially not now.”
He rested his palm gently on my growing belly. I was expecting our second child at the end of the summer, and we both hoped that this time we’d be blessed with a girl, a sister for our son. Philip was now two, a chattering, toddling fellow who was more his own little man every day, and as dear as he was, I was anticipating the sweetness of another new babe.
“You must follow your sister’s orders,” he continued, “and think only the most beautiful of thoughts to ensure a handsome daughter.”
I laughed softly, and placed my hand over his. Angelica had given birth to a daughter in December in Paris, and named her Elizabeth in my honor. Even before then, Alexander and I had decided that if our next child were a girl, she would be called Angelica.
“No more worrying, Betsey,” he continued with mock severity. “Not about money, or anything else.”
He kissed me again, which was often his way of ending our conversations, and a delightful way it was, too. It wasn’t until much later, when it no longer mattered, that I learned I’d been entitled to my worries. Alexander was too proud to borrow money from my father, but he hadn’t the same scruples about small loans here and there from more solvent friends. Yet he was adept at juggling, and he always paid back what he’d borrowed. During those early years in New York, I was never the wiser. I trusted him, and I obeyed my sister, and did my best to think only the most beautiful of thoughts.
But New York City in 1784 was not a place for beauty of any kind. If the war had barely touched Philadelphia, it had ravaged and ravished poor New York. The city as it stood now bore little resemblance to the handsome place I’d remembered visiting when I was a girl. Several hard-fought battles, a number of calamitous fires, and eight years of occupation by the British army had left much of the city in ruins.
Without timber, laborers, or inclination, nothing had been rebuilt, and looting and other thievery was so commonplace so as to go largely noticed. It wasn’t just the enemy that had caused this mischief, either. Hundreds of Tory sympathizers had crowded into the city for refuge, and many had lived in makeshift tents and lean-tos among the broken foundations of once-splendid homes, churches, and public buildings. Standing water that collected in the hollowed remains of cellars turned foul, and empty merchant docks along the waterfront rotted from disuse. Every tree, fence, and garden bench had been claimed for firewood, and the entire city had a scraped, flat look because of it.
Now with the peace in place, the Tories who could had fled to Canada, to Britain, or to the Caribbean, and their absence left more holes in the city’s fabric. They’d taken more than simply their families: with them had gone their wealth, their knowledge, their professions. Overnight the city’s population had shrunk to a fraction of its former size.