The company at the ball was the most notable and brilliant ever assembled in our country. In addition to the president and vice president, those in attendance included the cabinet officers, most of the members of Congress, the French and Spanish ministers, and various military and civic officers, as well as the wives and daughters of these gentlemen. The ladies wore jewels and plumes in their hair, and the military gentlemen were in full dress, their chests glittering with medals and ribbons.
As souvenirs, every lady was given an ivory fan, made in Paris, that opened to reveal a likeness of Washington in profile. Every gentleman received a commemoratory sash, skillfully painted with an American eagle and embroidered with a constellation of stars spelling out the new president’s initials.
The guests that we were most eager to see, however, were my sister Peggy and her husband, Stephen Van Rensselaer, down from Albany for the festivities. The grief over the deaths of their first two children had been somewhat softened by the birth of another son, Stephen, the year before, and I was glad to see that he’d helped restore much of my younger sister’s former high spirits. The reunion of Peggy and Angelica was filled with tears that were both happy and sad, shared by me as well. We three sisters had been so inseparable as girls, yet husbands and circumstances had parted us for too many years.
To my considerable honor, I danced with President Washington. He recalled me warmly from the days of Morristown and New Windsor as a young acquaintance of Lady Washington’s, as well as being Alexander’s wife and my father’s daughter. In truth, to say I danced with the new president is not quite accurate; President Washington never actually danced, but chose instead to walk through the steps of a dance. He was said to do this to preserve the dignity and gravity of his station, but I’d always suspected it was more that, being so large a man, he wasn’t comfortable attempting the hops and runs required by most dances.
By contrast, my husband was never one of those gloomy men who clung to the walls at a ball, but enjoyed dancing and the gallantry that accompanied it. While I danced with numerous gentlemen, Alexander took particular care to dance often with Angelica, so that she, too, was never without a partner. They made a splendid couple, enough that others paused to watch them dance, and I enjoyed seeing my dear husband and sister so happy in each other’s company.
As the evening progressed, and the celebratory wine flowed, our spirits rose, too. At one point after Angelica had completed a particularly lively jig with my husband, one of her garters came untied, and dropped to the floor beneath her skirts. Alexander noticed the fallen ribbon, and retrieved it for her.
Now, at that time, a woman’s garter was regarded as an essential but intimate part of her dress, often imprinted with the shape and size of the fair limb that it embraced. As a result, garters often became tokens between lovers, and the fact that Alexander now dangled my sister’s garter before her like an impudent silken worm was exactly the kind of bawdy silliness that often appeared in comic plays from London.
“I believe this is yours, ma chère soeur?” he said archly, holding it out to her.
She snatched the garter from him, laughing. “Even such gallant gestures, sir,” she teased archly, “do not make you a Knight of the Garter.”
Alexander bowed grandly before her, and, laughing all the while, Angelica tapped her palm lightly on each of his shoulders in turn as if conferring an imaginary knighthood.
But Peggy always liked to have the last word, and she did so now.
“Don’t encourage him, Angelica, or he’ll only expect more,” she said. “Especially since the title he most desires is Gentleman of the Bedchamber.”
“Peggy!” I exclaimed, startled and a little shocked by her boldness, even as I laughed with the others. It was all wine-fed foolish banter and nothing more, nor did I take any real offense from it, either. But as Peggy often did, she’d pushed the jest too far, and it was left to her husband to make some bland comment about the music to ease the awkwardness of the moment.
As I said, the entire business was done in less than a moment, and I’d forgotten all about it by the time we left for home.
But to my mortification, others were not so forgetful, nor so forgiving.
Alexander had been as good as promised a post in the cabinet in relation to finance, a deep secret that everyone in New York seemed to know, but the appointment could not be made until Congress had determined exactly how the government would function in regard to financial affairs.
In the meantime, he had involved himself in the belated selection of New York’s first senators to Congress. My father was an undisputed choice for one of the seats, but Alexander had also begun promoting a good friend of his, Rufus King, over Governor Clinton’s preferred candidate, Robert Livingston. That, combined with rumors of the coming appointment, meant that once again, my husband’s name—or rather, a cryptic version of it with some letters replaced with asterisks that fooled no one—and reputation were publicly ridiculed in letters printed in the newspapers.
One morning Angelica and I were taking tea in our small back garden whilst my youngest son, James, was napping inside. I had my sewing, and my sister had one of the morning newspapers spread on the table to read. Always an avid reader, she devoured the New York papers with the same ferocity that Alexander did, and as we sat together, she’d read aloud items she judged to be of particular amusement or interest.
“These letters are every bit as loathsome as the ones in the London papers,” she mused as she skimmed over the page. “So much venom and bile! Haven’t these men anything better to do with their days than squander them composing vitriol for print above a false name?”
“I wish you’d tell that to Alexander,” I said. “It’s one thing to write useful essays for publication such as The Federalist, but too often he cannot resist wallowing into dreadful skirmishes and name-calling with Governor Clinton’s followers.”
She didn’t answer, and I glanced up from my sewing to see her focused intently on what she was reading, her fingers pressed to her lips and her brows drawn together.
“What is it?” I asked uneasily. “What are you reading?”
She sat back in her chair, her hands spread over the paper as if covering the words could make them disappear. “Some dreadful individual who signs himself only as R. S. is accusing Hamilton of being an—an adulterer.”
“Not again,” I murmured unhappily, steeling myself. “Read me the pertinent part.”
She took a deep breath, and read swiftly. “ ‘There is also a certain puffed-up Attorney of this town who would force his advices upon the State-House, even as he flaunts the Laws of good Christians & keeps a HAREM of sisters for his pleasure.’ ”
“Oh, Angelica,” I said, appalled. Although the letter did not address my husband by name, everyone who read it in New York would know it meant Alexander, Angelica, and me, and perhaps even Peggy as well. “I’m sorry.”
“No, it is I who must apologize,” Angelica said. “You know I have the greatest of affections for your Hamilton, but like a sister for a brother and no more. It is so hateful for anyone to imply otherwise.”