“But when is Philip coming home?” Ana asked, and I put a hand to my mouth, grateful for my sister’s help and wondering how many times I would have to remind my daughter that Philip was dead.
Standing beside me, his face strongly stamped with grief, eyes downcast, as if staring into a bottomless pit of despair, my husband put a hand on my shoulder. “Let her believe whatever she must. Her mind has become disordered by the wound. We must let it heal.”
The disordering wasn’t entirely new or caused only by this wound. Now I saw Ana’s distress when Fanny had been taken from us in a new light. The depth and intensity of my daughter’s confusion was so much worse now than it was then, and in my grief and despair, it was terrifying. But because I felt as if my own mind had become disordered by the wound of Philip’s loss, I could scarcely gainsay my husband. None of us would.
My father—my beloved, devoted, kind father—tread as if upon the shells of eggs trying to comfort us. And my siblings followed his example.
Only Angelica, over a melancholy Christmas breakfast, was brave enough to venture, “Do you not think we should summon a physician for Ana—?”
“I’ll not have my daughter locked up in an asylum,” Alexander interrupted.
He said this quietly, but with such resounding authority, it stunned us all into silence. Plainly stung by his tone, if not the injustice of the accusation, Angelica sat up straighter. “Why, my dear brother, I’m only suggesting that a doctor examine her.”
Alexander didn’t answer, and his silence on the matter scared me more. For he was rarely silent on anything, and it meant he was scared, too. Instead, he cared for Ana with saintly fortitude—singing with her at the piano and taking her for walks to watch for the birds she loved so well—but she got no better. And I feared my husband took too much pleasure sharing that fantasy in which she dwelt, where Philip was alive, rather than the reality we faced together without him.
At the turn of the new year, I found Alexander in my father’s blue parlor. The very place we married, with the same snowy view of the river. That day, I’d been so hopeful, but it all seemed hopeless now. “Are you certain we shouldn’t send for the doctor—”
“They’ll lock her away.” Hamilton folded his arms as he stared out at the frozen river. He seemed so very far from me, and his hair had turned snowy as if overnight.
“We won’t permit it,” I reassured him, confused by what seemed an irrational response from an otherwise rational man. “We could choose a trusted doctor. Any you prefer; we could write Dr. Stevens, or Dr. Rush, or—”
“They locked up my mother. I will never let it happen to Ana.”
They jailed your mother for adultery, I thought. Not a disordered mind. Why should he be so fearful? No one would do anything to Alexander Hamilton’s daughter without his consent. He was no longer a helpless, penniless boy in the West Indies. He’d commanded armies. A nation.
He could protect his daughter. But perhaps he didn’t believe it, because he hadn’t been able to protect our son. And I didn’t broach it again, because I felt as if suspended on the thinnest ice, afraid to make the smallest misstep.
Lest we all should fall.
* * *
May the loss of one be compensated by another Philip. May his virtues emulate those which graced his brother, and may he be a comfort to his tender parents.
—GENERAL PHILIP SCHUYLER TO HIS DAUGHTER ELIZABETH HAMILTON
June 1802
Harlem
Flowers again. Yellow daffodils. Purple hyacinths. Red tulips. Then Pinkster azaleas when the weather turned warmer.
In the days before and after Little Phil’s birth, my husband filled my room with a rainbow of blossoms—my new room, in the house he built for me at the Grange, with its delicate fanlight in the entryway, the extravagance of eight fireplaces, and the mirrored doors of our octagonal dining room that could be thrown open to the parlor to form a rather grand ballroom.
Though I couldn’t imagine we might ever host a ball.
“We will, my angel,” Alexander vowed, laying a bouquet of fiery lilies across the bed. “That I promise. And a promise must never be broken . . .”
He treated me now as if I were quite a fragile thing. As fragile as our newborn babe. As fragile as our poor unfortunate daughter, whose mind remained disordered.
And, oh, the money he spent trying to make us all happy again.
He spared no expense in the marble Doric columns, verandas, and bay windows. Walnut side-chairs, silver oil lamps, and gilded mirrors. Wages for Mr. and Mrs. Genti, the couple he hired to serve as our cook and housekeeper. Then there were books and smart suits for our boys—especially our auburn-haired Alex, who found himself now, at sixteen, in the position of the eldest son with all its expectations. And there were little parakeets for Ana, who seemed to grow younger every day.
“She only needs tenderness and attention,” Alexander reassured me as we took a summer stroll together on the sylvan grounds. “She will recover in time.”
“And if she does not?” I asked, quietly.
For a long moment, he didn’t respond. So long that I feared he might not at all. “Then we will care for her here at the Grange where she cannot be exposed to the cruelty of onlookers.”
I nodded, for it was the thing I loved best about the Grange. It was far from prying eyes. It was a refuge. If ever we might be healed of our loss, it would be here. And yet, our boys must have their schooling. “But how will Alex and James and—”
“I’ll take them with me into the city during the week,” Alexander said. “I’ll stay with them while you and Ana and the littlest ones remain here so that none of them
