New York City
IT’S GOING TO be the most brilliant of entertainments,” I said. “The inaugural ball is a celebration of all our hard work and sacrifice.”
“Not for me. Not without my husband.” Angelica strolled to the window, staring out over the street at the passing carriages on the busy thoroughfare. “You’ll say that I’ve gone to balls without him before, but that was different. I wasn’t a castoff wife to be pitied and scorned.”
The post had come without a letter from her husband or her children. She’d taken it hard, and I was determined to cheer her. “No one will pity or scorn you,” I said, though I suspected it to be a lie. “No one will even guess that anything is amiss.”
She forced herself to smile. “Except for you, Betsy. You’ll spend your evening fretting over me and I would never wish to take away from your happiness when you’re soon to be such a grand lady.”
Looking down at my stained apron, I said, “I’m hardly a grand lady.”
Angelica also looked at my stained apron and made a face. “You’d best transform yourself into one, then, because everyone will look to you to set the style. Mrs. Washington hasn’t yet arrived in New York City to take her place at the president’s side. Mrs. Adams isn’t here yet, either. And Mrs. Knox has grown too fleshy to delight in dancing anymore.”
Still, I was scarcely in any position to replace any of those ladies. “No one will look to me. I’m just the wife of a New York assemblyman.”
At this, Angelica let out a sudden howl of laughter. “You dare not let Hamilton hear you diminish his stature in such a way! His pride couldn’t let the insult stand. You’re the wife of the mastermind who brought this presidency into being, and everyone knows it.”
That was true enough. I glowed with pride at my husband’s accomplishments, but I didn’t wish to indulge my own vanity.
“And who knows what he’ll go on to do next,” Angelica gushed.
I had an inkling that Alexander was considering a cabinet position, though he hadn’t shared more than the idea that it was a possibility. Selfishly, perhaps, some part of me hoped he could be content with his private law practice. For public life came with endless outrages. There had been, only recently, a poisonous screed in the papers imputing all manner of villainy to my husband, including infidelity to our marriage bed.
He will not be bound by even the most solemn of all obligations! Wedlock.
I thought it an absurd accusation—for even if my husband were a sinful sort of man, where would he find time to betray me? Some days, the man barely slept nor found time to sit for a meal, let alone spend time with his children.
Angelica came to sit beside me. “You know, don’t you? Well, tell me. What position is he being offered?”
“I don’t know,” I said, the words uncomfortable on my tongue. For why didn’t I know? “Only that he’s being considered for the cabinet.”
“I’m not surprised. Washington might be president, but like a king, he’ll need a . . . a prime minister! And who else would it be but Hamilton?”
Of course, she was right. But tonight, I wished to focus on the celebration, not the reality of governance and the challenges such an appointment would represent for us. “Then that’s even more reason why you must join us at the inaugural ball,” I managed. “And I won’t take no for an answer.”
Angelica squeezed my hand and winked. “Now that sounded like the commanding voice of a prime minister’s wife.”
That evening, I dressed in a dark blue gown with painted flowers I’d commissioned specially for the occasion, and we wedged ourselves into Angelica’s hired gilded coach for the short ride down Broadway to the Assembly Rooms. My sister believed a man of my husband’s stature needed to arrive in a grand fashion, and she was probably right. But my mind was unsettled about Alexander’s intentions for our future, and the way my powdered hair, styled very tall, bumped the carriage rooftop with every jolt of the wheels didn’t help.
By contrast, Angelica seemed at ease, and woefully underdressed. She insisted it was now quite in fashion on the Continent to go with natural hair, wearing the simpler gown she claimed had been popularized by the Queen of France. And everyone was very interested in all things French that summer, since the king had, at Lafayette’s instigation, called together the Estates General to reform France’s government in accordance with the principles of liberty.
Heaving a dreamy sigh, Angelica told us, “Mr. Jefferson believes that our revolution has unchained the mind of man, and that the whole world is now making itself over.”
She spoke often, and recklessly, of her flirtation with Mr. Jefferson, boasting to all who would listen how tall he was. How learned and courtly. What a wonderful father he was to his little motherless daughters. Even confiding to us the man’s secret dalliances. Exasperated, Alexander teased that she’d perhaps formed an improper attachment to the man.
I feared she might take it as a rebuke, but instead Angelica seemed delighted by the suggestion of jealousy in his voice. “Oh, but who can know what is proper anymore?”
My sister was not the only one to wonder it as three hundred well-coiffed guests all jockeyed for position in the entryway of the festooned ballroom.
With Mrs. Washington absent, ladies of rank had donned their most exquisite gowns, flashed their jewels, and flaunted their connections to contend for influence and position in this brave new society. Ordinarily, Governor Clinton’s wife would have been next in line to set the tone and protocol for the event. But the formidable Mrs. Knox, wife of the new secretary of war, seemed to believe the honor was hers. Mrs. Knox had been the one to buy the brown cloth for the president’s inaugural suit—all of American manufacture. Mrs. Knox was the one who hosted the party after the president was sworn in,
