It seemed, to me, that it was my husband who was shaken.
By Mr. Jefferson, most of all.
Though our tall Virginian secretary of state spoke eloquently about the ideals of liberty, he was proving to be a stubborn opponent of any practical reforms. “He’s a landed aristocrat who waxes poetic about the virtues of the common man,” Hamilton complained. “Which might be admirable did he not do it seated in his whirligig chair, sipping the finest wine his inherited wealth can buy, toasting French rioters who shout, ‘Death to the rich.’”
My husband didn’t trust men who spoke of the glory of the revolution without having fought in it. Even Madison had volunteered, briefly, in the militia. But soldier or not, Mr. Jefferson was a formidable foe whose strengths were my husband’s weaknesses.
Jefferson knew how to employ a wise silence and patience.
Meanwhile, my husband took too much for granted that he would have everything his way. He’d even taken for granted his own staggering capacity for hard work. For in writing The Federalist, he’d drawn strength from the collaboration; he’d pushed through his own exhaustion and agonies because he had Madison to commiserate and suffer alongside him. He’d had Madison’s intellect to challenge him and Madison’s friendship to encourage him.
But now he worked alone, almost as if to punish himself for having allowed anyone to share his burdens. As if to remind himself of the stern lesson of his childhood: he ought never trust or depend upon anyone.
Which was why, I think, he refused even my help, except to say, “Bring me a pot of strong coffee.” Some nights, it was the only thing he said.
At least until, in exhaustion and defeat, he confessed that he wouldn’t finish before the president’s deadline—a thing that had never happened to him before.
I went to where he sat with shoulders bunched in pain and gently took the pen from his palsied hand. “Betsy, what are you doing?”
“Taking you to bed. In the morning, tell the president that you need another day, and I’ll help you.” He thanked me with loving gratitude. And when I helped him copy it out the next night, he said all the right words to make me believe he was sincere.
He convinced the president.
He got his bank.
But I think I sensed in him, even then, resentment. Resentment that he hadn’t been able to do it himself. That he did need someone, even if it was me. And I believed that’s why he sent me and the children away from the heat and bustle of Philadelphia that summer.
He insisted, actually. And in those days, my husband was not to be denied. Not by Congress, not by the president, and certainly not by me. I’d lived with the consequences of having done it once, and I didn’t want to attempt it again. So I spent the summer with my father.
That summer.
What did Eliza know?
That’s what everyone wonders. Though no one has ever had the gall to ask. If they did, I’d say I knew nothing. And remembered nothing. That it was all, entirely, beneath my notice. But now, questions bite at me like insects in the night.
Before I left for my father’s house, was I there, at the table, slicing bread for my children to take on our journey when the woman came to our door with her sad story? Perhaps I was in the kitchen, setting a kettle to boil. I may have looked up over the wrought iron garden fence to wave to our Quaker neighbor, Dolley Todd, as she passed, and I glimpsed instead an ostentatious woman with golden curls.
To explain our unexpected visitor, surely my husband said, “Just a poor unfortunate woman. Abandoned. In desperate straits.”
“And you sent her away?” I would have asked. “Is there nothing to be done to help her?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he would have replied, kissing our children atop their heads. “But after dinner.”
That’s how it started, if the story he told was true. So banal a beginning it would have escaped my memory. But sometimes I fear that I don’t remember it because it never happened the way he said it did. That it never happened that way at all . . .
Chapter Twenty-Two
September 1791
Philadelphia
AFTER A BLISSFUL summer with my family in Albany, I returned to a new house. Situated just across the street from the president’s mansion in Philadelphia, it was bigger and more majestic in every way with Corinthian pilasters, dentil molding, and arched windows. My new drawing room alone was twenty-five feet square, and Lady Washington’s voice echoed in its empty confines. “How lovely.”
It was lovely. It was also more than I thought we could afford on my husband’s paltry government salary. But when I expressed this worry, Alexander said he’d take a loan from Angelica’s husband, and that we must keep up appearances.
Perhaps Lady Washington agreed, because she leaned in to confide, “I shall be so grateful for you to entertain here, in my place.”
“I could never take your place,” I said.
Though I knew she was weary and longed for the quiet solitude of Mount Vernon when she confided, “They call me the first lady in the land and think I must be extremely happy, but they might more properly call me the chief state prisoner.”
I laughed. “Then I certainly would not wish to take your place, even if I could.”
A sparkle came to her eye. “Oh, but you’re too young to deny yourself the pleasure. When I was your age, I enjoyed the innocent gayeties of life. Thanks to the kindness of our numerous friends, my new and unwished-for situation is not too much a burden. That is why I am delighted we are closer neighbors. With a little bit of furnishing, this fine new house shall become the social center of the city.”
Should that prove true, I would rise to the occasion. I’d learned from my mother how to set a fine table and behave
