“I know you must go for your children’s sake, but I’m going to miss you terribly. I’ve been so happy these months. We’ve all been so happy together, and now what will I do?”
“Now you will shine, Betsy. You’ll become all you were meant to be. You and Hamilton both. And I couldn’t be prouder of either of you. You’re making a new country, and I’m only sorry I cannot stay to be a part of it.”
Angelica was proud of me. I hadn’t realized, until that moment, how much I had longed to hear it.
And my lower lip began to wobble until she said, “Oh, you really must stop looking at me that way. You’re going to make me cry, too, and it will ruin my powder.”
For her powder’s sake—and for my own dignity—I didn’t dare see her off at the pier. Instead, we said our farewells in my parlor, and then my husband, young Philip, and the baron took her to the ship. Meanwhile, I retreated to bed, felled with an ache in my heart and my head.
That night my husband was forced to finish the letter to Angelica that I’d started, sharing in my misery at her departure. As if the loss of her was as genuine a wound for him as it was for me. Which made me love him even more.
“I fear I’ve lost an ally, not to mention a friend,” he confided one morning soon after.
Fighting my own fears that I would never see my sister again, I whispered upon our pillow, “She’ll always be an ally. Always your friend. Always your sister, even if an ocean away.”
With a huff, Alexander clamored from the bed. “I meant Madison. I would never have accepted this office if I didn’t believe I had his firm support.”
Jemmy Madison, now not just a congressman from Virginia, but the most influential congressman besides, had unexpectedly pulled his support from Alexander’s financial plans.
On top of the loss of my sister, Madison’s desertion was as depressing as it was confusing. “Did he say why?”
“He thinks it unjust that speculators might get a windfall from buying up debt from ignorant country folk, but that’s just how investment works. He’s letting Jefferson’s ideas about the nobility of the simple yeoman farmer sway him away from financial reality.”
Jefferson had only recently returned from his post as minister to France to take a new position in the president’s cabinet. But already Alexander was wary of Jefferson’s influence and perhaps he was right to be. Jemmy seemed to idolize his fellow Virginian, with whom he shared a friendship long before we met.
I had worried, once before, that Jefferson might come between Madison and my husband.
And it was vexing to think my fears could be coming true.
How many times had I hosted Jemmy Madison in my home? How many times had I admired his tender touch with my children? He’d become a friend to me. Worse, I realized belatedly, he’d become a brother to Alexander.
So the relationship simply must be salvaged. Trying to soothe my husband’s temper over breakfast, I pointed out, “Madison opposes only part of your plan, doesn’t he?”
Hamilton rattled off a list of reasons why even that disagreement was intolerable. “Debt and credit are an entire thing. Every part of it relies on every other part. Wound one limb and the whole tree shrinks and decays,” he said, waving an impatient hand. “No, Jemmy’s opposition to me is a perfidious desertion of the principles he was solidly pledged to defend.”
I let him vent his spleen and, with Mrs. Washington’s wise advice in mind, I tried another tactic. That my husband was a man of studied principles, I knew without question, but I also wished that he could occasionally muster a modicum of forbearance for the foibles of others. One that might preserve one of the most important friendships in our new nation. Just this once. “So, Madison has been corrupted?” I asked.
My husband slanted me a glance. “I wouldn’t go so far as that.”
“He’s a madman, then? One day working with you side by side, then changing his mind on a lunatic whim . . .” Alexander didn’t answer, which was, in itself, a concession. And when I noticed Jenny smirk knowingly as she refilled his coffee cup, I pressed the point. “Did Mr. Madison hit his head and damage his brilliant faculties?”
Hamilton grumbled. “You make too much of his faculties. Although Madison is a clever man, he is very little acquainted with the world.”
“That may be true. But it is still no personal opposition to you. What reason would he have, other than a difference of opinion?” I let the question hang there as Hamilton finally calmed enough to resume eating the stewed apples on his plate.