Clasping the book and the invitation with equal delight, Lysbet cried, “Can we go, Mama?”
I didn’t relish the inevitable crowds, but it wouldn’t do for me to be seen holding myself aloof from a celebration of Lafayette to which he’d specifically invited me. Besides, I wanted to make my daughter smile.
But when I told her we could go, her smile fell away. “Oh, but I have nothing to wear . . .”
My Lysbet, who’d never come out properly into society, possessed a wardrobe that consisted entirely of drab workaday calicos and one fancier brocaded gown for church. Her whole life, my Lysbet had patiently forborne the money spent to educate her brothers and the attention paid to her troubled sister. She wasn’t the oldest, or the youngest, and therefore, had often been lost in the shuffle.
But she was the daughter I’d always wished for, and she deserved a ball gown.
It was far too late to employ a seamstress; there wasn’t a tailor or sewing girl in the city not feverishly engaged in last-minute alterations for the forthcoming ball. But inside a very old and neglected trunk, I found a beguiling gown made of blue satin with a golden belt, embroidered in the pattern of a Greek key.
“It was your Aunt Angelica’s,” I said, unwrapping it. It was the gown my sister had worn to our dinner party at the Grange not long before Hamilton’s death and it was now two decades out of style. I’d saved it—even when I’d wanted to burn every token of every person who ever hurt me—because when I’d burned Monroe’s kerchief, it’d seemed almost to do him too much honor.
Nevertheless, I expected that the sight of the dress would pain me deeply, as all reminders of my sister now did. But when my daughter pulled the gown against herself and twirled, a different emotion rose in my breast. For the dress flattered Lysbet to the point of transformation, revealing the natural beauty she usually hid behind seriousness and spectacles.
Instead of pain, I felt nothing but my daughter’s joy.
And that now seemed to be a wonderful gift. One my sister had made possible.
“Oh, but the beadwork and embroidery,” Lysbet suddenly fretted. “It’s too much for a dedicated spinster. Too much for me by far.”
“It’s exactly right,” I said, taking up my needle. It’d been years since I’d dedicated much time to my sewing, and doing it now in the service of my daughter’s happiness seemed the best cause. “We shall make it a perfect fit.”
And when that was accomplished, I retrieved for Lysbet an ancient pair of blue paste earbobs to match. Earbobs that made me remember that whatever Angelica had done, or been, she’d also been my touchstone—always finding small ways to support and embolden me as I now wished to support and embolden my daughter.
As for me, my own formal attire was greatly simplified by virtue of widowhood. I owned one black gown proper for such an occasion, scented by the cedar chips with which it had been stored. Thus, donning a bonnet and the pearl-encrusted pendant in which Washington’s hair was enclosed, I braced myself to return to society.
We went by carriage to the Battery from whence my husband first stole British cannons and made his reputation at the start of the revolution. The bridge to the Castle Garden was covered with rich carpets from one end to the other. In the middle of the bridge arose a pyramid sixty-five feet high, lit with colored lamps and surmounted by a brilliant star in the center which blazed the name Lafayette. And then we stepped into the magnificent entryway to find a vast amphitheater inside the circle of the old fort, containing at least a thousand torches and nearly six thousand persons.
An eager crowd jostled Lysbet and I beneath an arch formed of the flags of all nations, surmounted by a colossal statue of Washington. I expected always to encounter the Father of the Nation at any celebration, but I didn’t expect to find a richly decorated marquee ornamented, upon a platform, with a bust of my husband and two pieces of cannon taken at Yorktown.
“It’s Papa!” Lysbet cried with a breath of astonishment, as if she’d never expected or dared to hope to see her father honored outside of our intimate circle of family and friends. And my heart seized to see her hands go to her mouth, as if to contain her surprise and joy.
Had Lafayette arranged for this display? And was it meant for the crowd or for me?
He was not a perfect man. But he was a great one. It is only plain justice that his wife should remember him better. And his country, too.
I was still not convinced by Lafayette’s argument, even as a murmur rushed through the crowd around us. “It’s Mrs. General Hamilton!”