It was not the first time my husband warned of discipline. He had, in fact, written similar words in love letters. But those were playful threats, embellished with a courtier’s wit. This time, he seemed in earnest.
Would he dare raise a hand to me? Though the Bible might have confirmed his right to, my fists balled with a sudden urge to turn my back, summon a carriage, and return with our baby boy to Papa’s home in Albany at once.
Other fathers would refuse to step into a quarrel between a daughter and a husband, but I didn’t doubt even for a moment that my father would shelter me and his grandson, nor that he would take my part in any quarrel. And for Alexander, a breach with my father—one of the foremost men in the state—would dash his ambitions forever. So I felt a gratifying, if discomforting, satisfaction that I held a greater power of happiness and misery over my husband than he held over me. Except for one single, solitary thing.
I loved him. I loved him so deeply and truly. Desperately.
And so I let him make this terrible mistake—toward Washington and me. That night, I said not another word. Quietly seething, I went to bed. I wouldn’t abandon him, as so many others had in his life, but I was no saint. And in the days that followed, I couldn’t manage more than polite conversation that felt stilted by the breach.
From a newly married Tench Tilghman, I later learned that Washington—notorious for his reserve—toasted his officers, invited them to shake his hand, and actually embraced them, weeping. I wasn’t there to see it myself, of course, but after it was done, I went alone with Philip to mingle with the crowds at Whitehall Wharf, holding my darling boy so that he wouldn’t miss the moment as the church bells rang and everywhere along the route people pressed noses to windows and crowded balconies to watch Washington go.
At nearly two years old, Philip was an uncommonly handsome little boy who laughed with delight and raised his little fists when the soldiers, still cheering, waved their hats as Washington boarded his ferry.
I laughed, too, at the joy in the moment, but also wept bittersweet tears.
Because I feared we might never set eyes upon the grand old man again as the river carried him away. And because, for days, I’d stifled emotion that now crested over at having uncovered another dark layer in my husband that I hadn’t known was there before.
I soldiered on and tried to distract myself with an upcoming dance assembly that week—a gathering of the city’s finest citizens at a grand ball that would effect a reconciliation between the patriots and any Tories still left in the city. I was eager to slip into my best gown—and the more genteel life that I imagined had preceded the war.
More importantly, amiable society so often brought out my husband’s playful wit and good humor, and I hoped the occasion might restore the tenderness between us. But then the poorer patriot citizens objected to the unseemliness of “dancing on the graves” of their comrades who’d died through the machinations of these very same Tories.
The ball was canceled, and we stayed in instead. And I could barely restrain the sadness I felt at the lost opportunity to restore our happiness.
Maybe Alexander sensed it, or perhaps he even shared it, for that night he climbed into bed next to me and wept apologies into my hair for his behavior, confessing a clawing loneliness I’d never fathomed.
“But we have so many friends,” I assured him, stroking his beloved face. “I couldn’t make an accounting of them all even using all our fingers and toes!”
“Your friends,” he said, hoarsely.
That much was true. Friends from my childhood. Friends of my father. Friends made only lately in the bustle of his ambitions. But I realized that the friends my husband had called the only family he’d ever known were his brothers-at-arms, now gone from his life, dispersed like chaff in the wind. John Laurens was dead. Lafayette had returned to France. McHenry and Tilghman to Maryland. And now George Washington to Virginia . . .
I realized the true reason my husband had not said good-bye.
Because he couldn’t bear to say good-bye.
Alexander Hamilton, the orphan, abandoned by those he loved and left to the mercies of this world, had no gift for partings. He’d left Washington’s side before Yorktown in what had seemed then to be a fit of pique and pride. But now I wondered if he’d left Washington before Washington could leave him. Before he could be abandoned by yet another father and separated again from brothers who he couldn’t claim by blood or law, but whom he loved just the same. And so I resolved from that moment on that I would draw closer to us my husband’s companions at war.