I gave him the indulgent smile I’d learned was the best response to his brilliance, if I ever hoped for his lecture to end. But Angelica seemed to actually enjoy these dissertations, and later gifted my husband with several books of economics as reward.
Angelica felt no compunction against going to Fraunces’s on Pearl Street, where Congress had rented space to debate whether or not they had sufficient power to form commercial treaties that would bind every state. And when I wondered if her husband minded or if this wouldn’t be looked at askance, she said, “The women in France do anything they like! Why, they are more avid on the subject of politics than their husbands.”
Knowing Angelica was to go on to Albany to see our family and then to Philadelphia before taking her leave of America, I didn’t want to share her with my friends and acquaintances. But they all clamored for her. Theodosia insisted we bring her to dinner, and it was no surprise that the equally outspoken and audacious Angelica and Theodosia got on like old friends. Likewise, Kitty Livingston’s sister, Sarah, married to Mr. John Jay, pleaded with us to come to tea, where all the ladies gossiped about the prominent bachelors in town. Naturally, some of the talk was about Monroe.
“Those gray eyes—”
“That dimpled chin!”
“That brawn. But Monroe is no great intellect; he’d be quite a nobody without the patronage of Mr. Jefferson . . .”
“That’s not true,” I insisted, rising to his defense. Then I reminded them of Monroe’s war heroism and service to the country until I was weary.
And I was weary, because I couldn’t keep up with Angelica. My sister was an indefatigable socialite. She accepted every invitation, holding court at every party.
So the night my ten-month-old daughter was spitting up and Angelica pouted because her husband’s being out of town on business meant she ought not go without me, I said, “Alexander will take you.”
And so they went, Alexander stumbling back into the house in the wee hours, complaining that my sister out-drank him, and retching over a chamber pot as he vowed that he would never imbibe champagne again.
I thought nothing of it until the next day when, while shopping with Angelica for sundries in the marketplace, we came upon James Monroe in the shade of the awning of Mr. Mulligan’s tailoring shop, in less than congenial conversation with my husband.
I didn’t wish to interrupt, but my sister twirled her parasol and fearlessly cried, “Hamilton! I need to arrange for a sloop up river and you’re just the man to help.” Angelica laced her arm into the crook of Alexander’s elbow, as was her habit, but, to my surprise, my husband let his arm fall away in a most ungentlemanly fashion.
Some manner of dark look passed between him and Monroe that I couldn’t comprehend. “Is my husband meddling in politics again, Congressman?” I asked with a smile to Monroe.
Monroe’s jaw tightened, as if I’d asked him a very difficult question. But before he was able to offer an answer, he was nearly accosted by surly citizens who wished to complain about the latest debate in Congress.
As I departed the scene with Alexander and Angelica, she glanced over her shoulder with disgust. “What bumpkins. I don’t see what you find so agreeable in Monroe. He’s far too comfortable with the tobacco-chewing rabble in their knit caps crowing about liberty, while insisting anything beautiful or enjoyable must be banned lest it destroy our revolution and deliver us into the clutches of monarchy.”
She wasn’t entirely wrong about the rabble. But I believed her to be entirely wrong about Monroe. “He’s a man of relatively modest means, but he’s no leveler,” I said.
Monroe proved it when, later that week, he joined us all at the long-awaited reopening of the John Street theater. But while our merry band of companions looked for seats in the gallery—Baron von Steuben insisting on a seat for his dog—I sensed Monroe’s discomfort around our friends. “You’ve been so quiet, Monroe. Unusually so, even for you. What weighs upon your mind?”
At that, his gray eyes lifted and met mine. “I’m leaving New York for a time.”
I was sorry to hear it. Discounting that one strange moment outside Mr. Mulligan’s tailoring shop, Monroe’s presence and friendship had buoyed my husband’s mood and made us all very happy. And I did not wish to part with him. “For how long a time will you be gone?”
“Three or four months, I would reckon. Long enough to see all there is to see out west.”
“Out west!” I exclaimed, my disappointment replaced with excitement for him. We’d shared a longing to see more of the world, and as he explained his intention to attend an Indian Treaty in Ohio, then to explore the settlements in Kentucky, I could not help but long to see them, too.