Capricorn Birthdays--Alexander Hamilton

 

Master Passion/Alexander Hamilton/Schuyler A Master Passion

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Here we are again in January, which is a month crowded with family birthdays as well as the birthdays of two of my great heroes. As to the family birthdays, I have two cousins, an uncle, my mother, and two granddaughters who were born in this month--Capricorns, everyone. They prize stability, are detail-oriented and hard workers. 

As to my heroes, the gentleman above, Hamilton, was born under Capricorn. He was therefore--according to the astrologers--the perfect man to have been America's first Secretary of the Treasury. Trained in the laws of commerce, he was the first balancer of our new nation's books, which, after the War of Independence were a sea of red ink. This initial knotty problem was solved through his knowledge of the way the young global economy functioned, as well as and a lot of unpleasant negotiating with the less well-fiscally-educated members of the legislature. In fact, some of what have proved to be America's original sins--those that endlessly plague us today, are the result of the political horse-trading--the compromises--that were necessary to stabilize a totally broke infant republic. 

Hamilton was also one of the three Founding Fathers who authored The Federalist Papers. From that framework, the one created by those three thoughtful lawyers, (Hamilton, Madison, and Jay) our American Constitution was born. Hamilton, who loved

an elaborate sentence, doubtless was the most verbose, though James Madison, the bachelor with whom his young family shared a back garden at the time, was a deeper philosopher and a pithier wordsmith. 

I follow on with a series of quotes from this statesman, "the ten dollar bill guy." There is plenty to chew on here, the words of a man who lived and died according to an elevated personal code of honor. I wish there were more in public service today who were as far-sighted, as self-sacrificing, and as honest. Unlike so many legislators today, Hamilton did not feather his nest while he held power. Within three years of his death, his wife had to sell their fine country home and take her seven children into New York City to live in a rented apartment.

 "There are seasons in every country when noise and impudence pass current for worth; and in popular commotions especially, the clamors of interested and factious men are often mistaken for patriotism."

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."

“The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.” 

"History will teach us that...those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants."

“For in politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.”

“If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.”

“Divide et impera must be the motto of every nation that either hates or fears us.”

“Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.” 

"Now mark my words. So long as we are a young and virtuous people, this instrument (the Constitution) will bind us together in mutual interests, mutual welfare and mutual happiness, but when we become old and corrupt, it will bind us no longer."

~ Juliet Waldron

 

      

     

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I’ve always had an interest in reading biographies of famous people, but it didn’t take me too many years to realize that these books, by nature, are only the opinion of a single writer. That’s when I started to read the notes and the bibliographies and these soon became as interesting as the book itself. This naïve reader had just “discovered” an author’s finest source material. 

As I, back in the day of inter-library loan, began to pursue these leads, I discovered the most exciting material of all, letters and diaries. The language isn't always easy for a modern reader. Eighteenth Century language has a circuitous, verbose style which tends to disguise the emotional thrust of the message. From these letters and journals, however, a voice still speaks; the past enters our present in a breath-taking way.

Here’s one which paints a picture of the realities of 18^th Century travel, of an Albany still forested, as the Marquis de Chastellux describes a Revolutionary War winter visit to General Schuyler’s mansion.

 

“It was a difficult question to know where I should cross the Hudson…for it was neither sufficiently frozen to pass over the ice, nor free enough from flakes to venture it in a boat. …I was only twenty miles from Albany; so that after a continued journey through a forest of fir trees, I arrived at one o’clock on the banks of the Hudson…A handsome house half way up the bank opposite the ferry seemed to attract my attention and to invite strangers to stop at General Schuyler’s, who is proprietor as well as architect…The sole difficulty therefore consisted of passing the river. While the boat was making its way with difficulty through the flakes of ice, which we were obliged to break as we advanced…”

Envision this world—so green, so cold! All you have between you and Old Man Winter is wool, felt and hide, and your feet and hands are continually numb. The Hudson flows like slate under an only single shade-up grayscale sky. A twinkle of snow sinks into the surface. The pines hiss, and the wind picks up as we are ferried across the water, the drifting ice striking the boat and icy droplets of water strike our face.  

I get inspiration from this stuff! Here’s another, a charming (and alarming) view into the life of Mozart, a musician on the English leg of his “world” tour, aged eight years and five months:

“Witness as I myself of most of these extraordinary facts, I must own that I could not help suspecting his father imposed with regard to the real of the boy, thou he had not only a most childish appearance, but likewise had all the actions of the stage of life.

For example, whilst he was playing to me, a favorite cat came in, upon which he immediately left his harpsichord, nor could we bring him back for a considerable time.

He would also run about the room with a stick between his legs by way of a horse. ..” 

~Daines Barrington, 28 September 1769, report to the Secretary of the Royal Society in London.  

I was happy to read that the little boy was allowed to have time with a favorite cat, that Leopold Mozart (“Papa”) didn’t play the martinet and order Wolfgang straight back to the piano. Like little boys today playing with cars, little Mozart would, in his imagination, ride horses.

I’m thinking, really excellent ones, matched, of course, maybe white or dappled gray…”

Sometimes these surviving letters say a great deal about kinks in personality, some not so pleasant, things you’d rather wish your subject hadn’t said, something a writer has to ponder and work to understand. Sometimes, when this happens, you may have to rewrite an entire character.  

It’s understandable—not to snoopy writers and historians, of course— that wives of men judged ‘famous” by their contemporaries often burned and bowdlerized their husband’s surviving letters—all and any they could lay their hands on.  In deference to those wives, whose spirits have been so forthcoming to their humble servant, here is a brief sample of something I'd rather not have read:

“Received December 22 of Alexander Hamilton six hundred dollars on account of a sum of one thousand dollars due me.”  ~James Reynolds

This is a receipt for the first part of the blackmail Hamilton would pay for his adultery with Reynolds’ wife Maria. She must have been a hot number, because talk about shooting yourself in the foot—this particular bad move just about takes the cake, both politically and personally! As I’ve studied his wife, Betsy Schuyler, I’ve grown to have the profoundest respect for her. She was a woman of convictions, the kind which helped her survive fifty years beyond the death of her husband. For me, she's become the  embodiment of the word "lady."  

Here's a happier excerpt (a flirtatious double entendre) from Nov 19, 1798, some years after his infidelity, sent by Hamilton to his wife:  "I am always happy My Dear Eliza when I can steal a few moments to sit down and write to you.  You are my good genius; of that kind which the ancient Philsophers called a familiar; and you know very well that I am glad to be in every way as familiar as possible with you."

  

And last, a charming diary entry, one from James McHenry, of later Fort McHenry fame, about Revolutionary War evenings while quartered with the rest of Washington’s ADC’s upon a substantial Pennsylvania household.

“Eight miles from Moors & 25 from Philadelphia. Head-quarters at Jonathan Fells (Doylestown). A raining evening. The company within doors includes a pretty, fullfaced, youthfull, playfull lass and a Family of Quakers meek and unsuspicious. Hamilton thou shalt not tread on this ground. I mark it for my own.”

This tells me that the recreational behavior of army officers/staff hasn’t changed a whole lot over the course of the last 250 years. It brings us, readers and writers,  closer to a world that is, in many ways, technically and socially, alien.  We no longer have to trust ourselves to a small ferry in sketchy winter conditions in order to cross the Hudson and arrive at the warmth, food and good company of the big house, but down at the core, we humans remain the same.

 

~~Juliet Waldron

 

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