Hamilton's forbidden flame, Angelica

 

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Angelica Schuyler ("Engeltke") named for her grandmother, as was Dutch custom,was born on February 22, 1756, probably at the home of her grandparents, the fine house called Rensselearwyck. Her parents, Catherine van Rensselear and Philip Schuyler, had been married during the alarms of the French & Indian War the previous year, on September 17th, 1755. Albany was, in those days, another semi-rural village in the upper Hudson Valley, hanging precariously on the edge of the wild frontier. The French and their powerful Indian allies had been on their doorstep many times before and now were menacing the English/Dutch settlements once more. 

The marriage was noted in the family Bible, just nine days after the Battle of Lake St. George where Philip Schuyler was a Captain and aide to General Bradstreet. If you do the math, you will see that  the young Captain had been summoned back from the army by his soon-to-be father-in-law. Catherine, the "Evening Star" of Albany (per the eligible bachelors of the valley) was a famous belle in her day but her flirtatious days were now over. Her first born daughter would grow up to be an even more famous coquette--on three continents.

Angelica seems to have been her father's favorite, a real sparkler right from the start. In her early teens (14) she was sent with her parents' good friends, New York British Governor Moore and his charming wife Lucy, for an extended stay. In New York, she apparently absorbed ideas about status, and for her the word "Colonial" now carried a cruel sting. I believe this was where she made up her mind to marry an English aristocrat, instead of one of her land-wealthy, but less sophisticated Hudson Valley cousins, the expected course for a Patroon's daughter. When Angelica returned home at last, she arrived in Albany with a music master and a harpsichord. She alone of the daughters was sent to what was then an  innovation among the Dutch--a boarding school to learn French, and the other courtly graces. Nothing was too good for General Schuyler's bright, pert eldest daughter. 

“Carter and my eldest daughter ran off and were married on the 23, July,” (1779) Unacquainted with his family connections and situation in life that matter was exceeding disagreeable and I signified it to them.” Phillip Schuyler to his friend, William Duer.  

This “Carter” was actually John Barker Church—after the war, when news came that the man he’d supposedly killed in a duel was still alive and well--he would resume his proper name. The cause of his flight from England was probably far less glamorous, for Church was bankrupt and a well-known gambler, an unpromising history that Philip Schuyler may have known.

Carter became commissary supplier to Admiral Rochambeau and General Jeremiah Wadsworth during the Revolution. Commissary was a fast way to accumulate a large fortune, as sub rosa skimming and was the norm. His war-profiteering accumulated a large fortune. Eventually, with plenty of money in his pocket, he would become a member of parliament and live in England in lavish style, owning a country home as well as a fashionable house in London.    

At this time, however, the family was still in America, and the Revolution raged in the Hudson Valley. 

"Mrs. Church is delivered of a fine boy. I hope her sister will give me another.” Philip Schuyler to his son-in-law, Alexander Hamilton September, 1778, soon after the Battle of Yorktown.

Angelica gave birth to her first born at The Pastures, the Schuyler home. A few months later came the famous Tory and Indian attack upon the house—Angelica & four month old Philip were present, as well as a pregnant Betsy Hamilton and the girls' new born sister, Kitty, and the rest of the children of this large family. 

                                        Angelica Church, baby and maid by John Trumbull

The Marquis de Chastelux remarked after the war: "Mrs. Carter, a handsome woman told me that going down to her husband's office (the commissary at Newport) in rather elegant undress, a farmer who was there on business asked who the young lady was. On being told that it was Mrs. Carter, he said, loud enough for her to hear, 'A wife and a mother has no business to be so well-dressed.'"  The farmer had mistaken her, because of her "immodest" dress, for some dandy's mistress. 

Angelica loved clothes, hats, and the latest fashions. She must have reveled after her marriage to John Church in freedom from the frugality of Dutch tradition, where three good dresses were "more than enough" for any respectable woman. 

These next letters were written when Angelica and Church departed from America in 1789. It would be  1797 that they would finally return.

 

November 8, 1789, Angelica Church to Alexander Hamilton:

      "I am not much disposed for gaiety- yet I endeavor to make myself tolerable to my fellow passengers…Do my dear Brother endeavor to sooth my poor Betsey, comfort her with assurances that I will certainly return to take care of her soon. Remember this also my dearest Brother and let neither politics or ambition drive your Angelica from your affections. ..Adieu my dear Brother, may God bless and protect you, prays your ever affectionate Angelica, ever ever yours.” 

And here is Hamilton's reply: 

    “After taking leave of you on board of the Packet, I hastened home to sooth and console your sister. I found her in bitter distress…After composing her with a strong infusion of hope, that she had not taken her last farewell of you…The Baron little Philip and myself with her consent, walked down to the Battery; where with aching hearts and anxious eyes we saw your vessel, in full sail, swiftly bearing our loved friend from our embraces. Imagine what we felt. We gazed, we signed, we wept…”

    “Amiable Angelica! How much you are formed to endear yourself to every good heart! How deeply you have rooted youself in the affection of your friends on this side of the Atlantic! Some of us are and must continue inconsolable for your absence.

    Betsey and myself make you the last theme of our conversation at night and the first in the morning. We dwell with peculiar interest on the little incidents that preceded your departure. Precious and never to be forgotten scenes! ...However difficult, or little natural it is to me to suppress what the fullness of my heart would utter, the sacrifice shall be made…”

From Betsey: 

“My Very Dear Beloved Angelica—I have seated myself to write to you, but my heart is so saddened by your Absence that it can scarcely dictate, my Eyes so filled with tears that I shall not be to write you much but Remember, Remember, my dear sister of the Assurances of your returning to us, and do all you can to make your Absence short. Tell Mr. Church for me of the happiness he will give me, in bringing you to me, not to me alone, but to fond parents sisters friends and to my Hamilton who has for you all the Affection of a fond own Brother. I can do no more. Adieu Adieu Heaven Protect you.”       

When she and her husband returned from their first sojourn in London, Angelica loved to shock the City with the latest novelties in style. Walter Rutherford, detailing one of her dinner parties, speaks of "a late abominable fashion from London, of Ladies like Washerwomen with their sleeves above their elbows, Mrs. Church among them."  

She and Hamilton continually played seductive word games when they wrote. It is notable that Hamilton wrote so much to Angelica about his work during the hectic time when he was America's first Secretary of the Treasury, attempting to set the wheels of public finance successfully turning. You may make of their affection what you will, although there were rumors about this glamorous pair were rampant in the circles of his political enemies--and finally in scurrilous pamphlets--for years. 

Two of Hamilton's biographers, (James Flexner and Robert Hendrickson) seem to believe Hamilton and his sister-in-law consummated their passion. How unlikely this was--betrayal between affectionate sisters, especially in the Schuyler's closely bonded family--is persuasively argued by Ron Chernow. Infidelity between those two would have been an explosive, corroding secret that it would have been nearly impossible to keep.

18th Century conventional morality ran in two very separate tracks--one for men and one for women-- even for beautiful, worldly, sophisticated women like Angelica. She may have been a kind of danger junkie, leading on so many powerful men, but, playing this game, she could wield far more power over these hopeful lovers than their wives ever could, forever promising, but never quite surrendering.  No one mentions John Church's affinity for dueling as an aspect of their reticence, but his handsome matched set of pistols were employed by many fool-hardy gentlemen. They would finally put an end to the gallant Hamilton himself. 

 Eight years after the tearful departure, Angelica would return to America, just as Hamilton resigned from his heroic stint as Secretary of the Treasury. By this time, despite all those confiding, flirtatious letters that had traveled back and forth across the ocean, she seems to have become anxious about her continuing hold upon Hamilton's affections. As the Church's attorney, Hamilton found himself responsible for purchasing their new home in New York.  In February of that year, she wrote a rather spiteful letter to him. He had enclosed "no plan of the lot and no description of the house. How can I bring out the furniture when I do not know the number of rooms my house contains...?"

She goes on: "I am sensible how much trouble I give you, but ...it proceeded from a persuasion that I was asking from one who promised me his love and attention if returned to America... for what do I exchange ease and taste, by going to the new world...?" 

To which he could only reply that he and Eliza were "strangely agitated between fear and hope, anxiously wishing for your return...We feast on your letters..The only rivalship we have is in our attachment to you and we each contend for preeminence in this particular...To whom will you give the apple?...Yours as much as you desire, A.H."

This hot and heavy signature, like so much of their correspondence, teeters on the edge of impropriety. This same tone is a constant in their letters until Hamilton took himself permanently out of the game on that ledge at Weehawken. He, however, was not the only important man to be enchanted by her.

Benjamin Franklin adored her. Thomas Jefferson seems to have had designs upon her during a time in France when he was the U.S. Minister to the French Court and she was present, sometimes without her husband. In 1788 Jefferson even invited her to come and stay with him at Monticello when they both returned to America. He further suggested that they could travel together, perhaps to Niagara Falls. 

Angelica's apparently relaxed views on "extra-marital escapades,"*(1.) invited these advances from Jefferson. She had previously acted as a go-between for the painter's wife, Mrs. Cosway, herself an artist and a particular friend of Angelica's, who was enamored of the famous author of the Declaration of Independence. Mrs. Cosway became Jefferson's mistress and so close were these three that Jefferson's own copy of The Federalist bears the "surprising dedication"*(2.) 'For Mrs. Church from her Sister, Elizabeth Hamilton.'" 

In Paris, Angelica was presented to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and invited into all the highest Enlightenment circles, as well as maintaining her own very active salon. Later, in England, Angelica once more bedazzled all who met her. Here she was presented to George IV and Queen Charlotte.  After this triumph, as in France, all the finest salons opened to her and to her wealthy husband. 

Insurance in those days was a private legal arrangement between gentlemen, although there was always a high risk of ruin for one or the other parties to the deal, especially if a ship laden with cargo went to the bottom. John Church seems to have (at least partly) shifted his love of gambling into this side of the business world, although he remained famous for his love of night-long, high-stakes card games. He certainly provided Angelica with the glamorous wider world of which she'd dreamed as a girl, as well as all the glittering parties, clothes and jewels anyone could need. When the family returned to New York in the late 1790's their parties were soon the talk of the town, as were her diamonds and the solid silver plate upon which she served dinner guests. Angelica was definitely a "material girl."

Betsy/Eliza 

Whatever Angelica and Alexander may have sometimes fantasied, I believe that Hamilton married the right sister. Elizabeth was faithful, loyal, a frugal manager, and a loving mother. She was exactly what a self-absorbed genius required in a wife, a woman who, no matter what happens, always "stands by her man."  Angelica and Hamilton, on the other hand, were too much alike. She was as high-maintenance as he. Far better suited to her was Church, who could provided the travel, the luxury, and the free rein that she craved.  She couldn't have her cake and eat it too and it was better for all concerned that it turned out that way.

At the end, though, Angelica came home to America. She is buried in Trinity Churchyard, near the graves of Alexander, Elizabeth and their oldest son, Philip. Her husband, John Church, is buried far across the sea in Westminister Abbey.

~~Juliet Waldron 

https://bookswelove.net/waldron-juliet/

*1. Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, page 315

*2. Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, page 315

For a colorful account of Jefferson in Paris, see the 1995 Merchant-Ivory movie of the same name.    

ANGELICA SCHUYLER ~ America's First Heart Throb

A Master Passion - A Founder's Marriage

Angelica, older sister to Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, was a piece of work. Perhaps you've met someone like her--enchanting, intelligent, daring, filled with boundless energy, bubbling over with wit. She was also a champagne tastes kind of gal who brought the party along with her, brightening any room she entered. Men and women alike adored her. She had admirers not only in America, but in France and in Britain, too, among them the leading lights of the time.  

The French Statesman Talleyrand, the Whig Leader, Charles Fox, the play-write Richard Brinsley Sheridan, as well as Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and the Marquis de Lafayette were among the many luminaries who fell beneath her spell. 

We can no longer see the glamor in this picture of her and her first child, painted by Trumbull. Fashions in beauty change. In one letter to his father-in-law, Hamilton speaks of Angelica and his wife Elizabeth as "our brunettes." I'm not certain if Angelica had blue eyes or the melting black eyes of her younger sister.  Whichever, it was her animating high spirits, wit, and a killer sense of style which knocked 'em all dead. In her own time, she was known as "the thief of hearts."

While accompanying her husband to England, Angelica thrilled to visit the glamorous European capitols, to be introduced at the French Court and to meet the Prince of Wales et al, but she missed her warm extended family, too. Here's an excerpt from a letter she wrote to her brother-in-law, Alexander Hamilton:

“You are happy my dear friend to find consolation in words and thoughts. I cannot be so easily satisfied. I regret America. I regret the separation from my friends and I lament the loss of your society. I am so unreasonable as to prefer our charming family parties to all the gaieties of London…I shall send by the first ships every well written book that I can procure on the subject of finance…"

Good as her word, she sent our soon-to-be First Secretary of the Treasury a copy of Adam Smith’s seminal work on economics, The Wealth of Nations.

Angelica and Hamilton engaged in a life-long flirtation, evidence of which survives in any number of letters.

Hamilton playfully writes to her: "I seldom write to a lady without fancying the relation of lover and mistress. It has a very inspiring effect.”

Angelica writes: "Indeed, my dear, Sir if my path was strewed with as many roses as you have filled your letter with compliments, I should not now regret my absence from America.”

Note the odd placement of the comma. The romantic in Hamilton certainly did!

“...You ladies despise the pedantry of punctuation. There was a most critical comma in your last letter.  It is my interest it should have been designed; but I presume it was accidental…” and in return he signs: Adieu ma chere, Soeur.  A. Hamilton”

Though Hamilton's political enemies made a great deal of their public repartee, it seems highly doubtful that these two, for all their word-play round the subject, ever shared a bed.  For one thing, the Schuylers were a proud and tightly-knit family, all of whom, from beginning to end, whole-heartedly admired Hamilton. The sisters, Elizabeth and Angelica, loved and supported each other from the beginning of this triangular relationship to the end--and beyond.

Here is a letter Elizabeth wrote to her sister just after her departure to England: “My very dear beloved Angelica: I have seated myself to write to you, but my hearts is so saddened by your absence that it can scarcely dictate, my eyes so filled with tears that I shall not be able to write you much. Tell Mr. Church for me of the happiness he will give me in bringing you to me, not to me alone, but to fond parents, sisters, friends and to my Hamilton, who has for you all the affection of a fond own brother."

Speaking of Talleyrand and Chevalier Beaumetz, who had traveled to America to escape Madame Guillotine, Angelica call them: "Martyrs to the cause of moderate liberty…To your care, dear Eliza, I commit these interesting strangers. They are a loan I make you till I return to America, not to reclaim my friends entirely, but to share their society with you and dear Alexander the Amiable.

By my Amiable you know that I mean your husband, for I love him very much and, if you were as generous as the old Romans, you would lend him to me for a little while. But do not be jealous, my dear Eliza, since I am more solicitous to promote his laudable ambition than any person in the world and there is no summit of true glory which I do not desire he may attain, provided always that he pleases to give me a little chit-chat and sometimes to say I wish our dear Angelica was here…Ah! Bess! You were a lucky girl to get so clever and so good a companion.”

Thomas Jefferson by Mather, elegant at the French Court

Amusingly, Hamilton's chief political enemy, Thomas Jefferson, seems to have also fallen under the spell of the formidable Mrs. Church's, this during 1788, when he was America's ambassador in Paris. The Ancien Regime still ruled France at this time, although events were only an eye blink distant from the coming Revolution. Here is a graceful excerpt from a letter from Jefferson to Angelica: 

The morning you left us, all was wrong, even the sunshine was provoking, with which I never quarreled before. I took it into my head he shone only to throw light on our loss: to present a cheerfulness not at all in unison with my mind. I mounted my horse earlier than common. I took by instinct the road you had taken...

"I think I have discovered a method of preventing this dejection of mind on any future parting.
"It is this. When you come again I will employ myself in finding or fancying that you have some faults & I will draw a veil over all your good qualities if I can find one large enough."

Six months after, Jefferson begs Angelica to return to Paris and in August 1788 he seductively proposes that she accompany him on shipboard when they both return to America.

Think of it, my friend, and let us begin a negotiation on the subject. You shall find in me all the spirit of accommodation with which Yoric began his with the fair Piedmontese.


(The characters Jefferson refers to were in an erotically charged scene in Sentimental Journey, a best-selling novel of the day by English writer Laurence Sterne. Yoric is forced to share a room at a crowded Italian country inn with a lovely female stranger. These two characters will eventually have sex.)

"Let’s go back together then. You intend it a visit; so do I. While you are indulging with your friends on the Hudson, I will go to see if Monticello remains in the same place, or I will attend you to the falls of Niagara, if you will go with me to the passage of the Potowmac, the Natural Bridge, etc.,"

A decade later, Jefferson, then Vice President, is still trying: "... I shall entertain the hope that we may meet at this place, as on a middle ground. perhaps you may find it not unpleasant in winter to get this much nearer to the sun. but whether we meet or not, I shall for ever claim an esteem which continues to be very precious to me, and hope to be, at times, indulged with the mutual expression of it."

Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop version of the Schuyler Sisters~

~Elizabeth, Angelica, Peggy~

But we're all overlooking Angelica's most important man--her husband. Biographers and armchair historians alike think of him as dull and boring. So apparently did Angelica after a decade of marriage.

In the beginning, however, John Barker Church was a handsome fast-talker, a down-on-his-luck aristocrat in America, fleeing the consequences of a duel and a host of unpaid debts. He courted his American princess under the cover of a war-time commissary business, using the alias 'Carter.'

After Major General Schuyler, her father, soon forbade the smooth-talking Englishman access to the house, but the damage was done. They eloped in classic style. One night, she climbed out the window and down a ladder into John's waiting arms.  Angelica's doubly patrician parents, (her mother was a van Rensselaer) were beyond furious. It took a year, stern interventions by Dutch grandparents, and a suitable offering in the shape of a son christened 'Philip', to reconcile them. 

It looks quiet today, but The Pastures, the Schuyler's home on the banks of the Hudson, was once the site of high romantic drama. Over the years, four thwarted and love-struck Schuyler daughters, one after the other, climbed out those upstairs windows into the arms of lovers.*

Once upon a time, before he became a successful insurance underwriter, (one who was by contemporary accounts was "fonder of premiums than payouts,") John Barker Church was a dashing rakehell with the scent of brimstone about him.  He seems to have been a type America loves--entrepreneur/con-artist. Once he reached America, his luck turned; all the cards went his way. He ended his Revolutionary War with a tidy fortune in his pocket. 

In the 18th Century it was more or less expected that graft would be a large part of the pay-off for a nimble supplier, so the tarnish--the unpaid soldiers of the Revolution and their blood-on-the-snow sufferings--didn't stick. From an aristocratic welcher, Church was, by the end of war, transformed into a man sufficiently wealthy to return to England with a colonial princess on his arm and with his pockets sufficiently full to "win" a seat in Parliament. 

In later years, letters sent by New Yorkers-in-the-know reported John Church's immense wealth as well as his appetite for underwriting all day and gambling all night. Both were occupations that, though fraught with risk, were also liable to bring immense rewards. For me, the picture that comes together is of a man of high intelligence and energy who had a positive delight in walking the edge--whether it was a bet laid upon the turn of a card or upon the successful return of a cargo of spices or a whaling ship.

Today, we call such people "thrill junkies," and perhaps this is the trait which brought Angelica and her husband together. From the number of passionate letters written to her that have survived, she thirsted for romance and was a mistress of leading on her admirers. Her looks, education, and brains ensured that she had but to crook a little finger and men came running. And why would we be surprised at her life-time of daring? She had, after all, climbed out that window, risking her honor and her future with a man whose real name she'd probably, even then, hadn't known.

~~Juliet Waldron

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And for a fictional riff which uses elements of Angelica's story check out:

http://amzn.to/1U1RTvE

*Elizabeth is the only daughter who was married (properly) at the house, because her sweetheart, Alexander Hamilton, was the only suitor for any of his girls of whom Philip Schuyler approved.