PRIDE AND PLEASURE: The Schuyler Sisters in the Age of Revolution, by Amanda Vaill
Anyone writing a biography of the Schuyler sisters, as Amanda Vaill does in “Pride and Pleasure,” has set themselves a challenging task. Not only do they have to compete with a host of Revolutionary War biographers, but, more notably, with “Hamilton,” the most popular musical of the 21st century. A great number of fans will have a preconceived notion of the most famous Schuyler sisters — Angelica, Eliza and Peggy. Woe betide the biographer who depicts them in a way that does not correspond with their vision.
And it is indeed possible that fans of that particularly Obama-era, multicultural, musical delight might take occasional issue with some historical realities. They may be disappointed to know, for instance, that the Schuyler sisters’ idyllic childhood in Albany, raised by doting parents and educated in a library stuffed with volumes of Shakespeare, was periodically interrupted by their enslaved servants running away after suffering severe frostbite.
Those undeterred by these unfortunate facts, however, will appreciate a thoroughly fascinating biography, filled with Vaill’s signature warmth, humor and insight. The author, who has previously written about Gerald and Sarah Murphy and Jerome Robbins, has a definite way with words; the Marquis de Lafayette is, for instance, a man “who thinks in run-on sentences.”
If the book lags at times, it is when describing the battles between men, on and off the field. But then, it’s a testament to the force of the Schuyler sisters’ personalities that they dwarf both the Revolutionary War and the political disputes that followed.
Angelica emerges as especially sparkling. Her husband is satisfyingly awful, a man described by her father, Philip Schuyler, as a “noxious beetle.” The Englishman, then living in America under the name John Carter, first met Angelica when she was 20, in 1776. A dandy filled with fanciful tales of rich relatives and duels, he told Angelica he had fled England to escape a loveless marriage. Charmed, the next year she eloped with him — only to learn that it wasn’t his romantic heart that had inspired him to flee Europe, but his debts. Moreover, his real last name was Church. However, the war changed his fortunes, and he returned to England a wealthy man. At which point, he promptly began spending his newfound resources on mistresses, horses and gambling.
While hardly ideal, the marriage wasn’t an entirely unhappy outcome for Angelica. In her travels in London and Paris, she befriended everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Mademoiselle d’Eon, a onetime spy for the king of France, to the Ghanaian abolitionist writer Ottobah Cugoano. She got on somewhat less well with Thomas Jefferson, as he did not enjoy talking to women about politics, although he did attempt a dalliance. When she returned to New York in 1797, Angelica scandalized society by dressing in revealing French laundress-chic, receiving visitors in her boudoir and hosting gambling parties where one guest was said to have lost $1,500 ($38,000 today) on a single hand.
Little wonder her sister Eliza’s husband, Alexander Hamilton, appeared besotted with her. Their letters strike a decidedly flirtatious tone that still feels slightly shocking two centuries later. But then, as Hamilton noted, he would “seldom write to a lady without fancying the relation of lover and mistress.”
Eliza was relegated to a more domestic sphere. While acquaintances might be engaged by Angelica’s vivacity, they were similarly attracted to Eliza’s good sense and composure. While courting her, Hamilton expressed his desire for an “Aquileia” — a Roman matron sharing her husband’s fortune who would, should those fortunes fail, be willing to spend her days “cheerfully planting turnips with me.”
Eliza excelled in that role, sewing her children’s undergarments, serving as Hamilton’s secretary and adviser and ferrying her husband’s essays to the printer. Still, her position may have chafed a bit. It’s worth noting that Eliza signed the copy of Hamilton’s “Federalist Papers” that she sent to Angelica with her name as well as her husband’s. It is as if, Vaill notes, she wished to tell her glamorous sister, “I do important things, too.”
Certainly, her level of devotion can’t have been terribly easy with a husband who insisted on writing to every female acquaintance as if she were a lover. And that was before his very literal, very public affair with Maria Reynolds. And yet, following Hamilton’s fatal duel in 1804, Eliza wore mourning for the next 50 years, until her own death at the age of 97. In the intervening years she became an outspoken abolitionist and established an orphanage. Hamilton was quite right to refer to her as “my angel” and “best of wives and best of women.”
As for Peggy — well, poor Peggy. Often overlooked, the girl once described as the prettiest of the sisters is almost an afterthought here. She is often in poor health, beset by “incessant pain, miscarriages, loss of appetite and shortness of breath.” Even when better she is described, in Eliza’s hopefully teasing words, as “in good health and spirits but bearing no sign of usefulness to the Commonwealth.” Withering, but not entirely inaccurate.
Angelica and Eliza are the stars of the biography. The work ends noting that, briefly, after their deaths, their bodies might have been placed in the same church vault; “for a short time at least, Angelica and Eliza are together again.”
Ultimately, “Pride and Pleasure” delves into the question of what role a woman might play in this newly founded nation. Young America made room for sophisticated free spirits like Angelica — but also needed an Aquileia.
PRIDE AND PLEASURE: The Schuyler Sisters in the Age of Revolution | By Amanda Vaill | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | 406 pp. | $36
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