Martha Washington: An American Life by Patricia Brady

"The worthy partner of the worthiest of men..." After reading about our last First Lady, I was finally spurred to read the biography of the first First Lady that I've had on a shelf for several years. The quote is from a local newspaper's obituary at the time of Martha Washington's death.

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington has been a bit of an enigma in American history. Despite her marriage to the most revered man in our nation's history, we really have very little by which to judge her life. One of the reasons for this is her purposeful destruction of family letters and documents that she considered private matters. Because of the lack of first hand information, historians have had to rely on secondary accounts and stories, sometimes even interpreting the silence into something of significance.

Patricia Brady has done a good job of taking the bits of scattered information and weaving them into a story that makes George Washington's beloved wife come alive in a way I have never experienced. (It is important to keep in mind as reading, though, that much of what she says is her interpretation and not always proven fact.) I especially appreciated the effort made at establishing the family history of both Martha and George before their marriage and the way their families became interwoven as time progressed. I had always pictured Martha Washington with the same frail psyche that I attribute to Mary Todd Lincoln, but Brady shows the strength of her character and constitution. The way she deals with the death of parents, a spouse, all four of her children, grandchildren, extended family, close friends, and eventually George Washington, proves she had a strength that not many possess today. Brady shows us no evidence of bitterness or anger at her circumstances, just a quiet determination to do what needs to be done and an unlimited love for those in her life.

Like Laura Bush's autobiography, this retelling is not so much concerned with political happenings as with how those events impacted Martha and her family. Brady describes her as fiercely loyal and protective of her husband, taking an extreme dislike to anyone who attempted to paint him in a bad light. As a fan of political history, one of my favorite passages in the book is Brady's description of Hamilton and Jefferson, neither of whom Martha cared for because of their opposition (in very different ways) to Washington's plans for the government. "Alexander Hamilton was a brilliant man but a terrible politician. Neurotic impulses often ruled his behavior, and he suffered from the fatal delusion that he was a master manipulator, causing needless distrust and dislike. Thomas Jefferson actually was a master manipulator, especially in combination with the detail-oriented James Madison."

I wish I had taken the time to read this sooner, so I could have corrected my misconceptions, but I am not sure I would have appreciated it without the comparison between the first and last First Ladies.