Martha Washington, An American Life by Patricia Brady

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (1731-1802) followed her hero-husband, General George Washington, from camp to camp during the Revolutionary War, and she followed him again to New York and then Philadelphia when he served two terms as the first president of the United States. 

 Martha Washington is what you would call a well-adjusted person, confidently self-knowledgeable and comfortable in her person, never pretending to be something she isn’t nor striving to be something she cannot be.  This is an enviable quality and made her likeable, successful and happy in her marriage. 

This was a nicely-written book, not terribly heavy reading (although I did get lost with all the family relations, nieces, nephews, adopted nieces and nephews and grandkids and great grandchildren).  The author gave just the right amount of attention to the backdrop of historical events playing out as we delved into Martha Washington’s life. 

 Martha’s first husband, Custis, was 20 years her senior and lived only seven years after they were married.  Martha was left widowed with two children and quite financially well off if not rich.  The Custis fortune was considerable.

What piqued my curiosity about Martha Washington was the book Mount Vernon Love Story by Mary Higgins Clark.  As mentioned elsewhere, Clark wrote about George and Martha's "love story," their marriage, in an engaging and understanding way.  After reading this book, Martha certainly seems to have been pretty much everything that Clark described and more.  

Clark's book gave slightly greater emphasis to the romance between George Washington and Sally Fairfax.  It is true that bachelor George had an eye for the married Sally Fairfax and that Fairfax and Washington had a flirtation and correspondence, but this author made very little of that unrequited romance seeming to explain that it was simply out of the question that Washington would have ever tried to steal Sally from his friend George Fairfax or, had he tried, that Sally would have succumbed.  It just wasn’t done.

 Read this book if you would like to “get inside” Martha Washington and her era.  It is a biography refreshingly devoid of psychologizing and tendentious analyses that many modern biographers so smugly (and boringly) engage in.