Many historians have long claimed that George Washington was primarily attracted to Martha Washington for her property and money, and that the two never really had a close, romantic relationship. This view is fully embraced by a script trapped in "Development Hell" about our first general and first President - one that I personally hope never sees the light of day. But I digress.
Anyway, it turns out that Martha Washington was not the plump, homely widow that Washington married simply for money. Scholars now say that she may very well have been...well...let me just turn it over to Brigid Schulte, writing for The Washington Post...
This just in: Martha Washington was hot. Or at least hotter than we thought.
Our image of the mother of our country, vague and insubstantial as it is, is drawn from portraits painted after her death showing a frumpy, dumpy, plump old lady, a fussy jumble of needlework in her lap, wearing what could pass for a shower cap with pink sponge rollers underneath.
But today, 250 years after Martha and George tied the knot, a handful of historians are seeking to revamp the former first lady’s fusty image, using the few surviving records of things she wrote, asking forensic anthropologists to do a computerized age-regression portrait of her in her mid-20s and, perhaps most importantly, displaying for the first time in decades the avant-garde deep purple silk high heels studded with silver sequins that she wore on her wedding day.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
It would appear that Martha Washington needn't have been that intimidated by neighbor Sally Fairfax.
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1 comment:
The article mentions paintings of Martha that portray her as an old lady. However, there is at least one painting that I know that was done when Martha was 26 years old. The painter was John Wollaston. It seems odd that they would need to use forensic science to create "a computerized age-regression portrait of her in her mid-20s". Unless they didn't think the Wollaston painting was hot enough for a modern audience.
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