"A" is for Abigail Adams

I promised you some novels, but first another biography. This time it's Abigail Adams: Witness To a Revolution by Natalie S. Bober.

Yet again a book where religion already plays an important role. It's been interesting to see the various connections among the books I've read here. Abigail's youth saw the beginning of the French and Indian War (reference to Abenaki book). Much of this work is pieced together based on letters she wrote, many of them to her husband, John (Abelard and Heloise). She married one president and gave birth to another (Abe Lincoln connection).

I already quite like her. She’s described as always yearning for new books to read, memorizing poetry and reciting it to herself in times of trial, quick-witted and direct, often speaking her mind. She cranks out the babies as her familial duty requires.

But so far, my fave part of her life is her witty relationship with her husband (then suitor) John. He composed a letter to her called "Catalogue of your Faults." I can't help but quote the book.

In this letter John cautioned Abigail not to be "vexed, or fretted, or thrown into a Passion," but to "resolve upon a Reformation--for this is my sincere Aim." Having said this, he proceeded to list her faults: "In the first Place...you have been extreamly negligent, in attending so little to Cards." He hoped she would make a "better Figure in this elegant and necessary Accomplishment."
Second was "a certain Modesty, sensibility, Bashfulness...that enkindles Blushes...at every Violation of Decency in Company."

In the third place, she had never learned to sing. And fourth, "you very often hang your Head like a Bulrush. You do not sit erect as you ought," so "you appear too short for a Beauty, and the Company loses the sweet smiles of that Countenance and the bright sparkles of those Eyes. This Fault is the Effect and Consequence of another, still more inexcusable in a Lady. I mean an Habit of Reading, Writing and Thinking."

Yet another fault was that of sitting with legs crossed. This, he felt, "ruins the figure," and "injures the Health." This was the result, also, he added, of thinking too much.

He ended by telling her that for three weeks he had searched for more faults, "but more are not to be discovered. All the rest is bright and luminous."

Her response? That she's proud to continue in all her faults and that "a gentleman has no business to concern himself about the Leggs of a Lady."


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