The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty

by Susan Page

America. (Her husband was not a fan of the group. In a letter to a friend, Marvin described the Garden Club as “an association of the snottiest outfits engaged in that sort of work.”) Local newspaper gossip columns faithfully recorded the teas, luncheons, dinners, and debutante parties she hosted or attended at their club, the Apawamis—a nice club, to be sure, but not the most elite. She fretted about her family’s social standing and spent more money than they had to spare. Even those who loved her acknowledged she had little apparent sense of humor. “Mrs. Pierce, she was tough to get along with,” recalled William “Bucky” Bush, George Bush’s youngest brother. “She was kind of a gloomy person, and she thought Martha, Barbara’s older sister, had hung the moon—tall and beautiful and long, curly hair. Barbara got kind of second shrift with her mother, which I don’t think she ever got over,” he told me. But he described Barbara’s father as “a really all-time wonderful man—bright, funny, literate, well-read, beautiful athlete and just fun to be around.” Pauline Pierce could hardly have

pointed than funny. When she went to summer camp at age twelve, Barbara recalled with chagrin, she weighed 148 pounds. In her memoir, Barbara’s fondest childhood memories seemed to revolve around eating. “The best food in the world came out of our kitchen,” she wrote, prepared not by her mother but by the household staff of two. On Sundays, when the cook had the afternoon off, the Pierce family would eat a big lunch—“baked chicken with the world’s best stuffing and mashed potatoes”—and make do in the evening with graham crackers and cream. “A glorious dish,” she exulted. In a youthful episode that became family lore, Barbara at age ten bought a can of Marshmallow Fluff—the name is an apt clue of its sticky sweetness—and happily dug into the tin with her fingers to eat as she walked home. By the time she arrived there, her mother had gotten three phone calls from neighbors reporting the cute scene. “Mother did not think it was quite so cute,” she recalled. Pauline felt humiliated. Barbara became violently sick. She could never bring herself to eat Marshmallow Fluff again. The friction between them was hard to miss, especially given how Pauline doted on her older daughter.

in the Bronx shortly before Barbara was