Washington [23]
It is commonly said that Washington stood six foot two or three, an estimate that gained currency after a doctor measured his corpse at six feet three and a half inches. Even though dozens of contemporaries pegged his height at only six feet, there is no need for any guesswork. Before the Revolutionary War, Washington ordered his clothes from London each year and had to describe his measurements with great accuracy. In a 1761 letter, he informed his remote tailor that “my stature is six feet, otherwise rather slender than corpulent,” and he never deviated from that formula.1 Obviously, Washington couldn’t afford to tell a fib about his height to his tailor. One can only surmise that when the doctor measured his cadaver, his toes were pointing outward, padding his height by several inches compared with his everyday stature.
Washington’s weight fluctuated between 175 pounds as a young man and 210 and 220 during the war years. From the time of his youth, he was powerfully rough-hewn and endowed with matchless strength. When he clenched his jaw, his cheek and jaw muscles seemed to ripple right through his skin. Even though he was exceedingly graceful, his body was oddly shaped, with a small head in proportion to his general frame. He possessed strong but narrow shoulders and wide, flaring hips with muscular thighs that made him a superb horseman. It was the long limbs and big bones, not the pinched torso, that hinted at superhuman strength, and his hands were so gigantic that he had to wear custom-made gloves. But the massive physique was never matched by a stentorian voice. The pleurisy that Washington suffered as a young man left him hollow-chested. Never a superior orator, Washington spoke with a weak, breathy voice that only exacerbated the problem.
Washington’s features were strong, blunt, and handsome. His nose was thick and flat and squared off at the bottom; it flamed a bright red in a wintry wind. Often easygoing with friends, he was praised by one companion for his “good nature and hatred of ceremony,” yet people spotted that his outward tranquillity was deceptive and that he had trained his face to mask his emotions.2 On the other hand, those potent emotions would repeatedly break through his well-composed facade at critical junctures throughout his career. In 1760 his friend and former aide George Mercer captured Washington’s constant struggle between his dignified reserve and his underlying feelings: “His features are regular and placid with all the muscles of his face under perfect control, though flexible and expressive of deep feeling when moved by emotions. In conversation, he looks you full in the face, is deliberate, deferential, and engaging. His demeanor at all times [is] composed and dignified. His movements and gestures are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid horseman.”3 So perfect was his posture that he was described as “as straight as an Indian.”4 Very particular about his appearance, he dressed in style while avoiding ostentation. At twenty-three, he told his brother Jack, “As wearing boots is quite the mode, and mine are in a declining state, I must beg the favour of you to procure me a pair that is good and neat.”5 Even at this early age, Washington suffered from tooth decay, perhaps contributing to some self-consciousness. As Mercer noted, “His mouth is large and generally firmly closed, but which from time to time discloses some defective teeth.”6
THROUGH HIS APPOINTMENT as district adjutant in February 1753, Washington was soon enmeshed in epochal events, as the British and French empires began to clash over their colonial possessions. In 1753 Britain’s North American colonies, mostly clustered along the eastern seaboard, inhabited a corridor flanked by the Atlantic Ocean and the Allegheny Mountains. French colonial holdings followed a sweeping arc from New Orleans to the southwest, up through the Mississippi River, into the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. When both major powers claimed control of the huge Ohio Country—covering present-day Ohio and Indiana, along