WASHINGTON' S FUNNY BONE
If you take a long, careful look at Gilbert Stuart's best known portrait of our first President George Washington, you can detect a bright gleam of good humor in his eye. I first noticed it many years ago when, our school tablets and notebooks had that picture on the cover. Then, in England in 1944, as I was descending a flight of steps too elegant to be calla stairway at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, when, at the base of the descending flight or riser sections I came upon George - the original from their Gilbert Stuart collection. It was good to see him so far from home, and I swear George smiled at me.
“Parson” Weems,, born as Mason Locke Weems at Ann Arundal, Maryland in 1759, but associated in most people's minds with Vermont where he became an Anglican minister, writer, story teller and tract producer He must have notice that happy glint in George Washington's eye for when he wrote a tract convening the life of the First President he included bits of information not found in other biographies of the man from Mount Vernon. He used materials attributed to little George which seem to have come largely from his own imagination. The tale of little George chopping down his father's prized cherry tree and saying grown-up things about honesty and steadfastness when accused of the deed is one of such literary liberties he seems to have taken. He quotes George Washington';s father, as well. He had never punished the boy and was pleased with his statement concerning truth as being proof of his paternal skill in raising the lad. Weems painted both in [purest terms.
Artist Grant Woods painted a visible version of the Cherry Tree incident which details the activity.
George Washington, according to his own diaries and personal papers, was always ready for a good joke, and I particularly like the humorous treatment he inflicted on General Cornwallis at Yorktown.
When Cornwallis was forced to surrender to Washington he refused to do so personally. He delegated the act of presenting the symbolic sword to the American victor to an underling. I have not read if Cornwallis was present but if within hearing distance he had a message from George anyway. There was ceremonial music by the continental band and it was George Washington who asked them to play “Yankee Doodle”.
That song had originally been a British one, using the old tune of “Lucy Lockett”, put together by Dr. Richard Shuckburgh, a British Army surgeon. The British enjoyed singing the lyrics which satirized the American rag-tag army with whom they have been associated during the French and War. The song ridiculed of the untrained, gangly, uncouth and oft riotous Yankees who peopled the Colonies. The words were intended to be insulting. -and in three ways, too. The word Yankee is from a Cherokee Indian word “eankka” meaning “coward” or “slave”;“macaroni” had nothing to do with pasta - it meant “a fop” or “a dandy”. The word ”doodle” meant “fool” or ”slow-witted”.
Instead of the American being insulted., they liked the ditty and at the Battle of Bunker/Breeds' Hill they devised their own version of what they thought the lyrics should say and it became a sort of battle hymn to many of them. George Washington, who must have had other choices, instructed the band to play “Yankee Doodle” as the background music. It must have rankled, not only the British troops present, but m'Lord Cornwallis, as well, to be reminded that the rag-tag, make-do army they ridiculed as being totally incompetent, had bested them on the battlefield.
Can't you just see the mischievous glint in George's eye when he gave the order that the tune was to be drummed a fifed to all the world during the solemn ceremonies.
The Yankee Doodle man so despised by Cornwallis and his crew had defeated the finest the redcoats could bring forth. It is good that we can see some humor in Georges request. That devilish glint in his portrait eye has meaning to all of us.
A.L.M. July 1, 2003 [c773wds]
