I have a special relationship with George Washington that goes back as far as I can remember. It originated not from tales of patriotic or moral virtue, but rather from the excitement of crossing the George Washington Bridge several times a year. My childhood artwork is full of drawings of the bridge. I even wrote and performed a song about it. Hildegarde Swift’s 1942 children’s book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge still occupies a prominent place on my bookshelf today.
As I grew, my affinity for the bridge led others to associate me with its namesake. I leaned into it. Washington was certainly an impressive figure, but my connection to him having begun with a bridge built long after his death means I’ve never taken the association too seriously. In that spirit, I’ve collected a few stories about the man that I find particularly amusing:
In Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution, Simon Schama mentions the publication of Portraits des Grands Hommes Illustres de la France, an anthology of patriotic heroes in the late 1780s. One prominent plate from 1786 celebrates Louis XVI as the benefactor of American independence, showing him alongside Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and the personification of America, who holds aloft the hat of liberty while trampling a British imperial beast.
Curiously, the plate misspells Washington’s name as “Waginston”. That has always amused me, to the point of chuckling out loud.
There’s a small bathroom off my home office that rarely gets used by anyone but me. As a result, “Dad’s bathroom” is sparsely decorated and has a utilitarian feel.
As a Christmas present this past year, my kids used AI to generate this image. They had it printed and presented it to me with the suggestion that it would go perfectly above the toilet in that bathroom. And it does.
Speaking of pictures of George Washington near toilets, Abraham Lincoln was fond of telling an apocryphal story about Ethan Allen’s visit to England in 1783. Daniel Day-Lewis performs its telling in the movie Lincoln:
It was right after the Revolution, right after peace had been concluded. And Ethan Allen went to London to help our new country conduct its business with the king. The English sneered at how rough we are and rude and simple-minded and on like that, everywhere he went. ’Til one day he was invited to the townhouse of a great English lord. Dinner was served, beverages imbibed, time passed as happens and Mr. Allen found he needed the privy. He was grateful to be directed thence. Relieved, you might say. Mr. Allen discovered on entering the water closet that the only decoration therein was a portrait of George Washington. Ethan Allen done what he came to do and returned to the drawing room. His host and the others were disappointed when he didn’t mention Washington’s portrait. And finally his lordship couldn’t resist and asked Mr. Allen had he noticed it - the picture of Washington. He had. Well what did he think of its placement? Did it seem appropriately located to Mr. Allen? And Mr. Allen said it did. The host was astounded. “Appropriate? George Washington’s likeness in a water closet?” “Yes,” said Mr. Allen, “where it will do good service. The whole world knows nothing will make an Englishman shit quicker than the sight of George Washington.”