George had long hoped to emulate his admired brother, but now he would almost graft his life onto Lawrence’s, as if George would extend his brother’s short life and fulfill its golden promise. The older brother became a revered figure in George’s memory, “a young man of the most promising talents.”⁴⁸ Though George was poorly equipped for such a post, lacking military experience, he vigorously pursued the position of adjutant general left vacant by his brother’s death. Inspired by Lawrence’s example, he decided to swap a surveyor’s life for that of a soldier. The colony had now been divided into four districts, with an adjutant responsible for each. Naturally, George wanted to serve as adjutant in the district covering the Northern Neck. When he was awarded the Southern District instead, he seemed not thrilled by his assignment to an important post but dismayed by the low-prestige district.

At twenty, George already had enough powerful patrons in Williamsburg to jockey to alter the decision. When William Fitzhugh, who was named to the Northern Neck adjutancy, moved to Maryland, Washington saw an opening to lobby to replace him. “I am sensible my best endeavors will not be wanting and doubt not but by a constant application to fit myself for the office,” he wrote to Dinwiddie. “Could I presume your Honour had not in view a more deserving person, I flatter myself I should meet with the approbation of the Gentlemen of the council.”⁴⁹ The young Washington could be alternately fawning and assertive, appealingly modest and distressingly pushy. While he knew the social forms, he could never quite restrain, much less conceal, the unstoppable force of his ambition. In the end, Fitzhugh resigned his post and yielded the Northern Neck adjutancy to young Washington. In early February 1753, just before his twenty-first birthday, George Washington took the oath of office and became district adjutant, which paid one hundred pounds annually and crowned him with the title of Major Washington.

In his seemingly inexorable rise in the world, Washington proved no less resourceful in the social sphere. In September 1752 a new Masonic lodge was convened in Fredericksburg, and two months later Washington was inducted as one of its first apprentices. Within a year he progressed swiftly through the ranks to become a Master Mason. We don’t know how Washington reacted to the fraternal group’s arcane rituals and occult signs. Still a relatively young movement, Freemasonry had been founded in London in 1717, drawing its symbols from the squares and compasses of masons’ guilds. While American Masons preached the Enlightenment ideals of universal brotherhood and equality, they discarded the anticlerical bent of their European brethren. Washington believed devoutly in the group’s high-minded values. He attended lodge meetings sporadically, came to own two Masonic aprons, walked in Masonic processions, and was even painted in full Masonic regalia during his second term as president. Repeatedly throughout his career, he paid tribute to the movement. “So far as I am acquainted with the principles and doctrines of Free Masonry,” he said toward the end of his life, “I conceive it to be founded in benevolence and to be exercised only for the good of Mankind.”⁵⁰ On another occasion, he stated that the purpose of Freemasonry was to “enlarge the sphere of social happiness” and “to promote the happiness of the human race.”⁵¹ Whatever credence he gave to Masonic ideals, the young George Washington, a born joiner, was likely drawn to the group as a convivial place to hobnob and expand his social contacts.

What strikes one most about the twenty-year-old George Washington was that his sudden remarkable standing in the world was the result not so much of a slow, agonizing progress as of a series of rapid, abrupt leaps that thrust him into the topmost echelons of Virginia society. The deaths of those he loved most dearly had, ironically, brightened his prospects the most. Quite contrary to his own wishes, the untimely deaths of his father and his half brother had endowed him with extraordinary advantages in the form of land, slaves, and social status. Every misfortune only pushed him further along his desired path. Most providential of all for him was that Lawrence Washington had expired on the eve of the French and Indian War, a conflict in which George’s newfound status as district adjutant would place him squarely at the forefront of a thunderous global confrontation.

CHAPTER THREE

Wilderness Mission

THROUGHOUT HIS CAREER, George Washington had the imposing face and virile form that suited a commanding leader. His most delicate feature was a complexion fair enough to sunburn easily; to shield him from sunlight in later years, he rode around Mount Vernon with an umbrella fastened to his saddle bow. The mild, deep-set eyes, of a pale grayish blue, seemed to glow with an inner fire whenever he grew excited. When Gilbert Stuart painted them a more brilliant blue, he explained that in a hundred years they would fade to the right color.

Washington’s hair was reddish brown, and contrary to a common belief, he never wore a wig. The illusion that he did so derived from the powder that he sprinkled on his hair with a puffball in later life. He wore his long hair tied up in a black ribbon, knotted at the nape, in an arrangement called a queue. However formal it looks to modern eyes, the style was favored by military officers. Pulling the hair back also broadened the forehead and lent him an air of martial nobility. Once his hair was drawn into a queue (or sometimes a silk bag) behind him, the side hairs were fluffed out into twin projecting wings, furthering the appearance of a wig.

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