“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
I’ve been going through Ron Chernow’s highly influential Washington: A Life (2010), one of the many biographies about America’s preeminent Founding Father, the first being Parson Weems’ The Life of Washington (1800).
One episode in the Chernow book really moved me, getting me to think about the masks we often don in order to hide how we really are before others, and what can be lost as a result.
The incident took place in 1783. The war with England was pretty much over. Though ill-armed, ill-clothed, ill-fed, ill-disciplined, and at times rather ill-led, the Americans—with indispensable help from the French—routed one of the world’s greatest militaries at the time.
At a cost, though. That March disgruntled soldiers and officers, frustrated by the incompetence of Congress (how little has changed), were about to stage a coup, mostly over having not been paid years’ worth of back salaries. After so much sacrifice and blood, these men feared that in peacetime (as one spokesman for them complained in a letter) they “might grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt.”
How serious these men were remains open to debate, though George Washington, worried enough (Alexander Hamilton had warned him that an army “was a dangerous instrument to play with”), met with the soldiers in Newburgh, New York, where they had already gathered. Washington hoped to quell what could have been catastrophic. Having just beaten the British, would the Americans destroy themselves with a military putsch from within?
Standing before the assembly, George Washington spoke strongly against those who advocated taking up arms against their country, an act so shocking that he said, “Humanity revolts at the idea.” Though at first castigating his officers, he stressed that because “I have been the constant companion and witness of your distresses and not among the last to feel and acknowledge your merits . . . it can scarcely be supposed at this late stage of the war that I am indifferent to [your] interests.”* In other words, instead of elevating himself above them, he portrayed himself as one of them. Little seemed to indicate, though, that he was making much headway.
Sometimes, dropping the masks and letting others see [our brokenness] can be helpful.
Then, to try to persuade them of congressional good intentions, General Washington started to read aloud a letter by Virginia congressman Joseph Jones. But he struggled with the opening words. Shocking the officers, who had never seen their commander like this, George Washington put on new spectacles that he had just bought precisely because his eyesight, from so much letter writing and reading during the revolution, was weakening. At 51 years old, and after eight long, hard years, Washington had greatly aged, and it showed.
“Gentlemen, you must pardon me,” he said. “I have grown gray in your service and now find myself growing blind.”
Wrote Chernow: “The disarming gesture of putting on the glasses moved the officers to tears as they recalled the legendary sacrifices he had made for his country. When he left the hall moments later, the threatened mutiny had ended, and his victory was complete. The officers approved a unanimous resolution stating they ‘reciprocated [Washington’s] affectionate expressions with the greatest sincerity of which the human heart is capable.’ ”
It’s hard for us today to realize the esteem and adulation, bordering on worship, that many early Americans had for George Washington. He had all but mythic status. His prestige, aristocratic bearing, and bravery, amid crisis after crisis, were essential to keep the revolution from floundering. Washington knew it, too, and had vigorously guarded this aura, which is why his moment of emotional nakedness, the dropping of the mask and exposing the tired, hurt, and aging man behind it, disarmed the troops and, perhaps, averted disaster.
To claim that this instant of vulnerability changed history might be claiming too much (though imagine the world today had early America been taken over by a military coup). If nothing else, it shows how much people appreciate raw authenticity, the baring of a broken soul, and what can be gained from it.
Paul, in Romans 3:9-19, quoting the Old Testament, hardly overstated the human condition. “There is none righteous, no, not one” (verse 10).We’re all broken sinners. “There is none who does good, no, not one” (verse 12). If not broken in the same places or in the same ways, we’re all still broken, and badly, too. “With their tongues they have practiced deceit” (verse 13). And sometimes, dropping the masks and letting others see can help, not just us (pretending to be what we aren’t gets emotionally wearing after a while), but also others realize that they aren’t alone in their hurt and brokenness. “Destruction and misery are in their ways” (verse 16).
This doesn’t mean exposing the darkest secrets of our souls (that’s for God alone); it means, instead, not pretending to be anything other than what we, and others, are—hurt, suffering, and aging people in need of grace not just from God but, as Washington’s experience showed, from others as well.
*Quotations taken from Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2010).
