Daddy in his skivvies
This artwork isn’t mine, I just weaseled it up a little. It’s an old advertising gimmick from a German lingerie maker. You don’t want to know what I was searching for when this turned up.
But I don’t want to talk about George Washington’s underpants, I want to talk about his false teeth. For I have seen them with mine own eyes, before they were stolen out of the Smithsonian in 1976. Thought you’d like to know that.
Actually, he had several pairs (and none of them made of wood). He had trouble with his teeth all his life. By inauguration day, the Father of our Country had one natural tooth left in his head (and when that went, he gave it to the dentist who had made his best pair of store-bought teeth)(whose name was Greenwood, so maybe that’s how ‘wood’ got associated with the august gentleman’s gnashers).
By the time Gilbert Stuart painted the famous portrait, Washington’s dentures were a source of constant misery. By some accounts, that’s why his mouth is swollen. But I’ve also read that they were so godawful painful, he took them out and stuffed his mouth with cotton balls, and that’s why his mouth is swollen.
But I have also read that Stuart and Washington detested each other on sight and the former wasn’t all that worried about making the latter look good. The original was deliberately left unfinished so that thousands and thousands of unflattering copies could be made and spread across the land.
Poor old George Washington. He was a heartthrob in his day.
p.s. I added the hearts.
February 10, 2014 — 8:18 pm
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