The Frank B. Carpenter Dinner
Tribute to the painter Frank B. Carpenter.

by Robert G. Ingersoll
(1892)

From The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll (Dresden Edition, 1900–1902), Volume 12.
Source: https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/frank-b-carpenter-dinner/
Public domain. CC0 / Public Domain Mark 1.0.

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The Frank B. Carpenter Dinner

New York, December 1, 1891
  • There was a notable gathering of leading artists, authors,
    scientists, journalists, lawyer, clergymen and other
    professional men at Sherry's last evening. The occasion was
    a dinner tendered to Mr. F. B. Carpenter, the famous
    portrait and portrait group artist, by his immediate friends
    to celebrate the completion of his new historical painting,
    entitled "International Arbitration," which is to be sent to
    Queen Victoria next week as the gift of a wealthy American
    lady. No such tribute has ever been paid before to an artist
    of-this country. Let us hope that the extraordinary
    attention thus paid to Mr. Carpenter will give our "English
    cousins" some idea of how he is prized and his work indorsed
    at home. The dinner to Mr. Carpenter was a great success—
    most enjoyable in every way. The table was laid in the form
    ol a horse shoe with a train of smilax, and sweet flowers
    extending the entire length of the table, amid pots of
    chrysanthemums and roses. Ex-Minister Andrew D White
    presided in the absence of John Russell
    Young..........Mr. White said: "During the entire course of
    these proceedings we have been endeavoring to find a
    representative of the great Fourth Estate who would present
    its claims in relation to arbitration on this occasion.
    There are present men whose names are household words in
    connection with the press throughout this land. There is
    certainly one distinguished as orator: there is another
    distinguished as a scholar. But they prefer to be silent. We
    will therefore consider that the toast of 'The Press in
    Connection with War and Peace' has been duly honored
    although it has not been responded to, and now there is one
    subject which I think you will consider as coming strangely
    at this late hour. It is a renewal of the subject with which
    we began, and I am to ask to speak to it a man who is
    admired and feared throughout the country. At one moment he
    smashes the most cherished convictions of the country, and
    at another he raises our highest aspirations for the future
    of humanity.
    "It happened several years ago that I was crossing the
    Atlantic, and when I had sufficiently recovered from
    seasickness to sit out on the deck I came across Colonel
    Ingersoll, and of all subjects of discussion you can imagine
    we fell upon the subject of art, and we went at it hot and
    heavy. So I said to him to-night that I had a rod in pickle
    for him and that he was not to know anything about it until
    it was displayed.
    "I now call upon him to talk to us about art, and if he
    talks now as he talked on the deck of the steamer I do not
    know whether it would clear the room, but it would make a
    sensation in this State and country. I have great pleasure
    in announcing Colonel Ingersoll, to speak on the subject of
    art—or on any other subject, for no matter upon what he
    speaks his words are always welcome."
    New York Press, December 2, 1891.

TOAST: ART.

I PRESUME I take about as much interest in what that picture represents
as anybody else. I believe that it has been said this evening that the
world will never be civilized so long as differences between nations
are settled by gun or cannon or sword. Barbarians still settle their
personal differences with clubs or arms, and finally, when they agree
to submit their differences to their peers, to a court, we call them
civilized. Now, nations sustain the same relations to each other that
barbarians sustain; that is, they settle their differences by force;
each nation being the judge of the righteousness of its cause, and its
judgment depending entirely—or for the most part—on its strength; and
the strongest nation is the nearest right. Now, until nations submit
their differences to an international court—a court with the power to
carry its judgment into effect by having the armies and navies of all
the rest of the world pledged to support it—the world will not be
civilized. Our differences will not be settled by arbitration until more
of the great nations set the example, and until that is done, I am in
favor of the United States being armed. Until that is done it will give
me joy to know that another magnificent man-of-war has been launched
upon our waters. And I will tell you why. Look again at that picture.
There is another face; it is not painted there, and yet without it
that picture would not have been painted, and that is the face of U.
S. Grant. The olive branch, to be of any force, to be of any beneficent
power, must be offered by the mailed hand. It must be offered by a
nation which has back of the olive branch the force. It cannot be
offered by weakness, because then it will excite only ridicule. The
powerful, the imperial, must offer that branch. Then it will be accepted
in the true spirit; otherwise not. So, until the world is a little more
civilized I am in favor of the largest guns that can be made and the
best navy that floats. I do not want any navy unless we have the best,
because if you have a poor one you will simply make a present of it to
the enemy as soon as war opens. We should be ready to defend ourselves
against the world. Not that I think there is going to be any war, but
because I think that is the best way to prevent it. Until the whole
world shall have entered into the same spirit as the artist when he
painted that picture, until that spirit becomes general we have got to
be prepared for war. And we cannot depend upon war suasion. If a fleet
of men-of-war should sail into our harbor, talk would not be of any
good; we must be ready to answer them in their own way.

I suppose I have been selected to speak on art because I can speak on
that subject without prejudice, knowing nothing about it. I have on this
subject no hobbies, no pet theories, and consequently will give you not
what I know, but what I think. I am an Agnostic in many things, and the
way I understand art is this: In the first place we are all invisible
to each other. There is something called soul; something that thinks and
hopes and loves. It is never seen. It occupies a world that we call the
brain, and is forever, so far as we know, invisible. Each soul lives in
a world of its own, and it endeavors to communicate with another soul
living in a world of its own, each invisible to the other, and it does
this in a variety of ways. That is the noblest art which expresses the
noblest thought, that gives to another the noblest emotions that this
unseen soul has. In order to do this we have to seize upon the seen, the
visible. In other words, nature is a vast dictionary that we use simply
to convey from one invisible world to another what happens in our
invisible world. The man that lives in the greatest world and succeeds
in letting other worlds know what happens in his world, is the greatest
artist.

I believe that all arts have the same father and the same mother, and no
matter whether you express what happens in these unseen worlds in mere
words—because nearly all pictures have been made with words—or whether
you express it in marble, or form and color in what we call painting, it
is to carry on that commerce between these invisible worlds, and he is
the greatest artist who expresses the tenderest, noblest thoughts to
the unseen worlds about him. So that all art consists in this commerce,
every soul being an artist and every brain that is worth talking about
being an art gallery, and there is no gallery in this world, not in the
Vatican or the Louvre or any other place, comparable with the gallery
in every great brain. The millions of pictures that are in every
brain to-night; the landscapes, the faces, the groups, the millions of
millions of millions of things that are now living here in every brain,
all unseen, all invisible forever! Yet we communicate with each other by
showing each other these pictures, these studies, and by inviting others
into our galleries and showing them what we have, and the greatest
artist is he who has the most pictures to show to other artists.

I love anything in art that suggests the tender, the beautiful. What is
beauty? Of course there is no absolute beauty. All beauty is relative.
Probably the most beautiful thing to a frog is the speckled belly of
another frog, or to a snake the markings of another snake. So there
is no such thing as absolute beauty. But what I call beauty is what
suggests to me the highest and the tenderest thought; something that
answers to something in my world. So every work of art has to be born in
some brain, and it must be made by the unseen artist we call the soul.
Now, if a man simply copies what he sees, he is nothing but a copyist.
That does not require genius. That requires industry and the habit of
observation. But it is not genius; it is not art. Those little daubs and
shreds and patches we get by copying, are pieces of iron that need to be
put into the flame of genius to be molten and then cast in noble forms;
otherwise there is no genius.

The great picture should have, not only the technical part of art, which
is neither moral nor immoral, but in addition some great thought, some
great event. It should contain not only a history but a prophecy. There
should be in it soul, feeling, thought I love those little pictures of
the home, of the fireside, of the old lady, boiling the kettle, the
vine running over the cottage door, scenes suggesting to me happiness,
contentment. I think more of them than of the great war pieces, and I
hope I shall have a few years in some such scenes, during which I shall
not care what time it is, what day of the week or month it is. Just that
feeling of content when it is enough to live, to breathe, to have the
blue sky above you and to hear the music of the water. All art that
gives us that content, that delight, enriches this world and makes life
better and holier.

That, in a general kind of way, as I said before, is my idea of art, and
I hope that the artists of America—and they ought to be as good here as
in any place on earth—will grow day by day and year by year independent
of all other art in the world, and be true to the American or republican
spirit always. As to this picture, it is representative, it is American.
There is one word Mr. Daniel Dougherty said to which I would like to
refer. I have never said very much in my life in defence of England, at
the same time I have never blamed England for being against us during
our war, and I will tell you why. We had been a nation of hypocrites. We
pretended to be in favor of liberty and yet we had four or five millions
of our people enslaved. That was a very awkward position. We had
bloodhounds to hunt human beings and the apostles setting them on; and
while this was going on these poor wretches sought and found liberty
on British soil. Now, why not be honest about it? We were rather a
contemptible people, though Mr. Dougherty thinks the English were wholly
at fault. But England abolished the slave-trade in 1803; she abolished
slavery in her colonies in 1833. We were lagging behind. That is all
there is about it. No matter why, we put ourselves in the position of
pretending to be a free people while we had millions of slaves, and it
was only natural that England should dislike it.

I think the chairman said that there had been no great historic picture
of the signing of the Constitution. There never should be, never! It was
fit, it was proper, to have a picture of the signing of the Declaration
of Independence. That was an honest document. Our people wanted to give
a good reason for fighting Great Britain, and in order to do that they
had to dig down to the bed-rock of human rights, and then they said all
men are created equal. But just as soon as we got our independence
we made a Constitution that gave the lie to the Declaration of
Independence, and that is why the signing of the Constitution never
ought to be painted. We put in that Constitution a clause that the
slave-trade should not be interfered with for years, and another clause
that this entire Government was pledged to hand back to slavery any poor
woman with a child at her breast, seeking freedom by flight. It was a
very poor document. A little while ago they celebrated the one hundredth
anniversary of that business and talked about the Constitution being
such a wonderful thing; yet what was in that Constitution brought on the
most terrible civil war ever known, and during that war they said: "Give
us the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was." And I said then:
"Curse the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was. Don't talk
to me about fighting for a Constitution that has brought on a war like
this; let us make a new one." No, I am in favor of a painting that
would celebrate the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution that
declares that there shall be no more slavery on this soil.

I believe that we are getting a little more free every day—a little
more sensible all the time. A few years ago a woman in Germany made a
speech, in which she asked: "Why should the German mother in pain and
agony give birth to a child and rear that child through industry and
poverty, and teach him that when he arrives at the age of twenty-one it
will be his duty to kill the child of the French mother? And why should
the French mother teach her son, that it will be his duty sometime to
kill the child of the German mother?" There is more sense in that than
in all the diplomacy I ever read, and I think the time is coming when
that question will be asked by every mother—Why should she raise a
child to kill the child of another mother?

The time is coming when we will do away with all this. Man has been
taught that he ought to fight for the country where he was born; no
matter about that country being wrong, whether it supported him or not,
whether it enslaved him and trampled on every right he had, still it was
his duty to march up in support of that country. The time will come when
the man will make up his mind himself whether the country is worth
while fighting for, and he is the greatest patriot who seeks to make
his country worth fighting for, and not he who says, I am for it anyhow,
whether it is right or not. These patriots will be the force Mr. George
was speaking about. If war between this country and Great Britain were
declared, and there were men in both countries sufficient to take a
right view of it, that would be the end of war. The thing would be
settled by arbitration—settled by some court—and no one would dream of
rushing to the field of battle. So, that is my hope for the world; more
policy, more good, solid, sound sense and less mud patriotism.

I think that this country is going to grow. I think it will take in Mr.
Wiman's country. I do not mean that we are going to take any country.
I mean that they are going to come to us. I do not believe in conquest.
Canada will come just as soon as it is to her interest to come, and I
think she will come or be a great country to herself. I do not believe
in those people, intelligent as they are, sending three thousand miles
for information they have at home. I do not believe in their being
governed by anybody except themselves. So if they come we shall be glad
to have them, if they don't want to come I don't want them.

Yes, we are growing. I don't know how many millions of people we have
now, probably over sixty-two if they all get counted; and they are still
coming. I expect to live to see one hundred millions here. I know some
say that we are getting too many foreigners, but I say the more that
come the better. We have got to have somebody to take the places of the
sons of our rich people. So I say let them come. There is plenty of land
here, everywhere. I say to the people of every country, come; do your
work here, and we will protect you against other countries. We will give
you all the work to supply yourselves and your neighbors.

Then if we have differences with another country we shall have a strong
navy, big ships, big guns, magnificent men and plenty of them, and if we
put out the hand of fellowship and friendship they will know there is
no foolishness about it. They will know we are not asking any favor. We
will just say: We want peace, and we tell you over the glistening leaves
of this olive branch that if you don't compromise we will mop the earth
with you.

That is the sort of arbitration I believe in, and it is the only sort,
in my judgment, that will be effectual for all time. And I hope that we
may still grow, and grow more and more artistic, and more and more
in favor of peace, and I pray that we may finally arrive at being
absolutely worthy of having presented that picture, with all that it
implies, to the most warlike nation in the world—to the nation that
first sends the gospel and then the musket immediately after, and says:
You have got to be civilized, and the only evidence of civilization that
you can give is to buy our goods and to buy them now, and to pay for
them. I wish us to be worthy of the picture presented to such a nation,
and my prayer is that America may be worthy to have sent such a token
in such a spirit, and my second prayer is that England may be worthy
to receive it and to keep it, and that she may receive it in the same
spirit that it is sent.

I am glad that it is to be sent by a woman. The gentleman who spoke to
the toast, "Woman as a Peacemaker," seemed to believe that woman brought
all the sorrows that ever happened, not only of war, but troubles of
every kind. I want to say to him that I would rather live with the woman
I love in a world of war, in a world full of troubles and sorrows,
than to live in heaven with nobody but men. I believe that woman is a
peacemaker, and so I am glad that a woman presents this token to another
woman; and woman is a far higher title than queen, in my judgment; far
higher. There are no higher titles than woman, mother, wife, sister, and
when they come to calling them countesses and duchesses and queens, that
is all rot. That adds nothing to that unseen artist who inhabits the
world called the brain. That unseen artist is great by nature and cannot
be made greater by the addition of titles. And so one woman gives to
another woman the picture that prophesies war is finally to cease,
and the civilized nations of the world will henceforth arbitrate their
differences and no longer strew the plains with corpses of brethren.
That is the supreme lesson that is taught by this picture, and I
congratulate Mr. Carpenter that his name is associated with it and
also with the "Proclamation of Emancipation." In the latter work he has
associated his name with that of Lincoln, which is the greatest name
in history, and the gentlest memory in this world. Mr. Carpenter has
associated his name with that and with this and with that of General
Grant, for I say that this picture would never have been possible had
there not been behind it Grant; if there had not been behind it the
victorious armies of the North and the great armies of the South, that
would have united instantly to repel any foreign foe.
