USA > Washington DC > Washington DC > The Society of the Sons of the Revolution in the District of Columbia > Part 14
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Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd As home his footsteps he hath turn'd From wand'ring on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell -* *
To the vile dust from whence he sprung Unswept, unhonor'd and unsung.
When we feel the truth of those lines we have risen to the realm of exalted sentiment; we have got beyond the range of argument; we have reached the point from which supporting argument must start and against which adverse argument must break ; for no one can argue against a virtue, and if patriotism is not a virtue then neither is the family relation from which it springs a virtue. Patriotism means the feeling we have for our fatherland, and we call our country her or she as we do the mother who bore us and nurtured us. A patriot is "one whose ruling passion is his love of country," and if patriotism, or nationalism, be not a virtue then there are no virtues in this world.
It was told of Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, that when he was shown some loaded dice which had been found in the ruins of Pompeii he remarked that some of the virtues might be modern but all the vices were ancient. If this be true, then it may be possible that the virtue of patriotism, which is both ancient and modern, may sometime in the dim future be lost. It may go the way of certain human qualities which were once admired and now are not admired; but I insist that if it shall ever depart from among us its place will not be taken by the world-wide brotherhood of man and a world-wide love of humanity. Such altruism never has existed and never can exist so long as we are in a world of men-weak and imperfect men in a world of men as
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weak and imperfect as ourselves. No nation was ever made great by a love of humanity, my friends. Nations have been made strong and useful in the world by the patriotism of their members, and nations have become weak and useless when their members have ceased to love them. Hear what George Washington said when he advised his countrymen :
"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country that country has a right to concentrate your affections."
And hear him again, speaking in the fulness of his experience :
"There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. "Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which just pride ought to discard."
In other words, a nation should be true to itself and it cannot then be false to any nation.
Do not for an instant suppose that the loss of the virtue of nation- alism would give us in compensation that eternal peace of which the dreamers dream. In reality, it would only substitute internecine war for international war. Nothing is plainer than that the great bind- ing force of a society is some common idea which all the members of that society hold; and that nation is strongest in which all classes are held together by a common nationalism, so that the man who works with his hands and the man who works with his head, the professional man and the commercial man are all dominated by an unselfish devo- tion to the country of which they are a part. Take away that bind- ing force and society flies apart into the classes which constitute it, and you have the clash of class antagonism ; you have class hatred and something which it were base flattery to call class patriotism. In- stead of international competition you have substituted class competi- tion ; instead of international warfare you have substituted class war- fare.
At the close of our Revolution we had this very class warfare, and George Washington and his colleagues made a government which they hoped would render its recurrence impossible. In 1786 he saw Daniel Shays, a soldier of the Revolution, lead 2,000 working men in an attack upon the Government of Massachusetts. The methods of Shays' men and of similar dissatisfied elements throughout the country have a familiar look to us of the present day. There were bands, associations, voluntary gatherings of men, who reasoned that as this was a people's government it should do something to materially help the people. If the people's will was supreme they thought it should operate directly. In the way of their will stood the law and the courts, so they were opposed to law and the courts. They acted through committees who made their demands of legislatures and courts. They arrogated to themselves the title of "the people." In reality conditions were worse at that time than they are now. Shays, as I said, had 2,000 men under arms. Massachusetts was then a State of about 350,000 inhabitants. The State now has about ten times
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as many inhabitants. Governor Bowdoin sent 4,000 troops against Shays. Therefore, a Shays of the present day should have 20,000 men and the Governor would need an army of 40,000 men to oppose him. The upheaval of 1786 was only a little worse in Mass- achusetts than it was in other places. It existed everywhere in the country.
What saved us then? Why, the formation of the Constitution of the United States; the Constitution which gave the people of America a nationality. Its first words are: "We, the people of the United States." It created the body politic known as "the people of the United States." Before that there had been the people of thir- teen separate States; now we were to be one people. For the first time we were citizens of the United States; for the first time we had a sovereign American nation. What a pitiful thought it is that after one hundred and thirty-three years of this nationality, after fighting a dreadful civil war to maintain it, after having grown to a giant's strength because of it, there should be any among us who would wish to diminish or abandon it! And never forget this: Internationalism means the abandonment of nationalism, and carried to its logical con- clusion it would mean that the United States of America would be no more in the world than one of our States is in the American nation.
This is all I have to say, Gentlemen. Let this portrait of George Washington remind us that he made the office of President of the United States ; that he gave us a personal head to our nation, a human expression of our nationalism; that the office has not changed ; that we have not changed, but are as much Americans now as we were before the upheaval of the world from which we have just emerged; that before we had a nation we had a warfare of classes and that our Government was formed to prevent such warfare in the future; that it will be prevented as long as the predominant idea of all our classes is unselfish devotion to our nation ; that this is a human world and our nation must be prepared to defend itself against attempted aggression ; that patriotism, or nationalism, is the highest of the civic virtues, and to diminish or destroy it would be to substitute for it class antagonism and class warfare, such as arose among us before our nation was formed ; that the foe of nationalism is internationalism, which if it should ever prevail would destroy our nation. The portrait which we are presenting to you is the portrait of George Washington, the Nationalist.
(Turning to General Richards) .
General Richards, before we give this portrait to the Army and Navy Club, I ask your indulgence to make a suggestion to you as President of the Sons of the Revolution. Our Society ought to do something to show conspicuously that it is mindful of the fact that the Revolution and the Constitution are eternally linked together- that without the Constitution the Revolution would have resulted in
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failure and George Washington and our forefathers would have fought in vain. I ask you to consider this:
Underneath the bridge now building across the Potomac River at Georgetown, the Key Bridge, called after the author of our national anthem, flows the old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and near there is the terminus of that historic waterway. That canal is the physical evidence of the statesmanship which resulted in the formation of the Constitution. In 1784 the Potomac Company was formed to improve the navigation of the Potomac River, and the Potomac Company be- came in course of time the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company. It was a conference over the Potomac Company and its objects which brought the delegates from Virginia and Maryland together in a meet- ing at Washington's house at Mt. Vernon, which caused Maryland to propose a larger meeting which should include delegates from Dela- ware and Pennsylvania, those States being also interested in Potomac navigation. This caused Virginia to propose a meeting at Annapolis of representatives from all the States to consider trade regulations and the Annapolis meeting proposed the meeting at Philadelphia in 1787 which framed the Constitution. How striking and appropriate it would be if our Society should erect some monument or marker near the old canal to tell the many people who pass that way that out of the conferences concerning it had come the Government under which we live.
(Turning to General McIntyre).
General McIntyre, the relations between the Society of the Sons of the Revolution and the Army and Navy Club are intimate. Many of our members are also your members. Our President is also your Vice-President. Those of your members who wear our insignia do so without apology. They think it is a proper adornment to the American uniform; and especially so when it finds companionship in decorations which have been conferred upon the wearer for his own gallant and distinguished service in time of war. The medals which he has won himself are indeed set off by our medal, which shows that his descent is as honorable as his conduct and that his distinction began five generations ago. We can confidently hope that it will continue into the generations which are yet unborn.
We have been your guests on numerous occasions, and, speaking frankly, we hope to be your guests again. To leave upon your walls a visible expression of our appreciation of your kind hospitality we have obtained this fine portrait of our patron, General Washington, and now present it to you with the assurance of our thanks.
GENERAL MCINTYRE: In thanking the Sons of the Revolution for this beautiful gift to the Army and Navy Club, I wish first, to thank them for the charming and scholarly address which we have had the pleasure of listening to. It is indeed a great pleasure to receive this gift, and it comes particularly well from the Sons of the Revolu-
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tion. A portrait to be of the greatest value, should come from the person of whom it is the portrait, or from his family-it is impossible now to receive this portrait from the original, but we have done the next best thing. From no organization could we receive a picture of George Washington with the same meaning as from the Sons of the Revolution, who in a particular manner represent all that Washington represented in his day, and who keep his sentiments alive in our people.
George Washington was first a soldier, and after he had laid down the cares of life and retired, he became again a soldier. He was first a soldier and last a soldier, and always a gentleman, and in no place will his picture be more appreciated than in the Army and Navy Club. An inspiration to our young officers and a source of pride to the older officers, who can likewise hope in an emergency to do what Washington did in the later years of his life, when he again took up the command of the American Army.
I wish again in the name of the Army and Navy Club to thank you for this beautiful portrait; I thank you for the very scholarly address with which it has been presented, and now I will have the pleasure of asking Major Runcie if he will tell the members of the Club exactly what the picture is. I take pleasure in presenting Major Runcie.
MAJOR JAMES E. RUNCIE: Gentlemen, it is my fault that you have to listen to me in telling the story of this picture tonight. By reason of some important connection that I had with the duty of pro- curing the picture for the Sons of the Revolution, because this body suggested that a story of the picture would be interesting to the gen- tlemen gathered here tonight to receive it, I was asked to give some account of the picture.
The pedigree of the picture, naturally begins with its author, and although this picture is not by the hand of Gilbert Stuart, he, if not its father, is its progenitor, its grandfather. Gilbert Stuart was a native born expatriated American, who made his way to London, and there became the pupil of another famous painter, also an expatriated American, Benjamin West. In due course, Stuart reached the envi- able position of the foremost portrait painter of his time, the successor of the Sir Joshua Reynolds, and after attaining that eminence in his art, he found that the foremost man in all this world was George Washington, of his native country, and we Americans born on the soil rather take the eminence of Washington for granted in our own country. I think most of us fail until our attention is called to it, to recognize not only his eminence, but his preeminence in the whole world in his time. There was no other figure in the world in the time of Washington's later years, from the time of the War of Inde- pendence until his death that compared in stature, in dignity, and in significance with that of George Washington; that obtains in other lands, and I think that most of us are unaware of it. I did not realize it myself until a few months ago, being in my own town and having
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. GEORGE WASHINGTON.
GILBERT STUART.
THE ARMY ~ NAVY CLUB Apr 1) 30 1919
GEORGE WASHINGTON Das Poreine \1 . THE INVITED "TATE-
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an informal reunion with some old school boy friends, one of whom has long occupied an eminent position, and George Washington com- ing up as a subject of conversation, the judge said that early in his judiciary career, he had been surprised to find candidates or applicants for admission to citizenship of the United States who did not know the name of the President. It then occurred to him to ask who was the first President of the United States, and the reply was prompt and accurate. He has ever since in the case of every foreigner who applied for admission to the privileges of citizenship asked who was the first President of the United States, and he had never found one candidate who did not know George Washington. He might simply offer the pronunciation of his name; he might lack familiarity with our lan- guage or our history, but he not only knew who George Washington was, but he knew before he had come to make this country the land of his endeavors. That is by way of showing why Gilbert Stuart came to the conclusion that it was for him to make the portrait of Washington by which he should be known to all mankind at this time and to posterity thereafter.
'The demand for portraits of Washington was something incredible ; I believe it would be impossible to say how many portraits of Wash- ington were executed at that time, most of them bear no recognizable resemblance to Washington, but the eminence of the man and the power of his name were so great that anything that was labeled "Washington," satisfied people who wanted something to remind them of that great man. Feeling so, Stuart came back to the United States and, as he found, unfortunately at a time when Washington was tired of sitting for his portrait. He had been pestered by painters, sculp- tors, and engravers until he had said he would have no more to do with them. He had had life masks taken and he had been portrayed in every conceivable way, and he refused even an artist so eminent as Stuart, permission to make a portrait. Stuart, however, was more than a great artist, he was a Yankee from Rhode Island. He then assailed Mrs. Washington, and represented to her that all the por- traits that had been made of the President (or as Mrs. Washington always called him before he became President, Mr. Washington, I think you will nowhere find in all Washington's fame, was he known as General Washington, he was Mr. Washington until he became President, and then he was "The President") ; so it was represented to Mrs. Washington that there should be portraits of the President and his wife for the Washington family. The others were for public purposes, they were for Governments, for Governors, for Societies, for great collectors, for galleries, but these were to be portraits for the family, and yielding to the plea of his wife, Washington consented, and this we owe to Stuart. Whether it was his original design, or whether in the course of the sitting, Stuart saw an opportunity to provide for himself for the rest of his life, he determined that the Washington family should never have the portrait of Washington,
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and they never received it; it was never finished. It exists today in the collection of the Boston Atheneum in an unfinished state, with which most of us are probably familiar from the many reproductions of it that have been made. But the artist felt that so long as he had had an original taken from life, the demands for portraits of Wash- ington would keep him supplied, and he referred to it jocularly in con- versation as his "Ever renewable or perpetual hundred pound note."
When a real portrait of Washington was wanted after his decease, it was necessary to go to Stuart who would produce it; in that way he produced, well I don't know just how many, but more than forty, all of which are, in a sense, originals. They were widely distributed but most of them are now in the possession of galleries, libraries, historic societies, from which they will never be separated. At long intervals, one appears for sale. About a month ago one of Stuart's "hundred pound notes" was disposed of in New York for $75,000, which is good interest on a "hundred pound note." However, the President sat many times for the portrait, and then naturally wanted it delivered. He repeatedly called for it and was always put off. It still lacked the finishing touches; the painter was not quite satisfied with the expression. One pretention after another was availed of, until finally, the President, who at bottom was a man of temper, is reported to have said, "Mr. Stuart, when the portrait is finished, you may send it to me, but I will trouble you no more," and he did not, and Mr. Stuart never sent him the portrait. Stuart tells in his memoirs, in the manner of a portrait painter, that he endeavored to get his sub- ject interested in conversation and talk, and found it very difficult to get Washington to talk; he tried him on war, on local affairs, on politics, on history of the great events in which he had been a great part, but he was not interested. He finally got him to talk about horses, and George Washington knew a good horse and loved a good horse, and brightened up at once, and then Stuart made the portrait. It has been observed that there is something constrained about the mouth, which Stuart always explains is due to the fact that Washing- ton was one of the few citizens sufficiently opulent to be supplied with false teeth that did not fit. The strength of that character was then in its infancy, but false teeth were carved from ivory. Washington had a set which are still preserved as a valued memory of the great man in a museum over in Baltimore, and they account for whatever peculiarity of appearance that may be observed in the representation of the subject's mouth.
WVell, among those who probably contributed $500 to Stuart for an original or at least a replica of his original from life, was a prominent banker of Philadelphia of those times, named Engle, who kept the picture through his life and to whose widow after his death it passed. On her death and the settlement of her estate, it was purchased by one Harold F. Procklin of New York, from whom it passed by pur- chase to one Warner, also of New York, who among other possessions
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of his. was the owner of Constitution Island, the rocky old wooded headland opposite West Point. In the quaint old colonial house on Constitution Island, the picture hung for about 75 years; it was the most valued possession, the most highly cherished possession of the family. The daughters of Mr. Warner will be remembered by at least some of my fellow antiques here tonight as the author of pious books, books very popular, books that the younger generation knows nothing about. Other of my contemporaries will remember that Mrs. Warner was deeply interested in the moral and spiritual welfare of the U. S. Corps of Cadets and presided over Sunday Schools and Bible Classes that were held in the old dialectic hall ; many will remem- ber the quaint old three-wheeled "shays" which date back to Colonial Times in which she used to come over to West Point to minister to our spiritual welfare. The older of those two ladies died perhaps fifteen years ago, the younger survived up to about five years ago, and died at the age of ninety-two, and in her will, she bequeathed the original Stuart portrait to the Military Academy, or to the Corps of Cadets, in language which I think fitting to repeat to you.
Inasmuch as my sister and I agreed long ago that when our portrait of George Washington, painted by Stuart, left our hands, it should go where we thought it would do the most good for our native land, therefore I give and bequeath the same to the Superintendent of the U. S. Military Academy, at West Point, New York, for the special use of the Corps of Cadets at the Academy, on the condition that said picture be kept at the Military Reserva- tion at West Point, and placed where the cadets can have free access to see and to study it, so learning to love and revere the man who under God founded the institution to which they belong, but gave them the country which they have sworn to defend.
I think the memory of such a woman as testified by such a gift, is worthy to be cherished by every man in the Army, of the United States whether he ever saw West Point or not. We received the picture, then our troubles began. Among others, the State of New York served a citation upon us to show cause why we should not pay a tax to that state for the privilege of receiving the portrait of our founder, which had a market value of many thousands of dollars. It was necessary to make an appearance in court and plead in response to the citation. The patriotic character of the gift and of the institu- tion to which it was given, dismissed the validity of their plea, and we received this priceless portrait free from taxation at the hands of the state of New York. The picture had hung as I said I believe, in that ancient house which dates back to colonial times, over a fireplace in a low ceiled room. The smoke of the fires had accumulated along the picture and along the frame, and we were very fortunate to find an artist who was a disciple of Gilbert Stuart, who venerated Gilbert Stuart as we Americans venerate George Washington himself, and he undertook not to restore the picture in a sense of doing it over again, but to remove the marks of the hands of time and the smoke of that
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fireplace, and he did it miraculously, so that when the time came when a copy of the picture was wanted for another purpose, it was natural for us to turn to that artist and ask him to produce it ; he did so, and he did it with a love of the subject in his heart, and the admiration that he had for the great painter whom he followed with such a result that I tried the experiment of putting the original and the copy side by side in frames, and it was a mere toss of a coin from every observer as to which was the original and which was the copy.
It is to Arthur Dawson that we owe the merit of this copy which these gentlemen have presented to our Club tonight, and which I venture to say not half a dozen of us would be able to distinguish from the original if the original were here. It ought further to be said that there are countless portraits of Washington, fortunately, there are portraits which cover the greater part of his active life, the resem- blance can of course be traced through all of them. From the earliest portrait, it shows him at the age of 24 or 25 as a Virgina Colonel, and it is known as the "Virginia Colonel Portrait," down to the Stuart portrait, which is the last that has been made. It was observed at the time this portrait was made that it was a greater likeness of Wash- ington, perhaps it was; it represents Washington as the experienced and able artist saw his character, not the Washington who was the man of action, the man facing difficulties, the man triumphing over almost incredible obstacles, but the man with his life's work behind him, lofty, calm, and serene, and it is worthy of note that no other portrait of Washington is recognized at first glance. The Gilbert Stuart "Wash- ington," is recognized all over the world, it needs no label; this is the picture for which we are indebted to the courtesy and generosity of these gentlemen of the Sons of the Revolution, of the man who was not only the first man of our country, the first commander-in-Chief of our Army and our Navy, but who has been described not by an American, but by an Englishman, as the noblest figure that ever stood in front of the Nation's history.
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