Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals Volume I Part 29

"Ever since I left you at New Haven I have been over head and ears in arrangements of every kind. It is the busiest time of the whole year as it regards the National Academy. We have got through the arrangement of our exhibition and yesterday opened it to the guests of the Academy. We had the first people in the city, ladies and gentlemen, thronging the room all day, and the voice of all seemed to be--'It is the best exhibition of the kind that has been seen in the city.'

"I am now arranging my rooms; they are very fine ones. I shall be through in a few days, and then I hope to be able to come up and see you, for I feel very anxious about you, my dear mother. I do most sincerely sympathize with you in your troubles and long to come up and take some of the care and burden from you, and will do it as soon as my affairs here can be arranged so that I can leave them without serious detriment to them.... What a siege you must have had with your _help_, as it is most strangely called in New Haven. I am too aristocratic for such doings as _help_ would make those who live in New Haven endure. Ardently as I am attached to New Haven the plague of _help_ will probably always prevent my living there again, for I would not put up with 'the world turned upside down,' and therefore should give offense to their _helpinesses_, and so lead a very uncomfortable life."

From this our suspicion is strengthened that the servant question belongs to no time or country, but is and always has been a perennial and ubiquitous problem.

"_May 11, 1888._ I feel very anxious about you, dear mother. I heard through Mr. Van Rensselaer that you were better, and I hope that you will yet see many good days on earth and be happy in the affection of your children and friends here, before you go, a little before them, to join those in heaven."

While expressing anxiety about his mother's health, he could not have considered her condition critical, for on the 18th of May he writes again:--

"I did hope so to make my arrangements as to have been with you in New Haven yesterday and to-day, but I am so situated as to be unable to leave the city without great detriment to my business.... Unless, therefore, there is something of pressing necessity, prudence would dictate to me to take advantage of this season, which has generally been the most profitable to others in the profession, and see if I cannot get my share of something to do. It is a great struggle with me to know what I ought to do. Your situation and that of the family draw me to New Haven; the state of my finances keeps me here. I will come, however, if, on the whole, you think it best."

Again are the records silent as to whether the visit was paid or not, but his anxiety was well founded, for his mother's appointed time had come, and just ten days later, on the 28th of May, 1828, she died at the age of sixty-two.

Thus within the s.p.a.ce of three years the hand of death had removed the three beings whom Morse loved best. His mother, while, as we have seen, stern and uncompromising in her Puritan principles, yet possessed the faculty of winning the love as well as the respect of her family and friends. Dr. Todd said of her home: "An orphan myself and never having a home, I have gone away from Dr. Morse's house in tears, feeling that such a home must be more like heaven than anything of which I could conceive."

Mr. Prime, in his biography of Morse, thus pays tribute to her:--

"Two persons more unlike in temperament, it is said, could not have been united in love and marriage than the parents of Morse. The husband was sanguine, impulsive, resolute, regardless of difficulties and danger. She was calm, judicious, cautious, and reflecting. And she, too, had a will of her own. One day she was expressing to one of the parish her intense displeasure with the treatment her husband had received, when Dr. Morse gently laid his hand upon her shoulder and said, 'My dear, you know we must throw the mantle of charity over the imperfections of others.' And she replied with becoming spirit, 'Mr. Morse, charity is not a fool.'"

In the summer of 1828, Morse spent some time in central New York, visiting relatives and painting portraits when the occasion offered. He thus describes a narrow escape from serious injury, or even death, in a letter to his brother Sidney, dated Utica, August 17, 1828:--

"In coming from Whitesboro on Friday I met with an accident and a most narrow escape with my life. The horse, which had been tackled into the wagon, was a vicious horse and had several times run away, to the danger of Mr. Dexter's life and others of the family. I was not aware of this or I should not have consented to go with him, much less to drive him myself.

"I was alone in the wagon with my baggage, and the horse went very well for about a mile, when he gradually quickened his pace and then set out, in spite of all check, on the full run. I kept him in the road, determined to let him run himself tired as the only safe alternative; but just as I came in sight of a piece of the road which had been concealed by an angle, there was a heavy wagon which I must meet so soon that, in order to avoid it, I must give it the whole road.

"This being very narrow, and the ditches and banks on each side very rough, I instantly made up my mind to a serious accident. As well as the velocity of the horse would allow me, however, I kept him on the side, rough as it was, for about a quarter of a mile pretty steadily, expecting, however, to upset every minute; when all at once I saw before me an abrupt, narrow, deep gully into which the wheels on one side were just upon the point of going down. It flashed across me in an instant that, if I could throw the horse down into the ditch, the wheels of the wagon might, perhaps, rest equipoised on each side, and, perhaps, break the horse loose from the wagon.

"I pulled the rein and accomplished the object in part. The sudden plunge of the horse into the gully broke him loose from the wagon, but it at the same time turned one of the fore wheels into the gully, which upset the wagon and threw me forwards at the moment when the horse threw up his heels, just taking off my hat and leaving me in the bottom of the gully.

I fell on my left shoulder, and, although muddied from head to foot, I escaped without any injury whatever; I was not even jarred painfully. I found my shoulder a little bruised, my wrist very slightly scratched, and yesterday was a little, and but very little, stiffened in my limbs, and to-day have not the slightest feeling of bruise about me, but think I feel better than I have for a long time. Indeed, my health is entirely restored; the riding and country air have been the means of restoring me.

I have great cause of thankfulness for so much mercy and for such special preserving care."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETH A. MORSE Painted by Morse]

The historian or the biographer who is earnestly desirous of presenting an absolutely truthful picture of men and of events is aided in his task by taking into account the character of the men who have made history. He must ask the question: "Is it conceivable that this man could have acted thus and so under such and such circ.u.mstances when his character, as ultimately revealed through the perspective of time, has been established? Could Was.h.i.+ngton and Lincoln, for example, have been actuated by the motives attributed to them by their enemies?"

Like all men who have become s.h.i.+ning marks in the annals of history, Morse could not hope to escape calumny, and in later years he was accused of actions, and motives were imputed to him, which it becomes the duty of his biographer to disprove on the broad ground of moral impossibility.

Among his letters and papers are many rough drafts of thoughts and observations on many subjects, interlined and annotated. Some were afterwards elaborated into letters, articles, or lectures; others seem to have been the thought of the moment, which he yet deemed worth writing down, and which, perhaps better than anything else, reveal the true character of the man.

The following was written by him in pencil on Sunday, September 6, 1829, at Cooperstown, New York:--

"That temptations surround us at every moment is too evident to require proof. If they cease from without they still act upon us from within ourselves, and our most secret thoughts may as surely be drawn from the path of duty by secret temptation, by the admission of evil suggestions, and they will affect our characters as injuriously as those more palpable and tangible temptations that attack our sense.

"This life is a state of discipline; a school in which to form character.

There is not an event that comes to our knowledge, not a sentence that we read, not a person with whom we converse, not an act of our lives, in short, not a thought which we conceive, but is acting upon and moulding that character into a shape of good or evil; and, however unconscious we may be of the fact, a thought, casually conceived in the solitariness and silence and darkness of midnight, may so modify and change the current of our future conduct that a blessing or a curse to millions may flow from it.

"All our thoughts are mysteriously connected with good or evil. Their very habits, too, like the habits of our actions, are strengthened by indulgence, and, according as we indulge the evil or the good, our characters will partake of the moral character of each. But actions proceed from thoughts; we act as we think. Why should we, then, so cautiously guard our actions from impropriety while we give a loose rein to our thoughts, which so certainly, sooner or later, produce their fruits in our actions?

"G.o.d in his wisdom has separated at various distances sin and the consequence of sin. In some instances we see a sin instantly followed by its fruits, as of revenge by murder. In others we see weeks and months and years, aye, and ages, too, elapse before the fruits of a single act, the result, perhaps, of a single thought, are seen in all their varieties of evil.

"How long ere the fruits of one sin in Paradise will cease to be visible in the moral universe?

"If this reasoning is correct, I shall but cheat myself in preserving a good moral outward appearance to others if every thought of the heart, in the most secret retirement, is not carefully watched and checked and guarded from evil; since the casual indulgence of a single evil thought in secret may be followed, long after that thought is forgotten by me, and when, perhaps, least expected, by overt acts of evil.

"Who, then, shall say that in those pleasures in which we indulge, and which by many are called, and apparently are, innocent, there are not laid the seeds of many a corrupt affection? Who shall say that my innocent indulgence at the card table or at the theatre, were I inclined to visit them, may not produce, if not in me a pa.s.sion for gaming or for low indulgence, yet in others may encourage these views to their ruin?

"Besides, 'Evil communications corrupt good manners,' and even places less objectionable are studiously to be avoided. The soul is too precious to be thus exposed.

"Where then is our remedy? In Christ alone. 'Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Search me, O G.o.d, and know my thoughts; try me and know my ways and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way which is everlasting.'"

This is but one of many expressions of a similar character which are to be found in the letters and notes, and which are illuminating.

Morse was now making ready for another trip to Europe. He had hoped, when he returned home in 1815, to stay but a year or two on this side and then to go back and continue his artistic education, which he by no means considered complete, in France and Italy. We have seen how one circ.u.mstance after another interfered to prevent the realization of this plan, until now, after the lapse of fourteen years, he found it possible.

His wife and his parents were dead; his children were being carefully cared for by relatives, the daughter Susan by her mother's sister, Mrs.

Pickering, in Concord, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and the boys by their uncle, Richard C. Morse, who was then happily married and living in the family home in New Haven.

The National Academy of Design was now established on a firm footing and could spare his guiding hand for a few years. He had saved enough money to defray his expenses on a strictly economical basis, but, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, he sought and received commissions from his friends and patrons in America for copies of famous paintings, or for original works of his own, so that he could sail with a clear conscience as regarded his finances.

His friends were uniformly encouraging in furthering his plan, and he received many letters of cordial good wishes and of introduction to prominent men abroad. I shall include the following from John A. Dix, at that time a captain in the army, but afterwards a general, and Governor of New York, who, although he had been an unsuccessful suitor for the hand of Miss Walker, Morse's wife, bore no ill-will towards his rival, but remained his firm friend to the end:--

COOPERSTOWN, 27th October, 1829.

MY DEAR SIR,--I have only time to say that I have been absent in an adjacent county and fear there is not time to procure a letter for you to Mr. Rives before the 1st. I have written to Mr. Van Buren and he will doubtless send you a letter before the 8th. Therefore make arrangements to have it sent after you if you sail on the 1st.

I need not say I shall be very happy to hear from you during your sojournment abroad. Especially tell me what your impressions are when you turn from David's picture with Romulus and Tatius in the foreground, and Paul Veronese's Marriage at Cana directly opposite, at the entrance of the picture gallery in the Louvre.

We are all well and all desire to be remembered. I have only time to add my best wishes for your happiness and prosperity.

Yours truly and constantly, JOHN A. DIX.

The Mr. Rives mentioned in the letter was at that time our Minister to France, and the Mr. Van Buren was Martin Van Buren, then Secretary of State in President Jackson's Cabinet, and afterwards himself President of the United States.

The following is from the pencilled draft of a letter or the beginning of a diary which was not finished, but ends abruptly:--

"On the 8th November, 1829, I embarked from New York in the s.h.i.+p Napoleon, Captain Smith, for Liverpool. The Napoleon is one of those splendid packets, which have been provided by the enterprise of our merchants, for the accommodation of persons whose business or pleasure requires a visit to Europe or America.

"Precisely at the appointed hour, ten o'clock, the steamboat with the pa.s.sengers and their baggage left the Whitehall dock for our gallant s.h.i.+p, which was lying to above the city, heading up the North River, careening to the brisk northwest gale, and waiting with apparent impatience for us, like a spirited horse curvetting under the rein of his master, and waiting but his signal to bound away. A few moments brought us to her side, and a few more saw the steamboat leave us, and the sad farewells to relatives and friends, who had thus far accompanied us, were mutually exchanged by the waving of hands and of handkerchiefs. The 'Ready about,' and soon after the 'Mainsail haul' of the pilot were answered by the cheering 'Ho, heave, ho' of the sailors, and, with the fairest wind that ever blew, we fast left the spires and sh.o.r.es of the great city behind us. In two hours we discharged our pilot to the south of Sandy Hook, with his pocket full of farewell letters to our friends, and then stood on our course for England.

"Four days brought us to the Banks of Newfoundland, one third of our pa.s.sage. Many of our pa.s.sengers were sanguine in their antic.i.p.ations of our making the shortest pa.s.sage ever known, and, had our subsequent progress been as great as at first, we should doubtless have accomplished the voyage in thirteen days, but calms and head winds for three days on the Banks have frustrated our expectations.

"There is little that is interesting in the incidents of a voyage. The indescribable listlessness of seasickness, the varied state of feeling which changes with the wind and weather, have often been described. These I experienced in all their force. From the time we left the Banks of Newfoundland we had a continued succession of head winds, and when within one fair day's sail of land, we were kept off by severe gales directly ahead for five successive days and nights, during which time the uneasy motion of the s.h.i.+p deprived us all of sleep, except in broken intervals of an half-hour at a time. We neither saw nor spoke any vessel until the evening of the ----, when we descried through the darkness a large vessel on an opposite course from ourselves; we first saw her cabin lights. It was blowing a gale of wind before which we were going on our own course at the rate of eleven miles an hour. It was, of course, impossible to speak her, but, to let her know that she had company on the wide ocean, we threw up a rocket which for splendor of effect surpa.s.sed any that I had ever seen on sh.o.r.e. It was thrown from behind the mizzenmast, over which it shot arching its way over the main and foremasts, illuminating every sail and rope, and then diving into the water, piercing the wave, it again shot upwards and vanished in a loud report. To our companion s.h.i.+p the effect must have been very fine.

"The sea is often complained of for its monotony, and yet there is great variety in the appearance of the sea."

Here it ends, but we learn a little more of the voyage and the landing in England from a letter to a cousin in America, written in Liverpool, on December 5, 1829:--

"I arrived safely in England yesterday after a long, but, on the whole, pleasant, pa.s.sage of twenty-six days. I write you from the inn (the King's Arms Hotel) at which I put up eighteen years ago. This inn is the one at which Professor Silliman stayed when he travelled in England, and which he mentions in his travels. The old Frenchman whom he mentions I well remember when I was here before. I enquired for him and am told he is still living, but I have not seen him.

"There is a large black man, a waiter in the house, who is quite a polished man in his manners, and an elderly white man, with white hair, who looks so respectable and dignified that one feels a little awkward at first in ordering him to do this or that service; and the chambermaids look so venerable and matronly that to ask them for a pitcher of water seems almost rude to them. But I am in a land where domestic servants are the best in the world. No servant aspires to a higher station, but feels a pride in making himself the first in that station. I notice this, for our own country presents a melancholy contrast in this particular."