Dr. Morse and his wife at once sent for their prospective daughter to visit them. She came, and, as she pleased a mother who idolized Finley, it is safe to conclude that she was indeed lovely.
In January, 1818, having been a.s.sured that he would find work in Charleston, S. C., he sailed from New York, and met with a pleasant reception in the home of his uncle, Dr. Finley. He found the society agreeable, but month after month pa.s.sed, and there was not a single request for a portrait. At last, as he was about to return to New England, he begged his uncle to sit for a painting, as a small return for his kindness. He did so, and an admirable picture resulted.
Friends came to see it. At once Charleston perceived that a real artist was in the city. He soon had one hundred and fifty orders at sixty dollars each! Hope came again to his heart; after a few months he returned to Boston, and October 1, 1818, he married Lucretia Walker.
At the request of the Common Council of Charleston, he now painted the portrait of James Monroe, then President of the United States, and a year later went again to South Carolina, leaving his wife and an infant daughter in Concord, with her parents. On his return, Dr. Morse having resigned his pastorate at Charlestown, and moved to New Haven, Ct., Finley also moved thither. Here he found delight in renewing his studies of galvanism and electricity under Professor Silliman.
Tiring of portraits, and longing for preeminence in art, he conceived the idea of a historical piece, the "House of Representatives," with eighty portraits of individual members. For this purpose he went to Washington, and began his work in earnest. He writes to his young wife: "I am up at daylight, have my breakfast and prayers over, and commence the labors of the day long before the workmen are called to work on the Capitol by the bell. This I continue unremittingly till one o"clock, when I dine in about fifteen minutes, and then pursue my labors until tea, which scarcely interrupts me, as I often have my cup of tea in one hand and pencil in the other. Between ten and eleven o"clock I retire to rest. This has been my course every day (Sundays, of course, excepted) since I have been here, making about fourteen hours study out of the twenty-four. This, you will say, is too hard, and that I shall injure my health. I can say that I never enjoyed better health, and my body, by the simple fare I live on, is disciplined to this course.... I have had a great deal of difficulty with the perspective of my picture. But I have conquered, and have accomplished my purpose. After having drawn in the greater part three times, I have as many times rubbed it all out again. I have been, several times, from daylight until eleven o"clock at night, solving a simple problem.
"How I do long to see that dear little girl of mine, and to hear her sweet prattle! Instruct her early, my dear wife, in the most important of all concerns; teach her that there is a great Father above, her obligations to him and to her Saviour. Kiss her often for papa, and tell her he will come back one of these days."
So absorbed did he become in this picture, that once he arose in the night, mistaking the light of the moon for the day, and went to his work, and another time attempted to enter the hall on Sunday, forgetting even the days of the week. When the work was finished and exhibited, everybody was too much interested in his own affairs to care about congressmen, and the picture failed to attract the public. It proved a loss pecuniarily, and was purchased by an Englishman and taken to England. Twenty-five years afterward, it was found in the third story of a store in New York, nailed against a board part.i.tion, and covered with dust. It had been sent over from London by a house which had advanced a sum of money upon it while in England. The picture afterward became the property of the artist Daniel Huntington.
Morse now went to Albany, hoping to obtain some patronage from public men. After long waiting, he writes to his wife: "I have not as yet received any application for a portrait. Many tell me I have come at the wrong time--the same tune that has been rung in my ears so long! I hope the right time will come by and by. The winter, it is said, is the proper season; but, as it is better in the South in that season, and it will be more profitable to be there, I shall give Albany a thorough trial and do my best. If I should not find enough to employ me here, I think I shall return to New York and settle there. This I had rather not do at present, but it may be the best that I can do. Roaming becomes more and more irksome. Imperious necessity alone drives me to this course. Don"t think by this I am faint-hearted. I shall persevere in this course, painful as is the separation from my family, until Providence clearly points out my duty to return."
Morse now turned his attention to the invention of a machine for carving marble, from which he hoped for pecuniary success, but success did not result from it. He now went to New York to try his fortune. But things were no brighter.
He wrote to Lucretia: "My last two letters have held out to you some encouraging prospects of success here, but now they seem darkened again.
I have had nothing to do this week thus far but to wait patiently. I have advertised in both of the city papers that I should remain one week to receive applications, but as yet it has produced no effect.... I sleep in my room on the floor, and put my bed out of sight during the day, as at Washington.... I have been active in calling on my friends and inviting them to my room; they have promised to come, but as yet few have called. As far as human foresight can perceive, my prospects seem gloomy indeed. The only gleam of hope--and I cannot underrate it--is from confidence in G.o.d. When I look upward, it calms my apprehensions for the future, and I seem to hear a voice saying: "If I clothe the lilies of the field, shall I not also clothe you?" Here is my strong confidence, and I will wait patiently for the direction of Providence."
Again he writes to his wife: "My cash is almost gone, and I begin to feel some anxiety and perplexity to know what to do. I have advertised, and visited, and hinted, and pleaded, and even asked one man to sit, but all to no purpose.... My expenses, with the most rigid economy too, are necessarily great; my rent to-morrow will amount to thirty-three dollars, and I have nothing to pay it with. What can I do? I have been here five weeks, and there is not the smallest prospect _now_ of any difference as to business."
He now attempted to obtain a situation in the legation about to be sent to Mexico. The place was promised, and Morse went to Washington, only to find that the expedition had been abandoned.
There was an occasional rift in the clouds, as when the corporation of the city of New York commissioned Morse to paint for them a portrait of General Lafayette, then in Washington, the price to be about one thousand dollars. As Sully, Peale, Inman, and other prominent artists were compet.i.tors in the application for this picture, to receive the commission was indeed an honor.
Morse now wrote cheerfully to his wife: "When I consider how wonderfully things are working for the promotion of the great and _long desired_ event,--that of being constantly with my dear family,--all unpleasant feelings are absorbed in this joyful antic.i.p.ation, and I look forward to the spring of the year with delightful prospects of seeing my dear family permanently settled with me in our own hired house here."
February 8, 1825, he wrote his wife that he had met Lafayette, "the man whose beloved name has rung from one end of this continent to the other, whom all flock to see, whom all delight to honor."
That very day a letter was penned him, not this time by the wife, but by his father. "My affectionately beloved son: Mysterious are the ways of Providence. My heart is in pain and deeply sorrowful, while I announce to you the sudden and unexpected death of your dear and deservedly loved wife. Her death proved to be an _affection of the heart, incurable_ had it been known.... I wrote you yesterday that she was _convalescent_. So she then appeared and so the doctor p.r.o.nounced. She was up about five o"clock yesterday afternoon, to have her bed made, as usual; was unusually cheerful and social; spoke of the pleasure of being with her dear husband in New York ere long; stepped into bed herself, fell back, with a momentary struggle, on her pillow; her eyes were immediately fixed, the paleness of death overspread her countenance, and in five minutes more, without the slightest motion, her mortal life terminated.
"It happened that, just at this moment, I was entering her chamber-door, with Charles in my arms, to pay her my usual visit, and to pray with her. The nurse met me affrighted, calling for help. Your mother, the family, and neighbors, full of the tenderest sympathy and kindness, and the doctor, thronged the house in a few minutes; everything was done that could be done, to save her life. But her appointed time had come, and no earthly skill or power could stay the hand of death. It was the Lord who gave her to you, the chiefest of all your earthly blessings, and it is he that has taken her away; and may you be enabled, my son, from the heart to say, "Blessed be the name of the Lord!""
The heart of Morse was well nigh broken. The woman he had idolized had gone from him in a moment. He wrote back to his father: "Oh, is it possible? is it possible? Shall I never see my dear wife again? But I cannot trust myself to write on the subject. I need your prayers, and those of Christian friends, to G.o.d for support. I fear I shall sink under it.
"Oh, take good care of her dear children!
"Your agonized son, "FINLEY."
Travelling by stage, he did not reach New Haven till his wife had been buried a week. A month later he wrote to a friend: "I dare not yet give myself up to the full survey of its desolating effects; every day brings to my mind a thousand new and fond connections with dear Lucretia, all now ruptured. I feel a dreadful void, a heart-sickness, which time does not seem to heal, but rather to aggravate. You know the intensity of the attachment which existed between dear L. and me, never for a moment interrupted by the smallest cloud; an attachment founded, I trust, in the purest love, and daily strengthening by all the motives which the ties of _nature_ and more especially of _religion_ furnish.
"I found in dear L. everything that I could wish. Such ardor of affection, so uniform, so unaffected, I never saw nor read of, but in her. My fear with regard to the measure of my affection toward her, was not that I might fail of "loving her as my own flesh," but that I should put her in the place of Him who has said, "Thou shalt have no other G.o.ds but me." I felt this to be my greatest danger, and to be saved from this _idolatry_ was often the subject of my earnest prayers. If I had desired anything in my dear L. different from what she was, it would have been that she had been _less lovely_. My whole soul seemed wrapped up in her; with her was connected all that I expected of happiness on earth."
She was but twenty-five, and had shared only the sorrows and privations of her young husband. How pitiful it seemed that she could not live to share his grand success. Whatever may come into a man"s life afterwards, he never forgets an affection like this. It blossoms in the warm sunlight of his youth; it never withers, even though other flowers take root in the heart.
Truly says George Eliot: "There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope."
This despair seemed to have settled upon Morse. He went back to New York, and now had plenty of work, but he said, "After being fatigued at night, and having my thoughts turned to my irreparable loss, I am ready almost to give up. The thought of seeing my dear Lucretia, and returning home to her, served always to give me fresh courage and spirits whenever I felt worn down by the labors of the day, and now I hardly know what to subst.i.tute in her place."
Hard, indeed, it seemed, that this "plenty of work" did not come in Lucretia"s life-time. Why are so many of the best and sweetest things in this world a little too late in their coming? Is it because perfection attained is not best for mortals?
About this time the National Academy of Design was organized, and Morse was made president, holding this position for eighteen years, till his work on the telegraph required his whole attention. These years were extremely busy years. So numerous were his sitters, that he was obliged to send many to his artist friends. In his evenings he prepared a series of lectures on the Fine Arts, which he delivered to large and fashionable audiences at the New York Athenaeum. He also wrote at this time a life of Lucretia Maria Davidson, a young poet who died at Plattsburg, N. Y., when she was seventeen, and several pamphlets against the growing power of the Romish Church.
Four years after the death of his wife he sailed for Italy, still further to study his beloved art. In London he again met Rogers, the poet,--"he has not the proverbial lot of the poet,--he is not poor, for he is one of the wealthiest bankers, and lives in splendid style," said Morse,--Turner, "the best landscape-painter living," Irving, our secretary of legation, and other distinguished men.
For three years Morse remained in Europe, in Rome becoming the friend of Thorwaldsen, whose portrait he painted; in Florence, of Horatio Greenough, the sculptor, of James Fenimore Cooper, and many others. In Paris, Morse painted the "Gallery of the Louvre," working from nine till four daily, meeting Baron Humboldt, and receiving the cordial hospitality of General Lafayette.
October 1, 1832, he sailed from Havre, on the packet ship Sully, for New York. That pa.s.sage marked an epoch not only in the life of S. F. B.
Morse, but an epoch in American progress. At the dinner-table the conversation turned upon recent discoveries in electro-magnetism, and the experiments of Ampere with the electro-magnet. Morse said, "If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit,"
and he had seen that it could years before in the cla.s.s-room at Yale College, "I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity."
He thought the subject over as he walked upon the deck, and as he lay in his berth, too deeply interested to sleep. If intelligence could be transmitted, it could be recorded. He took from his pocket a note-book, and thought out his alphabet of dots and lines. He showed his sketches to his fellow-pa.s.sengers,--not a wise thing, as it proved, when, later, one of the persons on board laid claim to the invention, causing some years of litigation.
When the vessel reached New York, Morse said, "Well, captain, should you hear of the telegraph one of these days as the wonder of the world, remember the discovery was made on board the good ship Sully."
Electricity had been known and studied since early times. It had been ascertained that the electric force could be stored up, as in the Leyden jar, and that it could be conducted through long metallic wires. The discovery of the Voltaic pile, or battery, in 1800, gave a great impetus to the study. Oersted of Copenhagen found that the position of the magnetic needle may be changed by the electric current, and that a magnet will induce electricity in a coil of wire. Schweigger of Halle discovered that "the deflection of the needle may be increased by coiling an insulated wire in a series of ovals or flat rings, compactly disposed, in a loop, and conducting the current around the needle from end to end." Ampere developed the theory of electro-magnetism, and proposed to the French Academy in 1820 a plan for a telegraph, in which there was to be a needle for each letter.
In 1827 Morse had listened to a course of lectures, given by Prof. James Freeman Dana, upon these matters, so that the subject was still fresh in his mind when he crossed the ocean in the Sully. Prof. Joseph Henry"s important discoveries were also well known.
Says Prof. E. N. Horsford of Cambridge, Ma.s.s., in the admirable life of Morse written by Dr. Samuel Irenaeus Prime: "He knew generally, when he stepped on board the Sully, in 1832, that a soft-iron horseshoe-shaped bar of iron could be rendered magnetic while a current of galvanic electricity was pa.s.sing through a wire wound round it; and he knew that electricity had been transmitted, apparently instantaneously, through wires of great length, by Franklin and others.... In the leisure of ship-life the idea of a _recording_ electric telegraph seized Professor Morse"s mind, and he gave expression to his conviction that it was _possible_. As it was possible to _dispatch_ and to _arrest_ the current, he conceived that some device could be found for compelling it to manifest itself by this intermittent action, and produce a record.
"He knew, for he had witnessed it years before, that by means of a battery and an electro-magnet reciprocal motion could be produced. He knew that the force which produced it could be transmitted along a wire.
He _believed_ that the battery current could be made, through an electro-magnet, to produce physical effects at a _distance_. He saw in his mind"s eye the existence of an agent and a medium by which reciprocal motion could be not only produced, but _controlled_, at a _distance_. The question that addressed itself to him at the outset was naturally this: "How can I make use of the simple up-and-down motion of opening and closing a circuit to write an intelligible message at one end of a wire, and at the same time print it at the other?"...
"Like many a kindred work of genius, it was in nothing more wonderful than in its simplicity. First, he caused a continuous ribbon or strip of paper to move under a pencil by clock-work, that could be wound up. The paper moved horizontally. The pencil moved only up and down; when resting on the paper it made a mark--if for an instant only, a dot; if for a longer time, a line. When lifted from the paper it left a blank.... The grandeur of this wonderful alphabet of dots, lines, and s.p.a.ces has not been fully appreciated....
"Not one of all the brilliant scientific men who have attached their names to the history of electro-magnetism had brought the means to produce the practical registering telegraph. Some of them had ascended the tower that looked out on the field of conquest. Some of them brought keener vision than others. Some of them stood higher than others; but the genius of invention had not recognized them. There was needed an inventor."
As soon as Morse left the ship Sully, and met his brothers Richard and Sidney, he told them that he had made an important invention, "one that would astonish the world, and of the success of which he was perfectly sanguine." He became an inmate of Richard"s house, living there several months.
From this time onward for twelve years he labored to give his telegraph to mankind; labored in the midst of distressing poverty, the ridicule of acquaintances, and the indifference of the world. Three motherless children were dependent upon him, but he could do little for them.
On the corner of Na.s.sau and Beekman Streets, in the newspaper building erected by his brothers,--they were the editors and proprietors of the "New York Observer,"--in the fifth story, a room was a.s.signed to him which he used for studio, sleeping-room, kitchen, and workshop. On one side was his cot, on the other his tools and crude machine. He whittled the models, and then made the moulds and castings. Here, from day to day, the simplest food was brought him, he preparing his own tea.
In the year 1835, having been appointed professor of the Literature of the Arts of Design in the New York City University, he took rooms in the third story of the university building. "There," he says, "I immediately commenced, with very limited means, to experiment upon my invention. My first instrument was made up of an old picture or canvas frame fastened to a table; the wheels of an old wooden clock, moved by a weight to carry the paper forward; three wooden drums, upon one of which the paper was wound and pa.s.sed over the other two; a wooden pendulum suspended to the top piece of the picture or stretching-frame, and vibrating across the paper as it pa.s.ses over the centre wooden drum; a pencil at the lower end of the pendulum, in contact with the paper; an electro-magnet fastened to a shelf across the picture or stretching-frame, opposite to an armature made fast to the pendulum; a type rule, and type for breaking the circuit, resting on an endless band, composed of carpet-binding, which pa.s.sed over two wooden rollers, moved by a wooden crank, and carried forward by points projecting from the bottom of the rule downward into the carpet-binding; a lever, with a small weight on the upper side; and a tooth, projecting downward at one end, operated on by the type; and a metallic fork, also projecting downward over two mercury-cups; and a short circuit of wire, embracing the helices of the electro-magnet connected with the positive and negative poles of the battery, and terminating in the mercury-cups."
Morse was now so poor that he bought his food in small quant.i.ties from some grocery, and prepared it himself. He says, "To conceal from my friends the stinted manner in which I lived, I was in the habit of bringing my food to my room in the evenings, and this was my mode of life for many years."
In this year, 1835, says Professor Horsford, "Morse made his discovery of the _relay_, the most brilliant of all the achievements to which his name must be forever attached. It was the discovery of a means by which the current, which through distance from its source had become feeble, could be reenforced or renewed. This discovery, according to the different objects for which it is employed, is variously known as the registering magnet, the local circuit, the marginal circuit, the repeater, etc. It made transmission from one point on a main line through indefinitely great distances, and through an indefinite number of branch lines, and to an indefinite number of way-stations, and registration at all, possible and practicable, from a single act of a single operator."
Poor, longing for money to carry forward his plans, despondent lest some one think out a kindred machine and supplant him, Morse was also suffering from injustice in his art work. Our government having offered to American artists commissions to paint pictures for the panels in the Rotunda of the Capitol, the friends of Morse urged that he, as the president of the National Academy of Design, be one of the artists chosen by the committee. John Quincy Adams, ex-President of the United States, and one of the committee, urged that foreign artists be allowed to compete, stating that no American artists were competent for the work. This, of course, gave offence, and James Fenimore Cooper wrote a severe article, in the "New York Evening Post," upon Mr. Adams"s remarks. The article was attributed to Morse, and his name was rejected by the committee. This was a great disappointment.
He said, years afterward, "The blow I received from Congress ... has almost destroyed my enthusiasm for my art.... I have not painted a picture since that decision.... When I applied to paint one of the Rotunda pictures, I was in my full vigor. I had just returned from three years" hard study in Italy, ... and felt a consciousness of ability to execute a work creditable to my country. I hazarded everything almost for this single object. When so unexpectedly I was repelled, I staggered under the blow. I have endeavored in every way to prevent its effects upon my mind; but it is a thorn which perpetually obtrudes its point, and would goad me to death were it not for its aspect in the light of G.o.d"s overruling providence. Then all is right."
From time to time prominent men came to the university, to see the telegraph. They saw, thought it wonderful, doubted its practicability, and did not offer to invest any money in the enterprise. Finally, in 1837, Mr. Alfred Vail, a young graduate of the University of the City of New York, became interested, helped to construct an improved machine at his father"s bra.s.s-works at Speedwell, N. J., for Morse to take to Washington for exhibition, and provided the means for his going.
After five long years, Morse had finally found some one ready to help.