Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals Volume I Part 22

"Excuse my neglect in not having written you before this according to my promise before I left Boston. I can only plead as apology (what I know will gratify you) a multiplicity of business. I am painting from morning till night and have continual applications. I have added to my list, this season only, to the amount of three thousand dollars; that is since I left you. Among them are three full lengths to be finished at the North, I hope in Boston, where I shall once more enjoy your criticisms.

"I am exerting my utmost to improve; every picture I try to make my best, and in the evening I draw two hours from the antique as I did in London; for I ought to inform you that I fortunately found a fine 'Venus de Medicis' without a blemish, imported from Paris sometime since by a gentleman of this city who wished to dispose of it; also a young Apollo which was so broken that he gave it to me, saying it was useless. I have, however, after a great deal of trouble, put it together entirely, and these two figures, with some fragments,--hands, feet, etc.,--make a good academy. Mr. Fraser, Mr. Cogdell, Mr. Fisher, of Boston, and myself meet here of an evening to improve ourselves. I feel as much enthusiasm as ever in my art and love it more than ever. A few years, at the rate I am now going on, will place me independent of public patronage.

"Thus much for myself, for you told me in one of your letters from London that I must be more of an egotist or you should be less of one in your letters to me, which I should greatly regret.

"And now, permit me, my dear sir, to congratulate you on your election to the Royal Academy. I know you will believe me when I say I jumped for joy when I heard it. Though it cannot add to your merit, yet it will extend the knowledge of it, especially in our own country, where we are still influenced by foreign opinion, and more justly, perhaps, in regard to taste in the fine arts than in any other thing."

On March 1, 1819, the Common Council of Charleston pa.s.sed the following resolution:--

"Resolved unanimously that His Honor the Intendant be requested to solicit James Monroe, President of the United States, to permit a full-length likeness to be taken for the City of Charleston, and that Mr.

Morse be requested to take all necessary measures for executing the said likeness on the visit of the President to this city.

"Resolved unanimously that the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars be appropriated for this purpose.

"Extract from the minutes.

"WILLIAM ROACH, JR., "Clerk of Council."

This portrait of President Monroe was completed later on and still hangs in the City Hall of Charleston. I shall have occasion to refer to it again.

Morse, in a letter to his parents of March 26, 1819, says:--

"Two of your letters have been lately received detailing the state of the parish and church. I cannot say I was surprised, for it is what might be expected from Charlestown people.... As to returning home in the way I mentioned mama need not be at all uneasy on that score. It is necessary I should visit Was.h.i.+ngton, as the President will stay so short a time here that I cannot complete the head unless I see him in Was.h.i.+ngton.... Now as to the parish and church business, I hope all things will turn out right yet, and I can't help wis.h.i.+ng that nothing may occur to keep you any longer in that nest of vipers and conspirators. I think with Edwards decidedly that, on mama's account alone, you should leave a place which is full of the most unpleasant a.s.sociations to all the family, and retire to some place of quiet to enjoy your old age.

"Why not come to Charleston? Here is a fine place for usefulness, a pleasant climate especially for persons advanced in life, and your children here; for I think seriously of settling in Charleston. Lucretia is willing, and I think it will be much for my advantage to remain through the year. Richard can find a place here if he will, and Edwards can come on and be _Bishop_ or _President_ or _Professor_ in some of the colleges (for I can't think of him in a less character) after he has graduated.

"I wish seriously you would think of this. Your friends here would greatly rejoice and an opening could be found, I have no doubt.

Christians want their hands strengthened, and a veteran soldier, like papa, might be of great service here in the infancy of the _Unitarian Hydra_, who finds a population too well adapted to receive and cherish its easy and fascinating tenets."

All this refers to a movement organized by the enemies of Dr. Morse to oust him from his parish in Charlestown. He was a militant fighter for orthodoxy and an uncompromising foe to Unitarianism, which was gradually obtaining the ascendancy in and near Boston. The movement was finally successful, as we shall see later, but they did not go as far from their old haunts as Charleston.

I shall not attempt to argue the rights and wrongs of the case, which seem to have been rather complicated, for Dr. Morse, more than a year after this, in writing to a friend says: "The events of the last fifteen months are still involved in impenetrable mystery, which I doubt not will be unravelled in due time."

The winter and spring of 1819 were spent by the young couple both pleasantly and profitably in Charleston. The best society of that charming city opened its arms to them and orders flowed in in a steady stream. Mr. John A. Alston was a most generous patron, ordering many portraits of his children and friends, and sometimes insisting on paying the young man even more than the price agreed upon.

In a letter to Morse he says: "Which of my friends was it who lately observed to you that I had a picture mania? You made, I understand, a most excellent reply, 'You wished I would come to town, then, and bite a dozen.' Indeed, my very good sir, was it in my power to excite in them a just admiration of your talents, I would readily come to town and bite the whole community."

And in another letter of April 10, 1819, Mr. Alston says: "Your portrait of my daughter was left in Georgetown [South Carolina], at the house of a friend; nearly all of the citizens have seen it, and I really think it will occasion you some applications.... Every one thought himself at liberty to make remarks. Some declared it to be a good likeness, while others insisted it was not so, and several who made such remarks, I _knew_ had _never_ seen my daughter. At last a rich Jew gentleman observed, 'it was the _richest_ piece of painting he had ever seen.' This being so much in character that I a.s.sure you, sir, I could contain myself no longer, which, spreading among the audience, occasioned not an unpleasant moment."

Morse and his young wife returned to the North in the early summer of 1819, and spent the summer and fall with his parents in Charlestown. The young man occupied himself with the completion of the portraits which he had brought with him from the South, and his wife was busied with preparations for the event which is thus recorded in a letter of Dr.

Morse's to his son Sidney Edwards at Andover: "Since I have been writing the above, Lucretia has presented us with a fine granddaughter and is doing well. The event has filled us with joy and grat.i.tude."

The child was christened Susan Walker Morse. In the mean time the distressing news had come from Charleston of the sudden death of Dr.

Finley, to whose kindly affection and influence Morse owed much of the pleasure and success of his several visits to Charleston.

Affairs had come to a crisis in the parish at Charlestown, and Dr. Morse decided to resign and planned to move to New Haven, Connecticut, with his family in the following spring.

The necessity for pursuing his profession in the most profitable field compelled Morse to return to Charleston by way of Was.h.i.+ngton in November, and this time he had to go alone, much against his inclinations.

He writes to his mother from New York on November 28, 1819: "I miss Lucretia and little Susan more than you can think, and I shall long to have us all together at New Haven in the spring."

His object in going to Was.h.i.+ngton was to paint the portrait of the President, and of this he says in a letter: "I began on Monday to paint the President and have almost completed the head. I am thus far pleased with it, but I find it very perplexing, for he cannot sit more than ten or twenty minutes at a time, so that the moment I feel engaged he is called away again. I set my palette to-day at ten o'clock and waited until four o'clock this afternoon before he came in. He then sat ten minutes and we were called to dinner. Is not this trying to one's patience?"

"_December 17, 1819._ I have been here nearly a fortnight. I commenced the President's portrait on Monday and shall finish it to-morrow. I have succeeded to my satisfaction, and, what is better, to the satisfaction of himself and family; so much so that one of his daughters wishes me to copy the head for her. They all say that mine is the best that has been taken of him. The daughter told me (she said as a secret) that her father was delighted with it, and said it was the only one that in his opinion looked like him; and this, too, with Stuart's in the room.

"The President has been very kind and hospitable to me; I have dined with him three times and taken tea as often; he and his family have been very sociable and unreserved. I have painted him at his house, next room to his cabinet, so that when he had a moment to spare he would come in to me.

"Wednesday evening Mrs. Monroe held a drawing-room. I attended and made my bow. She was splendidly and tastily dressed. The drawing-room and suite of rooms at the President's are furnished and decorated in the most splendid manner; some think too much so, but I do not. Something of splendor is certainly proper about the Chief Magistrate for the credit of the nation. Plainness can be carried to an extreme, and in national buildings and establishments it will, with good reason, be styled meanness."

"_December 23, 1819._ It is obviously for my interest to hasten to Charleston, as I shall there be immediately at work, and this is the more necessary as there is a fresh gang of adventurers in the brush line gone to Charleston before me."

A short while after this he received the news of the death of his grandfather, Jedediah Morse, at Woodstock, Connecticut, on December 29, aged ninety-four years. Mr. Prime says of him: "He was a strong man in body and mind, an able and upright magistrate, for eighteen years one of the selectmen of the town, twenty-seven years town clerk and treasurer, fifteen years a member of the Colonial and State Legislature, and a prominent, honored, and useful member and officer of the church."

In January of the year 1820, Dr. Morse, realizing that it would be for the best interests of all concerned to relinquish his pastorate at Charlestown, turned his active brain in another direction, and resolved to carry out a plan which he had long contemplated. This was to secure from the Government at Was.h.i.+ngton an appointment as commissioner to the Indians on the borders of the United States of those early days, in order to enquire into their condition with a view to their moral and physical betterment. To this end he journeyed to Was.h.i.+ngton and laid his project before the President and the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun. He was most courteously entertained by these gentlemen and received the appointment.

In the following spring with his son Richard he travelled through the northwestern frontiers of the United States, and gained much valuable information which he laid before the Government. As he was a man of delicate const.i.tution, we cannot but admire his indomitable spirit in ever devising new projects of usefulness to his fellow men. It was impossible for him to remain idle.

But it is not within the scope of this work to follow him on his journeys, although his letters of that period make interesting reading.

While he was in Was.h.i.+ngton his wife, writing to him on January 27, 1820, says: "Mrs. Salisbury and Abby drank tea with us day before yesterday.

They told us that Catherine Breese was married to a lieutenant in the army. This must have been a very sudden thing, and I should suppose very grievous to Arthur."

Little did the good lady think as she penned these words that, many years afterwards, her beloved eldest son would take as his second wife a daughter of this union. Why this marriage should have been "grievous" to the father, Arthur Breese, I do not know, unless all army officers were cla.s.sed among the unG.o.dly by the very pious of those days. As a matter of fact, Lieutenant, afterwards Captain, Griswold was a most gallant gentleman.

In the mean time Finley Morse had reached Charleston in safety after a tedious journey of many days by stage from Was.h.i.+ngton, and was busily employed in painting. On February 4, 1820, he writes to his mother:--

"I received your good letter of the 19th and 22d ult., and thank you for it. I wish I had time to give you a narrative of my journey as you wish, but you know '_time is money_,' and we must '_make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes_,' and '_a penny saved is a penny got_," and '_least said soonest mended_,' and a good many other wise sayings which would be quite pat, but I can't think of them.

"The fact is I have scarcely time to say or write a word. I am busily employed in getting the cash, or else Ned's almanac for March will foretell falsely.

"I am doing well, although the city fairly swarms with painters. I am the only one that has as much as he can do; all the rest are complaining. I wish I could divide with some of them, very clever men who have families to support, and can get nothing to do.... I feel rejoiced that things have come to such a crisis in Charlestown that our family will be released from that region of trouble so soon.

"Keep up your spirits, mother, the Lord will show you good days according to those in which you have seen evil....

"I am glad Lucretia and the dear little Susan intend meeting me at New Haven. I think this by far the best plan; it will save me a great deal of time, which, as I said before, is money.

"I shall have to spend some time in New Haven getting settled, and I wish to commence painting as soon as possible, for I have more than a summer's work before me in the President's portrait and Mrs. Ball's.

"As soon as the cash comes in, mother, it shall all be remitted except what I immediately want. You may depend upon it that nothing shall be left undone on my part to help you and the rest of us from that hole of vipers.

"I think it very probable I shall return by the middle of May; it will depend much on circ.u.mstances, however. I wish very much to be with my dear wife and daughter. I must contrive to bring them with me next season to Charleston, though it may be more expensive, yet I do not think that should be a consideration. I think that a man should be separated from his family but very seldom, and then under cases of absolute necessity, as I consider the case to be at present with me: that is, I think they should not be separated for any length of time. If I know my own disposition I am of a domestic habit, formed to this habit, probably, by the circ.u.mstances that have been so peculiar to our family in Charlestown. I by no means regret having such a habit if it can be properly regulated; I think it may be carried to excess, and shut us from the opportunities of doing good by mixing with our fellow men."

This p.r.o.nouncement was very characteristic of the man. He was always, all through his long life, happiest when at home surrounded by all his family, and yet he never s.h.i.+rked the duty of absenting himself from home, even for a prolonged period, when by so doing he could accomplish some great or good work.

That a portrait-painter's lot is not always a happy one may be ill.u.s.trated by the following extracts from letters of Morse to the Mrs.

Ball whom he mentions in the foregoing letter to his mother, and who seems to have been a most capricious person, insisting on continual alterations, and one day pleased and the next almost insulting in her censure:--

MADAM,--Supposing that I was dealing not only with a woman of honor, but, from her professions, with a Christian, I ventured in my note of the 18th inst., to make an appeal to your conscience in support of the justness of my demand of the four hundred dollars still due from you for your portrait. By your last note I find you are disposed to take an advantage of that circ.u.mstance of which I did not suppose you capable. My sense of the justness of my demand was so strong, as will appear from the whole tenor of that note, that I venture this appeal, not imagining that any person of honor, of the least spark of generous feeling, and more especially of Christian principle, could understand anything more than the enforcing my claim by an appeal to that principle which I knew should be the strongest in a real Christian.

Whilst, however, you have chosen to put a different construction on this part of the note, and supposed that I left you to say whether you would pay me anything or nothing, you have (doubtless unconsciously) shown that your conscience has decided in favor of the whole amount which is my due, and which I can never voluntarily relinquish.