Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [155]
Sarah attended an Episcopal church, but in Morse’s view she lacked genuine piety. He instructed her in true religion, as he had done years earlier for Lucrece, praying that she might come to experientially know what it meant to have an interest in Christ’s death and salvation. “Love him, dear Sarah, pray for the Holy Spirit to take of the things of Christ and show them to you. By his aid you can be taught truly to love him.” She showed serious concern for her soul, and he drew improving lessons for her from events. In one instance he mentioned a man who had been killed by a train while attempting to save a horse that balked on the tracks. “Let it have its effect my precious Sarah, on your own heart,” he counseled. “How would the summons find you, supposing it should come as suddenly as to the poor man … Faith in Christ alone calms every fear.”
Morse brought Sarah into comfortable circumstances. His wealth can only be estimated, but in 1852 he held nearly $400,000 in stock in six telegraph companies, besides cash he earned from the lines as dividends and from income-yielding real estate in Utica. For $17,500 he had bought a 100-acre farm property about two miles from the village of Poughkeepsie. It included an unpretentious but substantial house fronting the Hudson River. The landscape pleased his painter’s eye: “every variety of surface, plain, hill, dale, glens, running streams and fine forest … the Fishkill Mountains towards the south and the Catskills towards the north; the Hudson with its varieties of river craft, steamboats of all kinds, sloops.” The farm gained in commercial and personal value from a soon-to-be-built railroad line that would bring him within two and a half hours of New York City.
To manage the large place, Morse hired several domestics, a cook, and a live-in farming family named Teller. When asked at a court trial to state his occupation, he replied: “I … am at present a farmer.” In time the place did become a working farm with a stable of horses, producing milk and butter, hogs for slaughter, and prizewinning wine, as well as potatoes, corn, and other vegetables, some of which he donated to a “Home of the Friendless.” He took a pew in the local Presbyterian church, a fifteen-minute ride away. Indulging his love of music, he had a pianoforte and stool shipped from New York City by barge.
Morse gave his estate the same name contrived for it by some former owners: Locust Grove. After years of nomadism he was happy to have a home—at least “as far as we are permitted to call any place this side heaven home.” He grew fonder of Locust Grove every day. Two years after settling in he decided to enlarge and transform his house. For the remodeling he hired the eminent New York architect Alexander Jackson Davis, designer of the influential Gothic building of New York University and author of Rural Residences (1837). He also hired Davis to shape the grounds according to the latest texts on landscape gardening, creating an ideal illustration of Nature. Among other things this meant landscaping the approach so that, from any one point, only portions of the house could be seen peeping through the verdure, teasing the imagination with suggestions of an infinite variety of “picturesque beauty.”
Morse himself made many sketches of the house he desired. Davis’ plans went through several stages of design and redesign before the remodeling was completed early in 1852. He encased the original Federal-style house in an octagonal Tuscan-style villa, featuring a dramatic four-story tower that afforded panoramic views of the lordly Hudson. The numerous rooms included a large library, into which Morse conducted a telegraph wire from a nearby line for his personal use.
Morse and Sarah quickly produced a family. Within four and a half years after their marriage, they had two sons and a daughter