Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [199]
Rejoicing curdled into recrimination. A letter-writer to the Boston Courier called the venture a hoax: “reliable and unimpeachable evidence is wanting, that one solitary intelligible sentence ever passed upon the cable from either continent to the other.” An oceanic cable was not commercially viable, some said: “a little cool judgment might save us from many extravagancies.” Field was accused of staging a fake success in order to unload $375,000 worth of stock on a gullible market. Other scapegoats were named, other warnings issued, new proposals aired for different means of overseas telegraph communication.
The breakdown of the cable gave Morse the dismal satisfaction of feeling vindicated. He had prophesied that the cable could be laid and would work. “These points are successful,” he said. What went wrong had nothing to do with his invention or his thinking, but with the shabby motives and faithlessness of others. While abroad he learned that two Canadians had been named Honorary Directors of Atlantic Telegraph, neither of whom were stockholders—confirming his belief that he had been “ejected” from the expedition deliberately. His removal and the breakdown of the cable had the same meaning, and the same cause—the detestable mentality of trade that saw transatlantic telegraphy as a speculation, a “money matter.” Mere money-making “was the great and I might almost say exclusive motive of Mr. Field …. The hasty, and unfair means he used to grasp too much, have resulted in utter failure.”
Morse and Sarah spent the winter with Susan and her family in Arroyo, Puerto Rico. Enjoying the balmy weather, never in better health, he wore summer clothing in December and kept the windows open, chirped to sleep by crickets. The light pleased his painter’s eye, the sky of “richest Claude blue,” the spectacular sunsets “never exceeded in Italy for tender, rich & glowing tints.”
Morse was impressed by his son-in-law’s well-cultivated 1400 acres, rising two or three miles from the seashore to the mountains. And Edward’s estate seemed to him quite as well governed as some German principalities he had seen, including the small army of slaves who worked the sugar plantations and served the elegant mansion house. He thought the slaves superior physically to the white laborers of Europe, but not mentally: “In intellect they are indeed inferior and for that reason and their low tastes and passions, and besetting vices, require the wholesome restraints of a master.” Nor did he admire the Arroyanos, whom he found indulgent and profane: “No church privileges, no religion among the masses … the inhabitants of these rich hills, they are rather like the swine in their habits and enjoyments.”
The island’s commercial and political leaders treated Morse as a celebrity. The local Bolletin Mercantil reported his activities, and he passed an evening with the Governor of Puerto Rico. In February he organized and constructed a two-mile line between his son-in-law’s house and place of business—the island’s first telegraph. The government honored him with a public breakfast, attended by the American consul. A portrait of him was displayed, decorated with Spanish and American flags. Afterward the breakfasters, accompanied by a band of music, repaired to Don Eduardo’s office on the bay to witness the telegraph in operation.
Morse viewed the line as a first step, the inauguration of a new enterprise in which he had become interested while in Paris. Outdoing his earlier fantasy of a cable from the Azores—and surpassing the ambitions of Cyrus Field—a transoceanic telegraph would be constructed uniting America with Europe by a South Atlantic route. The cable would pass from Madeira to the Canary Islands to the coast of Africa, thence by way of several islands to Brazil, island-hopping from there across the