Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [2]
In 1799, as Jedediah thundered from his pulpit, Finley was sent from home for schooling. Now eight years old, he would spend most of the next decade living apart from his family. Jedediah enrolled him at Phillips Academy, in the isolated village of Andover, Massachusetts, some twenty miles from Charlestown. The well-regarded Academy had about sixty students. Its curriculum stressed classical languages, mathematics, and religious instruction suited to the sons of New England Congregationalists. The school’s Overseers included Jedediah himself.
Concerned above all with Finley’s growth in piety, Jedediah tried to board him with a prayerful family. He also wrote out a daily routine for his son to follow. It aimed at fashioning a Christian Gentleman—reverent, well mannered, and frugal, but aspiring to personal distinction:
1. Rise Early in the morning—read a chapter in the Bible, & say your prayers—Read the Bible in course. The Old Testament in the morning. The New Testament at night—
2. After a serious performance of these religious duties,—comb your head & wash your face, hands & mouth—in cold water, not hastily & slightly but thoroughly—
Next came instructions for Finley’s behavior at school:
3. Get your morning lesson well—Behave decently at breakfast. Go regularly & seasonably to the Academy—While there, in study hours, attend to your lesson, & get it thoroughly, & try to be the best scholar in your class.
4. In play hours, while at play, behave manly & honorably. Avoid every thing low, mean, indecent, or unfair—And endeavour to play in such a manner as that all may wish to have you on their side ….
“Take care to read your rules every day & observe them strictly,” Jedediah said.
Settled in the Academy’s preparatory school, Finley hastened to show his father that he understood and would obey. Probably only weeks after arriving in Andover, he sent home a scrawled reply: “I retire always by my self and say my prayers. I learn a hymn every sabbath.” Lest Finley forget his routine, Jedediah repeated the rules in nearly the same words week after week. And Elizabeth in her homelier voice repeated them, week after week: “make it your Daily business to obey your kind preceptors,” she wrote; “and above all things remember your duty to God pray to him Night and morning and read your chapter in the bible as often and do not read trifling books…. be as carefull of all your clothes as possible.” Jedediah directed Finley to fold the letters neatly after mastering their content, then tie them together and preserve them in his trunk.
The long-distance family discipline included detailed instructions to Finley on how, each week, he should respond: “You must write me long letters, & vary them as much as possible—avoid sameness,” Jedediah said. “Pay great attention to your handwriting.” His own letters could not be said to avoid sameness, and the hand was often crooked and blotchy. Nevertheless in letter after letter he insisted that his son reply pleasingly and by rule: “Avoid vulgar phrases…. Hold your pen properly and keep your elbow & arm in a right position…. Conclude your Letters in this way ‘I am your affectionate & obedient Son S. F. B. Morse.’ ”
The letters Finley received from home often came with longdistance kisses and concerns for his health, gifts of raisins or cake. But mostly they told him what to do and feel and think. At first, the all-seeing discipline did not take. He failed to write back. He got demerits in spelling and for whispering. A tutor reported that he had been idle and untruthful, and had ended up at the bottom of his class. “What a character, my son,” Jedediah moaned to him; “if you persevere in this conduct, you will fill our hearts with sorrow.” The sorrow was paternal but also personal, for Jedediah expected his children to