• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Using the world very well indeed, Morse was presented at court— the most splendid in all Europe—to the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie. With Paris becoming the world’s fashion center, he had himself outfitted for the surpassing occasion in a resplendent full suit—chapeau bras, silk-lined coat embroidered with gold lace, cashmere vest with gilt buttons, white cravat, pantaloons with a broad stripe of gold lace, a small sword—“which last for a peaceable man like him,” he admitted, “was a little out of character.” He covered the breast of his coat with six of his orders and the plaque of Cavaliero Commandador of the Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic(!), and hung around his neck his Nishan Iftichar, the diamonded gold brooch conferred upon him by the Sultan of Turkey. Standing in a receiving line among other brilliantly costumed notables, he got to meet the debonair mustachioed Emperor, as well as Eugénie, who said to him, he recalled, “ ‘we are greatly indebted to you, Sir, for the Telegraph,’ or to that effect.” He took some tempting-looking almonds and candies home for the children. To his surprise the bonbons turned out to be cunningly fashioned of fish.

From an even grander, historic event, however, Morse was painfully excluded. After thirteen years of single-minded perseverance, Cyrus Field at last succeeded in establishing telegraphic communication across the Atlantic Ocean, bringing London within minutes of New York and San Francisco.

On July 13, 1866, the 700-foot-long Great Eastern had once more taken off from the Irish coast, its iron hull scraped of a two-foot-thick crust of barnacles. Its paying-out machinery had been improved, the cable-insulation galvanized. After only one mishap at sea, when the cable fouled, the ship reached Newfoundland two weeks later and hooked its line onshore. Queen Victoria sent the first official transatlantic message, congratulating President Andrew Johnson on this new coupling of the United States and England. The immense promise of the cable was dramatized when Cyrus Field, in Newfoundland, received simultaneous messages from California and from Alexandria, Egypt. In a thrilling follow-up, the Great Eastern moved out six hundred miles to where its cable had snapped and sunk during the previous year’s attempt. Grapnels were sent down, on rope a half-foot thick. After thirty tries, the lost cable was recovered and landed, making a second usable transatlantic telegraph line.

From Paris, Morse sent Field congratulations on this revolutionary boon to human intercommunication, to “the great system of nerves that will make the world one great Sensorium.” He would profit from Field’s success, too, owning 600 shares in the cable company. He bought 200 more shares, speeding his order to New York across the undersea line itself, at the steep cost of nearly $30 in gold. Just the same, reading newspaper reports of the many London banquets and celebrations and toasts to “England and America United,” he felt left out. The reports said nothing of him. “My name in connection with the Atlantic cable, though it was my suggestion and built upon my assurances of its feasibility, is carefully excluded from mention.” Such, he concluded, was public opinion. Years ago the public had doubted his suggestion. Now it doubted that he ever made the suggestion.

As Morse had planned to do, he gave his family every advantage of European travel and education. He took them all on excursions to England, Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland. The children progressed in mastering French and German, learning to draw, and becoming accomplished musicians. The often mischievous Arthur played the violin in duets with his sister Lela, who was studying piano; his teacher, a celebrated German violinist, remarked that he had “extraordinary powers.” Morse indulged his own fondness for music by hearing performances in Dresden of Wagner’s Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman, and Tannhäuser.

Morse took particular