Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [32]
Allston urged Finley not to be discouraged. Although the painting had brought in little cash it had gained him much praise, from the best judges. In Allston’s aristocratic logic, the meager cash return meant that the worst judges had ignored it: “the lower classes must have been wanting in curiosity, and as they make up the mass of the town, if it does not attract them, the receipts must of course be small.” The life of the painting had just begun, he said. “Be of good heart then. I have no doubt of your success.”
At the end of April, Pratt moved the heavy House of Representatives to Salem, Massachusetts, for display at a local coffeehouse—small but the best he could get. The local press took notice, the public did not. In two weeks he made just over $40, his expenses amounting to nearly $60. He sent the picture on for exhibition to New York City, where Finley went to receive it, now in no hopeful mood. “I cannot predict any thing concerning it, but I don’t expect much.”
Under Pratt’s management, The House of Representatives was presented to New Yorkers through June and July. Although he circulated seven hundred handbills and kept the hall open each evening, his receipts in the first twelve days averaged only about $4; on one day only $1.50 came in. The trouble this time, he believed, was that the painting faced too much competition—not only from simultaneous shows by Rembrandt Peale and Thomas Sully but also from the city’s many theaters, circuses, and pleasure gardens. “Exhibitions are so multiplied that people begin to think them not worth seeing,” he informed Finley; “it is worse than it was at Salem; as far as I can judge, there is not the least interest taken in the subject.” It did not help that the street outside the hall was being torn up and repaved, leaving stony rubbish that made it impassable. By the time Pratt closed the show, in July, he had only three and a half cents on hand, together with bills for rent and advertising amounting to $110.
After the miserable seven-week run in New York, Finley signed over to a man named Curtis Doolittle the right to exhibit his picture anywhere in the United States—Doolittle to pay costs, Finley to receive half the profits. But there were no profits. After trying out the painting in Albany, Doolittle reported that receipts were so small he blushed to relate them. When he moved it to Hartford and Middletown, Connecticut, he lost $20 to $30. Finley released him from their contract. Doolittle transported the eighty-square-foot canvas back to New Haven and gave up.
Lucrece worried about how the series of failures might affect Finley. “My dear husband I trust will not give way to any anxious, desponding feelings,” she said; “it has pleased our heavenly Father for wise reasons to disappoint our expectations in regard to your large Picture, and it is our duty to submit to the disappointment.” But although he had very often preached the same to her, he found submission difficult. He came to feel that most people who attended exhibitions had no ability to appreciate his picture: “its merit is of too refined and unobtrusive a character.” To achieve that subtlety he had given the painting his all—all his improving skill, all his hopes for becoming a history painter, all his commitment to the nation’s promise, all the little money he had saved from his itinerant portrait painting and from the liberality of his Charleston patrons—all this and more than a year’s work. He understood well enough what it all meant: “this picture has ruined me.”
FOUR
An Affection of the Heart
(1823–1829)
THE FAILURE of his House of Representatives left Finley nowhere. “My plans for the future are in much confusion,” he told Lucrece. “I dream of this plan & that.” For a while he