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By Root 1413 0

took to the road again. He tried Albany, but wound up reading in his room, without business. People told him he had come at the wrong time—“the same tune that has been rung in my ears so long!” He tried New York City, boarding cheaply for $2.25 a week and sleeping on the floor of his studio. But New Yorkers were devoted to making money, not spending it. “No business at all,” he recorded; “All the artists agree there’s nothing doing.” Over one twelve-day period only two people came to see his samples. “I wait, and wait, and wait.” His clothes needed patching and he borrowed money for his necessities. Once again spending New Year’s apart from Lucrece, and alone, he listened to the city greet 1824 with an all-night din of trumpets and kettles.

Finley tried to revive his artistic career by changing its course. “I could easily be a sculptor,” he decided. After all, his statue of Hercules had taken a prize in London, and he could now apply to sculpture all he had since learned of painting. Sculpture was an art little practiced in America, too, “a field in which I cannot have, in the nature of the case, a single competitor.” As a move in that direction, he had conceived a lathelike device for carving in marble or another substance a replica of any statue or vase. He built a small model and got a New Haven mechanic to construct the working machine. But it proved wearying because turned by foot, and so heavy with its marble block as to make the floor tremble. Finley also learned that a marble-carving machine had already been patented. The truth was that America at the moment simply could not afford artists: “All are poor & discouraged, some are leaving the profession others leaving the country.”

Finley thought he might join the exodus, however. Perhaps to Mexico. The country was Americanizing its government, ready to adopt its first federal constitution, choose representatives, and elect its first president. It would enjoy the protection of the United States, too; in his annual message to Congress, President Monroe had declared that the Americas were no longer to be considered subjects for colonization by European powers. Given the current friendliness of Mexico toward the United States, Finley thought of pursuing his profession there, taking along The House of Representatives for exhibition. He might also become an art dealer. The upper classes of Mexico City lived lavishly, and the country probably harbored some important paintings. He might be able to interest speculators in buying them for resale in the United States, the profits to be split.

Finley began by seeking a position as private secretary to the new American minister to Mexico, Ninian Edwards, a former governor of Illinois. He wrote to several congressmen trying to enlist their influence, noting that his work as a painter would not interfere with his government duties: Rubens, for example, had done some of his finest portraits in England while serving as ambassador to the court. It turned out that Edwards already had a secretary. But he invited Finley to at least accompany the legation to Mexico, the American government providing free passage from New Orleans to Vera Cruz.

Finley’s latest scheme alarmed Lucrece: “How can I consent to have you be at such a distance?” She had given birth again, this time to a son named Charles Walker. Sickly at first, the infant vomited incessantly, and once even seemed to be dying. A frightened letter from her had brought Finley rushing back from Albany. But the episode left her feeling so guilty that she resolved to keep to herself whatever she suffered that might interrupt his work. She did suffer, her already frayed health worn down by the fatigue of caring for two young children: “I sometimes despair of ever enjoying any thing like health and strength again.” She feared opening letters from Finley lest they contain more news about Mexico, with the possibility of his being gone for two or three entire years.

The first week in April, however, Finley left for Mexico—the worst but one of their many separations. Lucrece and Jedediah