Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [35]
Unlike Finley, his brothers were thriving. Work as a full-time religious journalist gave Richard an uncharacteristic sense of purpose. Regarding the paper as “an incalculable service to the Christian public,” he energetically rounded up subscribers and composed advertising circulars. Sidney, trained in the law, needed no such steadying. Jedediah once compared him and Finley to the tortoise and the hare: Sidney phlegmatic, Finley impulsive. The most prudent member of the family, Sidney, unlike Finley, distrusted visionary prospects: “new schemes have been the ruin of the Morses,” he said. As the Observer flourished, he and Richard detached themselves from New Haven and stopped working on their father’s geographies: “we have shone long enough with borrowed light,” Sidney explained, “… wish now we may shine for ourself.”
Sidney E. Morse (ca. 1860) (New-York Historical Society)
Finley settled in New York in mid-November, renting a studio at 96 Broadway, a few blocks from his brothers’ Pine Street newspaper office. To his surprise and relief he did well. The new demand for his painting may have been due to his altered view of it. Instead of trying to line up and dash off many commissions, he sought only as many as he could handle while painting carefully. “I have no disposition to be a nine days’ wonder, all the rage for a moment and then forgotten forever.” At the same time he took on a few promising pupils, such as the nineteen-year-old rustic portraitist Erastus Field. “My storms are partly over,” he wrote, “and a clear and pleasant day is dawning upon me.”
With the pleasant day came some good luck as well. Three months before Finley settled in the city, the Marquis de Lafayette (1757–1834) had arrived in New York harbor to begin a year-long farewell tour of the country that would take him to all twenty-four states. Now the only surviving general of the American Revolution, he came at the invitation of Congress and of President Monroe, to a tumultuous reception. A flotilla of seven decorated steamboats manned by two hundred sailors swept him from Staten Island to the Battery, where he was welcomed by ringing bells, roaring cannon, and a crowd of more than fifty thousand.
To Finley as to Jedediah, Lafayette was a near-mythical figure, scarcely less beloved than Washington himself. Lafayette incarnated the fact that the American Revolution, in rejecting monarchy and aristocracy, marked the beginning of modern world history. And he remained a leading international spokesman for representative institutions and the universal right of liberty.
New York City planned to commemorate Lafayette’s visit by ordering a life-size portrait of the general. Enthusiastic for the idea, Finley wrote to the chairman of the portrait committee, nominating himself. He sent along testimonials from Charleston, and offered to submit samples of his pictures of New Yorkers. The intense competition for this uniquely important commission brought applications from such well-known artists as Rembrandt Peale and Thomas Sully. But the honor went to Finley, with a fee of about a thousand dollars. An engraving of the portrait would be made, certain to be popular, for which he would receive half the profits.
“We must begin to feel proud of your acquaintance,” Lucrece wrote to Finley. His extravagant success also heartened her by its promise of ending their separation. “I think now that we can indulge a rational hope that the time is not very far distant when you can be happy in the bosom of your much loved family, and that your dear children can enjoy the permanent advantage of an affectionate father’s counsel and care.” Finley spoke of renting a house and settling his family in New York—a possibility all the more desirable to Lucrece because she was