Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [57]
Members of the American colony asked Morse to preside over an Independence Day celebration at Lointier’s restaurant, at which Lafayette was the guest of honor. Some eighty Americans attended, including the U.S. minister to France, William Rives. Morse rose after the first of thirteen toasts to salute the General as a countryman: “Yes, gentlemen, he belongs to America as well as to Europe. He is our fellow-citizen.” Oddly echoing his family’s frequent criticism of himself, he praised Lafayette for the consistency that set him apart from the “fickle class” of humanity: “He is a Tower amidst the waters; his foundation is upon a rock; he moves not with the ebb and flow of the stream.” According to newspaper accounts, applause interrupted nearly every sentence of his panegyric, topped at the end by nine cheers and a band playing the Parisienne. In the toasts that followed, Lafayette proposed “Republican Institutions: the prolific Daughters of American Independence.” Morse received a health as “The worthy representative of the artists of the country.”
Practically every evening Morse spent with James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) and his family. A close friend of Lafayette, the novelist was in his early forties, tall, with a rich voice and military bearing. His manner was brusque—“unconciliating,” people called it, “uncompromising,” “like a bluff sailor.” With his wife and daughters he occupied two floors of a house in the elite Faubourg St. Germain, in view of the Hôtel des Invalides. His much-translated Leatherstocking tales were widely read in France and throughout Europe, taken as realistic pictures of American life. He worked so intently at his writing that his hand sometimes shook. But his literary efforts brought him nearly $20,000 a year, probably more than any other American writer had ever earned.
Morse admired Cooper for proving to the world the value of American culture, refuting “the disgraceful taunt that is hurled at us by foreigners of being destitute of genius.” He also saw embodied in Cooper his own ideal of the American gentleman, someone of simple manner but superior mind and bearing, “equal to any title of rank in Europe, Kings and Emperors not excepted.” Cooper understood the hollowness of European political systems, and spoke on behalf of American principles with fearless dignity. Yet he was more courted abroad by the great than those who truckled and cringed to foreign opinion. Unknown to his friend, Morse wrote to Professor Benjamin Silliman in New Haven suggesting that Yale award Cooper an honorary M.A. degree: “Such a man ought to be cherished and supported by his countrymen.”
For his part, Cooper rated Morse “just as good a fellow as there is going.” Fancying himself a connoisseur of art, he accompanied Morse around Paris looking at old paintings for sale on the street. They argued whether some cheaply priced begrimed canvas was or was not a Teniers, Cooper interpreting along the way since Morse spoke little French. Morse also gave painting lessons to Cooper’s daughter Sue, in whom he was rumored to be interested. Cooper denied this: “Morse is an excellent man, but not just the one to captivate a fine young woman of twenty.”
Nevertheless, the rumor was probably true. Morse seems to have had no female company while in Italy, and did not consider looking for a wife abroad. Only America, he said, could produce “the beau ideal of woman in all that gives dignity and loveliness to the sex.” He apparently found such a prospect in young Sue, for he admitted taking a “deep interest” in Cooper’s family, “not merely on the father’s account.” Sue was half his age, but so was Catherine Pattison when he proposed marriage to her. On the other hand, that Sue was also the daughter of an esteemed friend may have aroused guilt. For whatever reason, he backed away. Horatio