Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [86]
Before leaving for Europe in mid-May, Morse got ready several complete telegraphs to take along—transmitters, receivers, dictionaries, batteries. Given the difficulty of moving it all aboard ship and between countries, he decided to take a setup capable of working through only two miles. The apparatus included a once-again-improved port-rule and register, created by Vail after much thoughtful experiment.
Morse also gathered up letters of introduction and recommendation from well-placed politicians and other notables to their counterparts in Europe, including Russia. He impressed on them that in going abroad he hoped not only to profit from his telegraph, but also “to claim for my country the honor of the Invention.” At the same time he prepared a U.S. patent application, working together with F. O. J. Smith but making the elaborate drawings himself, a “most arduous and tedious process.” Foreign governments would not patent his telegraph if he had already patented it in America. So he asked the Patent Office to delay issuing the document until he returned from abroad—a request that would bring him grief.
While developing his telegraph, Morse had stayed in touch with his artist friends and painting pupils. As President of the National Academy of Design, too, he had continued to deliver the annual address and look after the awarding of premiums. On the eve of his departure the members once again elected him president, commissioning him to make purchases for the Academy while abroad. Before setting off he also attended to The Gem of the Republic, his giant history painting of the signing of the Mayflower Compact. After his wounding elimination from the Capitol rotunda project, a group of artists had raised subscriptions to commission the work, hoping to rally him. Getting started, he had visited Boston and Plymouth to search for remains of the Mayflower and of the furniture of the Pilgrims.
Morse sent the subscribers a printed letter, admitting that he was in a “state of suspense.” He hoped while in Europe to pursue “some studies connected with the Picture,” he said. But his commitment to the telegraph might make it a duty, “to myself and to my country,” to put off the painting for a while, perhaps eventually to give it up. For the moment he asked his sponsors to collect no more money until he returned, when he would more certainly know what to do. What he wanted to do was clear, he concluded: “If possible I wish as soon as practicable to relieve myself of the cares of the Telegraph, that I may have my time to devote more strenuously than ever to the execution of my picture.” In fact, however, his lifelong and once-consuming ambition to paint was dying.
Morse’s brother Richard decided to accompany him and Smith, not to transact business, but for the healthful effects of an overseas voyage. Sometimes vomiting after meals, he had been experiencing again the emotional pain that had darkened his adolescence and young manhood, what he described as “depression of mind, irritability of nerves & irresoluteness.”
As he embarked for Liverpool, Morse himself felt anxious. “I am risking all my professional business by this act,” he told Vail, “and if it should turn out nothing, I shall be in a bad situation.” His artistic career had taught him much about hopes that turned out nothing, or worse. Although pleased by the rousing and unanimous approval of his telegraph in Washington, he recalled his last stay in the city thirteen years before: while painting Lafayette he had received the news of Lucrece’s death. He must stay guarded, he thought, even though the prospect before him now was of fame and wealth, “the tide of prosperity at its full flow.” Human affairs were inconstant,