Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [94]
With the New Year came a new hope of demonstrating the telegraph at court. Morse was visited by the Prefect of the Seine, Count Ram-buteau, whose power he considered next only to the King’s. He worked the apparatus for the Count, who sent the words “Louis-Philippe” and was so impressed that he promised to speak to the King the same evening. But as usual nothing happened. A promised visit from the Chief of the King’s household, Count Bondy, apparently never happened either. And early in the new year Morse lost his closest contact with the palace when the government formed a new cabinet, deposing Count Montalivet as Minister of the Interior. “I cannot bear this standing still,” Morse groaned. “I have been dealing too much in lightning lately to feel easy travelling on a snail’s back.”
Morse got some further discouraging news from Mellen Chamberlain, the Vermont capitalist who was trying to sell rights to the telegraph elsewhere on the Continent, and in Asia and Africa. Chamberlain reported from Athens that he had demonstrated the invention to important persons in the city, including the King and Queen of Greece. All were captivated, he said, none was willing to risk money: “Fame is all you will get … in these poor Countries.” Still, he was off to Alexandria to show the telegraph to Mehemet Ali, Sultan of Egypt, “and hope to get something worth having.”
But Morse was beginning to feel that he must confine his hopes to America. The Old World and its old systems made Europeans unwilling to try new things however promising: “There is more of the 'Go-ahead character with us, suited to the character of an electro-magnetic Telegraph.” Some doubt was cast on this too, however, when Morse learned that Bavaria had put in operation on part of its railroad system the apparatus of Steinheil—the first government to give its support to electrical telegraphs. Morse regretted that the American Congress had not taken the lead. But he managed to see in the event a sign of approaching vindication: “this first adoption gives the assurance of … universal adoption and if mine is best as all continue to affirm, mine must supplant all.”
This depended, however, on the meaning of “mine.” Morse learned that an article in the Boston Post had declared the electromagnetic telegraph “entirely due to our fellow citizen Dr. Charles T. Jackson.” Jackson himself had supplied the information in the article. His spokesman in the Post explained that aboard the Sully Morse “pretended to feel a great interest in the invention,” and later “undertook to monopolize the credit.” Morse replied from Paris, threatening Jackson with public disgrace unless he immediately published a retraction: “For your family’s sake, and for your friends sake, I would wish to spare you this mortification; an indulgence on my part, which you must be conscious you do not deserve.”
Far from retracting, Jackson took aim at Morse’s reputation among the savans. He wrote off a blast to the Académie des Sciences: “I am pained at the undeserved patronage which the French philosophers have accorded to Mr. Morse. The invention which he has shown them belongs entirely to me.” (“L’invention qu’il leur a montrée mi appartient en entier.”)
In reopening his war on Morse after five years, Jackson triggered a transatlantic cross fire of angry letters between them, as well as charges and countercharges in the Observer and other American newspapers. Morse found out that Jackson had recently been accused of plagiarism. Now a geological surveyor for the U.S. government, Jackson had allegedly pilfered from an unacknowledged source the substance of his published report on the mineralogy of Nova Scotia. Just the same, his tale of technological theft and deceit was much talked about in Paris. Morse countered it by publicizing the testimonials from fellow passengers on the Sully, which he had brought with him to Europe. They produced “a pretty strong tide of indignation raised against Jackson,