Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals Volume I Part 20

In the same letter his father says: "In regard to the subject on which you ask our advice, we refer it, after the experience you have had, and with the advice you have often had from us, to your own judgment. Be not hasty in entering into any engagement; enquire with caution and delicacy; do everything that is honorable and gentlemanly respecting yourself and those concerned. 'Pause, ponder, sift.--Judge before friends.h.i.+p--then confide till death.' (Young.) Above all, commit the subject to G.o.d in prayer and ask his guidance and blessing. I am glad to find you are doing this."

How well he obeyed his father's injunctions may be gathered from the following letter, which speaks for itself:--

CONCORD, September 2, 1816.

MY DEAR PARENTS,--I have just received yours of August 29. I leave town to-morrow morning, probably for Hanover, as there is no conveyance direct to Walpole.

I have had no more portraits since I wrote you, so that I have received just one hundred dollars in Concord. The last I took for ten dollars, as the person I painted obtained four of my sitters for me....

With respect to the confidential affair, everything is successful beyond my most sanguine expectations. The more I know of her the more amiable she appears. She is very beautiful and yet no coquetry; she is modest, quite to diffidence, and yet frank and open-hearted. Wherever I have enquired concerning her I have invariably heard the same character of--"remarkably amiable, modest, and of a sweet disposition." When you learn that this is the case I think you will not accuse me of being hasty in bringing the affair to a crisis. I ventured to tell her my whole heart, and instead of obscure and ambiguous answers, which some would have given to tantalize and pain one, she frankly, but modestly and timidly, told me it was mutual. Suffice it to say we are _engaged_.

If I know my parents I know they will be pleased with this amiable girl.

Unless I was confident of it, I should never have been so hasty. I have not yet mentioned it to her parents; she requested me to defer it till next summer, or till I see her again, lest she should be thought hasty.

She is but sixteen and is willing to wait two or three years if it is for our mutual interest.

Never, never was a human being so blest as I am, and yet what an ungrateful wretch I have been. Pray for me that I may have a grateful heart, for I deserve nothing but adversity, and yet have the most unbounded prosperity.

The father replies to this characteristic letter on September 4, 1816:--

"I have just received yours of the 2d inst. Its contents were deeply interesting to us, as you will readily suppose. It accounts to us why you have made so long a stay at Concord.... So far as we can judge from your representations (which are all we have to judge from), we cannot refuse you our approbation, and we hope that the course, on which you have entered with your characteristic rapidity and decision, will be pursued and issue in a manner which will conduce to the happiness of all concerned....

"We think _her_ parents should be made acquainted with the state of the business, as she is so young and the thing so important to them."

The son answers this letter, from Walpole, New Hamps.h.i.+re, on September 7, 1816, thus naively: "You think the parents of the young lady should be made acquainted with the state of the business. I feel some degree of awkwardness as it respects that part of the affair; I don't know the manner in which it ought to be done. I wish you would have the goodness to write me immediately (at Walpole, to care of Thomas Bellows, Esq.) and inform me what I should say. Might I communicate the information by writing?"

Here he gives a detailed account of the family, and, for the first time, mentions the young lady's name--Lucretia Pickering Walker--and continues:--

"You ask how the family have treated me. They are all aware of the attachment between us, for I have made my attention so open and so marked that they all must have perceived it. I know that Lucretia must have had some conversation with her mother on the subject, for she told me one day, when I asked her what her mother thought of my constant visits, that her mother said she 'didn't think I cared much about her,' in a pleasant way. All the family have been extremely polite and attentive to me; I received constant invitations to dinner and tea, indeed every encouragement was given me....

"I painted two hasty sketches of scenery in Concord. I meet with no success in Walpole. _Quacks_ have been before me."

There is always a touch of quaint, dry humor in his mother's letters in spite of their great seriousness, as witness the following extracts from a letter of September 9, 1816:--

"We hope you will feel more than ever the absolute necessity laid upon you to procure for yourself and those you love a maintenance, as neither of you can subsist long upon air.... Remember it takes a great many hundred dollars to _make_ and to _keep_ the pot a-boiling.

"I wish to see the young lady who has captivated you so much. I hope she loves religion, and that, if you and she form a connection for life, some _five or six years hence_, you may go hand in hand to that better world where they neither marry nor are given in marriage....

"You have not given us any satisfaction in respect to many things about the young lady which you ought to suppose we should be anxious to know.

All you have told us is that she is handsome and amiable. These are good as far as they go, but there are a great many etcs., etcs., that we want to know.

"Is she acquainted with domestic affairs? Does she respect and love religion? How many brothers and sisters has she? How old are they? Is she healthy? How old are her parents? What will they be likely to do for her some years hence, say when she is twenty years old?

"In your next answer at least some of these questions. You see your mother has not lived twenty-seven years in New England without learning to ask questions."

These questions he had already answered in a letter which must have crossed his mother's.

On September 23, 1816, he writes from Windsor, Vermont:--

"I am still here but shall probably leave in a week or two. I long to get home, or, at least, as far on my way as _Concord_. I think I shall be tempted to stay a week or two there.... I do not like Windsor very much.

It is a very dissipated place, and dissipation, too, of the lowest sort.

There is very little gentleman's society."

WINDSOR, VERMONT, September 28, 1816.

I am still in this place.... I have written Lucretia on the subject of acquainting her parents, and I have no doubt she will a.s.sent.... I hear her spoken of in this part of the country as very celebrated, both for her beauty and, particularly, for her disposition; and this I have heard without there being the slightest suspicion of any attachment, or even acquaintance, between us. This augurs well most certainly. I know she is considered in Concord as the first girl in the place. (You know I always aimed highest.) The more I think of this attachment the more I think I shall not regret the _haste_ (if it may be so called) of this proposed connection....

I am doing pretty well in this place, better than I expected; I have one more portrait to do before I leave it.... I should have business, I presume, to last me some weeks if I could stay, but I long to get home _through Concord_....

Mama's scheme of painting a large landscape and selling it to General Bradley for two hundred dollars, must give place to another which has just come into my head: that of sending to you for my great canvas and painting the quarrel at Dartmouth College, as large as life, with all the portraits of the trustees, overseers, officers of college, and students; and, if I finish it next week, to ask five thousand dollars for it and then come home in a coach and six and put Ned to the blush with his nineteen subscribers a day. Only think, $5000 a week is $260,000 a year, and, if I live ten years, I shall be worth $2,600,000; a very pretty fortune for this time of day. Is it not a grand scheme?

The remark concerning his brother Sidney Edwards's subscribers refers to a religious newspaper, the "Boston Recorder," founded and edited by him.

It was one of the first of the many religious journals which, since that time, have multiplied all over the country.

Continuing his modestly successful progress, he writes next from Hanover, on October 3, 1816:--

"I arrived in this place on Tuesday evening and am painting away with all my might. I am painting Judge Woodward and lady, and think I shall have many more engaged than I can do. I painted seven portraits at Windsor, one for my board and lodging at the inn, and one for ten dollars, very small, to be sent in a letter to a great distance; so that in all I received eighty-five dollars in money. I have five more engaged at Windsor for next summer. So you see I have not been idle.

"I _must_ spend a fortnight at Concord, so that I shall not probably be at home till early in November.

"I think, with proper management, that I have but little to fear as to this world. I think I can, with industry, average from two to three thousand dollars a year, which is a tolerable income, though _not equal to_ $2,600,000!"

CONCORD, October 14, 1816.

I arrived here on Friday evening in good health and spirits from Hanover.

I painted four portraits altogether in Hanover, and have many engaged for next summer. I presume I shall paint some here, though I am uncertain.

I found Lucretia in good health, very glad to see me. She improves on acquaintance; she is, indeed, a most amiable, affectionate girl; I know you will love her. She has consented that I should inform her parents of our attachment. I have, accordingly, just sent a letter to her father (twelve o'clock), and am now in a state of suspense anxiously waiting his answer. Before I close this, I hope to give you the result.

_Five o'clock._ I have just called and had a conversation (by request) with Mr. Walker, and I have the satisfaction to say: "I have Lucretia's parents' entire approbation." Everything successful! Praise be to the giver of every good gift! What, indeed, shall I render to Him for all his unmerited and continually increasing mercies and blessings?

In a letter to Miss Walker from a girl friend we find the following:--

"You appear to think, dear Lucretia, that I am possessed of quite an insensible _heart_; pardon me if I say the same of you, for I have heard that several have become candidates for your affections, but that you remained unmoved until Mr. M., of Charlestown, made his appearance, when, I understand, you did hope that his sentiments in your favor were reciprocal.

"I rejoice to hear this, for, though I am unacquainted with that gentleman, yet, when I heard he was likely to become a successful suitor, I have made some enquiries concerning him, and find he is possessed of every excellent and amiable quality that I should wish the person to have who was to become the husband of so dear a friend as yourself."

Morse must have returned home about the end of October, for we find no more letters until the 14th of December, when he writes from Portsmouth, New Hamps.h.i.+re:--

"I should have written you sooner but I have been employed in settling myself. I thought it best not to be precipitate in fixing on a place to board and lodge, but first to sound the public as to my success. Every one thinks I shall meet with encouragement, and, on the strength of this, I have taken lodgings and a room at Mrs. Hinge's in Jaffrey Street; a very excellent and central situation.... I shall commence on Monday morning with Governor Langdon's portrait. He is very kind and attentive to me, as, indeed, are all here, and will do everything to aid me. I wish not to raise high expectations, but I think I shall succeed tolerably well."

About this time Finley Morse and his brother Edwards had jointly devised and patented a new "flexible piston-pump," from which they hoped great things. Edwards, always more or less of a wag, proposed to call it "Morse's Patent Metallic Double-headed Ocean-Drinker and Deluge-Spouter Valve Pump-Boxes."

It was to be used in connection with fire-engines, and seems really to have been an excellent invention, for President Jeremiah Day, of Yale College, gave the young inventors his written endors.e.m.e.nt, and Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, thus recommends it: "Having examined the model of a fire-engine invented by Mr. Morse, with pistons of a new construction, I am of opinion that an engine may be made on that principle (being more simple and much less expensive), which would have a preference to those in common use."

In the letters of the year 1817 and of several following years, even in the letters of the young man to his _fiancee,_ many long references are made to this pump and to the varying success in introducing it into general use. I shall not, however, refer to it again, and only mention it to show the bent of Morse's mind towards invention.

He spent some time in the early part of 1817 in Portsmouth, New Hamps.h.i.+re, meeting with success in his profession. Miss Walker was also there visiting friends, so we may presume that his stay was pleasant as well as profitable.