(1819-1892)
[Illustration: Cyrus W. Field.]
We, the people of the United States, have been celebrating with
memorable pomp the discovery of our hemisphere by Christopher
Columbus, and the elder nations and far-off islands have joined us
in an immense festivity, honoring beyond all example of approbation
an adventure that was a marvel, and an achievement that is immortal.
All the world remembers the voyage of Columbus, that, persevered in
through trials and perils, ended in triumph--how he studied the
stars and the charts, and out of the dreams of ages wove the fabric
of fancy that grew to theory, and prophecy, and history, that there
was land beyond the Atlantic; and there is no moment in human life
supreme above, or of more fascinating interest than, that when, from
the deck of his caravel he saw the light on the shore of the new
world.
An incident worthy to be associated for ever with this, is that of
Cyrus West Field, in his library, turning over a globe, after a
conversation relative to extending a line of telegraph to
Newfoundland, to reduce the time of the transmission of news between
Europe and America; when the idea flashed into his mind that the
telegraph might span the Atlantic. The next day Mr. Field wrote to
Lieutenant Maury, of the National Observatory at Washington, and to
Professor Morse, who invented the telegraph.
The Atlantic telegraph was as truly the conception and the
accomplishment of Mr. Field, as the discovery of America was the
ambition and the act of Columbus; and Chief Justice Chase was not
extravagant when he said the telegraph across the ocean was "the
most wonderful achievement of civilization," and entitled "its
author to a distinguished rank among benefactors;" or when he added:
"High upon that illustrious roll will his name be placed, and there
will it remain while oceans divide and telegraphs unite mankind."
John Bright said: "My friend Field, the Columbus of modern times, by
his cable has moored the New World alongside the Old."
Equally lofty testimony to the splendor of his fame is that of the
London _Times_ of August 6, 1858, saying: "Since the discovery of
Columbus, nothing has been done in any degree comparable to the vast
enlargement which has thus been given to the sphere of human
activity."
From the first vital spark that at last glows into the bloom of
life, each human being is endowed with certain qualities and
capacities, aptitudes, inspirations, possibilities, limitations; and
if one trace the stream of blood to its remotest sources, there is
no inconsistency in ancestry, and the science of humanity may be as
strict within its boundaries as that of geology, or the story of
fruitful trees, or the magnetic constellations.
The four famous brothers have given the Field family an almost
unique celebrity in this country. They were the sons of the Rev.
David Dudley Field, of Western Massachusetts, the room-mate at Yale
College of Jeremiah Evarts, father of William M. Evarts. Field and
Evarts entered college together in 1798, and graduated in 1802. The
American Fields are the descendants of John Field, the astronomer of
Ardsley, in Yorkshire, who gained a great reputation by publishing
astronomical tables, and died in 1587. Ardsley, it has not passed
from the general recollection, was the name of the estate on the
Hudson where for so many years Mr. Cyrus W. Field made his summer
home.
The family name was in the fifteenth century changed from Feld,
Feild, Felde, and Fielde, into its present form; and John Field, the
astronomer, was the first to introduce the Copernican system in
England, and he received a patent in 1558, authorizing him to bear
as a crest over his family arms, an arm issuing from clouds and
supporting a globe. Dr. Richard Field, chaplain of Queen Elizabeth,
was of the same family, and author of the "Book of the Church,"
republished in four volumes at Oxford in 1843.
It was the last day of autumn, November 30, 1819, at the Morgan Place,
on a hill that sloped to the river, near Stockbridge, Mass., that
Cyrus West Field was born. There were three older brothers--David
Dudley, Timothy Beale, and Matthew Dickinson. The Cyrus came from a
man of note in the town, named Cyrus Williams, and the West from Dr.
Stephen West, the predecessor of Dr. David Dudley Field in the pulpit
at Stockbridge. It is said of the child that he was of very delicate
organization, so weak and frail that his body "had to be supported by
a frame in which he could roll around the room till his limbs could
get strength to bear him." There was, however (as his younger brother,
Dr. Henry M. Field, the historian of the family, says in his vigorous
English), "a nervous energy and elasticity derived from his mother,"
that brought him up, and "once set upon his little feet, he developed
by incessant motion," and he was noted for "restless activity," a
characteristic of his whole life. His frame, always slight, "became
tough and wiry, capable of great effort and great endurance." Cyrus
was the one of the Field boys who did not go to college. When fifteen
years of age, his brother, David Dudley, who was nearly fifteen years
his senior, and lived until his ninetieth year, secured a place for
him in the store of A. T. Stewart. Cyrus was a thorough country boy,
and his mother's boy, and did not take kindly to the city at first.
Dr. Field says: "I well remember hearing my brother Matthew tell
mother how Cyrus had come down to the boat on which he left the city,
and wept bitterly; and mother telling him, the next time he went to
New York, if his little brother felt so still, to bring him home." Mr.
Field soon grew tired of being a clerk, and launched out in the
manufacture and sale of paper. His capital was his brains--and in
twelve years, when he was but thirty-three years old, he was in
possession of a handsome fortune, and thought of retiring. This,
however, was only a phase of restlessness, and he had before him
nearly forty years of extraordinary activity. His great works and
trials, his counting his gains and losses by millions, his glory and
his sorrows, were all before him. The first of his many long journeys
was to South America, with the artist Church, who painted for him the
"Heart of the Andes." He ascended the Magdalena River, climbed the
Andes to Bogota, crossed to Quito, and by way of Guayaquil, in
Ecuador, reached the western coast, and returned home October, 1853,
in time for the golden wedding of his parents. Then he set about the
task of retirement from business, and was in a feverish state of
energy upon that subject, and drifted into the twelve years harassing
struggle, from the time when, in his house in Gramercy Park, he sat
alone and turned over the globe, and thought of a telegraphic cable
through the Atlantic, until the tremendous task was gloriously
finished. After writing to Maury and Morse, Mr. Field called in his
next-door neighbor, Peter Cooper; and next called Moses Taylor, who
listened for an hour without saying a word; and brought in his most
intimate friend, Marshall O. Roberts; and then Mr. Chandler White (who
died the next year and was succeeded by Wilson G. Hunt). They
organized "The New York, Newfoundland and London Telegraph Company,"
Field, Cooper, Taylor, and Roberts putting in $20,000 each, and White
a smaller sum. Field and White, with David Dudley Field as legal
adviser, set forth for Newfoundland to get a charter, and called it a
fishing excursion. They got a land donation, and an exclusive right to
land cable for fifty years. There was first to build a line of
telegraph four hundred miles through the wilderness, across the huge
island. The land-line work lasted three years, and each of the
parties who started by putting in $20,000, put in ten times that
amount, and Field much more. The first cable across the Gulf of St.
Lawrence was a failure. The second one held; and at last there rolled
two thousand miles of tempestuous ocean, with a bottom that was a
mystery, between the verge of the American soil and the Irish coast.
Mr. Cyrus W. Field visited England as an Atlantic cable missionary,
and addressed the Chambers of Commerce in the principal cities, and
the members of the Government. His intense convictions and incessant
enthusiasm made way. The scientific men of England were cautious but
hopeful. There had been, as it happened, the year before a survey of
the North Atlantic, disclosing conditions of the bottom of the sea,
and they were reassuring. The Government was so far interested as to
engage to furnish ships to lay the cable, and to guarantee £14,000 a
year for messages sent if it proved a success--four per cent. of the
expected cost; but the capital had to be raised by private
enterprise, and Mr. Field visited Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester,
and Liverpool, and subscribed one-fourth of the whole sum. His
persistence was continued until the money was raised; but his
friends in America were not eager for the stock, and he had to pay
into the treasury of the company £88,000 in gold. The complete
responsibility of Mr. Field appears at every point. He was the
inspiration and the moving force from first to last. The work was
strange, and there were delays and details of difficulty arising at
every step, that a thousand times would have been insurmountable, if
it had not been for the indomitable Field, whose tenacity even
exceeded his impetuosity. There were two governments to be
negotiated with to furnish ships. The cable was at last ready and on
board--and three hundred and sixty-five years after Columbus sailed
from the shores of Spain, Field sailed from Ireland, the
Lord-Lieutenant, the Earl of Carlisle, making the speech of the
occasion. The first effort was to lay the cable straight from
Ireland to Newfoundland, and the start was made Wednesday, August 5,
1857. Three hundred and fifty miles out the cable broke. That was
failure; and Field's private fortune had suffered severely from his
absence. But the next year he was again in England and another start
was made--the ships going half-way and joining the cable and running
both ways. The cable parted again and again, and the ships returned
to England. All were in despair but Field, and he rallied once more,
and another trial was made--and succeeded. The cable lasted for a
few weeks and gave out. The people were wild with delight at the
success, and utterly cast down and disgusted by the failure. But the
proof was out; the thing could be done. Cables had been laid in the
Mediterranean, and final success was in sight. A new cable was made
and coiled on the Great Eastern--and when starting from Ireland and
one thousand two hundred and fifty miles were out, there was a break
where the ocean was two miles deep, and a year was lost. Then
another cable on the Great Eastern, and in 1866 it held out all the
way over. This was the year of the war between Prussia and Austria,
just after the battle of Sadowa. The next thing was to find and
splice the lost cable of the year before, and that was done, one of
the most wonderful things that ever happened. Mr. Field told the
story before the Chamber of Commerce of New York in November, 1866,
saying, after the lost cable was found and spliced: "A few minutes
of suspense and a flash told of the lightning current again set
free--some turned their heads away and wept, others broke into
cheers. Soon the wind arose and we were for thirty-six hours exposed
to all the dangers of a storm on the Atlantic; yet in the fury of
the gale, as I sat in the electrician's room, a flash of light came
up from the deep, which, having passed to Ireland, came back to me
in mid-ocean, telling that those so dear to me, whom I had left on
the banks of the Hudson, were well, and following us with their
prayers. This was like a whisper of God from the sea, bidding me
keep heart and hope."
The Great Eastern safely landed the second cable, and the two worlds
were safely forever joined. Mr. Field said he had often, in the long
struggle--nearly thirteen years in the forests of Newfoundland, on
ships in stormy seas--almost accused himself of madness, sacrificing
everything for what might prove, after all, but a dream. He received
the thanks of Congress, with a gold medal--the grand medal of the
French Exposition of 1867. Honors were heaped upon him. If he had
been a British subject, he would have been made a baronet. He had
given twelve years without accepting remuneration for time or toil,
and his hopeful, at last haggard dream, was a marvellous golden
reality.
He was forty-seven years of age. He visited Egypt at the opening of
the Suez Canal in 1864. He attended the millennial celebration of
the settlement of Iceland in August, 1874. He made with his wife a
trip around the world in 1880. He was known in all civilized lands
as one of the foremost men of his time. All the people of the
highest distinction in England knew and admired him as the most
typical and celebrated of Americans. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. John Bright,
the Duke of Argyle, Dean Stanley were his intimate friends. His
house at Gramercy Park was the scene of a splendid hospitality.
There gathered in his ample parlors, stored with souvenirs from
every land, and in his dining-room, men and women of the highest
consideration at home and abroad.
The keenness of his intelligence had increased with his
unprecedented experience. His triumphs had given him confidence in
his executive ability, and there was nothing too daring for him to
contemplate. His bitter lessons in going to the verge of ruin, when
he gave the fortune of his youth to the enterprise that he carried
to success, were amply pondered, and he resolved never again to
allow those near and dear to him to take the chances of cruel
fortune and the anxieties of impending want.
When his years were numbered in the thirties, he was meditating
retirement from business; and when he was in the sixties, his
irrepressible activities carried him into the development of the
elevated railway system on Manhattan Island, with the same ardor and
fixed purpose with which, thirty years before, he had invaded the
wilderness of Newfoundland to find a basis of operations for the
conquest of the Atlantic. His faith was undaunted and without limit.
His touch revealed new fortunes. He saw that the elevated lines that
developed Harlem, would also improve lower New York; and the
Washington Building, No. 1 Broadway, was the materialization of the
thought. The intensity that was remarked in his childhood, and that
commanded the confidence of the capitalists of England, knew no
abatement. He had been very cautious in advising Englishmen about
investments, but had imparted to some of them the assurance that
United States Bonds were as sound as the English investment of
national debt, and they profited by accepting his judgment. He
insisted upon popularizing the elevated roads by a uniform fare of
five cents, and had it done against strong opposition, and was more
confident than ever in the stock, of which he had an enormous
holding. But it took years longer than he had calculated to make
good his plans, and in the interval came a financial storm that
compelled him to submit to a heavy loss. He bore his misfortune with
fortitude, and still had a competency ample for him, when there came
a torrent of ill-fortune--the loss of his beloved wife, and the
failure of his sons, under circumstances that bore the distressing
stamp of insanity in one of them, a taint of madness that was in the
blood which had been so prolific of genius. He suffered where he was
strongest and weakest--in his love and his pride.
His spirit would have been invincible if his heart had not been
broken. No husband and father was ever more solicitous for the
welfare of wife and children. The death of his wife, followed by the
disasters that overtook his sons, wounded him as mortally as if a
flight of arrows had pierced him. The very contingencies of fortune
against which he thought he had provided with infinite painstaking,
fell upon him as if from clouds in a sky he thought clear. His
deepest resolution was that, after the long strain of facing the
total loss of fortune during the dark years of the cable enterprise,
he never again would consent to take the chances of the catastrophe
that had haunted him, and from which he had escaped at such hazard
that the fortunate interposition seemed miraculous; and he did not
consciously do the wrong to himself and dear ones he had with such
anxiety sought to avoid. His misfortunes were as incalculable as
incurable.
The family affection of the Fields is one of their distinctions, and
the love the four brothers, known to all the world, bore each other,
was as gentle and full of all happiness as that of children. The
"little acts of kindness, little deeds of love," that, as the old
hymn says, would make the world an Eden, were never wanting. The
festivals in which they delighted were those of the family--the
eightieth birthday of the oldest brother--the golden wedding. In his
long travels, Mr. Field was ever thoughtful of home, and it was like
him, giving a dinner to a company of Americans in Edinburgh, to
telegraph to their families so that each guest found the news of
that day, from his own fireside, in a cablegram on his plate.
Mr. Field was no doubt attracted to Iceland, in 1874, by his studies
of the northern waters; the way the world tapers off in the high
latitudes, and the fact that Iceland must have been often in his
mind as he studied Newfoundland and Ireland, and knew that Iceland
was so near Greenland as to belong to the American continent, and to
have been a stepping-stone from Norway to Labrador. He was regarded
by the Icelanders as almost as great a man as the King of Denmark,
who visited his remote possession at the same time; and they thought
Field even a greater discoverer than Columbus, for they said the
Genoese navigator got his knowledge of the land in the west from
their ancestors, and sailed on a certainty.
On the day President Garfield was shot down, he was on his way to
Williams College, and was to dine that night with Mr. Cyrus Field at
Ardsley, and go to the old place he called "the sweetest in the
world" next day. A yacht was waiting to convey the President from
Jersey City, when the news of the assassination became known. The
President suffered mentally because he had not made adequate
provision for his family, and Mr. Field headed a subscription list
with a liberal sum, and in a few days had a quarter of a million
dollars safely invested for Mrs. Garfield and her children. The
motive of this timely and apt generosity was, first, to afford
consolation to the dying chief magistrate.
It was within the scope of the ambition of Mr. Field to span the
Pacific as well as the Atlantic Ocean with a cable; but having
triumphantly overcome one ocean, he failed to put a girdle round the
earth, as De Lesseps, having succeeded with the Suez Canal--the only
work of the age to be named with the Atlantic telegraph--failed at
Darien.
If the prosperity of Mr. Field had continued, and the light had not
gone out in his home, he would not have been content until he had
ransacked the globe for ways and means to have followed the sun to
Asia with the telegraph. His footsteps point the way, and the road
to India is westward.
The golden wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Cyrus W. Field was attended by
hundreds of those who knew and loved them, and the great double
house of the Fields, fronting on Gramercy Park, was full of bright
faces and glittering with lights. The historic home was soon
darkened and made desolate. The master, the renowned victor--no name
more certain of an honorable immortality than his--was one whom
"unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster." His wife
passed away at Ardsley before the deeper gloom of the storm, and he
died there July 12, 1892. In his delirium on the morning of his
death, he was again on the stormy coast with the cable fleet; and he
said: "Hold those ships--do not let them sail yet." Through the
centuries there had descended to him from the old astronomer, his
ancestor, the far-flashing conception of enterprise and
understanding of the splendor of destiny that was his star, and
mingled with its light were the gentle influences of the religion of
his fathers, always to him real and radiant. He sleeps well, amid
the scenes where he passed his boyhood, and for which his heart
yearned always--beside his beloved wife; and carved in the marble of
their tomb as the last testimony to the loving heart of his
companion, are the words: "Love is eternal." The recollection of his
sorrows will not, as the centuries come and go, dim the beautiful
light of his illustrious name.
[Signature: Murat Halstead.]