NOVEMBER 19, 1818--MARCH 31, 1821.
Morse and his wife go to Charleston, South Carolina.--Hospitably
entertained and many portraits painted.--Congratulates Allston on his
election to the Royal Academy.--Receives commission to paint President
Monroe.--Trouble in the parish at Charlestown.--Morse urges his parents
to leave and come to Charleston.--Letters of John A. Alston.--Return to
the North.--Birth of his first child.--Dr. Morse and his family decide to
move to New Haven.--Morse goes to Washington.--Paints the President under
difficulties.--Hospitalities.--Death of his grandfather.--Dr. Morse
appointed Indian Commissioner.--Marriage of Morse's future mother-in-law.
--Charleston again.--Continued success.--Letters to Mrs. Ball.--
Liberality of Mr. Alston.--Spends the summer in New Haven.--Returns to
Charleston, but meets with poor success.--Assists in founding Academy of
Arts, which has but a short life.--Goes North again.
The young couple decided to spend the winter in Charleston, South
Carolina, where Morse had won a reputation the previous winter as an
excellent portrait-painter, and where much good business awaited him.
The following letter was written to his parents:--
SCHOONER TONTINE, AT ANCHOR OFF CHARLESTON LIGHTHOUSE,
THURSDAY, November 19, 1818, 5 o'clock P.M.
We have arrived thus far on our voyage safely through the kind protection
of Providence. We have had a very rough passage attended with many
dangers and more fears, but have graciously been delivered from them all.
It is seven days since we left New York. If you recollect that was the
time of my last passage in this same vessel. She is an excellent vessel
and has the best captain and accommodations in the trade.
Lucretia was a little seasick in the roughest times, but, on the whole,
bore the voyage extremely well. She seems a little downcast this
afternoon in consequence of feeling as if she was going among strangers,
but I tell her she will overcome it in ten minutes' interview with Uncle
and Aunt Finley and family.
She is otherwise very well and sends a great deal of love to you all.
Please let Mr. and Mrs. Walker know of our arrival as soon as may be. I
will leave the remainder of this until I get up to town. We hope to go up
when the tide changes in about an hour.
FRIDAY MORNING, 20th, AT UNCLE FINLEY'S.
We are safely housed under the hospitable roof of Uncle Finley, where
they received us, as you might expect, with open arms. He has provided
lodgings for us at ten dollars per week. I have not yet seen them; shall
go directly.
I received a letter from Richard at Savannah; he writes in fine spirits
and feels quite delighted with the hospitable people of the South.
This refers to his brother Richard Carey Morse, who was still pursuing
his theological studies.
The visit of the young couple to Charleston was a most enjoyable one, and
the artist found many patrons eager to be immortalized by his brush.
On December 22, 1818, he writes to his parents:--
"Lucretia is well and contented. She makes many friends and we receive as
much attention from the hospitable Carolinians as we can possibly attend
to. She is esteemed quite handsome here; she has grown quite fleshy and
healthy, and we are as happy in each other as you can possibly wish us.
"There are several painters arrived from New York, but I fear no
competition; I have as much as I can do."
As a chronicle of fair weather, favorable winds, and blue skies is apt to
grow monotonous, I shall pass rapidly over the next few years, only
selecting from the voluminous correspondence of that period a few
extracts which have more than a passing interest.
On February 4, 1819, he writes to his friend and master, Washington
Allston, who had now returned to Boston:--
"Excuse my neglect in not having written you before this according to my
promise before I left Boston. I can only plead as apology (what I know
will gratify you) a multiplicity of business. I am painting from morning
till night and have continual applications. I have added to my list, this
season only, to the amount of three thousand dollars; that is since I
left you. Among them are three full lengths to be finished at the North,
I hope in Boston, where I shall once more enjoy your criticisms.
"I am exerting my utmost to improve; every picture I try to make my best,
and in the evening I draw two hours from the antique as I did in London;
for I ought to inform you that I fortunately found a fine 'Venus de
Medicis' without a blemish, imported from Paris sometime since by a
gentleman of this city who wished to dispose of it; also a young Apollo
which was so broken that he gave it to me, saying it was useless. I have,
however, after a great deal of trouble, put it together entirely, and
these two figures, with some fragments,--hands, feet, etc.,--make a good
academy. Mr. Fraser, Mr. Cogdell, Mr. Fisher, of Boston, and myself meet
here of an evening to improve ourselves. I feel as much enthusiasm as
ever in my art and love it more than ever. A few years, at the rate I am
now going on, will place me independent of public patronage.
"Thus much for myself, for you told me in one of your letters from London
that I must be more of an egotist or you should be less of one in your
letters to me, which I should greatly regret.
"And now, permit me, my dear sir, to congratulate you on your election to
the Royal Academy. I know you will believe me when I say I jumped for joy
when I heard it. Though it cannot add to your merit, yet it will extend
the knowledge of it, especially in our own country, where we are still
influenced by foreign opinion, and more justly, perhaps, in regard to
taste in the fine arts than in any other thing."
On March 1, 1819, the Common Council of Charleston passed the following
resolution:--
"Resolved unanimously that His Honor the Intendant be requested to
solicit James Monroe, President of the United States, to permit a
full-length likeness to be taken for the City of Charleston, and that Mr.
Morse be requested to take all necessary measures for executing the said
likeness on the visit of the President to this city.
"Resolved unanimously that the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars be
appropriated for this purpose.
"Extract from the minutes.
"WILLIAM ROACH, JR.,
"Clerk of Council."
This portrait of President Monroe was completed later on and still hangs
in the City Hall of Charleston. I shall have occasion to refer to it
again.
Morse, in a letter to his parents of March 26, 1819, says:--
"Two of your letters have been lately received detailing the state of the
parish and church. I cannot say I was surprised, for it is what might be
expected from Charlestown people.... As to returning home in the way I
mentioned mama need not be at all uneasy on that score. It is necessary I
should visit Washington, as the President will stay so short a time here
that I cannot complete the head unless I see him in Washington.... Now as
to the parish and church business, I hope all things will turn out right
yet, and I can't help wishing that nothing may occur to keep you any
longer in that nest of vipers and conspirators. I think with Edwards
decidedly that, on mama's account alone, you should leave a place which
is full of the most unpleasant associations to all the family, and retire
to some place of quiet to enjoy your old age.
"Why not come to Charleston? Here is a fine place for usefulness, a
pleasant climate especially for persons advanced in life, and your
children here; for I think seriously of settling in Charleston. Lucretia
is willing, and I think it will be much for my advantage to remain
through the year. Richard can find a place here if he will, and Edwards
can come on and be _Bishop_ or _President_ or _Professor_ in some of the
colleges (for I can't think of him in a less character) after he has
graduated.
"I wish seriously you would think of this. Your friends here would
greatly rejoice and an opening could be found, I have no doubt.
Christians want their hands strengthened, and a veteran soldier, like
papa, might be of great service here in the infancy of the _Unitarian
Hydra_, who finds a population too well adapted to receive and cherish
its easy and fascinating tenets."
All this refers to a movement organized by the enemies of Dr. Morse to
oust him from his parish in Charlestown. He was a militant fighter for
orthodoxy and an uncompromising foe to Unitarianism, which was gradually
obtaining the ascendancy in and near Boston. The movement was finally
successful, as we shall see later, but they did not go as far from their
old haunts as Charleston.
I shall not attempt to argue the rights and wrongs of the case, which
seem to have been rather complicated, for Dr. Morse, more than a year
after this, in writing to a friend says: "The events of the last fifteen
months are still involved in impenetrable mystery, which I doubt not will
be unravelled in due time."
The winter and spring of 1819 were spent by the young couple both
pleasantly and profitably in Charleston. The best society of that
charming city opened its arms to them and orders flowed in in a steady
stream. Mr. John A. Alston was a most generous patron, ordering many
portraits of his children and friends, and sometimes insisting on paying
the young man even more than the price agreed upon.
In a letter to Morse he says: "Which of my friends was it who lately
observed to you that I had a picture mania? You made, I understand, a
most excellent reply, 'You wished I would come to town, then, and bite a
dozen.' Indeed, my very good sir, was it in my power to excite in them a
just admiration of your talents, I would readily come to town and bite
the whole community."
And in another letter of April 10, 1819, Mr. Alston says: "Your portrait
of my daughter was left in Georgetown [South Carolina], at the house of a
friend; nearly all of the citizens have seen it, and I really think it
will occasion you some applications.... Every one thought himself at
liberty to make remarks. Some declared it to be a good likeness, while
others insisted it was not so, and several who made such remarks, I
_knew_ had _never_ seen my daughter. At last a rich Jew gentleman
observed, 'it was the _richest_ piece of painting he had ever seen.' This
being so much in character that I assure you, sir, I could contain myself
no longer, which, spreading among the audience, occasioned not an
unpleasant moment."
Morse and his young wife returned to the North in the early summer of
1819, and spent the summer and fall with his parents in Charlestown. The
young man occupied himself with the completion of the portraits which he
had brought with him from the South, and his wife was busied with
preparations for the event which is thus recorded in a letter of Dr.
Morse's to his son Sidney Edwards at Andover: "Since I have been writing
the above, Lucretia has presented us with a fine granddaughter and is
doing well. The event has filled us with joy and gratitude."
The child was christened Susan Walker Morse. In the mean time the
distressing news had come from Charleston of the sudden death of Dr.
Finley, to whose kindly affection and influence Morse owed much of the
pleasure and success of his several visits to Charleston.
Affairs had come to a crisis in the parish at Charlestown, and Dr. Morse
decided to resign and planned to move to New Haven, Connecticut, with his
family in the following spring.
The necessity for pursuing his profession in the most profitable field
compelled Morse to return to Charleston by way of Washington in November,
and this time he had to go alone, much against his inclinations.
He writes to his mother from New York on November 28, 1819: "I miss
Lucretia and little Susan more than you can think, and I shall long to
have us all together at New Haven in the spring."
His object in going to Washington was to paint the portrait of the
President, and of this he says in a letter: "I began on Monday to paint
the President and have almost completed the head. I am thus far pleased
with it, but I find it very perplexing, for he cannot sit more than ten
or twenty minutes at a time, so that the moment I feel engaged he is
called away again. I set my palette to-day at ten o'clock and waited
until four o'clock this afternoon before he came in. He then sat ten
minutes and we were called to dinner. Is not this trying to one's
patience?"
"_December 17, 1819._ I have been here nearly a fortnight. I commenced
the President's portrait on Monday and shall finish it to-morrow. I have
succeeded to my satisfaction, and, what is better, to the satisfaction of
himself and family; so much so that one of his daughters wishes me to
copy the head for her. They all say that mine is the best that has been
taken of him. The daughter told me (she said as a secret) that her father
was delighted with it, and said it was the only one that in his opinion
looked like him; and this, too, with Stuart's in the room.
"The President has been very kind and hospitable to me; I have dined with
him three times and taken tea as often; he and his family have been very
sociable and unreserved. I have painted him at his house, next room to
his cabinet, so that when he had a moment to spare he would come in to
me.
"Wednesday evening Mrs. Monroe held a drawing-room. I attended and made
my bow. She was splendidly and tastily dressed. The drawing-room and
suite of rooms at the President's are furnished and decorated in the most
splendid manner; some think too much so, but I do not. Something of
splendor is certainly proper about the Chief Magistrate for the credit of
the nation. Plainness can be carried to an extreme, and in national
buildings and establishments it will, with good reason, be styled
meanness."
"_December 23, 1819._ It is obviously for my interest to hasten to
Charleston, as I shall there be immediately at work, and this is the more
necessary as there is a fresh gang of adventurers in the brush line gone
to Charleston before me."
A short while after this he received the news of the death of his
grandfather, Jedediah Morse, at Woodstock, Connecticut, on December 29,
aged ninety-four years. Mr. Prime says of him: "He was a strong man in
body and mind, an able and upright magistrate, for eighteen years one of
the selectmen of the town, twenty-seven years town clerk and treasurer,
fifteen years a member of the Colonial and State Legislature, and a
prominent, honored, and useful member and officer of the church."
In January of the year 1820, Dr. Morse, realizing that it would be for
the best interests of all concerned to relinquish his pastorate at
Charlestown, turned his active brain in another direction, and resolved
to carry out a plan which he had long contemplated. This was to secure
from the Government at Washington an appointment as commissioner to the
Indians on the borders of the United States of those early days, in order
to enquire into their condition with a view to their moral and physical
betterment. To this end he journeyed to Washington and laid his project
before the President and the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun. He was
most courteously entertained by these gentlemen and received the
appointment.
In the following spring with his son Richard he travelled through the
northwestern frontiers of the United States, and gained much valuable
information which he laid before the Government. As he was a man of
delicate constitution, we cannot but admire his indomitable spirit in
ever devising new projects of usefulness to his fellow men. It was
impossible for him to remain idle.
But it is not within the scope of this work to follow him on his
journeys, although his letters of that period make interesting reading.
While he was in Washington his wife, writing to him on January 27, 1820,
says: "Mrs. Salisbury and Abby drank tea with us day before yesterday.
They told us that Catherine Breese was married to a lieutenant in the
army. This must have been a very sudden thing, and I should suppose very
grievous to Arthur."
Little did the good lady think as she penned these words that, many years
afterwards, her beloved eldest son would take as his second wife a
daughter of this union. Why this marriage should have been "grievous" to
the father, Arthur Breese, I do not know, unless all army officers were
classed among the ungodly by the very pious of those days. As a matter of
fact, Lieutenant, afterwards Captain, Griswold was a most gallant
gentleman.
In the mean time Finley Morse had reached Charleston in safety after a
tedious journey of many days by stage from Washington, and was busily
employed in painting. On February 4, 1820, he writes to his mother:--
"I received your good letter of the 19th and 22d ult., and thank you for
it. I wish I had time to give you a narrative of my journey as you wish,
but you know '_time is money_,' and we must '_make hay while the sun
shines_,' and '_a penny saved is a penny got_," and '_least said soonest
mended_,' and a good many other wise sayings which would be quite pat,
but I can't think of them.
"The fact is I have scarcely time to say or write a word. I am busily
employed in getting the cash, or else Ned's almanac for March will
foretell falsely.
"I am doing well, although the city fairly swarms with painters. I am the
only one that has as much as he can do; all the rest are complaining. I
wish I could divide with some of them, very clever men who have families
to support, and can get nothing to do.... I feel rejoiced that things
have come to such a crisis in Charlestown that our family will be
released from that region of trouble so soon.
"Keep up your spirits, mother, the Lord will show you good days according
to those in which you have seen evil....
"I am glad Lucretia and the dear little Susan intend meeting me at New
Haven. I think this by far the best plan; it will save me a great deal of
time, which, as I said before, is money.
"I shall have to spend some time in New Haven getting settled, and I wish
to commence painting as soon as possible, for I have more than a summer's
work before me in the President's portrait and Mrs. Ball's.
"As soon as the cash comes in, mother, it shall all be remitted except
what I immediately want. You may depend upon it that nothing shall be
left undone on my part to help you and the rest of us from that hole of
vipers.
"I think it very probable I shall return by the middle of May; it will
depend much on circumstances, however. I wish very much to be with my
dear wife and daughter. I must contrive to bring them with me next season
to Charleston, though it may be more expensive, yet I do not think that
should be a consideration. I think that a man should be separated from
his family but very seldom, and then under cases of absolute necessity,
as I consider the case to be at present with me: that is, I think they
should not be separated for any length of time. If I know my own
disposition I am of a domestic habit, formed to this habit, probably, by
the circumstances that have been so peculiar to our family in
Charlestown. I by no means regret having such a habit if it can be
properly regulated; I think it may be carried to excess, and shut us from
the opportunities of doing good by mixing with our fellow men."
This pronouncement was very characteristic of the man. He was always, all
through his long life, happiest when at home surrounded by all his
family, and yet he never shirked the duty of absenting himself from home,
even for a prolonged period, when by so doing he could accomplish some
great or good work.
That a portrait-painter's lot is not always a happy one may be
illustrated by the following extracts from letters of Morse to the Mrs.
Ball whom he mentions in the foregoing letter to his mother, and who
seems to have been a most capricious person, insisting on continual
alterations, and one day pleased and the next almost insulting in her
censure:--
MADAM,--Supposing that I was dealing not only with a woman of honor, but,
from her professions, with a Christian, I ventured in my note of the 18th
inst., to make an appeal to your conscience in support of the justness of
my demand of the four hundred dollars still due from you for your
portrait. By your last note I find you are disposed to take an advantage
of that circumstance of which I did not suppose you capable. My sense of
the justness of my demand was so strong, as will appear from the whole
tenor of that note, that I venture this appeal, not imagining that any
person of honor, of the least spark of generous feeling, and more
especially of Christian principle, could understand anything more than
the enforcing my claim by an appeal to that principle which I knew should
be the strongest in a real Christian.
Whilst, however, you have chosen to put a different construction on this
part of the note, and supposed that I left you to say whether you would
pay me anything or nothing, you have (doubtless unconsciously) shown that
your conscience has decided in favor of the whole amount which is my due,
and which I can never voluntarily relinquish.
You affirm in the first part of your note that, after due consideration,
you think the real value of the picture is four hundred dollars (without
the frame), yet, had your crop been good, your conscience would have
adjudged me the remaining four hundred dollars without hesitation; and
again (if your crop should be good) you could pay me the four hundred
dollars next season.
Must I understand from this, madam, that the goodness or badness of your
crop is the scale on which your conscience measures your obligation to
pay a just debt, and that it contracts or expands as your crop increases
or diminishes? Pardon me, madam, if I say that this appears to be the
case from your letter.
My wish throughout this whole business has been to accommodate the time
and terms of payment as much to your convenience as I could consistently
with my duty to my family and myself. As a proof of this you need only
advert to my note of yesterday, in which I inform you that I am paying
interest on money borrowed for the use of my family which your debt, if
it had been promptly paid, would have prevented.
And in another letter he says:--
"I completed your picture in the summer with two others which have given,
as far as I can learn, entire satisfaction. Yours was painted with the
same attention and with the same ability as the others, and admired as a
picture, after it was finished, as much by some as the others, and more
by many.
"Among these latter were the celebrated Colonel Trumbull and Vanderlyn,
painters of New York.... You cannot but recollect, madam, that when you
yourself with your children visited it, not withstanding you expressed
yourself before them in terms so strong against it and so wounding to my
feelings, yet all your children dissented from you, the youngest saying
it was 'mama,' and the eldest, 'I am sure, mother, it is very like
you.'...
"Your picture, from the day I commenced it, has been the source of one of
my greatest trials, and, if it has taught me in any degree patience and
forbearance, I shall have abundant reason to be thankful for the
affliction."
In the end he consented to take less than had been agreed upon in order
to close the incident.
As a happy contrast to this episode we have the following quotation from
a letter to his wife written on February 17, 1820:--
"Did I tell you in my last that Colonel Alston insisted on giving me
_two hundred dollars_ more than I asked for the picture of little Sally,
and a commission to paint her again full length next season, smaller than
the last and larger than the first portrait, for which I shall receive
four hundred dollars? He intimates also that I am to paint a picture
annually for him. Is not he a strange man? (as people say here). I wish
some more of the great fortunes in this part of the country would be as
strange and encourage other artists who are men of genius and starving
for want of employment."
Morse returned to the North in the spring of 1820 and joined his mother
and his wife and daughter in New Haven, where they had preceded him and
where they were comfortably and agreeably settled, as will appear from
the following sentence in a letter to his good friend and mentor, Henry
Bromfield, of London, dated August, 1820: "You will perceive by the
heading of this letter that I am in New Haven. My father and his family
have left Charlestown, Massachusetts, and are settled in this place. My
own family also, consisting of wife and daughter, are pleasantly settled
in this delightful spot. I have built me a fine painting-room attached to
my house in which I paint my large pictures in the summer, and in the
winter I migrate to Charleston, South Carolina, where I have commissions
sufficient to employ me for some years to come."
He returned to Charleston in the fall of 1820 and was again compelled to
go alone. He writes to his wife on December 27: "I feel the separation
this time more than ever, and I felt the other day, when I saw the
steamship start for New York, that I had almost a mind to return in her."
From this sentence we learn that the slow schooner of the preceding years
had been supplanted by the more rapid steamship, but that is,
unfortunately, all he has to say of this great step forward in human
progress.
Further on in this same letter he says: "I am occupied fully so that I
have no reason to complain. I have not a _press_ like the first season or
like the last, but still I can say I am all the time employed.... My
President pleases very much; I have heard no dissatisfaction expressed.
It is placed in the great Hall in a fine light and place.... Mrs. Ball
wants some alterations, that is to say every five minutes she would like
it to be different. She is the most unreasonable of all mortals;
derangement is her only apology. I can't tell you all in a letter, must
wait till I see you. I shall get the rest of the cash from her shortly."
Just at this time the wave of prosperity on which the young man had so
long floated, began to subside, for he writes to his wife on January 28,
1821:--
"I wish I could write encouragingly as to my professional pursuits, but I
cannot. Notwithstanding the diminished price and the increase of exertion
to please, and although I am conscious of painting much better portraits
than formerly (which, indeed, stands to reason if I make continual
exertion to improve), yet with all I receive no new commissions, cold and
procrastinating answers from those to whom I write and who had put their
names on my list. I give less satisfaction to those whom I have painted;
I receive less attention also from some of those who formerly paid me
much attention, and none at all from most."
But with his usual hopefulness he says later on in this letter:--
"Why should I expect my sky to be perpetually unclouded, my sun to be
never obscured? I have thus far enjoyed more of the sunshine of
prosperity than most of my fellow men. 'Shall I receive good at the hands
of the Lord and shall I not also receive evil?'"
In this letter, a very long one, he suggests the establishment of an
academy or school of painting in New Haven, so that he may be enabled to
live at home with his family, and find time to paint some of the great
historical works which he still longed to do. He also tells of the
formation of such an academy in Charleston:--
"Since writing this there has been formed here an Academy of Arts to be
erected immediately. J.R. Poinsett, Esq., is President, and six others
with myself are chosen Directors. What this is going to lead to I don't
know. I heard Mr. Cogdell say that it was intended to have lectures read,
among other things. I feel not very sanguine as to its success, still I
shall do all in my power to help it on as long as I am here."
His forebodings seem to have been justified, for Mr. John S. Cogdell, a
sculptor, thus writes of it in later years to Mr. Dunlap:--
"The Legislature granted a charter, but, my good sir, as they possessed
no powers under the constitution to confer taste or talent, and possessed
none of those feelings which prompt to patronage, they gave none to the
infant academy.... The institution was allowed from apathy and opposition
to die; but Mr. Poinsett and myself with a few others have purchased,
with a hope of reviving, the establishment."
Referring to this academy the wife in New Haven, in a letter of February
25, 1821, says: "Mr. Silliman says he is not much pleased to hear that
they have an academy for painting in Charleston. He is afraid they will
decoy you there."
On March 11, 1821, Morse answers thus: "Tell Mr. Silliman I have stronger
_magnets_ at New Haven than any academy can have, and, while that is the
case, I cannot be decoyed permanently from home."
I wonder if he used the word "magnets" advisedly, for it was with
Professor Silliman that he at that time pursued the studies in physics,
including electricity, which had so interested him while in college, and
it was largely due to the familiarity with the subject which he then
acquired that he was, in later years, enabled successfully to perfect his
invention.
On the 12th of March, 1821, another daughter was born to the young
couple, and was named Elizabeth Ann after her paternal grandmother. The
child lived but a few days, however, much to the grief of her parents and
grandparents.
Charleston had now given all she had to give to the young painter, and he
packed his belongings to return home with feelings both of joy and of
regret. He was overjoyed at the prospect of so soon seeing his dearly
loved wife and daughter, and his parents and brothers; at the same time
he had met with great hospitality in Charleston; had made many firm
friends; had impressed himself strongly on the life of the city, as he
always did wherever he went, and had met with most gratifying success in
his profession. A partial list of the portraits painted while he was
there gives the names of fifty-five persons, and, as the prices received
are appended, we learn that he received over four thousand dollars from
his patrons for these portraits alone.
On March 31, 1821, he joyfully announces his homecoming: "I just drop you
a hasty line to say that, in all probability, your husband will be with
you as soon, if not sooner than this letter. I am entirely clear of all
sitters, having outstayed my last application; have been engaged in
finishing off and packing up for two days past and contemplate embarking
by the middle or end of the coming week in the steamship for New York.
You must not be surprised, therefore, to see me soon after this reaches
you; still don't be disappointed if I am a little longer, as the winds
most prevalent at this season are head winds in going to the North. I am
busy in collecting my dues and paying my debts."