The Story of the Atlantic Telegraph

by Henry M. Field

As Mr. Field was thus brought near to his English friends, they in turn were brought near to him, for as no man in America was better known abroad, no house received more foreign guests, many of whom he had not met before, but who brought letters to him, and there was no end to his hospitality. John Bright he could not persuade to cross the sea; but he had the pleasure to welcome his co-laborer in the repeal of the Corn-laws, Richard Cobden. The house in Gramercy Park became famous for its receptions. Many will recall that given to the Marquis of Ripon and the other High Commissioners, who came a year or two after the war, as representatives of the British government, and negotiated at Washington the treaty which settled the Alabama claims; and those to Dean Stanley and Archdeacon Farrar; and to many others. If the strangers happened to arrive in the summer time, they were entertained at his beautiful country seat on the Hudson, to which he had given the name of "Ardsley," from the seat of John Field the astronomer, who lived in the West Riding of Yorkshire more than three centuries ago, and introduced the Copernican astronomy into England, and from whom the family are descended.

In some cases when he went abroad, England was but the starting point for excursions on the Continent, in which he visited almost every European country. In 1874, in company with two well-known Americans, Bayard Taylor and Murat Halstead, he made a voyage to Iceland, as ten years before he had been to Egypt, as a delegate from the New York Chamber of Commerce, to witness the opening of the Suez Canal.

In 1880-81 he took a still longer flight around the world. Waiting till after the Presidential election, that he might cast his vote for his friend General Garfield, the very next day he left with his wife in a special car for San Francisco, where after a few days, they took ship for Japan, from which they passed through the Inland Sea to Shanghai, and from China to Singapore, and up the Bay of Bengal to Calcutta, where he found the same English nobleman whom he had entertained in New York, the Marquis of Ripon, Governor-General of India. Going up the country, the travellers visited Agra and Delhi, where the wonders of architecture showed the magnificence of the old Mogul Empire. The whole journey was one of infinite pleasure and instruction, and they were never weary of talking of the strange manners and customs of the people of Asia.

When they returned to America, General Garfield was President of the United States, who, though a Western man by birth, had been educated in New England, at Williams College in Massachusetts, where he had been graduated twenty-five years before, and which he had a desire to revisit; and it was arranged that he should leave Washington in the morning of July 2d, with as many of his cabinet as could be spared from the seat of government, and come on to New York and all be entertained at "Ardsley," and the next day proceed up the Hudson and across the country to Williamstown; a programme which was interrupted by the terrible news that on arriving at the station in Washington he had been shot, an event that instantly recalled the assassination of Lincoln. At once there rose a cry of horror from one end of the land to the other, and for weeks the whole country was watching by the bedside of the illustrious sufferer.

Of course, the sympathy for the wife and children was universal, but Mr. Field was the first to give this sympathy a practical direction. With his quick eye he saw the condition in which they would be left by the death of the President, as for them the law makes no provision. His salary stops at the very day and hour that he ceases to live, nor is there a pension settled upon his family, nor can anything be paid from the national treasury except by special act of Congress. In this extremity it occurred to Mr. Field that what the Government failed to do should be made up by private generosity; and even before General Garfield's death he started a subscription, heading it with five thousand dollars, and taking it in person to his rich friends. The self imposed task occupied him several months, in which he raised a fund of over three hundred and sixty thousand dollars, which was put into United States four per cent. bonds, yielding an interest of over twelve thousand dollars a year, to be paid quarterly during the life of Mrs. Garfield, and then to go to her children. It was a great satisfaction to have thus provided for those who bore the name of a President of the United States, so that they should be able to live in the comfort and dignity that befitted the family of one who had occupied the most exalted station in the government.

Not content with this, Mr. Field went to Washington, and urged upon his friends in Congress, and finally succeeded in getting passed, a bill giving to the widows of all Presidents a pension of $5,000, which, it added to his gratification to know, would apply to the venerable Mrs. Polk: and that still goes, and will go during her lifetime, to the wife of General Grant, as the slight expression of a nation's gratitude.

Next to the interest he felt in his own country, his heart was in England. While he was an intense American, and perhaps, for that very reason, because he was an American, he claimed kindred with the people from whom we are not only descended, but have received such an inheritance of glory. In his own words: "America, with all her greatness, has come out of the loins of England." When he was in India he was proud of the mighty English race that from its little island governed an empire of two hundred and fifty millions on the other side of the globe. Some might have said that he inherited no small portion of its unconquerable spirit.

And not only did he admire Old England, but he loved Englishmen. He knew all that was said of English reserve and English pride, but long familiarity had taught him that underneath this cold exterior were many of the noblest qualities—courage, heroism and fidelity—so that it had become a part of his creed that an Englishman, when once you have won his confidence, will go farther and fight harder for a friend or for a cause than any other man on the face of the earth. Among such a people Mr. Field was proud to number many of his dearest friends.

A touching proof of their regard for him was given but a few months before his death. On the 2d of December, 1890, he and his wife celebrated their golden wedding. For fifty years they had travelled on the course of life together. Children and grandchildren had been born to them, so that at the close of half a century a large and happy family was gathered round those to whom they looked up with the tenderest affection.