"When I left Paris I was feeble in health, so much so that I was fearful of the effects of the journey to London, especially as I passed through villages suffering severely from the cholera. But I proceeded moderately, lodged the first night at Boulogne-sur-Mer, crossed to Dover in a severe southwest gale, and passed the next night at Canterbury, and the next day came to London. I think the ride did me good, and I have been exercising a great deal, riding and walking, since, and my general health is certainly improving. I am in hopes that the voyage will completely set me up again."
CHAPTER XX
Morse's life almost equally divided into two periods, artistic and scientific.—Estimate of his artistic ability by Daniel Huntington.—Also by Samuel Isham.—His character as revealed by his letters, notes, etc.— End of Volume I.
Morse's long life (he was eighty-one when he died) was almost exactly divided, by the nature of his occupations, into two equal periods. During the first, up to his forty-first year, he was wholly the artist, enthusiastic, filled with a laudable ambition to excel, not only for personal reasons, but, as appears from his correspondence, largely from patriotic motives, from a wish to rescue his country from the stigma of pure commercialism which it had incurred in the eyes of the rest of the world. It is true that his active brain and warm heart spurred him on to interest himself in many other things, in inventions of more or less utility, in religion, politics, and humanitarian projects; but next to his sincere religious faith, his art held chiefest sway, and everything else was made subservient to that.
During the latter half of his life, however, a new goddess was enshrined in his heart, a goddess whose cult entailed even greater self-sacrifice; keener suffering, both mental and physical; more humiliation to a proud and sensitive soul, shrinking alike from the jeers of the incredulous and the libels and plots of the envious and the unscrupulous.
While he plied his brush for many years after the conception of his epoch-making invention, it was with an ever lessening enthusiasm, with a divided interest. Art no longer reigned supreme; Invention shared the throne with her and eventually dispossessed her. It seems, therefore, fitting that, in closing the chronicle of Morse the artist, his rank in the annals of American art should be estimated as viewed by a contemporary and by the more impartial historian of the present day.
From a long article prepared by the late Daniel Huntington for Mr. Prime, I shall select the following passages:—
"My acquaintance with Professor Morse began in the spring of 1835, when I was placed under his care by my father as a pupil. He then lived in Greenwich Lane (now Greenwich Avenue), and several young men were studying art under his instruction…. He gave a short time every day to each pupil, carefully pointing out our errors and explaining the principles of art. After drawing for some time from casts with the crayon, he allowed us to begin the use of the brush, and we practised painting our studies from the casts, using black, white, and raw umber.
"I believe this method was of great use in enabling us early to acquire a good habit of painting. I only regret that he did not insist on our sticking to this kind of study a longer time and drill us more severely in it; but he indulged our hankering for color too soon, and, when once we had tasted the luxury of a full palette of colors, it was a dry business to go back to plain black and white.
"In the autumn of that year, 1835, he removed to spacious rooms in the New York University on Washington Square. In the large studio in the north wing he painted several fine portraits, among them the beautiful full-length of his daughter, Mrs. Lind. He also lectured before the students and a general audience, illustrating his subject by painted diagrams….