“Cyrus W. Field, Esq.”
Captain Anderson’s letter of September 9th is to Mrs. Field, and was written on board the Great Eastern:
“I cannot tell you how I have felt since our new success. It is only seventeen months since I first walked up to the top of the paddle-box of this ship at Sheerness upon a dark, rainy night, reviewed my past career in my mind, and tried to look into the future, to see what I had undertaken, and realize, if possible, what the new step in my career would develop. I cannot say I believed much in cables; I rather think I did not; but I did believe your husband was an earnest man of great force of character, and working under a strong conviction that what he was attempting was thoroughly practicable; and I knew enough of the names with which he had associated himself in the enterprise to feel that it was a real, true, honest effort, worthy of all the energy and application of one’s manhood, and, come what might of the future, I resolved to do my very utmost and do nothing else until it was over. More completely, however, than my resolve foreshadowed, I dropped, inch by inch, or step by step, into the work, until I had no mind, no soul, no sleep, that was not tinged with cable. I am fortunate that my duties were such that I might well ask a blessing upon it, or I had better never have gone to church or bent a knee—in a word, I accuse your husband of having pulled me into a vortex that I could not get out of, and did not wish to try. And only fancy that the sum total of all this is to lay a thread across an ocean! Dr. Russell compared it to an elephant stretching a cobweb. And there lay its very danger. The more you multiply the mechanism the more you increase the risk. With all the vigilance and honesty of purpose of chosen men, exigencies must arise and may occur. When the nights are dark and stormy there comes the torture that may ruin all if not successfully met. And so that task has been a series of high hopes and blank, dark hours of disappointments, when it seemed as if the difficulties were legion and we were beating the air. Mr. Field, at least, never gave out. He never ceased to say, ‘It would all come right,’ even when his looks hardly bore out the assertion. But at last it did. We came through it all, and I feel as if I had said good-bye and God bless you to a wayward child who had cost me great thought and was at last happily settled for life just where I wished her. I do not think, though, that I could or would have nursed the wretch for twelve years, as your husband has done, to the destruction of the repose of himself and all the rest of his family. I should have discarded her and adopted some other. He has persevered, however, and to him belongs all the credit your country can bestow.”
Professor Wheatstone wrote:
“According to my promise I enclose a copy of my letter of September, 1866, to the Secretary of the Privy Council, in answer to his inquiry respecting the persons most deserving of honor in connection with the successful completion of the Atlantic telegraph.
“ ‘19 Park Crescent,
“ ‘Portland Place, N.W., September 22, 1866.
“ ‘My dear Sir,—The following is my opinion respecting the principal co-operators in the establishment of the Atlantic telegraph:
“ ‘The person to whose indomitable perseverance we are indebted for the commencement, carrying on, and completion of the enterprise is undoubtedly Mr. Cyrus Field. Through good and through evil report he has pursued his single object undaunted by repeated failures, keeping up the flagging interest of the public and the desponding hopes of capitalists, and employing his energies to combine all the means which might lead towards a successful issue. This gentleman is a citizen of the United States, and there would perhaps be a difficulty in conferring on him any honorary distinction.
“ ‘From the staff of officials by whose practical skill and unwearied attention the great project has been at last achieved, it appears to me there are four gentlemen who might, in addition to special merits of their own, be taken as the representatives of all those who have labored under or with them in their respective departments.