“I remain, my dear sir, most faithfully yours,
“W. E. Gladstone.
“Cyrus W. Field, Esq.”
In one of the weekly letters sent to him from New York there is this announcement:
“A circular has been received from the State Department, dated June 3d, stating that they have received for you from Paris ‘A Grand Prize and Diploma.’ ”
He was invited to a banquet to be given at Willis’s Rooms on July 1, 1868, “as an acknowledgment,” so the invitations read, “of the eminent services rendered to the New and Old Worlds by his devotion to the interests of Atlantic telegraphy through circumstances of protracted difficulty and doubt.”
The Duke of Argyll was chairman of the Committee of Invitation, and Sir James Anderson was at the head of the Executive Committee.
The following letter was received from the American minister to France:
“Paris, 24th June, 1868.
“Sir James Anderson:
“Dear Sir,—No one appreciates more highly than myself the valuable service rendered by Mr. Field in establishing a connection by telegraph between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, and the unfaltering confidence and persevering efforts with which he entertained this great international enterprise through the circumstances of protracted difficulty and doubt to which you allude. It would have given me sincere pleasure, had it been in my power, to unite in the tribute of respect proposed to be paid to him—a pleasure I relinquish with an equally sincere regret.