“The Most Lovely Babe I Ever Saw”

In the Spring of 1822 the portrait artist Gilbert Stuart had established himself nicely in a studio to the rear of John Doggett’s frame shop and mirror emporium on Market Street in Boston. It was a mutually beneficent relationship - Stuart received a studio space in the middle of Boston’s booming commercial district, Doggett didn’t press him too hard on his rent, and Doggett displayed and sold Stuart’s artwork in his exhibition hall next door  – including, this spring, portraits of the first  five presidents of the United States - George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe.

Gilbert Stuart

It was also a good place for Stuart to work his connections in hopes of commissions from leading citizens of the town. One of his nephews, Edward Newton, had found a fair success trading in a partnership with the merchant firm of the Perkins brothers, and had ingratiated himself with the family so much that the senior partner of the firm, James Perkins, and his wife Sarah, had hosted his marriage to Miss Sarah Williams out of their Pearl Street mansion just before the newlyweds shipped out to Calcutta, and James’s young grandson had recently been christened “Edward Newton” in a token of that friendship.

Russell Sturgis

 In May, the Perkins’s brother-in-law Russell Sturgis sat for Stuart and the family was pleased with his portrayal of the ruddy faced veteran of the China trade, with his shock of white hair standing straight up, comfortably warmed by his favorite fur trimmed robe which he had brought back from the Oregon coast.  

Shortly later, after much persuasion, James Perkins also agreed to sit. By July the wealthy merchant and the celebrated artist were sharing their bantering companionship and a taste of the fine Madeira that shipped on the Perkins boats. Everyone in Boston recognized that just sitting for Stuart was an event in itself, and his portraits were almost always worth the wait.

 "We are told he is one of the best painters in the world & excels in his likeness” remarked a local matron. But dealing with the artist was no simple matter, “he is indeed very excentrick, he loves a cheerful bottle and does no work in the afternoon; he is very dilatory in finishing his pictures." James made repeated visits to Stuart’s studio off Market Street that summer, and the family looked forward with anticipation to seeing the finished portrait of their pater familias.

What was not expected was that James Perkins would develop a cold, and then pneumonia….

                                                                                                                               

                                                                                                             James Perkins, Esq. Obituary 

                                      New England Palladium 

                                             August 6, 1822

To have lived long; - to have lived irreproachably, although unceasingly occupied in the business of the world; - to be remembered for industry, talents, probity, and sound judgment, in long continued commerce with one’s fellow men; to have accumulated wealth without sorrow or regret to any one; - to have given profitable, and honorable employment to many; - to have contributed greatly to the support of public credit and independence – is not the common lot of men.
To have felt throughout such accumulation, and through all varieties of fortune, that a man should be the trustee of his own wealth, to be used for charitable, and beneficent purposes, is to have raised a monument of one’s worth, which few men have done.
It is not in the halls of legislation, nor in the splendor of public achievements, that we look for the records of this gentleman’s life, and reputation. Distinctions so derived had no attraction for him. Though public services were frequently asked of him, they were given only when public exigencies forbade any one to excuses himself.
His chosen object was the commerce of the world. He embraced in his extended view, the condition of the family of nations; and the involved problems of the wants and means of widely separated countries.
It is enough for one mind, however aided, to have grasped this complicated subject, and to have shewn, by eventual success, that it was well understood. Society has reason to rejoice in that success, which has for its object honorable gain; and for the general result, the diffusion, through all regions, of the products peculiar to each. Nor is it wealth, merely, that follows commercial enterprise. The moral, social, political, and religious attainments of favoured communities, find their modes of diffusions through the paths of commerce. The liberal, enlightened and generous MERCHANT, need not fear comparison with any of the benefactors of the human race.
It is, however, to the USE which was made of the fruits of industry, that we are most strongly attracted, in considering the distinguished citizen whom we lament. He had subdued, if he ever felt it, that sentiment, which prompts men to live for themselves only; - and when they can do this no longer, to provide, as securely as possible, that they may still live in their representatives. This sentiment, in its most chastened and commendable form, had long been familiar in this gentleman’s mind. But it left room there, for its manly co-relative, that one should live for society, and for his fellow-men, as well as for himself. 

Those to whom his virtues, and his fame are, and will be, most precious, will gratefully remember his industry and talents. – But his most durable representatives, will be his attentions to the interests of virtue, of learning, and true religion. In these he has surpassed the noble bounty of the respective benefactors of which our community is justly proud. – His munificence will be felt through successive generations; and long after the deep and vivid sense of excellence, now so universally acknowledged shall have been lost in the lapse of years.  

                                                                                                                                                                     

On the day of the funeral, Mayor Phillips asked the shipping in the harbor to fly their colors at half- mast and requested the aldermen and city council to attend the funeral of “their senior and highly esteemed associate.”

The board of directors of the Massachusetts General Hospital attended the funeral as a group, as James Perkins, Esq had served that institution as Vice-President since 1815 and had been one its most munificent subscribers with a contribution of $5,000.

An editorial in the Commercial Advertiser noted that James gave $20,000 to the Boston Athenaeum in 1821, and left $25,000 to Harvard University in his estate, and lamented that "We are astonished that capitalists, in their liberal moments, never think of Yale College. Cambridge, before, had so much money that they hardly knew what to do with it - while modest and unassuming Yale..."

Over two hundred years have passed since the funeral for James Perkins, Esq. took place, but his legacy today provokes a sharp controversy in many quarters that his eulogists could never have imagined.

In 2022, Harvard University committed $100 million dollars to redress its ties to slavery, and published a report entitled “Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery” which documented its findings that James Perkins was not only a major donor, but that his wealth was derived from his activities as a slave trader and slave owner during his time on the island of Haiti, when he frequently visited vessels in the Cap Français harbor to select enslaved women, men, and children for purchase, and then selling them to slave owners on the island, and that after the Haitian trade collapsed he and his brothers redirected their primary business interest to the opium trade with China. 

Also in 2022, The Jamaica Plain Historical Association published an article entitled “James Perkins:  Slave Trader, Enslaver and Opium Smuggler” which concluded “The Perkins family of Boston, Jamaica Plain and Brookline are known as generous philanthropists, but history reveals the brutal origin of their family fortune. The wealth supporting their donations originated in the profits made by buying and selling people into slavery and the products of slave labor as well as smuggling opium into China.”

The Boston Athenæum addressed its relationship to Perkins family in a statement: “Our own legacy, like that of many historic institutions, reveals inherent contradictions. We acknowledge that the Perkins brothers built their fortune at the expense of the lives of others ... while supporting a great number of educational, medical, and cultural causes through their generous philanthropy.... We encourage our members, researchers, and visitors to engage critically with our rare materials by asking important and sometimes difficult questions.”

These ethical questions were evidently of little concern to the family at the time. We can easily imagine the scene at Pine Bank, the family’s country home on Jamaica Pond, after James died. It was early August, and nobody seemed ready to venture into town.

His son James spent most of his day rigging and re-rigging his little sloop, tacking about on the Pond, and instructing his Forbes nephews on how to properly jibe. When calm dropped over the waters in the late afternoon, he would just drift. His pretty wife Eliza spent her time with the children - James Amory was a sprouting lad of eight, and four-year=old Sarah was most talkative and already reading books. Teddy, as they called three-year-old Edward, was toddling about, and Eliza sometimes felt quite queasy and let it be known that another might be on the way.     

                                  

   

Even Mousse, the old African who had rescued the family from the insurrection in Haiti back in the nineties, seemed unsettled. He spent much of his days in the orchard, picking peaches and nectarines, and encouraged the cook to prepare the compotes that reminded the whole family of their trips to France. When Uncle Sam would ask for his help serving a dinner, Mousse would happily oblige.

Thick in grief and looking for consolation Thomas HandasydPerkins, the younger brother and the “mover and shaker” of the Perkins partnership, sought out the artist’s studio where he knew James had been sitting in his final days.  Fully expecting his brother’s likeness to welcome him in at least an advanced state, he stopped into the back of Doggett’s shop and found Stuart in his studio. He asked to see the work-in-progress, and the artist hemmed and hawed and fussed about and, at length, finally produced one desultory, half-finished sketch – Colonel Perkins was incensed by the meager product of the wasted hours. He stormed out of the studio - “Very well Mr. Stuart! You have inflicted an irreparable loss by your dilatoriness and I never shall enter your studio again!”

Some weeks passed before the merchant and the portrait artist met in the street, and Stuart, who had been busy painting the errant portrait from memory, begged Tom to reconsider his resolve. He finally yielded and, as he later related to his nephew, “I entered the studio and there on the easel I saw the perfect portrait of my dear brother.”  

The Trustees of the Boston Athenaeum had also attended their late benefactor’s funeral en masse, “Desirous to testify their gratitude to the memory of a distinguished Benefactor” the Trustees asked his widow for permission to commission a copy of the portrait being completed by Stuart. They would have commissioned a portrait of Perkins earlier, they wrote, “had not the great modesty of Mr. Perkins refused to receive while living any mark of their gratitude.”

With the support of the Perkins family, over forty prominent Bostonians subscribed to the project. Two hundred dollars was allocated to Stuart to replicate the painting and sixty dollars was paid to Doggett to make a frame. Stuart began the copy of the portrait in September 1822, and, surprisingly, it was finished by the end of the October. In the family portrait, James sits at a desk with a sheaf of papers, a few books, and a quill pen; his gaze is direct and completely self-assured. The Athenaeum portrait embellishes his surrounding considerably. He sits, holding an open letter before a Roman column and tapestry with shelves of books in the background, looking slightly bemused at finding himself a public personality.  

For James’s widow Sarah, the consolation for her loss came not from the likeness of her late husband when it finally arrived, but from her deep Christian faith and her large extended family. She spent that summer at Pine Bank. In the fall she busied herself in her new town house on the corner of Pearl and High Streets; her son James and his growing family moved into the adjoining townhouse next door. James had grown up as “a nice boy, not handsome; short and thick-set, with blue eyes and sandy hair; very fond of athletics, the best fencer and dancer about.” He had been schooled at Boston Latin and at Harvard where he joined the Porcellian Club and “got into a gay set, Kirk Boot and others”, drinking the bottles of wine his mother had sent over to him in Cambridge.  While there was family talk that he was overly “fond of the grape”, no record has been found that he joined in with the conspirators in the “Rotten Cabbage Rebellion” of 1807 or was part of the group that vandalized the bells of the college that year and he managed to become the first in the family to graduate from Harvard, with the class of 1809.  

                                                                                                                                             

Sarah Perkins struggled to find her way in her new role as a widow. She wrote regularly to her friend Sarah Newton in Calcutta, apprising her of the challenges she faced at home:

Boston; April 20^th, 1823

Mrs. Sarah T Newton (care of Edward A Newton, Esq) Calcutta

So many distressing events have taken place my dear friend since I wrote you, and I find myself so desolate and alone, I know not where to begin, or whether I shall have resolution to finish a letter; altho’ I know and feel I am wrong, I find myself yielding so often to grief and sorrow.

Eliza I know has informed you of the severe loss I have sustained in the ever to be lamented death of my dear James, the best of husbands, the kindest friend, but to you who knew him, it is not necessary to make this remark.

The feelings of that moment, I can never forget; you will spare me the detail of that heart-rending hour, suffice it to say, it was on his part calm and serene – no regret mingled with the solemn scene, no weakening – no bodily suffering – he passed from life to death without a struggle – O! that my last hour may be equally peaceful and happy !!  . . .

Eliza has another son born the First March, she has been unusually sick since his birth but is now doing well – Our dear children, thank God, are all well, James also well – I need not tell you how devoted he is to me, indeed all are kind and attentive but yet there is a void in my heart which nothing can fill - - I rejoice dearest Sarah that health and happiness are your attendance, may they long on you – Say to Edward how much I esteem him, and that I do not love my little Teddy the less for reminding me daily of his Godfather, he is the most interesting child I have ever known, but they are all dear to the heart of your affectionate

Sarah Perkins 

And so the birth of Charles Callahan Perkins was announced as far away as Calcutta.