Winter 2005

Faces from the Past:  William Kent

By Patrick Browne

The Society’s latest acquisition is this portrait of William Kent, born in Duxbury in 1823.  Spotted by Collection’s Committee Chair Bob Hale, the portrait surfaced in an advertisement by a Cape Cod antiques dealer. 

The portrait was purchased along with fascinating diaries belonging to Kent’s father, William V. Kent, a Duxbury and Boston merchant.  Acquisitions of Duxbury portraits are rare enough, but it is extraordinary for a portrait to enter the Society’s collection along with primary source documents such as journals or letters relating to the family. 

The journals tell of the older Kent’s travels in England in 1845-6 and his interesting views on seafaring and British culture.  His passage in 1845 to Liverpool was particularly rough.    “I pity the life of a seaman,” he writes, “he is never at rest.  It is ‘all hands’ nearly all the time.”  As the weather gets worse, Kent writes, “I am truly sick of a winter’s ocean.  I yearn for a fair wind and a smooth sea…Captain Homes says thus far our passage has been the roughest he has ever seen…Give me the top point of Mount Washington in a hail storm rather than what I have experienced.”

Upon reaching Liverpool, Kent traveled the city and surroundings doing business and making observations.  He was particularly struck by the poverty, writing, “Went to bed reflecting how little we know in America of suffering and misery.  This called to my recollection the remark George Soule made to his Grandfather Sprague who was very fastidious in his opinions, that if he would visit New Orleans (which is a Paradise of Morality in comparison to this place) that ‘he would think the millennium was very far off.’”

The purchase was made possible by the Collections Acquisitions Fund, raised through the Society’s 2003 Auction.  It is precisely the sort of collection we hoped the fund would enable us to purchase.  Our thanks go to all the generous supporters of the last auction.###

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