The Priest and His Daughter
by Anne Mazlish
The life of James Kent Stone is a haunting tale.
I first came upon the story while editing a mid-l9th century diary, an account of a month long summer holiday in a notable little village at the head of a fjord in coastal Maine. A party of friends, actually five families from New England and New York, parents and children, totaling about 30 people in all comprised the group, who in August of l855 made a long three day journey by the common transport of the day, carriage, steamer and wagon, to Mt. Desert Island. The island today is still an astonishingly beautiful resort of mountains and lakes surrounded by the sea. Among the group of visitors was a lively young man of fifteen, James Kent Stone, "a good fellow" remarked the diarist.
The summer adventure was instigated by the artist, Frederic Edwin Church, already a recognized painter, and familiar with this area of Maine through his mentor, Hudson River painter, Thomas Cole. The diarist was a lawyer from New York named Charles Tracy, whose daughter was to later marry J.P. Morgan, and who peppered his account with anti-Catholic diatribes inspired by his recreational summer reading on the subject of the Immaculate Conception, an eerily prophetic introduction to the story of James Kent Stone. (For when a child overhears prejudice, his curiosity is aroused as he instinctively recognizes the irrational feeling beneath the words of the adult.)
It soon became apparent that all the adult visitors were socially prominent descendants of old New England families, for the most part Protestant Episcopalians, including an Episcopal divine, two lawyers of whom one would distinguish himself shortly as a novelist and then later as the first casualty of the Civil War, a businessman, and a painter. The men were all successful in their professions, and possessed substantial incomes, earned or inherited. Intrigued I decided to further identify them and record something of their history. The search was an interesting and challenging undertaking in itself, and it was in this process that I uncovered the bare facts of the life story of Kent Stone, a boy then on the threshold of manhood, admired by both adults and peers. Those facts continued to haunt me until two years ago when I decided to look further into his life, see what new information I could unearth, and perhaps undertake a biography. This article is based on both earlier and subsequent research.
Throughout the forthcoming book I hope to suggest a means to a greater understanding of the tragedy, of the many individuals involved, of an explosive era with very different mores from our own, and of the ultimate "overwhelming" of two people in particular, Kent Stone and his eldest daughter, by his consuming search for an absolute TRUTH, and by the need for unconditional love and security that gripped Kent Stone. It will I think be a cautionary tale, as appropriate for now as then.
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