James Arnold (1781–1868), a native of Providence, Rhode Island, had moved to New Bedford as a young man, found employment as a clerk in the office of William Rotch, merchant. The Rotches were among the earliest and most prominent of the great New Bedford whaling families. In 1807, Arnold married his employer’s granddaughter, Sarah Rotch, and in time became a partner, then a principal, in the firm. By tradition, his reputation was that of a “careful and conservative merchant,” of “wide and unsullied reputation,” but at the same time “autocratic” and “severe and exacting.” He was also reputed a man of considerable learning, a student of the classics. (Zephaniah W. Pease, “The Arnold Mansion and its Traditions,” Old Dartmouth Historical Society, Historical Sketches, No. 52, 1924, p. 6–8.)

Sarah Rotch Arnold (1786–1860) brought the softer virtues to the family, including the ability to create a home that was warm and graceful and that became known for its spirit of hospitality. She was also responsible for the creation of its extensive and beautifully conceived garden, which became a showplace in New Bedford. See below, p. 223–224.

The Arnolds had one child, a daughter, Elizabeth Rotch Arnold (1809–1860). Hers is the “melancholy story” long associated with the family. In 1830, when affianced to be married, deeply troubled, she confided to her parents that she could not marry because she had been seduced by, and for two years or more had been the mistress of, her cousin Francis Rotch, twenty-one years older than she, married and the father of two children. Hearing this, her father, behaving in accord with his local reputation as a harsh man and in order to expose the villainy of Francis, whose benefactor Arnold had been from the time of Rotch’s arrival in New Bedford, disclosed the xiiwhole affair publicly. Though feeling in the community ran so high against Francis that he was forced to flee, the full burden of her father’s disclosure was borne by Elizabeth. Francis’ wife and children followed him to Morris, New York, where he had ended his flight, and remained with him to the end of his long and prosperous life. Elizabeth, however, remained in her parents’ house, the object of the town’s curiosity and gossip, single until the year before her death when she married, against her parents’ wishes, Charles Tuttle, a New Hampshire country doctor.

At James Arnold’s funeral, the minister, referring to the storied mansion, spoke “of the deadly pain at the heart of all that beauty, of the tragic agonies those walls enclosed, of the struggles of strong, proud natures—there to bear submissively the inevitable.” (Old Dartmouth Historical Society, Historical Sketches, No. 52, p. 23.)

The story is told in John M. Bullard’s privately printed book, The Rotches, New Bedford, 1947, p. 159–165, under the rubric, “The Great Rotch Scandal”; there, however, the persons involved are not identified by name. The present editors have had the help of Richard C. Kugler of the Old Dartmouth Historical Society in establishing the relationships.

The group portrait (42″ × 32″) is in oil on canvas. The artist is unknown, nor can date or place of execution be assigned beyond the general assumptions that can be made from the appearance of those portrayed. The identity of the male figure in the background is also unknown. The painting descended through the Rotch family to Arthur G. Rotch, by whom it was given to the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.