Tag: Clara Morris

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Mountain Lion

John Cooper4 Comments
Oscar Wilde in the Catskills

After traveling across the vast expanses of the American south for more than a month, lecturing in 18 cities, Wilde returned to New York for some rest and relaxation with friends at the exclusive Summer resorts of the north-east.

On July 15, 1882. Oscar gave a courtesy lecture at the Casino during a week’s stay with Julia Ward Howe and friends at Newport, RI, (revisited here) and he did not lecture again for two and a half weeks.

During that time he:

— visited Long Beach with Sam Ward where he was to be found creating interest on the beach;
—cruised around Long Island for three days with Robert Roosevelt aboard his yacht, occasionally swimming, fishing and calling in at popular hotels;
—visited the actress Clara Morris at her retreat in Riverdale, NY;
—stayed with statesman John Bigelow at his summer home at Highland Falls, near West Point;
—vacationed at Long Branch spending a night as guest of former President of the United States, General Ulysses S. Grant, which must have provided a interesting counterpoint to his recent stay with Jefferson Davis, the former president of the Confederate States of America, at his home at Beauvoir;
—traveled to Peekskill to stay with clergyman and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher with whom he attended a church service and a military band concert.

After all that urbane socializing it was time to head for the hills for more urbane socializing—and a return to lecturing.

The social lion was about to become a mountain lion in The Catskills.

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Men of Letters

John Cooper4 Comments

A.A. Milne and Z.Z. Top are not just at the opposite ends of the 20th century’s cultural and chronological spectrum, they are also polar examples of another kind.

I mean, of course, in the alphabetical use of two initials as a form of nomenclature, which, as a device, often makes for a memorable moniker. Oscar Wilde, in his time, knew a few characters thus named, including two of the most celebrated: W. B. Yeats and H. G. Wells.

However, on this day I should like to focus on two similarly styled, but lesser known, artists in the Wilde story, for they share a bond more profound than the form of their familiar names: I refer to F. D. Millet and W.T. Stead.

F. D. MILLET

Portrait_of_Frank_Millet_by_his_contemporary,_author_and_illustrator_George_Du_Maurier,_from_Harper's_New_Monthly_Magazine_for_June_1889
F. D. Millet, portrait by George Du Maurier, 1889.


Francis Davis Millet was an American painter, sculptor, and writer with whom Wilde became acquainted quite early on in his American lecture tour of 1882.

On January 11 that year Millet was invited to a reception given for Wilde at the Dress Association on W. 23rd St., hosted by the proprietor of that cooperative enterprise, the journalist and actress, Kate Field. Also present were the actress Clara Morris, E.C. Stedman, and other artists and painters including Elihu Vedder.

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