Millet to Stoddard: May 10, 1875
Letter 1: Letters of Frank Millet to Charles Warren Stoddard: May 10, 1875 - January 3, 1900
Ubi Bohemia Fuit [Latin: literally, Where Bohemia Was (the Venice home Millet had shared with Stoddard before Stoddard went away.)][1]
Monday, May 10
Dear Old Chummeke: --
Mrs. Harris and the perambulating corpse, the Dr., have just gone away and the old lady charged me to give you a scolding for not calling to say adieu.[2] Please consider the scolding delivered.
[Space added to facilitate reading.]
The time is 6 p.m. and 36 hours ago I was reading your letter from Pisa, having mailed previously one to you at Livorno enclosing an envelope from Paris directed to you in a feminine hand; all of which speriamo nella sanctissima [Hopefully, by all that is most holy] etc. etc. you will receive in due time.[3]
Now I haven’t got so doggoned much to say because I let out [a bit?] in my first letter and can't possibly duplicate it, simply [page 2] because I am once more a complete Venetian.
I have seen the Adamses several times.[4] Donny is indignant because you neither left your photo nor your adieux.[5] Mrs. A. is calm and collected. I told them that I had named the new dog Charles Warren Stoddard Venus, that it wasn’t that kind of a dog but it was not a question of sex but of appropriateness. By the way, the pup has developed great natural talent for imitation. Whenever a bugle sounds or a whistle blows, he howls in the same key and does in the same key and does it splendidly:
“Listen to the Mocking Dog” etc. etc.[6]
What do you suppose induced Mrs. Harris to come down. She asks me to sit up tonight with a sick man. She doesn’t consider that I have worked ten long hours today having transferred my cartoon to my canvas etc. But of course I can’t well refuse to do such [page 3] a service because I may sometime be in need myself – to look at it selfishly.
[Space added to faciliate reading]
She [Mrs. Harris] said she had never had read anything of yours. I asked if she hadn’t read the book [Stoddard's South-sea Idyls (1873), published in England as Summer Cruising in the South Seas (1873), with illustrations of naked native women]. Eh---r--r---no. “Well you may take it” -– “From what they say” she said. “I don’t think I should care to read it” -- a maiden blush mantling her brow. I had given her the volume and she handed it back to me after a sly glance into it where she saw several naked figures dancing. She positively considers it immoral. Probably Miss Arbesser has put ideas in Mrs. H’s head.[7]
Stoddard's South-Sex Idyls (1873), published in England as Summer Cruising in the South Seas (1873). It is the illustrations in the English edition which scandalized Mrs. Harris. See illustration from this edition below.
Two women have been here today who are going to hire the house. They want to come in on the first of June and occupy our spare rooms. Can you believe that I refused this offer? I did ‘pon honor. Tom [another dog] sleeps in your place now and fills it all up – that is, the material space he occupies crowding me out of bed very often.
[Page 4] I’ve just had a letter from [John P.] Jackson, [a journalist]. He has seen your Padua letter and admires it. He is running the Herald office in London now. Call on him. [George Faulkner] Wetherbee [an American painter] has at least written. Both he, [Edwin Graves] Champney [a Boston painter] and myself are refused of course. Sic transit Gloria. [Sic transit gloria mundi is a Latin phrase meaning "Thus passes the glory of the world".[8]
If you see Joaquin [Miller, a writer about the American West] give him my love.[9] I shall certainly be in Lunnun [London? A play on words?] by July 10 or 15 & hope you will manage to stay.
Miss you? Bet your life. Put yourself in my place. It isn’t the one who goes away who misses it – it is he who stays. Empty chair, empty bed, empty house. But enuf ced for tonight. I hope to hear immediately on your arrival.
I call you chummeke diminutive of chum for you are already “chum” but have never been chummeke before. Flemish you know.
So, my dear old cuss, with lots of love I am thine – as you need not be told –
Frank.
Next: Letter 2: Millet to Stoddard: May 26, 1875
Notes
- ↑ James Gifford, Glances Backward: An Anthology of American Homosexual Writing, 1830-1920 (Broadview Press, 2007), n. 9, page 376. Gifford in this book transcribes and publishes some of Millet's letters to Stoddard.
- ↑ Mrs. and Mr. Harris have not been identified. They are not mentioned in Peter Engstrom, Francis Davis Millet: A Titanic Life (East Bridgewater, Massachusetts: Millet Studio Publishing, 2010).
- ↑ The Italian is translated as per James Gifford, Glances Backward: An Anthology of American Homosexual Writing, 1830-1920 (Broadview Press, 2007), page 376. n. 10. Stoddard's letter from Pisa and Millet's earlier letter are not known to be extant.
- ↑ The particular Adams family referred to is unidentified. That Adams family had a daughter named Charlotte and nicknamed "Donny". The Adams family referred to here is probably not Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (May 27, 1835 – May 20, 1915), his wife and family, friends of Millet's. On May 8, 1865, C. F. Adams, Jr. married Mary Elizabeth [Ogden]; daughter of Abram Ogden of New York City, NY. The couple had three daughters and two twin sons: Mary Ogden ("Molly") Adams, Louisa Catherine Adams, Elizabeth Ogden ("Elise") Adams, John Adams, and Henry Adams, both of whom graduated Harvard in 1898. See Wikipedia, accessed March 8, 2012.
- ↑ "Donny" is identified by Katz as a nickname for Charlotte Adams, the eighteen year old daughter of Charles Francis Adams, Jr., and his wife, but this identification is mistaken. See Jonathan Ned Katz, Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), page 208. Charlotte Adams' identity is unknown at this time. A number of articles published by Charlotte Adams are mentioned in Millet's later letters. Those references suggest that she may well be the writer and artists' model described in the Dictionary of Artists' Models edited by Jill Berk Jiminez (Routledge, August 1, 2001), accessed March 28, 2012 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=T_XUi40rTz4C&pg=PA37&lpg=PA37&dq=Charlotte+Adams+writer+Lippincott's&source=bl&ots=C8w-KGkbdy&sig=9sWFTIIjFDjHgiNlX8Lw5J3gEF8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Y61fT8aQKqX00gH58JGxBw&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Charlotte%20Adams%20writer%20Lippincott's&f=false
- ↑ "Listen to the Mocking Bird" (1855) is an American folk song of the mid-19th century.
- ↑ Charles Warren Stoddard's South-sea Idyls (Boston: J. R. Osgood, 1873). Summer Cruising in the South Seas, London, Chatto and Windus, 1873.
- ↑ Millet's correspondence with Champney is in the Millet collection, Library of Congress. Jackson, Champney, and Wetherbee are is identified in Peter Engstrom, Francis Davis Millet: A Titanic Life (East Bridgewater, Massachusetts: Millet Studio Publishing, 2010).
- ↑ Joaquin Miller was the pen name of the Western American poet Cincinnatus Heine (or Hiner) Miller (September 8, 1837 – February 17, 1913), nicknamed the "Poet of the Sierras". See entry on Wikipedia.
