Franklin Davis Millet (1846–1912)
By William F. Hanna
The cold wind off the water in Halifax, Nova Scotia buffeted the members of what one newspaper called “a little army of sorrowing men.” Among the group was Laurence Millet, a New York lawyer by way of Oxford University and the Harvard Law School. But it wasn’t a matter of law that called Millet to Halifax; rather he was there to claim the body of his father and to attend to the details of his burial.
The deceased was Francis Davis Millet, one of the best-known American artists of his day and a man celebrated on two continents for his work as a journalist, author, and world traveler. Born in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts in 1846, Millet grew up in East Bridgewater, the son of a much-loved country doctor. During the Civil War, the younger Millet served briefly as a member of the 60th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment and then enrolled at Harvard, where he studied modern languages and literature. In 1869, shortly after receiving his degree, Millet entered the world of journalism, an association that would bring him fame and adventure for the rest of his life. He began at the Boston Daily Advertiser, where he learned the lithographer’s trade while also handling general reporting assignments. He also served briefly as city editor of the weekly Boston Courier and he worked for a while at another weekly, the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette.
In 1871, Millet moved to Antwerp and enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where over the next two years he won silver and gold medals in recognition of outstanding student work. Additionally, during his stay in Belgium, he visited several German cities, igniting a passion for travel that would never leave him.
In 1873, Millet became secretary to Charles Francis Adams, Jr., who was then serving as Massachusetts’ commissioner to the Vienna Exposition. In addition to his duties with Adams, he covered the Exposition for both the New York Herald and the New York Tribune, and over the next two years also took the opportunity to travel extensively throughout western and southern Europe.
In 1875 Millet returned to the United States and opened a studio on Boston’s Tremont Street. In the following year, he exhibited his painting, The Bay of Naples, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, and he covered that event for both the Boston Advertiser and the American Architect and Building News. Back in Boston, he assisted John La Farge in decorating the interior of Trinity Church and in the same year, seemingly never at rest, he joined La Farge and William M. Hunt in establishing the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Millet — called Frank by his friends — was an eloquent, gregarious companion, and his many friends during these years included the sculptors Augustus St. Gaudens and Daniel Chester French, as well as the writer Samuel L. Clemens and the painter John Singer Sargent. In 1877, Millet exhibited his portraits of Clemens and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., at the National Academy of Design in New York City before heading off to cover the Russo-Turkish War for the New York Herald and The Times of London. Never just a spectator, Millet, who in addition to his reporting was also working as a combat artist for the London Graphic, found himself in the thick of things on the front lines and ended up being decorated for valor by both the Russian and Romanian governments.
In 1878 Millet settled in Paris, where he served on the fine arts jury at the Exposition Universelle. He also exhibited his work in the Paris Salon and in London at the British Royal Academy. In 1879, with Samuel Clemens serving as best man, Millet married Elizabeth (Lily) Greeley Merrill, a native of Yarmouth, Maine.
After their marriage, the Millets moved back to the States and stayed in the house of Asa Millet, in East Bridgewater. Frank built a small studio on the grounds and worked there whenever he and his family visited. His first child, Katherine, was born in East Bridgewater in 1880, and a son, Edwin Abby, arrived in the following year. When the boy died at three months, he was buried in the family plot in Central Cemetery, near the Millet house. It was during this period that Frank shared a studio in New York City, where he worked with Louis Comfort Tiffany in designing the windows for the Seventh Regiment’s armory. It’s likely that Lily remained in her father-in-law’s house when Frank was away.
It was during the 1880s that Millet’s reputation, both as an artist and talented organizer, grew in stature. In 1882, he was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design, and in less than ten years he advanced to the vice presidency of the organization. In 1905, he became a charter member of the American Academy in Rome, and six years later was the chief administrator when that school was consolidated with the American School of Classical Studies. In 1908, Millet was elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and two years later became a member of the American Institute of Arts and Letters.
Throughout this period he also continued to travel the world. In 1884, he moved his family to Worcestershire, England, where his third and fourth children were born. Laurence would become the New York lawyer, while his brother Alfred would enjoy a reputation as one of America’s foremost psychiatrists. It’s difficult to know how much of his children’s lives Frank was present to witness. During these years he was traveling constantly. After visiting Scandinavia in 1882, he used the next few years to see Mexico, and central Europe, where he and some friends sailed down the Danube in one-man canoes. In 1892–93, he was named director of decorations for the White City of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He also handled public relations for the Exposition.
In 1898, Millet went to the Philippines to cover the Spanish American War for Harper’s Weekly, the London Times and the New York Sun. In the following year, he and a co-author published Expedition to the Philippines. This volume joined several others that had been written by Millet in previous years. These included a translation of Tolstoy’s The Sebastopol Sketches from French to English and a book about the canoe trip down the Danube entitled From the Black Forest to the Black Sea. The painter also wrote fiction; most notably a collection of short stories entitled “A Capillary Crime and Other Tales.”
In a life that seemingly had not a minute to spare, Millet also continued to accept painting commissions, both public and private. Among his best-known public projects were murals placed in the U.S. Customs House in Baltimore and in the Minnesota State Capitol, as well as in the Federal Building and the Cleveland Trust Company building in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1908, the year in which he finished the Baltimore project, he also found time to travel to Japan, where he received a medal from the Japanese government. He returned to Rome by way of China, Russia, and Germany. Indeed, one newspaper later said that Millet had visited every place on earth, including the Arctic and Antarctica.
Such a life, especially if it’s ended in its prime, deserves a grand send-off, and for Millet this came on the deck of the RMS Titanic in the early hours of April 15, 1912. Traveling from Europe to New York on Academy of Rome business, Millet was last seen assisting women and children into the lifeboats as the dying ship slipped away. That was what had brought Laurence Millet to Halifax, for unlike many of his fellow victims, Frank’s body had been recovered.
When all of the necessary steps had been completed, the Millets returned to Boston on the morning train of May 2, 1912. Frank’s body was immediately taken to Mt. Auburn Cemetery, four miles west of the city, where it was cremated. A brief service was held before a packed crowd in the Lawrence Chapel on the cemetery’s grounds. President William Howard Taft had sent a large floral spray, and several others were added by prominent members of the city’s artistic community. After the service at Mt. Auburn, Millet’s ashes were taken to East Bridgewater and buried in the family plot in the Central Cemetery.
Tributes to Frank Millet poured in from all parts of the United States and Europe as friends tried to find suitable ways to honor his memory. Resolutions were passed and testimonials were delivered, but perhaps Millet would have been most pleased by words written by his old friend, Samuel Clemens. Several years before his death, Mark Twain had written: “Millet was the cause of lovable qualities in people, and he admired and loved those persons for the very qualities which he (without knowing it) had created in them.”
