Millet was best known as a painter. After serving as a surgical assistant during the Civil War, he studied art at Harvard University and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium. Millet was a member of the Society of American Artists and the National Academy of Design, and served on the advisory committee of the National Gallery of Art, and as a founding member (and vice chair) of the US Commission of Fine Arts. He served as decorations director for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and created the murals for the Call Room of the US Custom House in Baltimore. His paintings are in the collections of the Minnesota State Capitol, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Tate Gallery, and The Brooklyn Museum.
As a journalist, Millet worked for the Boston Courier, the Philadelphia Advertiser, the New York Herald, the London Daily News, and the London Graphic. He was a war correspondent during the Russo-Turkish War. Millet also translated Leo Tolstoy from Russian to English, and published short fiction and personal essays. His books include Expedition to the Philippines (1899), Capillary Crime and Other Stories (1892), and The Danube from the Black Forest to the Black Sea (1892).
Although married and the father of four, Millet’s family lived in Italy. Millet lived at this address with his lover, Archibald Butt, a US Army Officer who served as military aide to presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Their large parties were famous in their time, attended by members of Congress, US Supreme Court justices, and President Taft.
Both Millet and Butt died aboard the RMS Titanic. In 1913, a memorial fountain to the two men was erected on the Ellipse, on the grounds of the White House. Designed by Daniel Chester French and Thomas Hastings, the shaft of the monument that rises above the bowl of a fountain that includes two bas-relief figures representing art (for Millet) and chivalry (for Butt). This is the only known monument on federal land dedicated to two gay men.
The Homes
2000 G Street NW, Washington, DC (Oscar W. Underwood House)
A second-empire mansion with a mansard roof, this was the home of Millet and Butt until their deaths in 1912. Congressman Underwood (D-AL) lived here from 1914 to 1925. It was then acquired by the Washington College of Law, the first law school in the US founded and run by women, who occupied the property from 1924 through 1952. Currently part of the campus of George Washington University, the mansion was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1976.