542 



OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (VILLAUMK WIM PERIS.) 



(1888); Au Bois Joli (1894); Le Clos des Fees 

 (1898). In 1883 he contributed a long prose intro- 

 duction to Guillen's Chansons Populaires de 1'Ain, 

 his only prose writing of importance, and in 1888 

 he obtained a gold niedal for his lyric poem, 

 Quatre-vingt-neuf, Chant Sculaire. 



Villaume, Karl von, a German soldier, born in 

 1840; died in Berlin, June 3, 1900. He was an 

 ordnance expert who served on the staff almost 

 from the time of his entrance into the army. In 

 1877,, as a captain of the general staff, he was 

 attached to the Russian headquarters during the 

 war in the Balkans, and at its close he was ap- 

 pointed military tittarlie of the embassy in Rome, 

 which post he exchanged in 1882 for that of first 

 military attach^ in Paris, having reached the rank 

 of lieutenant colonel. There he obtained docu- 

 ments from a French traitor that revealed the 

 operations of the French spy system, and to the 

 French, who were wrought up by suspicions of 

 German spies and angered against military at- 

 taches as a class, he appeared to be the head and 

 front of the espionage that they dreaded, and 

 had to give up the post, having won as much 

 credit at home as he lost in France. He was 

 nominated aid-de-camp to the Emperor, and in 

 1886 he succeeded Gen. von Werder as military 

 plenipotentiary at St. Petersburg. He served sev- 

 eral years in this post to the satisfaction of his 

 Government, was then recalled to take command 

 of an artillery brigade at Stettin, the first time 

 that he was with the troops since he was a lieu- 

 tenant, and in 1896 was appointed director of the 

 staff college in Berlin. 



Villebois-Mare'uil, Col. de, a French soldier, 

 born in 1847 ; died in South Africa, April 5, 1900. 

 He was educated for the army at St. Cyr, received 

 a commission in 1867, served in Cochin China, was 

 captain of chasseurs in the Army of the Loire in 

 1870, received a severe wound at the recapture 

 of Blois, and for his brave conduct was decorated 

 on the battlefield. He was attached to the war 

 school in 1871, and in 1882, when Gen. Boulanger 

 became Minister of War, he received an appoint- 

 ment on the general staff. He was sent to Al- 

 geria in 1888, having then the rank of lieutenant 

 colonel, was promoted to a colonelcy in 1892, held 

 commands successively in Mayenne, Soissons, and 

 in Algeria, and in 1895 resigned from the army on 

 account of a family bereavement and devoted him- 

 self to old soldiers' societies. He was the author 

 of a romance entitled Sacrifies, which appeared 

 in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1890, under the 

 pseudonym of Georges Simny ; of one called Entre 

 Civilises, published in 1896; and of a third, Au- 

 dessus de Tout, printed in 1899. When the war in 

 South Africa broke out he went to offer his serv- 

 ices to the Transvaal, and was the chief adviser 

 of the Boer generals on artillery tactics. Passing 

 near Boshof with a small detachment he was over- 

 taken by a British scouting party and killed. 



Wilde, Oscar Fingall O'Flaherty Wills, an 

 Irish poet, born in Dublin, Oct. 16, 1856; died in 

 1'aris, Nov. 30, 1900. He was the son of Sir 

 William Wilde, surgeon-oculist to the Queen, and 

 Lady Jane Wilde, who as Speranza was a well- 

 known Irish lyrist in the fifties. After a brilliant 

 university career at Trinity College, Dublin, and 

 at Oxford, he traveled in Italy and Greece, and, 

 returning to London in 1879, originated the pe- 

 culiar aesthetic movement satirized in the opera of 

 I'atience. In 1881 he went to the United States 

 and lectured on art, and he afterward lectured in 

 England and in Paris. He met with great social 

 >u< -i -ess, and his poems and society plays were 

 I" 'pillar. In 1894 he was convicted of felony, for 

 which he served a sentence of two years in prison. 



After his release in 1897 he lived in the Latin 

 Quarter of Paris, under the name of Sebastian 

 Melnotte. In his last hours he w r as received into 

 the Roman Catholic Church as a penitent. He 

 published Xewdigate Prize Poem Ravenna (Lon- 

 don, 1878) ; Poems (1880) ; Vera, a comedy (1882) : 

 The Happy Prince, and Other Tales (1888); 

 Dorian Gray, a novel ; The Portrait of Mr. W. H., 

 a theory respecting Shakespeare's Sonnets; Inten- 

 tions, a collection of essays (1891) ; Guido Ferranti 

 (1890); The Duchess of Padua, a blank-verse 

 tragedy (1891); Lady Windermere's Fan, a skil- 

 fully written comedy (1893); Salome, a tragedy 

 (1894); A Woman of no Importance, a comedy 

 (1893); The House of Pomegranates, poems in 

 prose; The Sphinx, a poem; Lord Arthur Saville's 

 Crime, a collection of short stories; An Ideal Hus- 

 band, a play ; The Importance of Being in Earnest, 

 a play (1895) : and The Ballad of Reading Gaol 

 (1898). The last-named work, which appeared 

 anonymously, is a strong poem, and has been 

 called his finest literary effort. His verse is almost 

 always melodious, and abounds in exquisite de- 

 scriptive passages. The authorship, in part at 

 least, of Mr. and Mrs. Daventry, a problem play 

 (1900), has been attributed to him. 



Williams, Frederick., an Irish actor, born in 

 Dublin in 1829; died in New York city, Sept. 5, 

 1900. He was educated in his native city as an 

 architect. He made his first appearance at the 

 Smock Alley Theater, Dublin, as Tybalt in Romeo 

 and Juliet, in 1850. For two years he played 

 the usual succession of rQles in the stock com- 

 panies in Ireland, and in 1852 was engaged at the 

 old National Theater, Cincinnati. His first ap- 

 pearance was Catesby in Richard III, in the au- 

 tumn of 1852. He remained an active and im- 

 portant member of that company for seven years. 

 He then toured as a star from 1859 to 1861. lie 

 was next engaged as leading actor of the Hollida v 

 Street Theater, Baltimore, where he played until 

 the civil war, during which he again made a 

 starring tour lasting two years. In the spring of 

 1864 he went to New York city as leading man 

 of George Wood's Theater (afterward Wallack'si. 

 and in the autumn of the same year accepted a 

 place as light comedian in the Boston Museum. 

 In 1865 he became stage manager of that house, 

 and he remained in that place fourteen years, dur- 

 ing which all productions were supervised by him. 

 and many adaptations of foreign plays arranged 

 for the stage. In 1879 he became stage manager 

 of Daly's Theater, New York, where he remained 

 four years. He then traveled two seasons with 

 the company of the late Frank Mayo, and three 

 with the Boston Ideals. In 1887 he" was engaged 

 as stage manager of the Lyceum Theater, New 

 York, the duties of which he performed faithfully 

 up to the date of his last illness. His last im- 

 portant work was the preparation of E. H. Sotli- 

 ern's production of Hamlet. 



Wimperis. Edmund M., an English artist. 

 born in 1835; died at Southbourne, England. Dei-. 

 25, 1900. He went to London in early lite, and 

 learned wood engraving under Birket Foster. As 

 an engraver he attained a high degree of excel 

 lence, and many exquisite example- of his work- 

 manship may be found in the illustrated book- nt 

 the sixties. When wood engraving declined he 

 turned his attention to water-color painting and. 

 though almost entirely self-taught, met with great 

 success. His taste was almost entirely for land- 

 scapes, and he cared little or nothing for human 

 incident. In later life he painted in oils, ami 

 almost equally successful in this branch of, art. 

 He followed Haag as vice-president of the Royal 

 Institute of Painters in Water Colors. 





