Accommodation
Wilde spent six days in Newport, and stayed at least one night (July 14) at ‘Oak Glen’, the Summer home of Julia Ward Howe, who had earlier received Wilde at her Boston home that year.
Julia Ward Howe was the sister of Sam Ward, the lobbyist and socialite, who taken Wilde under his wing in New York. There was also much unfounded talk of a pending engagement between Wilde and her daughter Maud Howe (later Elliott).
At other times Wilde stayed at Ocean House, a large hotel adjacent to the Casino, from where he wrote to Charles Eliot Norton c. July 15 (Letters, 176).
"Oak Glen"
Union Street, Portsmouth, RI (Summer home of Julia Ward Howe), now 745 Union Street, Portsmouth, RI, 02871
Original structure: c. 1850
Main house built: 1870 (Extant)
Ocean House*
202 1/7 Bellevue Av., Newport, RI (NE corner of Bellevue Av. and Bowery Street)
Built: 1845-46 (Russell Warren, architect)
Opened: 1846 (John G. Weaver Sr., owner)
Destroyed (fire): September 9, 1898
* The second hotel of this name in Newport. The first (1841-45) was destroyed by fire. Neither hotel to be confused with the extant 1868 Ocean House at Bluff Ave, Westerly, RI 02891.
Ocean House on the right along Bellevue Avenue.
The adjacent Newport Casino and Ocean House.