in the nature of his collections. Whereas Parisian collections emphasized Japanese domestic objects or dress more associated with femininity, the Boston collectors focused on the elite all-male aspects of Japanese society: the tea ceremony, the samurai, and elite communities of Buddhist monks. Bigelow's preference for the company of men was manifest nowhere more clearly than on his island retreat of Tuckernuck, off Nantucket. He invited other men there to enjoy the pleasures of dining and swimming in a world without women. George Cabot Lodge Bigelow was heartbroken when George Cabot Lodge, the young poet he had chosen as his spiritual son to inherit his island estate, died there at the age of thirty-five. Lodge's 1906 poem "Tuckanuck" celebrates the island as a place "to dream an Eastern dream, starred by the cry / of sea-birds ..." A more exuberant letter from Lodge to Bigelow anticipating a trip to the island reads "kind Sir! Surf Sir! And sun, Sir! And Nakedness! – Oh Lord! How I want to get my clothes off – alone in natural solitudes." Milka Ternina He was also reported to have proposed marriage in 1899 to the Croatian soprano Milka Ternina of the Metropolitan Opera. He gave her a 38-carat diamond named “Cleveland” and presented her a letter with his marriage proposal. She rejected the proposal, but from then on their relationship became more intimate. During their relationship, he gifted her a number of Japanese objects, which she donated in 1930 to the Etnografski Muzej in Zagreb. Death Bigelow died in 1926. In accordance with his final requests, Bigelow's remains were cremated; half the ashes were buried near Fenollosa's at Mii-dera, just outside Kyoto, and half were interred in the Sturgis family plot at Mount Auburn Cemetery. References Frederic, Louis (2002). "Japan Encyclopedia." Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. "A History of the Asiatic Department: A Series of Illustrated Lectures Given in 1957 by Kojiro Tomita (1890-1976)." Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1990. External links Biography at BigelowSociety.com Hokusai Returns - Bigelow's Ukiyo-e collection 1850 births 1926 deaths American art collectors American Japanologists American Buddhists Japanese Buddhists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Harvard Medical School alumni American expatriates in Japan Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Physicians from Massachusetts American expatriates in France