Oatsie charles biography of martin

The Wit & the Whim of Oatsie Charles

Set on a spit of Atlantic-lapped land, the celebrated socialite and philanthropist’s famous house welcomes back her daughter and family to continue their tradition of Newport summering

Photo by Mick Hales and Nick Mele

https://flowermag.com/oatsie-charles-newport-home/

A special Newport, Rhode Island house named The Whim will happily come full circle when Victoria Mele moves back and calls it home after almost 50 years.

“I came to this property when I was 2 years old,” says Victoria. That was in 1952, when her mother, prominent Washington socialite Marion “Oatsie” Leiter Charles, bought the famous estate called Land’s End. It consisted of a main house, a gardener’s cottage, an eight-car garage, a greenhouse, and vestiges of previous owner Edith Wharton’s gardens.

Designed by architect John Hubbard Sturgis in the 1860s for Samuel C.

Ward, brother of writer and act