Confederate groups, including women's associations, worked to fund and organize cemeteries, memorialize the war and its soldiers, and honor the "Lost Cause" of the South. In 1888, Winnie published her first book, a monograph of Irish revolutionary Robert Emmet entitled "An Irish Knight of the 19th Century." Davis was involved in a few well-known romantic relationships, but she never married. In 1885–1886, she may have been courted by the noted landscape and portrait artist Verner Moore White, but the relationship supposedly ended when White moved to Europe to further his studies in art. This relationship has never been completely verified. In 1887, Davis developed a more serious relationship with Alfred Wilkinson, a successful New York attorney, whom she met while staying with family friends in Syracuse during the late fall of 1886. Her mother met Wilkinson and initially approved the match, but her father disapproved, based on Wilkinson being from the North and his grandfather having been an abolitionist. Davis reconsidered his disapproval after meeting Wilkinson, and the engagement of the couple was announced in 1889. Northern papers publicized it as healing the wounds of the Civil War. However, an outcry against it in the South burdened the romance, for some dreamed that the young Davis would marry a prominent Southerner, preferably a descendant of one of the generals. Jefferson Davis died shortly before the announced wedding date, and mourning custom required postponing the nuptials for a year. During this time, Wilkinson's house burned down. Winnie's mother Varina became opposed to the marriage. Her Southern friends considered the relationship an insult to the Davis legacy. More importantly, her husband had left the widowed Varina in financial difficulties, and she worried that Wilkinson would be unable to support Winnie. This concern was incorrect, but the damage was done. The engagement was ended in October 1890. By 1891, Varina Davis moved with her daughter to New York City, deeming the climate of Mississippi unhealthy. Richmond, Virginia had also offered them a home, but both women realized they needed to work to support themselves financially. The widowed Varina had no pension, nor signing authority with respect to what remained of Davis's estate. Mother and daughter both became correspondents for the "New York World", a newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer, a good friend of the Davis family who was married to Kate Pulitzer, a distant Davis cousin and friend of Varina's. The Davis women lived in a series of residential hotels, eventually settling at the Gerard Hotel in what is now the theater district.