88. Maud Wagner — Lost Lady of Tattoo Art

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KIM: Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode, wherein we dive into another tangential topic that interests us. I’m Kim Askew, here with my friend and writing partner, Amy Helmes.

AMY: Hey, everyone. Kim, I think our regular listeners would be a little shocked to hear that we’re going to be discussing tattoos today. It doesn’t necessarily seem like us. Do you have any tattoos?

KIM: I do.

AMY: You do?!

KIM: You didn’t know that?

AMY: Uh, no! I don’t think I know…

KIM: Yeah, I think you knew. Because I’ve had it the entire time I’ve known you. I have it on my (actually I don’t remember) I think it’s my right hip, the upper buttock area. I have a heart with vines around it.

AMY: Well, I wouldn’t have seen that!

KIM: Well, no, with swimsuits or something. I mean, we don’t wear swimsuits that much. I don’t know why; we live in L.A. but we’re not swimsuit-type people. We’re more like fireside, tea people. So she didn’t know that I had one. I have a heart with vines around it that I got a long time ago. Anyway.

AMY: All right, you learn something new every day.

KIM: That’s hilarious. But Amy, what about you? I know you don’t have one; you don’t even have your ears pierced. 

AMY: Yeah, it’s not my aesthetic, but also I think the main reason really is that I would be too paralyzed by indecision to even know what I would want permanently emblazoned on my body. You know, I’ve thought about it. (I’ve never actually really thought about getting a tattoo, but I have, for fun, thought about what I would get if I were going to get one.) It would have to be a word or a quote or something, but how do you even begin to choose? I just don’t know.

KIM: Yeah, that’s the thing. I have a very spontaneous side, as you know. There wasn’t much thinking involved in my tattoo.

AMY: That makes sense.

KIM: But I never regretted it.

AMY: Okay, good, good. Now I will say, and I'm going to hold this up to the screen and show you…. I think, um, Meg who, you know, my old college roommate Meg, she gave me  temporary literary tattoos and I have yet to use them, but maybe I will put them on now that this episode is coming up and we can put pictures of my bicep on Instagram with my literary tattoo.

KIM: You should wear them to our next tea.

AMY: Yeah. And they’re all Pride and Prejudice themed. So we have, of course, “Obstinate, headstrong girl.” Uhh.. “Pemberley,” including a silhouette of Pemberley.

KIM: I love that one. Can we fight over them?

AMY: “I am all astonishment.” I like that one. These are made by Litographs, it’s called. 

KIM: So Meg, if you’re listening, do you have a tattoo? I don’t think so, but let us know…

AMY: Oh, that’s a good question! Yeah, I don’t know if she has one either. 

KIM: Okay, so anyway, listeners, if tattoos are something Amy isn’t passionate about, you might wonder why we’re even discussing them today. It all stems from an outing Amy and I had in January to go have afternoon tea at a venue called Lily Rose in downtown L.A.

AMY: Yes, so it’s this super cool bar in the Wayfarer hotel… it’s got a funky-bordello vibe with all kinds of cool Victorian art and photos covering the walls. Sort of almost Dark Academia in certain respects. But the centerpiece of the decor is this large, maybe four-foot tall photo of a Victorian woman. She’s got a rose affixed to her poufy, Gibson-girl hair. She’s wearing a four-strand pearl choker. She’s got a truculent expression on her face… AND, she’s wearing a barely there strapless bodice that reveals the fact that her body is covered in tattoos. It’s so surprising.

KIM: Yes, she’s inked with tons of artwork, including two lions across her chest, a hummingbird, butterfly, serpent, palm trees, and an eagle carrying an American flag in its beak. 

AMY: So naturally, the portrait caught our attention, and being the curious girls that we are, Kim and I flagged down a waiter to ask him who this was in the picture. You’d think it being the focal point of the bar, he would know. No, he said he wasn’t sure and had to go ask someone. 

KIM: Yeah, and he returned a minute later and said, “Oh, that’s Lily Rose,” a.k.a. the bar’s namesake, which made sense.

AMY: Made sense, but god bless him, but he was lying! 

KIM: I think he made it up on the spot.

AMY: I think he totally made it up. So I went home and googled Lily Rose trying to find out more about this woman, and I DID find the photo online — it’s everywhere. But the woman’s name was not Lily Rose. It’s Maud Wagner. She happens to be the first known female tattoo artist in the United States. So we’re going to tell you a little about Maud Wagner in today’s episode.

KIM: And of course, we’ll link to some photos of Maud Wagner (and her tattoos) in our show notes. (And, you know, in case any of our listeners want to go get a tattoo after this episode, maybe she’ll inspire you.) So Amy, what do we know about Maud Wagner?

AMY: Well, she was born Maud Stevens in Kansas in 1877, and when she was young, she apparently ran off and joined the circus.

KIM: I love her already.

AMY: Yes. Apparently she worked first as a contortionist, aerialist and acrobat in her early days with the circus. My daughter Julia would love that because she takes aerial lessons. She takes the silks… 

KIM: I know, I love that. It’s so beautiful.

AMY: I know, it scares me and Mike half to death to watch her. We’re  always joking that she might run off to join the circus someday also. So hopefully she doesn’t pull a “Maud.”

KIM: You know I try everything, right? I did take a lesson in that once and I was horrible. I didn’t have enough upper arm strength to pull myself up.

AMY: Did we do that together because I did that also?

KIM: Did we? Was it with Isobel?

AMY: Was it in Hollywood?

KIM: Yes! It was years ago.

AMY: It was so hard!

KIM: Oh, you have to be so strong to be able to do it. It’s not like you could just unless you’re super strong, you could just walk off the street and do it.

AMY: No, no. It’s like climbing the rope in gym class, but even harder. I was crippled the day after I tried it. 

KIM: But it looks so beautiful. 

AMY: It does, it does. 

KIM: But anyway, we digress. While performing at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 Maud met the man who would become her husband, and he was a tattoo artist. His name was Gus Wagner and he sported 800 tattoos himself.

AMY: Yeah, there’s a book by a woman Margo DeMello called Inked about the history of tattooing and in that book it basically says Wagner gave Maud a tattoo as a way of getting a date with her. 

KIM: Yeah, that wouldn’t have worked on me. No.

AMY: No, but apparently a needle and ink is a turn-on for Maud, because she fell for Gus and they ended up getting married and he taught her everything he knew about the art of tattooing. Apparently he did it the old-fashioned way; not with like a gun kind of thing, just a needle and ink. And because she wound up having him decorate most of her body with tattoos, she became an exhibition unto herself. Now instead of being an acrobat, she was a walking work of art. 

KIM: Nice pivot… there’s a lot more career stability than as an acrobat, I think.

AMY: Yeah, probably. Safer. Safer to be on the ground. In researching Maud, I came to find out that actually, tattoos in the Victorian era were not as taboo as you might think. Yes, they did kind of start with prisoners and sailors getting them, but some members of elite society actually sported tattoos including Queen Victoria’s eldest son. And there were even some upper class Victorian women sporting ink, too.  Apparently (and we’ll get into this in a second, but) Winston Churchill’s own mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, is said to have had a tattoo! Her name was Jennie Jerome, and she was an American heiress (one of the “buccaneers” if you will). 

KIM: We love the buccaneers.

AMY: Yes. She reportedly had a tattoo of a snake coiled around her left wrist. 

KIM: Oooh!

AMY: Yeah. I say “reportedly,” because it was written about in a newspaper article in 1894 and I’ll just read from that:

“There are certain women of the world who capture public attention to that degree that everything they do is promptly chronicled. Lady Randolph Churchill is one of them. When returning home from India with Lord Randolph she noticed a British soldier tattooing a deckhand… She had the artist brought before her and asked him for some designs. He suggested the Talmudic symbol of eternity- a snake holding its tail in its mouth. Lady Randolph was charmed and bared her arm for the operation. Lord Randolph swore and protested. But the tattooing was done- so it is said, at least- and it is described as a beautifully executed snake, dark blue in color, with green eyes and red jaws. As a general thing it is hidden from the vulgar gaze by a broad gold bracelet, but her personal friends are privileged to see it and hear the story of the tattooing.” 

KIM: Oooh, I love that. I’m not going to get another tattoo, probably ever, but that sounds really cool. Good for her!

AMY: Yeah, if it looks like a bracelet or whatever. But here’s the problem. When you look up photos of Jennie (and there are many) there is no snake tattoo to be found on any, even potentially hidden under a bracelet. You just can’t find them. She would have gotten the tattoo when she was around 40, supposedly, but no one’s been able to find any photographic evidence she was sporting ink. 

KIM: That would be hard to hide.

AMY: It would be. And I’d love for that story to be true, but it could be fake news. They even kind of said in the article, it’s almost written as if they didn’t have an eyewitness account. Like, “So it is said,” you know? But I want to credit a web article by Amelia K. Osterud, a historian and author of the book Tattooed Lady: A History. She provided the intel on all this about this mystery of Jennie Churchill’s tattoo. Anyway, it’s really making me want to go read Anne Sebba’s 2007 biography of Jennie Churchill. Even if she didn’t get a tattoo, she sounds like she was quite the spitfire in many other ways, and if you’re into the Gilded Age like we are, she’s a lady you ought to know better.

KIM: I’m super into that idea. Anyway, getting back to Maud Wagner, she died in 1961. Because she and her husband spent so much time on the road in traveling vaudeville shows, county fairs and amusement arcades, the couple is credited with helping spread the tradition of tattooing across the United States. 

AMY: There’s also a historical novel based on her life called Maud’s Circus by an author named Michelle Rene (I’m not sure how that’s pronounced)   But If you liked Sara Gruen’s 2006 novel Water for Elephants, this one sounds like it would kind of be in that same sort of world, which would be fun.

KIM: Oh, yeah, and that’s making me think of one of my favorite books ever, but the name is not coming to me. The wonderful book… it’s like a cult favorite. 

AMY: It’s not the lobster boy?

KIM: No, no, it’s not called The Lobster Boy, but yeah it’s set in the circus. Geek Love! 

AMY: Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking of! Geek Love.

KIM: I didn’t hear you say that. 

AMY: I didn’t say it, but I feel like there was a Lobster Boy in Geek Love.  

KIM: Oh yeah, there is. Yeah, Geek Love, which I read a few years ago again because Eric had never read it and I had him read it and he loved it. Such a great book.

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: We would never have known about Maud if we hadn’t gone to tea together and seen her photo so once again once of our field trips turned into inspiration. It always does.

AMY: Yeah, although still not as great as our Cate Blanchett sighting during our afternoon tea we had at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. Remember that?

KIM: Oh, I won’t ever forget it. We were having a brainstorm for one of our projects that I think maybe our first book or something.

AMY: Yeah, and we thought, “This is all meant to be, the fact that we’re seeing Cate Blanchett here!!!”

KIM: And it was!!

AMY: Anyway, it’s making me think we need to schedule another of our fancy teas. Let’s get it on the books.

KIM: Yes, let’s, because who knows what adventure might await. So that’s all for today’s episode! Be sure to join us again next week when we’ll be discussing the author Tess Slesinger and her unforgettable Modernist novel, The Unpossessed.

AMY: We’ve got Dr. Paula Rabinowitz joining us next week, and get this: Tess Slesinger’s son, Peter Davis, will be with us, too! How cool is that?

KIM: I cannot wait! Bye, everyone!

AMY: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.