108. Lola Ridge with Terese Svoboda

KIM: Hi, everyone, welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dust off forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew.

AMY: And I'm Amy Helmes. Once again, Kim, today we're discussing a writer who was all the rage in her day. Lola Ridge isn't a name many of us know today, but anyone who was anyone in New York's intellectual circles in the 1920s and 1930s knew and admired her work, wrote for the avant-garde literary magazine she edited, attended her frequent parties, and respected the zeal of her radical beliefs.

KIM: She was considered one of the preeminent poets in America, on par with e.e. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, T.S Elliot, Ezra Pound, Jean Toomer, and Robert Frost. Funny, not funny how we remember all their names and not hers. In addition to helping shape the ideal of what American literature of the time should be. She was speaking out about gender disparity in literature 10 years before Virginia Woolf published A Room of One's Own. In today's parlance, you might say she was "fire."

AMY: And fire was, in fact, a recurring theme in her work. She wrote five collections of poetry, which sold extremely well nationally. Her most critically acclaimed long form poem, "Firehead" based on Christ's crucifixion, was described at the time as "magnificent" and "one of the most impressive creations of any American poet."

KIM: She won a Guggenheim fellowship and a Shelley Memorial Award, but beyond those financial boosts, most of her life was spent scraping to get by.

AMY: And listeners, if you tuned into our recent episode on Heterodoxy with Joanna Scutts about the feminist intellectual women of Greenwich Village, Ridge's life story occurs within the same timeframe and locale. So she was addressing a lot of the same subjects in her poetry that were on the minds of the women of Heterodoxy.

KIM: Yes, her poetry was radical and it reflected her beliefs in anarchy, freedom and justice. She once wrote "Nice is the one adjective in the world that is laughable applied to any single thing I have ever written." You could say Ridge's verse was more hot to the touch.

AMY: And we've got a guest expert today who can tell us what made it so, so let's raid the stacks and get started. Our guest today is Terese Svoboda, author of the 2018 biography Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet. Like Ridge, Svoboda is herself a poet, having published eight collections of poetry in addition to being a novelist, memoirist, short story writer, translator and videographer.

KIM: She's won numerous grants and awards, including a Guggenheim, the Bobst Prize for Fiction, and the Iowa Prize for Poetry. The opera Wet, for which she penned the libretto, premiered at LA's Disney Concert Hall. In 2005, her work has appeared in Granta, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate and The Paris Review. The New York Post called her memoir Black Glasses Like Clark Kent "astounding," and The Washington Post called her Lola Ridge biography that we're discussing today "magisterial." Her forthcoming novels include the title's Dog on Fire and Roxy and Coco. We're honored to have you on the show, Terese.

TERESE: Thank you. Well, you know, next year will be the 150th anniversary of Lola Ridge's birth, so I'm really delighted to have the opportunity to alert readers to a fascinating life and amazing work.

AMY: Okay. So when I hear about a female poet from a hundred years ago that nobody remembers, my initial reaction is I'm not that surprised. I feel like there are lots of poets throughout history that we've kind of gotten over. You know, people don't read a lot of poetry anymore, so it's not that surprising that there would be poets that have faded into obscurity, but by the time I'd finished reading the introduction of your biography, I was like, " Wait one minute This is not just 'some poet.'" She was big time in her day. I mean, massively important, as we learn in your book. I kept thinking, "Why wasn't she on college syllabuses?" You know, I studied all this literature in school. Her name never came up. So when did you first discover her there and what made you want to tell her story?

TERESE: Well, I encountered Robert Penske's Slate article, " Street Poet," oddly enough. It was published in 2011 and it was the first time in 40 years of my career that I'd ever heard about her as well. The Slate article showed very little of what I later came to recognize was her really important work, but I was inexplicably wild about her, like, kismet. Um, after publishing a couple of articles about her, I signed a contract to actually write the biography with the grandson of HD.

Not only have very few of my books had a contract in advance, but to have the publisher understand her importance because of HD's acquaintance with Lola was really a godsend and I remain very grateful. 

AMY: And listeners HD, we should mention is the early modernist poet and novelist, whose name was Hilda Dolittle. She wrote under her initials HD and actually Kim, we probably need to do an HD episode at some time.

KIM: Yes, absolutely. But getting back to Ridge, this was an era when poetry was much more popular among mainstream readers. It was something we touched on in our episode. Last month, when we discussed the poet Nora May French. Terese, can you put her celebrity and perspective for our listeners?

TERESE: So when Lola was first published, poetry books were put out in front of bookstores to lure people inside, and customers for new poetry books actually fought over the titles. So poets became celebrities, particularly. Partly this was because it was the first time that so many women had published poetry, but also because sometimes they wrote sexy topics coded and clothed in poetry. Anyway, when Lola Ridge announced that she would be protesting the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, it was front page news across the country.

KIM: Wow.

AMY: Because everybody knew who she was. 

TERESE: Yeah. 

AMY: Okay. So for the rest of us, you know, we're going into your book not knowing anything. I didn't know about her life, I didn't know any of her poetry. And what I loved about your approach to this book is that you incorporate the poetry as we go along . So we see how it all connects. It's beautifully woven together in a way that helps you understand the poetry, as it related to her life. So that was great.

KIM: Yeah. And beyond her poetry, Ridge's life, itself, is a fascinating story of adventure and reinvention. Her story begins in Dublin, Ireland, where she was born in 1873. But at the age of four, Lola sailed with her mother to Australia. Lola's mother saw more opportunity among the gold miners of New Zealand, where they eventually migrated a few years later. Though her mother had an estranged husband, Lola's father, back in Ireland, she called herself a widow and married another man in New Zealand. They settled in a mining town called Hokitika, and Ridge would later incorporate her memories and experiences from this frontier childhood in a long form poem called "Sun-up" that was published in 1920. Terese, how did New Zealand shape our young Lola?

TERESE: Well, New Zealand was at the end of a gold rush as big as San Francisco's, but it came with a socialist twist. The miners were soon unionized. Old age pensions and minimum wage were legislated and New Zealand. As you perhaps know, became the first country in the world to allow women to vote.

AMY: I did not know that.

KIM: I didn't know that either. That's great! 

TERESE: It was sort of an accident. And I won't go into that story now, but they were, and the leader was sort of an anarchist without portfolio. So anyway, when Lola was 18, her first published poem "On Zealandia" appeared in a newspaper. Uh, this was a time when newspapers featured poetry on every page and when readers were passionate about Socialism, and this is how it ends "injustice shall fall by the sword of the brave with the feds of class in an honorless grave, o'er the ruins, let freedom and brotherhood wave on Zealandia."

AMY: Mm. Okay. So she's off and running right there.

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: And she's only getting started, basically. So as a young woman, right around this time period, Lola Ridge ends up getting married in New Zealand and has a child, but it wasn't a happy marriage and she wanted out. So like her mother before her, she took her child, a son named Keith, and they left. They sailed for America in 1907, but not long after her arrival, Ridge made a pretty shocking decision. Terese, can you explain? 

TERESE: Well, it may be the reason why her biography is so unknown. Um, her mother was her babysitter as that often happens, but she died when Lola was setting sail for the Us. And maybe the long trip by boat convinced her that without her mother, she couldn't care for her son or fulfill her ambitions or maybe even find a job. So she left him in an orphanage for six years. So at the time, the poor sometimes left children there for a while when they couldn't manage. And of course, the wealthy left the children for much longer in schools, and anarchists always find children to be an insoluble problem. Lola traveled to New York City, alone, via Panama Canal actually, where she reinvented herself, taking 10 years off her life, saying she was an Australian rather than a backward New Zealander and claiming she was a Us citizen. And of course, unmarried.

KIM: I love what you said about the wealthy using boarding schools. I mean, I don't know why that never occurred to me. I mean, I've always had thoughts about boarding schools but that's a really, really interesting way of thinking about it. 

AMY: And it's funny too, because we've discussed this topic of women who have left their children. Because Charlotte Perkins Gilman kind of had made a similar choice with her daughter. Um, and then even the last episode we did, with Dirty Helen Cromwell, who happened to be a prostitute, you know, a different line of work, but she made the decision as well to leave one son behind and send the other off to a private school so she could get some work done. So issues that we're still kind of dealing with today. But I do think it's harder, as modern women, to hear these stories. It's hard to know what to do with it, right? Because we can't imagine doing that in this day and age. 

TERESE: Yeah. Uh, I wonder what's changed, really. I mean, is childcare that much better?

AMY: It's not. So, yeah, I wonder too. It seems a little heartless and, and we can talk about that later, what her relationship with Keith wound up being like, if they had any real relationship, but.

KIM: I, I would say though, you know, it's the same question of when people with less money and less opportunity end up taking care of the children of other people who are wealthier, and leaving their children with their mothers or their families. So I feel like we're just in kind of a privileged position. So that's why it seems so, um, maybe unnatural isn't the right word, but I think that could be a first instinct when you hear it. But I think that people are struggling with that.

AMY: And we have tools now, like the television to sit our kids in front of. I mean, as awful as that sounds, we have other forms of babysitters that can give us a little time. 

KIM: Tablets. 

AMY: Yeah.

TERESE: …to collect our thoughts. Well, you might also consider that she did Keith a favor, too. I don't think she was going to be the world's best mother, even if, uh, she kept him.

KIM: That's a good point.

AMY: Yeah, I think you're probably right, when we get more into what her lifestyle was like at times. 

KIM: Lola had already had a modicum of success in New Zealand and Australia as a writer. And now in her mid thirties, she was finding her footing in America. She wrote potboiler novels and got involved in the anarchist movement that brought her into the orbit of famed anarchist, Emma Goldman. Goldman described Ridge as "our gifted rebel poet." So Lola also had a new sweetheart, David Lawson. She would go on to marry him, nevermind that she still had that first husband from back in New Zealand. But at one point Ridge took employment as the first manager of the Ferrer center. Can you explain what that was?

TERESE: Francisco Ferrer was a Spanish anarchist who established what was known as modern schools, which were those without allegiance to, state or church. As a result, he was executed by the Spanish government after being framed for a bombing in 1909. The Ferrer center in New York City opened a year later as a sort of community center for anarchists and it was located in St. Mark's Place. It featured lectures, language and art lessons, dancing, and lots of talk. Anarchy and socialism were de rigueur among the artists at the time, and many famous people spoke or taught at the center, such as Robert Henri Rockwell, Kent, Man Ray, George Bellows, and his roommate Eugene O'Neal and even Trotsky took art lessons. The lecturers included Margaret Sanger, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Clarence Darrow, and the most prominent anarchist of the time Emma Goldman.

KIM: What a milieu. Wow, that's incredible.

TERESE: So Lola was the center's first manager, not the easiest job to organize anarchists and especially not their children, because she eventually helped found their school. And she began a magazine for the center.

AMY: Yeah, it sounds like that job was just absolutely overwhelming and all- consuming for her. And it's, you know, going back to her decision to drop her son off at the orphanage, she wouldn't have been able to do any of this, realistically, had she been a single mother. Okay, so in 1918, she published a collection of poetry that would garner her widespread fame. It's called The Ghetto and Other Poems. The title poem, "The Ghetto" is a 22- page work that describes the immigrant community of the lower east side in New York. It reads almost like a story though, complete with various characters who live in the tenements. And her writing just transports you there. It's like stepping into that world. Uh it's so evocative and full of life. I read portions of it. I absolutely loved it. Terese, would you mind reading an excerpt from "The Ghetto" for our listeners, just to give them a feel?

TERESE: Sure. Uh, I think, the excerpt that I selected will also give you a sense of the Ferrer Center, and how Whitman influenced her because of these long lines and so forth. 

[reads excerpt]

This excerpt is clearly all about what it's like to witness an anarchist's argument over some point or some, uh, policy that they were perpetually arguing. And with anarchists, there's never any real solution, but she obviously had a very visual sense of, um, the characters themselves and the situation which she paints, without any kind of judgment, which is what I like about it.

KIM: I am obsessed with that poem. I read the whole thing and I wanna tell everyone about it. It's so engrossing. It's dark. Um, it seems pretty overtly sexual, which I was interested in, you know. I think it's 1918 was when it came out, right? So, yeah. So I'm curious about what people's response to this poem was. Why was it so well received, and what made her approach to this topic unique?

TERESE: Well, the newly founded New Republic magazine announced the publication of The Ghetto and Other Poems right there across their cover. Reviewers gushed. In the New York Post, Louis Untermeyer, the famous anthologist declared it was the "discovery of the year. Now you have to understand that at the time, the Jewish ghetto on the lower east side was a tourist attraction.

People were curious about the extreme poverty, yes, but also of the exoticism of the mostly Eastern European immigrant lives, and to some extent, the experience of immigration that their own fathers and grandfathers had undergone just a decade or so before this. 

AMY: I was just in New York with my kids and did the, um, Ellis island, you know, tour. And I thought of her a little bit. I know she didn't come in through Ellis Island, but I thought of that world while I was there. And like a lot of those people were winding up in the neighborhood that she was so accurately describing here. I mean, it's like a film almost, reading the poem. Um, people made the mistake of thinking she was Jewish, right?

TERESE: Yes, that's 

AMY: right. 

TERESE: She celebrated the otherness of the Jewish lower east side. She was one of the first to delineate the life of the poor in Manhattan, in particular women's lives.

AMY: So as we said in the introduction, Ridge went on to edit some very important literary magazines of the day, thanks to the acclaim that she earned for writing "The Ghetto." For the first magazine, called Others, she began hosting these weekly soirees in her one-room apartment. Can you paint a picture of what these parties would have been like?

TERESE: Well soirees were in. Everyone had them. But Lola's were legend, filled with modernist hot shots. William Carlos Williams was there. Lola's mentee, Jean Toomer, Mina Loy, Hart Crane, whom she edited. And of course, Edna St. Vincent Millay. Even e.e. Cummings angled for an invitation. 

KIM: Wow. That's incredible. Sounds like a party. It would be fun to go. 

AMY: The place to be full of talent and intellectuals. And I mean, can you imagine some of the anecdotes ... crazy, right? And probably, yeah, you probably don't want a little boy hanging out in the apartment.

KIM: Yeah. So we also want to talk about this important speech Ridge gave in Chicago in 1919. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

TERESE: Sure. So, what Lola did was she helped organize the sold-out speaking tour in which she spoke along with William Carlos Williams and others. Rather than to recite her poetry, however, she gave a speech entitled "Woman and the Creative Will," about how sexually-constructed gender roles hinder female development. Now this was 10 years before Virginia Woolf published " A Room of One's Own." And, uh, here's a couple of quotes: "I shall try to show that woman has not only a creative will, but a very great future in creative art." And another quote, "Woman is not, and never has been, man's natural inferior." So she was given a grant to turn the speech into a book, but then was told by Viking that no one would buy it.

KIM: Hmm. Interesting.

AMY: So a few years after the magazine she was editing, Others, folded, a new literary magazine sprung up called Broom, which was meant to showcase American literature and introduce American writers to a European readership. It was published in Europe, but Ridge was hired to serve as the American editor in the magazine's New York offices. Terese, can you tell us about that gig and also explain how she was kind of elbowed out by the men involved? 

TERESE: So spectacularly beautiful and brilliant Broom, you know, it's illustrated by all the cubists and so forth in Europe. Uh, it was founded by Guggenheim heir Harold Lowell. He went off to Europe and promptly reneged on his promise that Lola would have the last word on which Americans would be published. This, as you could imagine, rankled Lola, who had increased advertising and subscriptions substantially and had also secured the only outside support for the magazine, his mother. So nonetheless Lowell began to tire of publishing and eventually a snake in the grass, the would-be Surrealist Matthew Josephson, appeared at Lowell's side saying he would take over the magazine without any experience and so forth, but nonetheless. And this was while Lola was frantically cabling an offer herself. Josephson, knowing very little about publishing, then ran the magazine into the ground in the matter of a year.

AMY: And I mean, this is so disturbing because when she was editor, the pieces that she was commissioning, the authors she was featuring, the artists she was featuring, are these huge, new discoveries. All these names that we now know like the back of our hand, she was like, "Yeah, this guy's gonna be important, let's put him in the magazine." You know, she was kind of shaping Modernism in America, you know? Literary modernism, right?

TERESE: Yes. The only poet she really couldn't take was Getrtude Stein and they tried to stuff it down her throat, and that was definitely a point of contention.

KIM: Interesting. so, um, I wanted to circle back around to her politics and her commitment to anarchist causes, and how that was reflected in her poetry? 

TERESE: Lola seemed to have stepped off the boat and gone straight to Emma Goldman's. Emma published her and gave her advice and no doubt pushed her appointment as director of the Ferrer Center. And as I have said, Lola's background in socialist New Zealand was formative. She advocated individual liberty. She supported and wrote about not only the rights of women, but laborers, blacks, Jews, immigrants, and homosexuals. She wrote about lynchings executions, race riots, and imprisonment. She interacted closely with the most radical women of the era, uh, from editing Margaret Sanger's magazine on birth control in 1918 to reciting her own poems at Emma Goldman's deportation dinner (although, I didn't know you had a dinner for it.) But eventually Lola was arrested during the demonstration against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti and hauled off with Edna St. Vincent Millay. In 1936, watching a May Day parade in Mexico City, she raised her fist in solidarity with the marching communists, but she was not a communist. She was an anarchist, along the lines of the Russian Bakunkin, who believed he was making responsible choices by thinking for himself in Congress with democratic ideals. She felt it was the duty of poets to quote, "Write anything that burns you," as she once told an English critic.

KIM: She was completely individualistic, 

TERESE: Yes, Yeah. she was.

AMY: That incident, um, at the rally for Sacco and Vanzetti, it got a little violent, right? I mean, she got jostled around,

TERESE: Yes.

AMY: Or a horse reared up in front of her. She could have gotten hurt!

TERESE: Oh, yes. So, uh, the short story writer, Katherine Ann Porter, worked for many years as a journalist and she covered the demonstration that Lola attended, and here's her description of it. "One tall, thin figure of a woman stepped out alone, a good distance into the empty square. And when the police came down at her and the horses' hooves beat over her head, she did not move, but stood with her shoulders, slightly bowed, entirely still .The charge was repeated again and again, but she was not to be driven away. A man near me said in horror suddenly recognizing her, 'That's Lola Ridge!'"

AMY: You do such a good job in your book, too, of explaining what the country and kind of the whole world was feeling during this whole thing. I mean, there was a lot of turmoil, and then when they were executed, it was just a, almost like a period of mourning for the people that were fighting till the end and hoping that wouldn't be the outcome. Um, but the context you put it all in was really well done. I felt like I was living through it a little bit, you know?

KIM: Yeah. That leads us really nicely into her poem, "Firehead," which some consider her magnum opus. It's centered around Christ's crucifixion, but it's not a religious poem, right? Can you talk about what's going on there and how it relates to this case?

TERESE: So I'm gonna be a problem here. " Firehead" did receive a lot of terrific reviews, but to contemporary poets today, the work is nearly unreadable. At the time she was under the sway of the metaphysical, a style most familiar in the work of Hart Crane, someone she published and invited to her parties. So the "Firehead's" gassy, romantic rhetoric seems to me less about the crucifixion and more about her conflict about having abandoned her son using the persona of Mary Magdalene as herself and the son as Christ bailing her shame and regret led to strange narcissistic and even erotic passages it is not her best book. Sun Up and Other Poems is, however. It's strikingly contemporary and mostly written in the voice of a "bad girl" in Australia. I so much wish that she'd written quote, "The Passage of Theresa," her successful Guggenheim proposal, which was about a mother who was unable to cope as an Australian immigrant. The proposed point of view on that book was the same girl, only a little older.

AMY: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I want to read that too. And I'm so glad you said that about "Firehead," because I really liked all the passages from “Sun Up” and "The Ghetto." I was like, oh, this is amazing, . And then we get to "Firehead" and it's supposed to be the thing, her magnum opus, and I was thinking to myself, “Ah, this isn't for me.” So I'm glad you validated that for me.

KIM: I'm gonna be embarrassing, but I actually liked it of the parts that I read. And I loved, um, the part where Mary talks about having not loved Jesus as a son, as much as she should, and then relating that to her own experience with Keith and you know, maybe her own feelings about that. And then I also, wanted to connect it with the, um, the institutionalized murder and showing Christ as the ultimate victim of that, which then relates to the case we were talking about earlier S a cco and Vanzetti.

TERESE: Yeah, those are all very good points, uh, with regard to that book. I find Hart Crane almost unreadable too. So, you know, it was a, it was a movement branch that also didn't go anywhere.

AMY: Yeah. So it seems like the farther she's getting in her writing career, ironically, the poorer she's getting, and this was a part that frustrated me a lot about her biography. I was floored by the extent of her financial hardships. She was living hand to mouth and always begging anybody really for loans. I mean, her friends were constantly getting hit up. Like, I need more money. I need more money. And they weren't really loans because she couldn't pay them back. You know? She barely ever ate anything and we can discuss whether she maybe had an eating disorder, but I was stressed out by all this, you know, I was just like, what are you doing? And then she leaves on a trip. She decides, oh, I really wanna go travel the middle east. So she embarks on this ambitious trip. With no money, she thinks, oh, the money will come . So I didn't know whether to be impressed by all that and kind of the moxy of it, or seriously annoyed by her.

TERESE: Well, she is annoying in her insistence that she can devote herself totally to her art. I mean, I don't know, this is a gendered feeling that we have because, men have done that, but usually with a partner who takes care of the details. But anyway, she nearly starved to death in the process. She didn't marry money the way other women artists did for artistic freedom, nor did she inherit it. She did court patrons during the last era that there were patrons who were not in the end, very supportive. Uh, and she went to various artist residencies — Yaddo and MacDowell. She was conflicted there too, but in the end, I very much admired how she didn't let the lack of funds keep her from going off to anywhere really. But Europe in particular, she traveled all the way to Baghdad in the thirties one patron's check at a time she was researching a poem and felt she needed to visit Babylon. She did not lack ambition.

KIM: Good for her. And I do agree , there's probably some gender, um, judgment. When we're like, “Uggh, get it together.” Well, yeah, plenty of men just flew by the seat of their pants, so to speak.

AMY: I think it was stressing me out because I would be terrified to do that. So you're right. There's something brave about deciding “I'm gonna go to Baghdad and figure it out as I go along.” Like, my personality just would not allow me to do that. I'd be terrified. 

KIM: Yeah. You're not an anarchist.

AMY: No. That settles it. Yep. 

KIM: Um, yeah, so, she remained married to her second husband until she died in 1941, but it seemed like their marriage was fraught based on what you wrote. Though he didn't seem like a terrible guy. In fact, he seemed actually kind of supportive and sympathetic. What's your takeaway from that relationship? What was going on there?

TERESE: So she was a bigamist. Let's start there. But I think a lot of people in that very fluid time of immigration and lack of communication got away with all kinds of things, remade themselves regularly, especially during the Edwardian era. So anyway, back to David, David Lawson and Lola had their quarrels as all couples do, but for the most part, David comes across as a quite reliable guy whose only flaws were that he fancied himself an artist, too, and didn't make enough money for them. Forty years after Lola died, he published an important biography of a chess player. He finally got it together to do that. And in 1935 when Lola waltzed off to the Southwest in Mexico on a Guggenheim back in the days when that was the place to be like Berlin in the nineties, she started a relationship with a man named Alfredo. She was 61 and such attention by a younger man must have been very flattering. He used her to help him write a novel, which was never published and disappeared, but like many romantic and artistic collaborations, it didn't flourish. Alfredo left for a pack of cigarettes, as it were, and never returned. Lola, marooned by then in California, wrote David for money to return to New York city.

AMY: Yeah, I kind of felt for David. As you mentioned earlier, you know, a lot of the male writers had the support of a wife that was kind of holding up the household. It felt like David was that for her. And yeah, he was kind of feckless in terms of, he wasn't making a lot of money himself, but of the two of them, he was at least trying to keep it all together. And she was the genius, you know? She even kind of tried to get David to go have affairs and stuff, because she knew in a sense, like, I'm not the greatest wife here. I'm not available to him because of my art, you know, because of writing, I have to devote myself to that. And so she would say, "What about this girl? What about this girl?" You know? And he never really followed up on any of that, but I guess she was trying to give him an out.

TERESE: Yeah, she felt guilty about it. She had a lot of guilt about various things and had to cope with that.

AMY: And she was very ill towards the end of her life. And so she kind of did need him. He was there in the end, right?

TERESE: Well, he didn't seem all that attentive toward the end, but I don't think she was a woman who could take help. So, uh, there was no real reason for her to have no underwear at that point, for example, you know, it was a little perplexing when she was complaining about not having newspapers.

AMY: Yeah, that's just chalk it up to brilliant artists, you know? They're kooky. She's got some quirks there. Um, so yeah. Speaking of, you know, when she's dating this Mexican, Alfredo, I think she was trying to act like she was a lot younger than she actually was. And she did that all her life. She lied about her age. She, you know, lied about her husband back in New Zealand. She lied about the existence of her son that she abandoned. Um, she wasn't very truthful with the people around her, and in that sense, I would imagine that for you, it was difficult to get the straight truth about her. She seems like an unreliable narrator. Was it hard for you to be like "should I trust this? Is she b.s.-ing here?"

TERESE: So, you know, a biographer gets a feel for when a person is telling the truth or not. But you don't necessarily know about what. What were those desperate notes she left behind in 1916 about? An abortion? A book offer? A love affair? You know, she's writing from her heart, but she didn't leave enough clues to really solve those questions. But the important part is that she was enough of a public figure that her trail was legible, you know, in newspaper accounts and so forth. And luckily she and other people exchanged plenty of letters, although her handwriting was terrible. Always pick a biographical subject with good handwriting otherwise, forget it.

AMY: That's funny. That was the most difficult part. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: Um, you do a good job throughout the book too, of stopping at moments and being like, "Is this true? You know, what's going on here?" You kind of have that discussion with the reader a little bit, like, "Hmm. Let's hold up here. I'm not sure about this. She said it, but we know this." So, um, you do a good job of like walking us through it. Yeah.

TERESE: Well, the reader has to judge for themselves, frankly, you know. 

KIM: So speaking of her trail, you write in your book about how and why her legacy was completely erased not too long after her death. Can you explain that for our listeners so they can understand what happened?

TERESE: Well, The New York Times at Lola's death reported that she was one of the leading poets of the country, but she died at the nadir of leftist politics just as the US was entering World War II. So proletarian modernism, which is what she wrote, fell completely out of fashion You would think though that the Sixties generation that rediscovered feminism an anarchy would've resurrected her, but not quite. Although her work appears in two important anthologies of the period and her life as an anarchist should have had great appeal to the revolutionary spirit of the time, her poetry was not revived, partly because for the last 50 years, her executor promised a biography and a collected works and did not deliver, which obviously, uh, contributed much to her relative obscurity and neglect. Feminist critic Louise Bernikow signaled out Lola and the poet Genevieve Taggard as “twice neglected," because they were women and they were radicals part of the buried history within the buried history. What has been lost by these omissions is the radical and political tradition in 20th century American poetry. And the idea that subjects like hers are even appropriate for poetry, not only Lola's work, but an entire generation and tradition of proletariat modernism from the twenties and thirties in particular has been amputated from literary consciousness.

AMY: Do you think... like the one name we know from that time period, female poet, is Edna St. Vincent Millay. Would you say the reason we know that name is because she was just tamer? That she wasn't writing radically?

TERESE: She wrote lots of radical poems, actually. And then they were publishing in The New York Times supported by the sexual undercurrents of her work and her genius at promoting herself. I mean, Lola was the vestal virgin of poetry and not the outrageous partygoer that Edna was.

KIM: Oh, that's really interesting. Um, yeah, if she had somehow promoted herself better. And then what you said about the sixties. It's interesting, because you would think, you know, I could see where for a while some of the overtly sexual stuff might've been censored and it might've been hard at that point, but like in the Sixties, you know, maybe that would've been a good time. So maybe now, maybe we are finally in a place to take a second look at her work and also find new meaning and inspiration in it. I feel like we really need it. Would you agree?

TERESE: Sure because today the same neofascist threats that Lola experienced in the earliest years of the century and mid-century appeals to Americans and Europeans in search of order and conformity. We see an increasing disparity between rich and poor, revived racist agendas, a redefinition of torture, seemingly ineradicable war, violence toward immigrants and a discounting of art and culture, both increasingly treated as unnecessary to society. And I am happy to say there are now many poets who have taken up the challenge to write about social justice.

AMY: Do you think people are taking a second look at her? Have you noticed there's more of an interest in Lola in the last decade?

TERESE: Well…

AMY: Not enough. 

TERESE: Anyone who reads the biography is, uh, fascinated and I've had a lot of positive responses. There hasn't been a "Read Lola" movement, but I wish for next year that there would be.

KIM: Oh yeah. For sure. I mean, if you're not inspired to read "Firehead" after our discussion, please, please, please read "The Ghetto." It's incredible. 

AMY: I'm still not gonna read "Firehead." 

KIM: Amy's not gonna read… 

AMY: …it's not for me, 

KIM: I think it's incredible.

AMY: Yeah. And I think you're right. It's almost like we're just reliving the 1930s right now. I think that's so many times. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: It gets me down.I feel down a lot when I think about it, but then I'm also like maybe going back to some of these writers will give me hope or give me answers or, um,

TERESE: Right. They lived through it.

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So listeners, much of Lola Ridge's poetry is free to read online through Google Books or Project Gutenberg. It's not hard to find. Um, like I said, my favorites are "Sun Up" and "The Ghetto," and they really read like a story. Especially "Sun Up," is the story of a girl, um, all fascinating, but I would really encourage you to check out Terese's book because you not only get the introduction to Ridge's poetry, but you get to put it all in context. It's like having a professor sitting right with you, talking you through it.

KIM: Terese thank you for all the incredible work you did to bring Lola Ridge back into the conversation. And that was in addition to all of the other amazing work you're creating. I don't know how you do it all, but it's been wonderful to have you with us today. Thank you so much for carving out some time for us. We are so incredibly grateful.

TERESE: A pleasure. And please celebrate Lola Ridge's birthday on December 12th.

KIM: I'm noting it on our calendar and we will be shouting it out to everyone.

AMY: We'll have to figure out something very rebellious to do. I'll get on that.

KIM: An "Anything that burns you" day. I like it. 

AMY: So that's all for today's podcast. As always check out our website, lostladiesoflit.com for a transcript of this show and further information.

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

107. Cabinets of Curiosities & The Museum of Jurassic Technology

KIM: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I'm Kim Askew, here with my co-host Amy Helmes.

AMY: Hey, uh, Kim I've decided that going to the library is a lot like going to Target.

KIM: How so?

AMY: Well, like being at Target, I wind up coming home with way more items than I had gone there for. It's becoming a problem because I already have way too many books lying around my house.

KIM: Yes. And as we know from our previous episode on libraries, you do not like having books around the house, which is unusual, but that's another whole story. So tell me about your latest unanticipated library haul.

AMY: Okay. So I happen to walk past one of those little carousels with the random paperbacks, you know, they're barely even organized. But one title catches my eye. It's called Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder. It was written by a guy named Lawrence Wesler Weschler. Not sure how to say his last name, but I see that it has a medallion on the front, naming it a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critic Circle Award. So that's promising, right. And the minute I read the subtitle, I know this book is going home with me.

KIM: Oh my gosh, tell me the subtitle. What is it?

AMY: " Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology."

KIM: Hold the phone: Jurassic Technology. You just said the magic words.

AMY: I know. I almost called you from the library. Um, anyone who doesn't live in Los Angeles and frankly, even many people who do live in LA have never heard of one of our favorite places, the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Kim, I think that I introduced it to you when you moved here, but I'm not sure.

KIM: I'm not sure either. I don't remember. That's how long we've been friends though, but it's probably true. Anyway, the Museum of Jurassic Technology is a very small and unassuming museum in Culver City, California. It's not much more than an obscure little storefront on a busy street. Thousands of people probably drive by it every single day and don't even notice it.

AMY: And I always am telling people they need to visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Well, to clarify, I tell the people I think will get it, because not everyone does. I actually used to take dates before I was married, because it's like a litmus test.

KIM: Oh, my God, I did the same thing, but only once because I met an online date there in the tea room at the top, they have like a samovar and a tea room. I met a guy there. He was not interested in the museum, but he was interested in talking about himself for like two hours. And I'm like, I'm never bringing another date here again, unless I know he is the one. By the way, I took Eric when we first started dating, and he loved it.

AMY: Okay. Yeah. Good. And I get that, because it's just like don't taint my experience of the museum. Yeah. Okay. So for as many times as I've tried to explain this place to people, I often come up short because in a lot of respects, it defies explanation. This book by Weschler says the same thing. He kind of struggles to figure out for himself what it is, but also to describe it in the book. But it's one of the reasons I wanted to read his take on it. I wanted some sort of explanation for the absolute randomness and weirdness of this place. 

KIM: I'm sure you've done the thing where you go down the wormhole on the internet, trying to find out more, but there's also almost this feeling like you don't want to know too much. Like you just want to take it as it is. And I never, before I take anyone, I never tell them too much about it.

AMY: Cryptic is the word.

KIM: It makes just enough sense to be tantalizing. It's like you are just catching something and getting something, but around the edges it's very nebulous, which is one of the things that makes it so amazing.

AMY: First of all, when you walk in, it's almost pitch black. There is a soundtrack playing that is spooky, like, "Oooooh," kind of like that. So one of the first things you can do though, is they have a little introductory video. You watch the video, you finish it and you're no farther along than where you started. It's like stepping into a Twin Peaks episode or something. I keep thinking of like David Lynch.

KIM: It's "Carnival"-esque. So if you ever watched the HBO series "Carnival," it's very dark like, this is all part of the vibe of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. So anyway, Amy, did this book you found give you any new enlightenment about the museum? Tell me, I'm curious. Maybe part of me doesn't even wanna know, but tell me.

AMY: I know. Well, I think it's gonna be everything that you probably already surmised. So the museum owner, his name is David Wilson, he actually won a MacArthur Grant for this museum. So the book's author, Laurence Weschler, he calls the museum "uncertain and settling," and that description is spot on. It's sort of like that Kaiser Soze thing from The Usual Suspects, where you're like, "Is this real or is it all a put on? Is it just elaborate performance art?" Like you said, Kim, you sort of understand it. There's enough basis in truth where things look official and real. There's official, um, plaques that go by each exhibit that make it seem like, yes, this seems real.

KIM: Especially to a non-scientist, like, "Huh, yeah. Okay. That could be true."

AMY: Yeah. You're kind of doubting what you're reading on the little plaques, like, "Noooo," but words are thrown out like, um, "early Mesopotamia" that you're like, "Okay." So the author goes on to explain sort of the history of the modern museum. And I think this is what the little video at the beginning of the museum does too. Museums, when they started, they were very different from what museums are today, what we know of museums. They were more like personal collections. Rich people had, you know, collections of oftentimes weird stuff: oddities. Curiosities. There's actually a German term called wunderkammern, which means basically "wonder cabinet." And this dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries, where people would sort of have a hodgepodge of natural history, art, features of human ingenuity. So they were very, um, excited about anything that humans invented that was interesting or weird. So the Museum of Jurassic Technology is really kind of a nod to these precursors to the modern day museum. Does that make sense?

KIM: Yep. Absolutely. It's um, cabinet of curiosities.

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. But it's a little bit more elevated. It's not Ripley's Believe it or Not.

KIM: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. 

AMY: It feels much more intellectual ,academic. So for example, let's go back to the subtitle of this book that I read. There's an exhibit on these pronged ants that live in the Amazonian rainforest or African I'm not sure.... we think. I mean, we're told, based on the exhibit I, I don't quite remember what happens with the ants, but it's something like they wind up turning into like another creature. Something that scientifically doesn't seem possible. There is a whole exhibition called "Listen to the Bees." It's probably my favorite one there. You know what I'm talking about, right? So it's basically a whole room with old remedies that people in the 1700s and earlier would've had for, like, medical problems. So one of the remedies would be like, you eat mice on toast. Like in one of the little displays, there's a piece of toast with three furry mice, dead, and then you read like , people thought this cured impotence, people would've had those home remedies. Um, there was another thing that I loved in it, the micro art.

KIM: That's what I was gonna say. That always stays with me. yeah, well, Um, you're looking through a microscope and you're seeing all this art on the head of a pin. Is that what it is? 

AMY: On the head of a pin or in the eye of a needle.

KIM: Yeah. You're seeing all this incredible art.

AMY: Microscopic miniatures. Yeah. But you're also sort of like, why is this here? 

KIM: Yeah. how does this fit into the, the, this "Mesopotamia" or whatever? 

AMY: There's one thing that you look through these binoculars into this dark box and there's a taxidermied fox head in the box that's lit up, but then projected onto it is of video an old lady in a rocking chair . And there's not really any explanation.

KIM: Yeah,

AMY: You kind of shake your head as you're walking away, like I, I I'm stunned. 

KIM: I feel like some of our listeners are like booking their ticket to LA right now.

AMY: It's so cool. And like I said, the guy won a MacArthur Grant for this. Okay, so I'm just gonna read a little section from Weschler's book because this passage more than anything is what finally explained to me what he thinks the owner, David Wilson, is trying to do.

So he writes: 

Those earliest museums, the ur-collections back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were sometimes called Wunderkammern, wonder-cabinets, and it occurs to me that the Museum of Jurassic Technology truly is their worthy heir in as much as wonder, broadly conceived, is its unifying theme. (“Part of the assigned task,” David once told me, “is to reintegrate people to wonder.”) But it’s a special kind of wonder, and it’s metastable. The victory to the Museum of Jurassic Technology continually finds himself shimmering between wondering AT (the marvels of nature) and wondering WHETHER (any of this could possibly be true.) And it’s that very shimmer, the capacity for such delicious confusion, Wilson sometimes seems to suggest, that may constitute the most blessedly wonderful thing about being human.

 So basically it is a museum about wonder. Wondering if it's true, wondering like a state of awe at what you're seeing, because you know, the stuff is really weird that you're looking at. 

KIM: Just that idea of the possibilities of the things that are unknown to us, because we know that there are potentially some mysteries in life that we don't understand. And when you're in this museum, you feel that possibility.  

AMY: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So yeah, this book also mentions the Ashmolean museum at Oxford University. That kind of started out as one of these cabinet of curiosities. And I've never been there, but I have been to another museum in Oxford called the Pitt Rivers museum.

KIM: Yes, that is so cool.

AMY: You've been there? Okay. I had read about it in a book and the thing that I really wanted to see there was a fly, like a house fly that was dressed up like a ballerina. So it had a little tutu on it and stuff, and I'm like, No matter what I do in England, I'm going to find that house fly that looks like a ballerina, right? So, I was traveling with my friend, Meg, and we get to the museum and there is so much stuff. Several floors, floor to ceiling, like specimens. 

KIM: Are you able to find this little fly? 

AMY: Well, yeah, there's no way I was gonna be able to find this. So we went up to a guard and we were like, "Can you help us? We're looking for this fly that looks like a ballerina." And he's like, "Oh yes, yes, yes, follow me, follow me." And so he's walking very swiftly down all these aisles and so we passed this one section where's all these jars of formaldehyde, and the guy points to his right and goes, "Baby in a bottle." Like he just wanted to point out that we saw the baby in a bottle.

KIM: Oh, my God.

AMY: And then we keep walking and yeah, he showed, he took us and showed us where the little fly was in a tutu with fairy wings, yeah. I'm very, when I travel, I like to find unusual museums.

KIM: Yeah. You are really good at that. I remember the, the, um, yeah, the funeral carriage museum that you went to. Where was it? Barcelona.

AMY: Yeah, that was in Barcelona. I've also been to the Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago, which is really fun. They have all kinds of like rusty, old, torture-y looking surgery tools, you know? And then like also things that have been pulled out of the human body. Gallstones that look like a four leaf clover or whatever. Yeah. I've been to the world's only pencil sharpener museum in Ohio. like this random guy just spent his whole life collecting little novelty pencil sharpeners. Yeah. Oh, I have my Freakatorium story too. Should I tell that? Okay, so when I was in New York City, like, I don't know, probably 20 years ago now, I had seen an ad in like the weekly indie paper for this place called the Freakatorium. Like, ding, ding, ding, what? What's the Freakatorium? I have to go to it. So we tried to figure it out. It was closed while I was gonna be there, so I was like, "Oh, well." I was there for New Year's Eve, so we're leaving the New Year's party with a group of about nine friends. Across the street, it's all dark, but I see the sign Freakatorium and I'm like, "Oh my God, there it is. There's the Freakatorium" 

 I, um, run across the street. I just wanted to try to look in the window and see what it was all about. Right. So there's nine of us. We're all kind of looking in the window. It's darkened storefront, all of a sudden way in the back inside the store, a light goes on.

KIM: Ooh.

AMY: I see a silhouette figure coming towards the front of the shop. It's 2:00 AM on New Year's Eve. The door cracks open, and these little eyes peep out. It's a guy. He's like, "Yeah?" And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm visiting from out of town. I really wanted to come to the Freakatorium, but it was closed. Is there any way you could let us in and just see it really quick?" And he says, "All right, gimme five minutes. I need to go turn on the lights and wake up the two-headed turtle. It's gonna cost everybody 10 bucks a head, but I'll throw in a sword-swallowing demonstration for free".

KIM: Oh 

AMY: So he closes the door and we are all standing on the sidewalk losing our minds. And sure enough, he brings us in. They had all kinds of weird stuff. Like just weird, weird stuff. Um, allegedly Sammy Davis Jr's glass eye was there on display. Frick and Frack, the live two-headed turtle was in the little terrarium. And then, yeah, the guy did a sword swallowing exhibition.

KIM: I have a couple of museums, just off the top of my head. But, um, I mentioned in a previous episode, just as an aside, the Prostitutes Museum in Virginia City. I think it might be called the Red Light District Museum or the Prostitute"s Museum, but it's basically got all sorts of like paraphernalia for birth control and other stuff, and it's super interesting and weird and it's in a basement also, so that's kind of creepy, but really interesting. Um,

AMY: That's reminding me also in Tuscany. I went to the Museum of Torture.

KIM: Oh, that's amazing

that yeah. Yeah. 

AMY: So now that you know that Kim and I are intrigued by these sorts of museums, I want to start a list of more weird museums that we have to check out. I know you guys know them, so please email us or message us on Instagram or whatever, and tell us where we need to go to find more places like this. Let us know, and if we get enough responses, we'll try to compile them into a definitive list for an upcoming newsletter. So you can all have them. And in our show notes, we'll try to include the ones we talked about today.

KIM: For sure.

AMY: And if you happen to find yourself in Los Angeles, carve out a few hours to pop your head into the Museum of Jurassic Technology. 

KIM: Advanced reservations are now required, but you will not regret it. We guarantee it.

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. Be sure to join us back here next week when we'll be covering another last lady of literature.

KIM: Our music 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.

106. Helen Cromwell — Good Time Party Girl with Christina Ward

KIM ASKEW: Hi, everyone, welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew, here with my co-host Amy Helmes.

AMY HELMES: That's me, hi. The subject of today's episode wrote a salacious memoir about her wild life as an early 20th century American, um, business woman... I'm trying to think of a tactful way of describing it.

KIM: Oh, Amy, don't worry about tactfulness. She wouldn't give a damn about that. Following her Edwardian era upbringing, Helen Cromwell was a call girl turned madame, bootlegger and speakeasy owner who was the life of every party and had a mouth that would make a truck driver blush. Half a century ago, she wrote a memoir called Good Time Party Girl, the Notorious Life of Dirty Helen Cromwell, 1886 to 1969.

AMY: It is such a page turner. I couldn't put this book down.

KIM: Same. It's an exhilarating read. We were both just texting each other as we were reading it going, "Oh my God. Oh my God."

AMY: Yeah. So Cromwell may have had a teensy bit of help from a ghost writer when it came to fashioning her life into a book, but the stories and the voice are all hers; I kept kind of thinking this woman is the Forest Gump of prostitutes, basically, because from the famous people she encountered to the history she lived through, not to mention the obstacle she overcame, your mind is blown. I found myself cheering this woman on through every gob smacking page .

KIM: Yeah. In the midst of all its eyebrow-raising passages and many shocking revelations, which we'll talk about, the book is remarkably poignant and full of heart. We are so excited to tell you all about Dirty Helen Cromwell and introduce you to our guest who succeeded in getting her memoir back in print. So let's read the stacks and get started 

[intro music plays]

KIM: Our guest today is Christina Ward. She's the vice president of Feral House, the publishing imprint which reintroduced the world to Helen Cromwell's Good Time Party Girl in 2019. Christina has a passion for discovering lost and forgotten writers from history. Uh, we love that.

AMY: And I think it's fair to say also that she has quite a passion for food. She wrote the 2019 book American Advertising Cookbooks, How Corporations Taught us to Love Bananas, Spam and Jello. So if you've ever wondered where those horrifying culinary concoctions of the 1950s sprang from, Christina has the answers on that in her book. She's also the author of Preservation, the Art of Canning Fermentation and Dehydration. So something tells me there's some homemade jam hanging out in your pantry, Christina. Thank you so much for joining us. 

CHRISTINA WARD: There is! This is going to be so much fun. I love talking about Dirty Helen and all the other forgotten women of history who are a little outside what we consider the normative. And my last batch of jam I made was a peach with Old Monk rum, a very dark, robust rum, and it tastes fantastic.

AMY: Ooh. I wonder if you can work the Dirty Helen liquor into a jam somehow? We'll talk about the Dirty Helen booze later on in the show, but...

CHRISTINA: Yeah, I know I can.

KIM: I'm sensing a, uh, jam of the month club. I wanna be part of it if that happens. Anyway, so Christina, tell us about how you first learned about Helen Cromwell and your involvement in bringing back her memoir.

CHRISTINA: I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and my father-in-law, Joe , used to be a vice cop in Milwaukee. He joined the force in the late forties and had all these great stories. And one of the things a lot that beat cops did was visit a lot of the neighborhood taverns on their beat. And one of them was the Sunflower Inn owned by Helen Cromwell. Now at that time, Helen was at the very end of her life and career, but she was notorious in Milwaukee. The bar had set up itself after a speakeasy, and how she got her name was because of her filthy, filthy mouth. So people came in for the personality. And so Joe told me about Helen, and Joe had a copy of her original memoir that she wrote. When I finally read it, I was like, I need to publish this. We need to bring this book back. People need to know about this incredible woman and her amazing life.

AMY: Yeah. All right. So after reading the first chapter or two of Good Time Party Girl, I texted Kim right away. She hadn't started it yet. And I was like, "Oh, get ready for this." Okay. So listeners, imagine if Anne of Green Gables or Maud Hart Lovelace's, Betsy, Tacy and Tib dropped constant F-bombs and described losing their virginity. That's basically what reading the early chapters of this memoir felt like.

KIM: Yeah, it's the other story you always wanted to hear, right? It's the other side.

CHRISTINA: I think that there's this crazy mythology of how everything was Little House on the Prairie. When Helen really starts talking about her story, this is a teenager in, you know, 1900, 1901. And she's talking about having hot pants, and so...

KIM: It's a different kind of coming of age story than you're used to from that period.

CHRISTINA: Yeah, absolutely. This is gonna be a real different take on growing up during that time period.

KIM: Yes. She vividly recounts her youth in Indiana, as you said. It's at the turn of the 20th century, and even knowing what we were getting into, the level of frankness that she had in terms of the profanity and the sexuality was totally unexpected. It's kind of a reminder that today we maybe have a more cleaned up idea of what that Gibson Girl type young woman was like, right? These passages are pretty racy.

CHRISTINA: It is racy. And I think it's a much more accurate reflection of what it was like to be a woman of that time. Not to say that there weren't very chaste and churchgoing young women, but on the other end of the spectrum, there were also, and I think that, you know, as women, we know this, that, you know, you're wrestling with your urges, you're going through this great hormonal change as a teenager and discovering your power as a woman and the power of femininity. And Helen talks about how empowering it was for her to feel attractive.

KIM: It's kind of crazy how, um, cleaned up and how asexual all the characters are that we usually read from that time, period. I mean, it's so unrealistic, but so pervasive.

AMY: Yeah, if you think about it, these young women are often married off at a pretty young age, so you can't be expected to think they go from being like this completely innocent little girl to suddenly a married woman. I, They have the, uh, normal course of...

KIM: Hormones.

AMY: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And this exemplifies, I mean, she really describes it all. It's wonderful.

KIM: Let's talk about, she loses her virginity at 16 and she writes about it.

CHRISTINA: So here, Helen had the hots for Phil. Phil was a recent, new resident of the town from the very robust, sophisticated town of Cincinnati. She instantly fell in love with this very, uh, handsome, dark haired, dark eyed, mysterious stranger.

AMY: So basically, they're kind of sneaking around town trying to see each other behind her parents' backs. Finally, they make a plan to get away together one night at a hotel room.

CHRISTINA: Yes. So they finally have sex, and she's actually in, in remembrance of the event, questions, as we see sometimes written in romance novels, the concern of the size of, of, Phil, and whether she can accept that, and finds out happily that she can and did and enjoyed the process and wanted to repeat it as many times as she could.

KIM: Yes,

AMY: She's quite frank, yes. So needless to say, Helen's Midwestern parents feel that they need to do something to keep their wild child in check. They are not quite sure what she's been getting up to with this boy, but they know it's not good. So they decide to ship her off to stay with some relatives in New York. It ends up being a kind of out of the frying pan into the fire sort of scenario in terms of tawdriness, right?

CHRISTINA: Absolutely. So she goes to visit her cousin, who's actually much more sophisticated than she is. And so they're hanging out at a hotel with college age friends at Lake Saranac on, you know, the New York finger lakes, which was a retreat for many of the Gilded Age millionaires and playboys . And so she finds that partying with all of these college folks and her young cousin is that they're way more promiscuous than she ever was. But she wasn't as interested in just casually having sex with a lot of guys, because at that time she was just really in love with Phil. But it did open her eyes as to a world that lay beyond Indiana.

AMY: There is one story, which we're not gonna go into, from the New York days. Um, there's one party on a yacht. You guys have to read this. That's all I'm gonna say.

CHRISTINA: Yeah, it's, it's pretty outrageous. But again, if we take away the time period, if you thought about what would happen if you put a bunch of really super hormonally influenced teenagers on a boat with a bunch of booze, , you know...

AMY: It's called the Bravo TV series Below Deck. 

CHRISTINA: Right. I think, 

AMY: The 1900s version of that.

KIM: Yeah. It's like Spring Break.

CHRISTINA: People have been doing these kinds of things forever, but Helen's version of her experiences, I think, are just so wonderfully unique, because not everyone had the capability to write about their teenage adventures.

KIM: Yeah. Just the fact that she had no filter, and just told it like it was.

CHRISTINA: Absolutely. And no shame either. I think that's a refreshing element of it. She tells her story without regret, really, or any kind of judgment. She's like, "Take me as I am. I had a great time and I've got the stories to show for it."

KIM: I love her. I love her. 

yeah, so when her stint with the New York relatives came to an end, that absence that she had from Phil, it only made her heart grow fonder. And this led to the first of many life changing decisions. Christina, can you tell us what happened? 

CHRISTINA: Yeah. So she came back from visiting her cousin, Adele, in New York, and her father was trying to send her off to college. And she made a choice. She eloped. She actually did the train switch, which, you know, you think never really happens, except in movies, but that's what she did. So she was put on a train to go off to college, um, and she got off at the switching station at that town and jumped on the train to Cincinnati where Phil had moved back to with his mom. And that was it. The die was cast for her new life in Cincinnati.

AMY: And as a Cincinnati native, I loved this whole part of the memoir. In fact, I was excited to discover that that first saloon that her husband, Phil, operated in the West End was about four blocks away from a flag factory that I worked at every summer in high school and college. So that flag factory has been around for a really long time, since 1869, so I can picture Helen Cromwell walking past that flag factory in the neighborhood she was living. Right there. I guess we could say this is the point in her life where, you know, even though she's done this totally rebellious thing and eloped, she's having a very conventional life right now, correct?

CHRISTINA: She is. And so she got married. She has the first of her sons. Um, Phil who's now her husband works in the brewing industry. I'm gonna take a small historical aside here, and if folks aren't familiar with how brewing and bars worked at that time period, bars were not independently owned by a person as much as they were called a tide house. So the breweries actually owned the bars, almost like a franchise. A lot of times the bosses there would be kind of low level gangster-ish, let's call it mob light, that would actually manage these bars. And so Phil was actually working as a bar manager for one of those kind of mobish families that were related to the breweries. And so Phil was working all night and kind of enjoying the pleasures of the nightlife, where Helen was at home with the kids. And she was getting tired of it. Really tired of it. It was like she got married and just was put on the shelf and put away. And so that became a real hard thing for Helen to stomach.

AMY: Yeah, so she's bored. So then she makes the decision to go get a job. 

CHRISTINA: Yeah. Helen was always fashion forward, loved fashion. And so she went to one of the finer dress makers and got a job working as a sales lady. So Helen was always a people person and always really a self starter, if you will. 

AMY: And part of the reason she took that job, too, was because she wanted the clothes. She would get a discount on the clothes, and she was always very stylish.

CHRISTINA: Oh, very stylish. It was something that she was renowned for, even up to the end of her life. She was always finally coiffed and with hats. She was a connoisseur of millinery and fine clothing. She was always turned out to the nines.

KIM: So the section of the book where Helen finds out about Phil's infidelity is absolutely heart wrenching. Can you explain what happened for our listeners? 

CHRISTINA: Yeah, so Phil took up with a woman who was a known companion in that hierarchy of sex work. So this was a woman who kind of affiliated herself with other mobsters, and Helen found out and she was devastated. Just absolutely devastated. And she confronted Phil, asked him to give her up. And he wouldn't. He just wouldn't. And the other woman became increasingly bold, and what finally set Helen off was she called the house. She called the house where she lived with her children, with Phil's children. And that was enough to set her off. And Helen, when she had a temper, she had a temper. So she went looking for this woman and when she found her, she beat her up. She stole her diamond ring and she, 

that Phil had given this woman, she took it and she, she did some damage.

This

woman. 

AMY: Literally, the claws came out, because I think she raked her fingernails down the woman's face. 

KIM: She did it from her eyes down to the point of her breasts or something she says, and her hands were bloody. And she broke her arm too.

CHRISTINA: Right. And broke her arm. So, what that represented for Helen, I mean, she loved Phil. She gave up her college education, her whole family, ran away, and that's what she gets in return. Some Schmo who's, you know, messing around with a woman who Helen definitely felt was uglier than she was . And that Helen made a point of that. She was really offended, uh, by the fact that she felt that she was much prettier than the woman that Phil took up with. And so Phil was really upset that she did that, and she gave him the ultimatum of like either she goes, or I go .

KIM: By the way, she's pregnant with their second child during all of this too, by the way. 

AMY: So basically she, even though she's married, she has gotten interest from a man, wanting to take her out. Normally she would say, "No, I'm a married woman," but because her marriage is in shambles, her husband's stepping out on her, she has this thought like, "Maybe I should do it too." But she doesn't want to. So she pays her husband a visit at the bar and says, "Let's just try to make our marriage work." And if he would've said, yes, she would've turned down this date, but he very rudely says, to hell with you. And at that point, the switch flips and she realizes now, okay, I'm going on this date. And that date was the turning point, right?

CHRISTINA: It was an absolute turning point. She gave Phil every chance to do the right thing, and he refused. And so she was like, "Fine. A man asked me out on a date, I'm gonna go." 

AMY: But key point, at the end of the night...

CHRISTINA: Yes

AMY: He left her some cash.

KIM: Yep. 

AMY: And she's like, "What is this?" 

CHRISTINA: She was like, if somebody's gonna give me money to do that, why not? And so she never called herself a prostitute or anything like that. She looked at herself as just, you know, compensated for showing a man a good time.

KIM: Yeah. And what I love about her story is that it's not shown as like, oh, well look, what happens when someone chooses that life and their life is ruined. Like, she is thriving, basically.

AMY: Oh, yeah. She's having the time of her life. 

Yeah, 

CHRISTINA: Yeah, absolutely. She was always sad that her marriage ended, but at the same time, she very much looked at it as like, you know, Phil tossed it all away. And so forget him.

AMY: We should talk about the collateral damage, though. 

CHRISTINA: Yeah, she has to make what's come to be called the Sophie's Choice. So she has the two sons, the older son, Phil Jr, she decides to leave with her mother-in-law and her sister-in-law. But Donny, who was the youngest, she did not want to leave Donnie behind. And so when she left, she took Donny with her and split the brothers up, and that caused a lifelong kind of ripple effect for the family, even to this day. Um, she goes west, as so many people did, because the west was where, you know, new starts, new beginnings and new opportunities. And she meets up with a fellow that she had met at the dress shop in Cincinnati. And it turns out that he was a not so low level gangster. He was a bank robber. And he offered Helen a lot of money if she would stay with him to hide out for six months. And then he would also pay for Donny to go to school at a good private boarding school. And so Helen did that. 

AMY: And I think there was a little bit of an explanation for leaving the one son. She knew the alternative would be losing both kids.

CHRISTINA: Yeah. She was very concerned, especially when we think about the laws at that time, women did not have many rights at all, especially, in Helen's situation, she would've been accused of immorality, being an unfit mother, and she would've had both sons taken away had she proceeded to divorce court. And that's something to bring up as well, because Helen did not go get a divorce. Neither did Phil. So essentially, Helen was a bigamist. By my count, at least six times.

AMY: She just kind of failed to mention that Cincinnati husband.

CHRISTINA: Yeah. She would go get married again whenever it was convenient for her again. So starting out, she's looking to try to establish some personal autonomy for herself that she can support herself, and make her own choices for her life. And that becomes like an overarching thing throughout her entire career is she's always trying to be independent.

AMY: Then she decides, okay, I'm not really wanting to turn tricks anymore. I think I have the business acumen to start my own brothel.

CHRISTINA: Yeah. She's in New York doing a little bit of, kind of, you know, companionship for pay, as well as working her dress job. And she meets a young man who she falls in love. Again, she falls in love and it turns out he's a very wealthy son of, um, a rug importer out of Chicago, but he's also a pretty wounded veteran, so it's a bit of an ill fated, love story. And that's how she winds up in Chicago. 

AMY: And he knows what her line of business is. I found that fascinating.

CHRISTINA: Yeah, he was totally accepting of her career choices. Of course, he requested that she not engage in the bed business while he was around, um, but her being independent was always very important to her. After her experience with Phil, she did not like giving up that independence or autonomy to a man. Um, but that is how she got to Chicago, and through his family is how she was introduced to the Chicago crime families. And Al Capone's the guy who really helps shape the next part of her life.

AMY: She claims that she and Al Capone were always just friends, that it was platonic, but they did have an enduring camaraderie with each other.

CHRISTINA: Yeah, it's funny, she was very protective of Capone. The family thinks she probably was sleeping with Capone, um, but some of the researchers who are experts in Capone think actually he wasn't. He would've not wanted to mix business with pleasure, and he saw her as a business woman, as someone with potential. So her first job actually for Capone in Chicago is filling in helping out one of his, um, brothels.

AMY: A really gross brothel the way she describes it. Yeah, I feel like she's so frank in the whole memoir that I don't know what it would benefit her to hide that if they were sleeping together. So I don't know. She really made Al Capone look like a complete sweetheart in the book. 

KIM: Oh, this is just like the best mini series waiting to happen. I mean, or best not even mini the best TV series. Do you wanna talk about how she transitioned from running a brothel to opening her own speakeasy? It was the Sunflower Inn, which would become legendary in Milwaukee. So how did she get there from running a brothel?

CHRISTINA: So she's in Chicago and the man that she loved, he died. And she wanted to get out of Chicago, and Al Capone gave her some business advice, which was go up to Superior, Wisconsin and open a brothel there. And then with Capone's money and support, she went up to Superior, Wisconsin, which sounds like "Where? Why?" But at that time, Superior, Wisconsin was a port city on Lake Superior, and it had huge international traffic. So if you were gonna open up a brothel, going where lots of sailors are is a good business plan. And so she did that, and she was very bold in running it and hiring women and being actually really fair with women, with pay. She, herself, was not actually sleeping with men. She was getting older. She felt that she was ready to get out of the brothel business and essentially turned over everything to one of the girls who was working for her and was gonna go back to Chicago. Uh, she got on the train, made a stop in Milwaukee and met a couple people and sussed out Milwaukee as like this could be a good place to retire from sex working. And so her retirement plan was then to open a proper speakeasy. Again, great business sense. Milwaukee was an industrial town and she noticed how the police were operating here in Milwaukee and noticed that all the fancy nightclubs, the fancy speakeasies that were operating at night, were the ones that were getting busted all the time. So she decided, very smartly, to open her speakeasy for the daytime and to cater to workers, to working men. And so she was open from like 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM. Those were her hours.

AMY: Interesting. So, and, so she had a workaround when she was a madame. With the police, she just basically paid them off and she never had any worries that she was gonna get busted. Now, running a speakeasy, she has to be a lot more careful. She devised a lot of clever ways to keep the booze hidden. I 

CHRISTINA: I, I think Milwaukee during Prohibition was a funny place to be because just like Cincinnati, we had an economy built on beer breweries. And so Prohibition wasn't as greatly enforced here in Milwaukee, uh, during that time period, as it was in other places. All the local cops were just like, "eh." Nobody paid much mind to it. Um, but they had a, uh, an out of town FBI guy that started cracking down and, and giving everybody fits. And so that's where you see all the workarounds and that's where Al Capone helped her. The other thing that was interesting is, Milwaukee was kind of a Switzerland of mafia, if you will. So even with the proximity to Chicago, Capone did not run Milwaukee. And the families that were doing stuff here actually had affiliations with Kansas City. So the Kansas City mob and then the Chicago mob, they kind of agreed just to keep Milwaukee neutral . And everyone knew that Capone was helping Helen. That she was gonna get the booze from Capone and that his system for, you know, hiding things and rigging things, it was all Capone's. And so she had that protection. So that was one of the other elements that kept her pretty safe. Nobody was really gonna mess with her because they knew that they were gonna answer to Capone.

AMY: I thought it was funny when she mentions in the memoir that she was actually even a little bummed when Prohibition finally ended and she was able to sell booze legally. What do you think she meant by that?

CHRISTINA: Well, I think that there was that element of danger that becomes exciting. You become addicted to the adrenaline of it, and so it was a good run for her and she had it down. And she didn't have a lot of competition either. So when Prohibition ended and more bars were able to reopen it increased her competition and that's what made her miss, uh, the, monopoly, if you will.

AMY: So needless to say, when you're reading this book, you will find, or at least I found myself shouting, "Oh my God." Like, I would say that out loud, throughout the course of reading it, um, I'm thinking of the moment where the cops are coming to bust the speakeasy. She realizes she's gonna have to escape out the bathroom window. A woman is sitting on the toilet and she literally hurdles over the woman. Well, she first says get outta here. And the woman's like, what are you talking about? She jumps on the woman's legs and hurdles herself out the bathroom window. So like just crazy stories.

CHRISTINA: And, and that was Helen. The first time I read the book, I had the same reaction. Like "What? No way, come on." And so I did some fact checking on some of the stories. As much as I could. I could not find the woman in the toilet who she jumped on, though I did seek out people who had been to Helen's and everybody corroborated... every, every story, just assume it's all true. A few of the ones that I could actually corroborate, I'm thinking of the story that she tells a little bit later of getting in a cab to go down to Louisville for a day.

AMY: Oh, yes. From Milwaukee to Louisville. I'm just gonna take a cab.

CHRISTINA: I, "Hey boys, I have this party I'm supposed to go to, what do you think?"

And the cab drivers at the bar, he's like," Jump in. We're gonna go." And so sure enough, drive down to Louisville. And the party is for her bourbon supplier, the infamous Van Winkle family from Pappy Van Winkles, very sought after bourbon. And so I've talked to Julian and talked to his aunt who remembers the story and they corroborated. Yes. It's part of their family lore that this infamous bar owner in Milwaukee. Um, and one point I'll. they said that she came just with a fur coat and nothing else on. I've heard a lot of stories of Helen showing up naked in a fur coat. So, I think she may have done that once and then it becomes kind of added onto the lore. Um, but yeah, they remember Helen. And it goes to say there's enough of these stories that I was able to corroborate. So every time you read it and you go, "Oh my God, I can't believe that," you should probably believe it.

KIM: Yeah. And she's name-dropping all these people too, um, who turned up for a drink at the Sunflower Inn. There's names like Randolph Churchill, Gloria Swanson, Joseph McCarthy, to name just a few. 

AMY: And he didn't just drop in for a drink. He worked there. Supposedly. Allegedly. 

CHRISTINA: Oh, not allegedly. 

So yeah. So that's again, part of doing this research. So after Prohibition, Helen goes legit and she also switches her hours a little bit. So she starts opening at night, and her place becomes like the in spot. So you've got business magnets, you've got celebrities, it's kind of an insider thing. All right, you had your dinner, you're dancing at the night club. Where do you go now? We're going to Helen's. The place was physically small. She famously had four bar stools. That's it. Nothing else. She had a piano player and four bar stools. You had to stand or sit on the floor, and she only served bourbon or scotch. That was it. That's what you got. 

AMY: If you tried to order something else, she would very loudly, so that the entire bar could hear, cuss you out. So it became like a running joke

KIM: Yeah, you get heckled. 

CHRISTINA: And, and a rite of passage, and no one was immune. So for our professional baseball team at that time, like the Milwaukee Braves, they would bring rival teams in, you know, players. They bring Joe DiMaggio in and have Helen curse him out. And so it became like a high comedy and it became a real hopping, fun place, and that, for a lot of people, is that memory of the Sunflower Inn and that later period when they went legit. So thirties up until her closing in the early sixties, it was a landmark and Helen was a local celebrity.

KIM: Yeah. And as you said too, I mean, there's all this name dropping, but there are also people that she does, you know, out of respect for their situation or whatever not reveal their names. Which of course is very interesting.

AMY: Enticing as the reader. You're like, who is it? Is it a Kennedy? I want to know! 

CHRISTINA: Yeah. It, you know, and that's where some of 'em, I couldn't figure out, but where the bar was located was fairly close to Marquette University, so the college boys would come and, and hang out at Helen's too. And she was so supportive and outgoing to a lot of the Marquette boys. And the students that were having a hard time, she'd hire them. And one of them was Joe McCarthy. The infamous Wisconsin Senator, who was responsible for like kind of what they call the Red Scare hearings. She paid for him to finish. She paid for the tuition of five different guys to finish Marquette. Um, I could not find any official documentation of that, but I did hear a few family anecdotes. I had two different people come forward to say, you know, my grandpa told me a story about Helen giving him money to finish school.

So I think that was a reflection of she was still a mother. And so she found a way to, um, be maternal to some of the young fellows who were frequenting the bar.

AMY: So in the Sunflower Inn, one of the items of decor was this giant, giant painting of a naked lady, like lounging on a couch and she kind of always would tell people that was her. Um, then we know from the memoir, it's not her, so that she, or did she say, or did you tell us that?

CHRISTINA: I think I told you that, because that's the research and here's the fun part: so Helen always claimed it was her and nobody disabused her of that. And it's a very kind of a Rococo style lounging woman fully nude. Is it tacky? I guess it depends on your taste, but interestingly only about six months ago, I got another version of that story, which is really interesting. So my research found that that painting was originally in the Grove Hotel, which was again, a Milwaukee hotel. It went out of business and somehow, alright, Helen, got that. The story I just heard was a different restaurant had bought the painting from the auction when that hotel went out of business in the 1930s, but Helen always wanted the painting. She had seen it and she wanted the painting. And this woman who was the granddaughter of the folks who owned that restaurant, she claims that Helen had two Capone associates go into the restaurant and convince her grandfather to give the painting to Helen.

KIM: An offer you can't refuse.

CHRISTINA: And 

oh, so I don't know. So it might have been acquired a little in a shady way.

AMY: So this leads to my next question, which is we know that Helen was not being straight about that painting. Maybe this is an example of, you know, take everything with a grain of salt, who knows, because she obviously was telling tales about that painting.

CHRISTINA: Yeah, you know, unreliable narrator? To what extent? Um, because again, some of the stories that I thought were pretty outrageous, I was able to verify as happening, and yet then there's something you find out, you know, just six months ago that, oh, there's a different version of that story. For me, I want to believe Helen. So I think any reader should approach this with like, it's the gift of the storyteller to embellish a little bit to make the story a little better, but it's about 80% point and 

AMY: what I was gonna say. I believe her also, but it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. What matters is these are damn good yarns.

CHRISTINA: Highly entertaining. And again, that snapshot of a woman who completely lived her life under her own terms who fought against a bad first husband to just the general patriarchy to carve out a life that she wanted to live, not the life that someone else wanted her to live.

KIM: Yep. And I mean, any autobiography you feel like if it's 80% true that's pretty good. That's good enough for me, right? Um, so she actually developed this memoir with help from a journalist friend named Robert Dougherty. Do you have any idea how much of the actual writing she did on this project? It really does sound like her voice, but...

CHRISTINA: It's very much her voice. And so I did speak to, um, Dougherty's daughter, who says that she remembers Helen. Helen would visit her dad when they were working on this. What Dougherty did was help take all of her writing and her notes and anecdotes and make it into something that's readable. So it's definitely Helen's words, Helen's voice. And so Dougherty really, I, I guess, a better term he was very much a developmental editor and he helped put the whole thing together and construct it, but what his daughter told me, again, the thing that's so fascinating and interesting to me is that for all of Helen's notes and all of the stories that are in the book, she said there's another box filled with more of the notes with even more stories. And I was like, 

AMY: my gosh. 

CHRISTINA: me. I need that.

AMY: We need the sequel!

KIM: Development execs out there, there's more! You could, you could run this series for years.

CHRISTINA: I want more Helen. 

AMY: Yeah. I definitely think her voice rings out so clearly from this book. Even if she did have a little help piecing it together. There's one point where she tells the reader that she gave a man her "boom-boom look," and I'm like, Robert, doesn't say, boom-boom look, that's a Helen term, you know? she would say when she'd meet a guy and she knew she was gonna be doing quote unquote business with him, she'd say "I had a live one on the hook," you know? Her personality shines through on every page. There is also a ton of foul language in her memoir. And I know, Christina, that kind of came into play when you were reissuing this book, right?

CHRISTINA: It was one of the things I did for modern readers is... the first edition that was published in 1969 had, like, fake swears that you kind of, you know, "oh, crud," um, right. "Fiddlesticks." "Oh, fudge." Um, but you know, we're adults, we're modern readers. So one of the things I did was unbowdlerize all of the language. I put the swears back in, because that is actually how Helen spoke. Um, and it's one of the things that is then in meeting people, older folks who had stories of Helen, some of the insults that she gave, um, entertaining as they were, were, just blush-inducing. She could, like a poet, turn out a curse that was just beautiful and insane and filthy. It's like the "Aristocrat's Joke" times a 

AMY: I love it. 

KIM: Oh, she's so great. 

CHRISTINA: She is. 

KIM: As you said, she earned her nickname, Dirty Helen, not for her career as a professional bed partner, but for her dirty mouth. And in a world that was then and still is stacked against women, she used sex and her feminine wiles as a way to claim her power. It worked for her and it allowed her a degree of liberty that was unusual for women at the time. Christina, what do you admire most about Helen Cromwell's story?

CHRISTINA: Her tenacity. Her tenacity. At the face of every potential hardship, she always chose herself. She chose to advocate for herself to figure out a way that she could support herself. She never made a decision that was going to make her beholden to someone else. 

AMY: I am listening right now to a podcast called Heidi World, which is all about Heidi Fleiss and her story. And I think having just read this book, and then listening to her story, it's definitely making me think a little bit more about sex work. And, you know, I think I always came to it with the idea that, you know, these women are being degraded and they have no other option and they're reduced to having to do this in order to survive. And Helen's story is not that at all. Like, she had full agency over her decisions and her choices and it worked for her. It made me think about things a little bit differently, I guess.

CHRISTINA: Well, I'm, I'm glad for that because that's, again, this story of a woman entrepreneur of an unlikely life. But yet one that is just as valid as, you know, any other coming of age and business woman's career biography. And I think that that is part of the reason I wanted to bring it back. These unlikely lives, these women, if we can kind of recast, stripped away of some of the cultural trappings and some of the moral trappings about what they do and what the choices they made, I think that we can, um, reevaluate and think about our own experiences as well as maybe start new conversations. I would love for anyone listening to this to go and talk to their grandmothers right now. If you've got a grandma, ask grandma if she had hot pants at all and who it was for. You know, let's start talking more...

AMY: Um, your Thanksgiving assignment, everyone.

KIM: Yeah, I wish I'd asked my grandmother some of that stuff because I have a feeling from a few little things I've heard whispered that there was definitely more there to the story than I ever knew. I'm gonna go digging. She's not around anymore, but I'm gonna go digging.

AMY: Um, but yeah, just the idea of like, we're talking a lot right now about giving women freedom over their bodies and this, this applies too.

KIM: That's a great point, Amy.

CHRISTINA: Absolutely. That is such a good point. And I think the more we tell the stories of the women who were, you know, a little bit -- or a lot a bit -- outside of what we think is quote, unquote "normal." The word normal... I wanna throw that out the window. All the choices that women are making about their lives, their work, if it's the right choice for you, then it's the right choice.

AMY: So today we can still see Helen's legacy in the form of, uh, a scotch? What is it?

CHRISTINA: This is a barrel-strength bourbon. I was talking to a friend of mine who owns a distillery here, Guy Rehorst of Great Lakes Distillery. His family was in the bar business before he started the distillery and so he has memories from his grandparents bar of, you know, meeting up as the young boy. He met Helen. I wanted to bring the book back and Guy was on board a hundred percent. He's like, "We've gotta work together. Helen deserves a bourbon!" Again, because all that was served at the Sunflower was either scotch or bourbon. And so we partnered to introduce Dirty Helen Bourbon. And then of course, every bottle has a little kind of micro-history of Helen's story. So people can get the book, they can get bourbon. The book is sold worldwide anywhere. For the bourbon though, you have to come to Milwaukee and you have to buy the bourbon in town.

AMY: All right. So listeners, if you're driving through That's Milwaukee. Yeah. You, you know where to stop. Um, that's great. I love it. Um, and actually it's only, you know, 10:00 AM here in Los Angeles, but if it weren't so early in the morning, I think I would've poured myself a little glass of scotch or bourbon in her honor.

KIM: Amy, I think Helen would sanction you drinking at 10:00 AM. It wouldn't have stopped her.

CHRISTINA: It would not have stopped her. 

AMY: That's true. Anyway, Christina, thank you so much for dropping by the show to tell us about this unforgettable personality. I had a blast reading the book and I've had a blast talking to you about her.

KIM: This was so much fun. 

CHRISTINA: Thank you so much for the opportunity. I'm Helen's biggest fan and I will always take every opportunity I can to tell folks about her. And I encourage people to, again, talk to your mothers, talk to your grandmothers and, uh, ask 'em if they had hot pants.

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: Get the dirt, get the dirt... 

KIM: And tell us! We wanna hear about it. We'll do a follow up show about all of your grandmothers.

AMY: So that's all for today's episode. We'll see you guys back here next week.

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

105. Odds & Ends

KIM: Hi everyone! Welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode! I’m Kim Askew…

AMY: And I’m Amy Helmes. We’re calling today’s episode “Odds and Ends” because sometimes we just have interesting things we want to talk about that don’t necessarily fit under one umbrella heading. So this episode is a hodgepodge, but hopefully people will enjoy it.

KIM: Works for me! Why don’t we start off with some letters because we have a great one in reference to our recent episode on The Gilded Edge by Catherine Prendergast. That book is about the poet Nora May French and also another woman, Carrie Sterling, whom we learned from our guest was not a big fan of another one of our “lost ladies,” Charmian Kittridge, a.k.a. Mrs. Jack London.

AMY: Yes, and so we don’t normally like to pit women against one another but we have a great note from one listener that we just had to share with you guys. She writes: “I would say Charmian Kittredge London had the last laugh. While Carrie was judging her, Charmian was living a life of adventure and great sex. (And let’s face it, Jack was hot).”

KIM: I love it. And actually, I felt kind of defensive for Charmian, too. I get why Carrie Sterling didn’t like her (not to get too much into that episode, you’ll have to go listen to it) but I feel like Charmian made the best of a difficult situation for women in those days. Anyway, we also got a number of letters earlier this spring after our episode with Hilma Wolitzer aired, including one from Brian who writes: “Hilma Wolitzer is one wise and witty woman. You all had great rapport.” And our listener friend Rosemary wrote “Hilma Wolitzer was so gracious and open. So interesting to learn of her life and work. Her positivity is so inspiring!” And that’s just actually a sampling of the amazing notes we got about Hilma. It was incredible getting to talk to her and we loved how excited everyone was about this episode. We were excited too.

AMY: Yeah, one of the highlights of the year, for sure. Hilma is. You can’t not love her.

KIM: Yeah, and in the meantime, keep those emails and messages coming, everyone! We love hearing from you! While we’re on the topic of letters, I really want to go back to our episode on Debora Vogel for a minute. We mentioned her letters to various publishers and editors in that episode, but we didn’t have time to actually read from any of them, and Amy, I think you know which one was my favorite.

AMY: Oh, yes! It was my favorite too! So I think we did mention in that episode, the Polish modernist writer Debora Vogel didn’t really take no for an answer. So a lot of her letters are very overbearing. She was… well, persistent would be the most polite way of putting it, I think. I guess. It would not be a good idea to try to ghost Debora Vogel because she WOULD NOT ALLOW IT. Let me just read the letter that sums this up best. This was written to a Moshe Starkman at the Yiddish Culture Society in New York City:

“Dear Moshe Starkman,

What’s wrong? Even when we don’t have pronounced business interests and the letter does not need to be answered, I am still wondering why you don’t write? Especially after I sent you my picture, a photo of my portrait where I look like a young lady from Tahiti. And I am anxiously waiting to hear what you think! Perhaps you did not receive my letter? Without a doubt, one cannot get letters which were not actually written, but I did write the letter. I have stopped thinking about the trip to America, since you have not answered my query if I can really count on the pay from a talk or literary reading?”.... [she goes on from there…. But how DARE HE IGNORE HER TAHITIAN LADY SELFIE!!!!!!]

KIM: I mean, that is #goals right there.

AMY: I wish I could see the photo!

KIM: Yes. Imagine if you submitted something to a literary zine…

AMY: Or The New Yorker…

KIM: Or The New Yorker. And you just wrote back with that.

AMY: The Tahiti… was that like racy? Like was she in a bikini?

KIM: I’m thinking it must have been.

AMY: It almost seems like it was a bit sexy. Like, “Did you not get my sexy photo of me being a Tahitian lady?” And like how not professional that would be to send that to an editor.

KIM: It’s wild. Wild.

AMY: And I love that she's just so insistent, like, "Maybe you didn't get the letter, but I know I sent it!" Um, oh my God.

KIM: That’s the best. That is.

AMY: Clearly she never read that book He’s Just Not That Interested.

KIM: Oh, He’s Just Not That Into You. I’m not saying I necessarily read that, but…

AMY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you have to admire her gumption. 

KIM: Yeah, completely. And it’s kind of fitting that Vogel was compared to Gertrude Stein, because we also came across a letter that Stein wrote to an editor following an apparent rejection letter, which reads very much like something Debora Vogel would have written. Do you want to read that, too?

AMY: So Stein wrote: “I am sorry you have not taken the poems, for really you ought to. I may say without exaggeration that my stuff has genuine literary quality – frankly let me say the only important literature that has come out of America since Henry James. After all, Henry James was a picture puzzle, but The Atlantic did not hesitate. To be sure, he was connected with the heart of Boston, but, then, I did graduate from Radcliffe, and I was a juvenile pupil of William James, and that combination ought to encourage The Atlantic. During the war I met many and miscellaneous Americans, and I confess I was surprised to find how many knew my work and were interested. The Atlantic Monthly, being our only literary magazine, it really is up to it. I am sending you a few earlier stanzas that may be easier. Do your best for them; it really is important. Before receiving your letter, I had already sent you two more poems. Did you get them? Sincerely yours, Gertrude Stein.

Wow, these ladies!

KIM: Whoa, they’re awesome. Oh my gosh.

AMY: Don’t you DARE reject me, and here’s why! Oh my gosh.

KIM: Wow, wow, wow.

AMY: And I’m gonna throw Henry James under the bus while I’m at it!

KIM: Absolutely. Oh my gosh. I wonder if in the end it actually worked?

AMY: I do wonder. Yeah. Okay, and still on the topic of letters (I guess we do have a cohesive theme for this episode!) but switching gears a little, can we all just agree that people just don’t write beautiful love letters the way they used to? 

KIM: Nope. Definitely not.

AMY: This thought occurred to me while I was reading an old biography of Diana Manners, a.k.a. “Lady Duff Cooper” out of Britain. She was a contemporary of Nancy Mitford, friends with Evelyn Waugh and Winston Churchill and the like. She was basically another one of those “It Girls” of her day, and she’s got that same sort of “Mitford-esque” sardonic wit. But in this biography there were a few of these love letters she received from Duff Cooper before they married. This is actually a 1981 biography written by Philip Ziegler. So I just want to read you one of the letters that she got from Duff just to show you that men don’t know how to lay it on thick anymore, like they used to. So are you ready?

KIM: Mm-hmm, give it to me.

AMY: [reading]

If I were a painter then you would be properly painted. Not once but a thousand times, in every dress you have ever honoured, in every setting you have ever shone in. And if I were a millionaire I would found a picture gallery in which only pictures of you might be exhibited. The gallery would be open only to the nobility and clergy, the entrance fee would be 1,000 pounds and visitors would have to take off their shoes on entering. And if I was an architect I would design that gallery to look something like a church but more like a heathen temple. And the best of your pictures should hang above the high altar where the pale-faced high priest of Dianolatry would worship every hour. And if I were a musician I would make music so passionate that when it poured out of the temple organ it would reach the souls of your thousand idolaters and make them drunk like wine. And if I were a poet I would write psalms and prayers so beautiful and so unhappy that your picture, half intoxicated with the incense streaming up from the censers, would stretch out its hands in pity to the worshippers below. And if I were God I should let all those unfortunates die in the ecstasy of their devotion — all except one who should live for ever after in a palace of pearl and purple with you sitting on a throne of chrysoprase by his side. But unfortunately I am neither artist, millionaire, architect, poet, musician or even God, but only a rather sentimental, shy young man with ambitions beyond my energy and dreams beyond my income. So shall I send you a small box of chocolates, or would you rather have a postal order?

I mean, marry that dude! And she did!

KIM: Oh my god. I’m speechless.

AMY: I mean to think about getting that.  Later she writes to him, (um, so  Duff suggested that one day their letters might be brought together to provide a picture of the age. Alan Parsons perhaps might edit them.): “It is I that must edit them,” replied Diana proudly. “And if I must be old, it is I that shall read them to the envious young, flaunting, excitingly. And when they hear yours they'll dream well that night and waking crave for such a mythical supreme lover.”

So she knew how good his letters were. 

KIM: Oh my God. That is so romantic. Wow. And then they actually did get married.

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, she had a ton of suitors. It was kind of like, who's she gonna pick? And he was not the top. He, he didn't seem like the top choice. He didn't have any money.  But he went on to become the English ambassador  in France. So he did well for himself. But anyway, this biography also has a tie in to Daisy Fellowes.  If you remember from our past episode with Lee Lesner, we learned that Daisy was Duff Cooper's lover for a while. So I have a little anecdote from this book. Basically Duff almost immediately  after the wedding, he could not be faithful for one second. He took lovers right away, and Diana knew this. And for the most part, she was actually okay with it so she's like, “That's all right.  If he needs to do that, that's fine.” And in fact, she was even friendly with a lot of his mistresses then, they would hang out together and it was all like perfectly sanctioned. However, Daisy Fellowes was one that she was not okay with. She didn't like Daisy Fellowes. 

KIM: That’s so interesting.

AMY: So I remember back when we were doing that episode and we were talking about how Daisy Fellowes was maligned as sort of like a villainous kind of woman. Diana seems to have thought so.

KIM: Interesting.

AMY: Like, in the later years, like later decades, they were sort of okay with one another, but for someone who was very willing to give her husband to other women, that was where she drew the line a little bit, But it didn't stop him. They were together for a while. And I should note, also, that I got this biography at the little free library around the corner in the neighborhood. What a treasure! You never think you're gonna find anything good in there, but this one little library, the closest one to my house, there must be somebody in the neighborhood that's got my same exact taste because there's always good stuff in

there. 

KIM: I sense a little mystery here! You need to figure out who it is somehow. You need to leave a book that you think they’ll like and put a note in it.

AMY: Oh yeah! Like a little romantic comedy thing.

KIM: Oh, maybe we’ll write another movie based off this!

AMY: I actually did ask Mimi Pond, who lives in my neighborhood. (She was one of our previous guests.) I was like, “Oh, I bet this Diana Cooper book was yours and you put it in the library,” and she's like, “No, I didn't, but let me read it next!” So I have to pass that on to her.

But my thing with little free libraries is I feel like if you're gonna have them, you have to keep it curated. You have to keep it clean. There cannot be like junky Mormon bibles and dumb stuff in there.

KIM: Yeah, you gotta check it and make sure.

AMY: Yeah, keep it nice. Otherwise it just looks like a garbage pile.

In fact, a friend of mine has a little free library and she doesn't live near enough to me to go, but she not only keeps hers pristine, she makes sure it has really good books. She goes to library sales specifically looking for really good books to put in her little free library.

If she finds junk, like… she doesn't even like cookbooks in there.

She takes stuff out and gets really mad if people put junky books in her library. But she stocks it with really good novels.

KIM: I would only wanna do that too. And Eric offered to build one for me. Um, so I've been thinking about what I wanted to do.

AMY: That's Eric just wanting you to get rid of some of your books

in the house. He has an ulterior motive. Come on.

KIM: Right. Oh my God. How did I not see that? That's yeah,

you're probably right. 

AMY: You should still do it, though.

KIM: I should, yeah, I think it would be a lot of fun.

AMY: And speaking of interesting books that we want to read,  a few biographies that actually came out in recent months on some lost ladies of lit I mean, I guess some are less lost than others, but we've got all these books marked as ones that we eventually want to get around to reading. But, um, in the meantime, wanted to let you guys know and give you a heads up.  First off there's Antonia Frasier's book,The Case of the Married Woman,, which is about the early 19th century British writer Caroline Norton and basically the hell that her husband put her through when she tried to obtain a divorce from him. He’s a real asshole. And our pal Laura Thompson also writes about her in her book Heiresses which is another good book.

KIM: Love that book.

AMY: Yeah. But anyway, so Norton was treated so bad by her husband who basically got custody of their children. One of the kids actually died in his custody, so it was really tragic. The trials she went through (and I'm talking literal courtroom trials), led her to write a number of political pamphlets on legal rights for women and  her intense campaigning (she actually even appealed to Queen Victoria about this subject) eventually led to the Married Women's Property Act of 1870 getting passed. And that was a game changer for women. So Caroline Norton,  she was like tabloid fodder while all this was going on, but she did something and, and made the best of it. She did also write a lot of novels. We had kind of been considering her for an episode, but when I looked into the novels that she had written, they kind of seemed maybe a little bit too of their time; a little stodgy and old fashioned for  a modern reader. So, not sure that we're gonna dive into any of her novels, but the Antonia Frasier book sounds really intriguing to learn more about her.

KIM: Yeah. Maybe we'll do a mini episode at some point. if it's not right  for a full episode. Um, another book that we want to mention is a new biography of Jean Rhys called I Used to Live Here Once by Miranda Seymour. It sounds really good.

AMY: Yeah, it sounds like Jean Rhys had a really up and down 

hard life. And I think a lot of her books are semi autobiographical. So it would kind of be interesting to read that bio and read some more of her work. Um, there's also a biography that’s new in the States.

I think it's been out in the UK for a while, but it is  The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne.  It would be so awesome to get Paula Byrne on this show for a Barbara Pym episode. I did try reaching out to her a while ago, but I haven't heard back. So if anybody out there has a Paula Byrne connection, let her know we're interested.

KIM: I think I have a book on Jane Austen by her. I know I follow her on Twitter, I’ll see if I can reach out to her that way.

AMY: Okay, it may have just fallen through like i didn’t have the right email or..

KIM: She seems very busy, like she has a lot of fans.

AMY: Yeah. I still want to do Barbara Pym at some point though.

KIM: Yeah. In the meantime, we’ve got a great lineup of guests scheduled from now through the end of this year and beyond. There aren’t enough weeks in a year to fit in all the amazing pitches we’re getting about other lost ladies of lit. We’ll find a way though because so many great things are coming our way! So keep tuning in, and tell your lit-minded friends about us!

AMY: Bye, everyone! 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.

104. Miriam Michelson — The Superwoman with Lori Harrison-Kahan

AMY HELMES: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to unearthing forgotten classics by women writers. I'm Amy Helmes, here with my writing partner and co-host Kim Askew.

KIM ASKEW: Hey, everybody. Amy, were you a fan of superheroes growing up?

AMY: Um, okay, so I had a crush on Christopher Reeve's Superman . I do remember that, but more importantly, I can recall spinning around manically in the living room, a la Linda Carter in imitation of Wonder Woman when I was a kid. I loved that TV series. I remember wanting those Wonder Woman Under-roos, if you remember those.

KIM: Oh, yeah. I mean, same with all of that. Christopher Reeve, huge crush. And then I wanted to be Wonder Woman. And it's interesting that you say that, because both of those references remind me a little of the lost gem of a novel from 1912 that we're gonna be discussing today. Miriam Michelson's The Superwoman is speculative fiction that imagines a female utopia where women rule the roost. A bit like the tribe of women warriors from which Wonder Woman originated. Before becoming a bestselling fiction writer, Michelson, who grew up in a Nevada mining town, worked as a San Francisco-based reporter at a time when female journalists were mostly relegated to fashion and society stories. She made a name for herself as a girl reporter who covered crime and politics.

AMY: So I guess a bit of Lois Lane thrown in the mix, too. And we have the perfect guest with us to discuss The Superwoman and Michelson's gender-busting career: Professor Lori Harrison-Kahan, who edited the 2019 book The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michaelson.

KIM: Okay. Let's read the stacks and get started!

[intro music starts]

AMY: Today's guest, Lori Harrison-Kahan, is a professor in the English department at Boston College, where she teaches courses on American literature and culture. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies. She's the author of The White Negress: Literature, Minstrelsy, and the Black Jewish Imaginary. And as we said, she edited the book we're going to be discussing today, The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michaelson, which won the 2021 Best Book Edition award from the Society for the Study of American Women Writers.

KIM: Lori also co-edited a 2020 edition of Heirs of Yesterday by Emma Wolf, and listeners, you may remember we did an episode on Emma Wolf's 1892 novel Other Things Being Equal back in September with guest Sarah Seltzer. So welcome, Lori! We're so glad to have you on the show.

LORI HARRISON-KAHAN: It's great to be here and have this chance to talk about Michaelson with you.

AMY: As Kim said in the intro, she had an unusual career for a woman of her time, but let's back up, because her childhood is pretty incredible too. So she was born in 1870 in Calaveras County, California, made famous by the Mark Twain story, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Her parents were Jewish immigrants who came to the United States from Poland to flee anti-semitism there. She spent her youth in Virginia City, Nevada, which is a place Kim and I have both visited. In fact, when I was there, I stayed at a B and B that overlooked an old, kind of creepy looking schoolhouse and little did I know at the time that Miriam not only attended that school, she also briefly taught at it! If I had only known.

KIM: That is so cool. I love that. So listeners, if you haven't been to Virginia City, we should set the scene for you. It's an old west town in the mountains that now feels pretty much like a ghost town. There are old mining tours you can go on. They stage duels on the main street at noon. There's a prostitute's museum. Oh yeah, and there's the Bucket of Blood saloon. I think Amy, you probably went there. It's named for a bloody gun fight that occurred there in the 1880s. Anyway, Virginia City is famous for the Comstock Lode silver ore discovery in 1859, which almost instantly made it a boom town.

AMY: Yeah. And Lori, I feel like we emailed about this, but you have not had an opportunity yet to go to Virginia City. 

LORI: That's right. I'm so envious that you have both been there.

AMY: It's really fun. It's really fun. Uh, so yeah, the population of this little town up in the hills peaked in the mid 1870s with an estimated 25,000 residents. It was known as the richest city in the US, filled with brick homes and a world class opera house musicians from all over the world performed there. And Samuel Clemens famously began using his pen name, Mark Twain, while he was working there as a reporter in the 1860s. So he's kind of the most famous writer associated with Virginia City. Lori, can you talk a little bit about what Miriam's life was like when she lived there? 

LORI: Sure. And you both captured the town so well, having been there. A lot of what I know about it is from Miriam's writing. She wrote about it both in fiction and non-fiction , so one of her last books was actually a non-fiction book of the history of the Comstock Lode primarily in Virginia City. Um, and one of her earliest novels was a semi autobiographical novel called The Madigans, and it's from that book that we get a sense of what it was like for her to grow up in that area. And what's really interesting about that book, it centers on a family of six sisters. Those are the Madigans. And this is why it's semi autobiographical: so Miriam was part of a big family, but she had both brothers and sisters. So when she turns her life into fiction, she clearly wanted to center the experiences of girls and women by turning, you know, all those siblings, into girls. It's a book that is clearly inspired by Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, but in this book, it's like, they're all Jo March, right? They're all tomboys. The sisters are all adventurous, they're all athletic. They're constantly pulling pranks on each other. And Miriam herself was athletic. She then went on to cover sports as a journalist. Miriam talks in that non-fiction book about Virginia City being a place where you can make up the rules as you go along. And that applies to a game of marbles, but it also applies to, um, rules about gender. So I think in many ways, that's what shaped her nontraditional views about gender. She went on, you know, this is the late 19th century, to have a career. She never married. She never had children. Um, so a pretty unconventional life for a woman at that time, which I think had a lot to do with where she grew up.

AMY: Is The Madigans still in print anywhere? I mean, is it hard to find because a "Wild West" Little Women sounds intriguing. 

LORI: Yes, isn't it great? I know. So most of her work is out of print. A lot of it is on Google books and I think I include one chapter of The Madigans in my collection, as well. Um, and then in the front of my collection, I do tell you where you could find the things that are available on Google books. I tell you where you could find those.

KIM: Great. So, we talked earlier about Miriam being of Jewish descent. How did that impact her life?

LORI: I have a sort of a complicated answer to this question because Miriam herself would've said that it didn't really affect her. She didn't strongly identify as Jewish. Her family certainly was not religious. But I would argue that in fact it did shape her experiences. There were not many Jews in Virginia City. Her parents were immigrants who spoke with accents. And so it's clear from looking at some of the history that they would've kind of stood out as different, as foreigners. People would've been very aware that they were Jewish. So in terms of how it shaped her, right, she's saying it didn't really matter, but when the press would write about her when she became a famous novelist, they would often point out her Jewishness. There's an article in The Washington Post about her, where they refer to her as a California Jewess who has succeeded with her pen. So people were certainly aware of her religious background. And I think the way that it shows up in her writing is that she doesn't very often write about Jews, but she does really capture the full ethno-racial diversity of the West. So she writes about Native Americans. She writes about Chinese immigrants. She writes about African Americans in the West, which was somewhat unusual for a white writer at that time. She also writes about Native Hawaiians. So I think that being somewhat on the margins, whether she kind of acknowledges an impact or not, allowed her to kind of recognize the experiences of others on the margins and write about them and want to really kind of do justice to the full diversity of the place in which she grew up.

KIM: In the introduction to The Superwoman and Other Writings, you talk about the birth of the celebrity "girl reporter" and the progressive era press, which is really fascinating. Can you tell us a bit about that and where Michaelson fit in?

LORI: Sure. So Michelson began working as a reporter in the 1890s, and this was a period when women are entering the newspaper industry as reporters in significant numbers. And a lot of that had to do with someone whose name is probably gonna be recognizable to listeners, and that's Nellie Bly. So Nellie Bly, in the 1880s, was really the first woman to break into investigative reporting. So women before this were writing for papers, but they would cover society events and fashion, things that editors thought, you know, only women would be interested in. But Nelly Bly changed all that through a series of articles that's now referred to by its book title, which is Ten Days in a Mad House. She feigns insanity and she goes undercover in a woman's asylum on Blackwell's island in New York. And that piece just got enormous attention. Bly became a celebrity. So Michelson is kind of following on the heels of that. Suddenly a lot of papers did want women journalists because it created a kind of spectacle. She herself didn't go undercover the way that Bly did, though in her fiction, she wrote about a woman or reporter who went undercover. This is the era of Hearst and Pulitzer, the sensational journalism. And so she's kind of really fitting into that in terms of creating a spectacle around herself as a kind of woman reporter. So the way that this kind of plays out, this is true for Bly and it's true for Michelson. They often use the first person in their news articles, which we don't associate with, right, we think of news reporting as being objective. It's written in the third person. But Michelson would make herself a character in the stories, and you'd be very aware of her as a reporter kind of tracking down this information.

AMY: I think it's interesting too, that she was really able to do some kick-ass things here because people saw her as non-threatening, right?

LORI: Yeah, it's really interesting, right? And I think she had, in particular, access to other women who might not speak to male reporters, right? So that she could tell stories that male reporters could not necessarily tell, but she was also really invested in making sure that the women's point of view on various issues was present in the newspaper. One of her earliest stories for the San Francisco Call which is the first major daily paper she writes for, it was about a woman's convention in San Francisco that brought, you know, figures like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Susan B. Anthony, and Anna Howard Shaw, the leading suffragists of the time, to San Francisco. And Michelson wrote about that as a reporter, but what's also interesting about this is that she kind of refused to be pigeonholed. So that was her first piece, but then she kind of spread out into all these other arenas. Many of them were associated with, you know, only men reporters could do this work. So she wrote about sports. She wrote about crime. She wrote about politics. She also wrote about the theater. So a really kind of wide range of topics.

AMY: And all of the articles that you mention, and I think some of them are included in the book, but they all sound super interesting, you know? If I was scrolling through on my phone and I saw that, I would definitely read that article.

KIM: Yeah, she has buzzy headlines for sure, too.

LORI: Yeah. definitely. Yeah. 

AMY: And she was writing for mass appeal, for kind of the common man and the common woman. So she wasn't really writing for intellectuals.

LORI: Right, right. At this time in the 1890s, she's writing for kind of one of the major San Francisco papers. Most reporters didn't actually get bylines. Articles were just kind of published without any attribution, but women always got bylines because the papers wanted to draw attention to the fact that women were writing, because that itself sold papers and created a spectacle. And for Michelson, she not only got bylines, but sometimes the headlines and sub-headlines would actually include her name , because she was just a selling point for these papers. 

AMY: And it's interesting that we call this yellow journalism, you know, it was tabloidy, but she was managing to work in these serious feminist issues... she had like a sassy writing style. She was fun. And she was just sort of writing articles about, should women wear pants? Should women ride bicycles? Things like that that probably actually was pretty effective in changing people's minds about a lot of this. And in fact, you pointed out she sometimes used a strategy called conversion journalism, almost like she would trick the reader a little bit. Can you talk about that?

LORI: Sure. Yeah. I mean, she would claim at times that she was objective or she would even go so far as to kind of claim that, um, ... there's a piece that's actually about this woman's convention that she attends where she seems to kind of claim at the beginning that she doesn't really believe in the figure of the New Woman, the independent woman at the time. But then as she attends these events she's persuaded, right? So we see her being persuaded over the course of the article. And I think that was a really deliberate strategy, that she could kind of take the reader on a journey with her and perhaps persuade the reader as well. Or sometimes she would follow a figure who she's interviewing who is skeptical in a similar way and then comes to see things in a very different way through the experiences that she narrates in that article.

AMY: I wish we could do that for some of the MAGA people somehow. Wish that strategy could be employed more effectively today. 

KIM: Yeah. So it seems like Michelson's journalism career was going great, but then she made this transition to writing fiction. Do we know what led to this transition?

LORI: So I have a couple of ideas about this. One is money , um, that, that it would've been more lucrative to be a fiction writer than a journalist at the time. This was a time when magazine culture is really exploding. There are all these mass circulation magazines and they have this very high demand for short stories. She began writing short stories for these magazines, but then as a novelist, she'd be making money from royalties and so forth. So that's one reason. Another is that as a fiction writer you could have a national reputation in a way that most journalists cannot. I mean, Nelly Bly here is really the exception, but most journalists just have a local following, right? But these mass circulation magazines have a national and sometimes international audience, so she's expanding her audience. And then also, there are changes going on in the newspaper industry in the early 20th century, which is when she makes this shift. There's kind of a backlash against the figure of what she calls the "girl reporter," right? The women journalists... there's this pushback against sensational journalism. And I think she was pretty savvy in realizing that that was happening and that she could make this shift in her career to fiction. 

KIM: Yeah, there's definitely a through line between her journalism and her fiction. Some of her first published fiction dealt with human trafficking and the lack of opportunities for women of color. She set some of these early stories in Hawaii and San Francisco's Chinatown, and this brought to mind one of our earliest episodes. It was on Sui Sin Far's short story collection, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, and many of those stories are set in San Francisco's Chinatown as well. How did readers respond to Michelson's fiction?

LORI: Yeah. The Sui Sin Far episode I assigned for my students, um, because we were reading Mrs. Spring Fragrance, and they're really interesting writers to compare. Sui Sin Far is also a bit of an outsider, but she's half Chinese, so more of an insider than Michelson, who's white kind of coming into Chinatown. Um, so really interesting to read those two side by side.

AMY: Is there any possibility that they could have known each other?

LORI: This is such a great question! One of the premier scholars who works on Sui Sin Far, Mary Chapman, is convinced that they must have known each other, but we don't have any hard evidence of that. They're kind of circulating in the same environments at the same time. 

AMY: At the very least reading each other's work.

KIM: Yes, for 

LORI: Yep. Yeah. And probably influenced by each other in some way. Um, yeah, so, uh, the question was about the early response to her fiction. Um, so what's interesting about this is that when you publish fiction, short stories and novellas in magazines, often there are no reviews. And so we don't have a kind of reception history. So some of that early material, we don't really know how readers are responding to those, those fictional Chinatown tales. I don't really have a sense of how readers would have responded except to say that she was enormously popular, right? It's clear that she's getting more and more work. She's publishing stories and then suddenly book publishers are interested in her. It's clear that she's clicking, that she's tapping into something in the time period. And then once she publishes books, we do, of course, have reviews. So then we get a much better sense of how readers responded. And one of the through lines that I see in the reviews is just how much fun her work is to read. So really emphasizing how enjoyable it is. "I can't put this book down." Um, there's this quote about one of her works being, quote, "as catchy as ragtime." So really a very modern, trendy feel to it. It's very slangy. She has this sassy, first-person woman's voice for a lot of her work. The critic HL Menkin, reviewing one of her books, called it "a literary joy ride." so same idea there, but what a lot of these critics miss, that's not really mentioned in their reviews, are the underlying feminist messages of her work. And I think today those are really evident, to readers in a way that they weren't then.

AMY: But just think about it for a second . If you heard that somebody's literary voice was "catchy as ragtime" and "a literary joy ride", you would immediately go read it. And this is a woman that we had never heard of!

KIM: Yeah, it's crazy. I know. Absolutely. 

LORI: Her kind of breakthrough is she publishes a short story called In the Bishop's Carriage, and a publisher contacts her and says, "you should turn this into a novel." And that becomes her first novel, and that's written from the first- person point of view of the female protagonist, who is a pickpocket. And this was quite unusual at the time, to have a female criminal as your main character. So that was a scandalous element, and it becomes a bestseller as a result, but it's also the very kind of modern, as I said, slangy voice.

AMY: There's another one I don't know when it comes in the timeline, but Petticoat King, which is about the life of Elizabeth I. That one caught my interest too. 

LORI: Yes. That's feminist historical fiction, which we have tons of today, but I mean, that's what's interesting as well, because she's trying out all these different genres. Where she wouldn't be pigeonholed in her reporting career, she's writing in all these different kinds of modes and genres in her fiction as well.

KIM: All right. So let's talk about The Superwoman, which was published in The Smart Set in 1912. Do you wanna give our listeners a quick summary of the setup?

LORI: Sure. And this is a great example of what I was just saying with the different genres, because here she's experimenting with science fiction. Um, so The Superwoman, in terms of the plot, it opens up, you almost feel like you're reading a realist novel by Edith Wharton or Henry James. And what's really interesting about it as well, is that the protagonist is a man, which is unusual for Michelson. Our readers who knew Michelson and these strong female protagonists, but suddenly you have a male protagonist and he's on a transatlantic ocean liner. His name is Hugh Ellenwood Wellburn. And as that name, I think, conveys he is a wealthy, white man who doesn't have to work. Family money. Really not the most likable protagonist; he's a bit of a jerk. And he finds himself on this boat with the two women he's considering marrying. One is young and beautiful. The other is a very elegant widow. And he can't really make up his mind, so he goes to the edge of the boat. He's gonna flip a coin to decide which woman he should propose to. And at that moment he is swept overboard and he wakes up on an island, a remote island, that's unnamed in the text. And it turns out that on this island, women rule. So the gender roles have been reversed. Women are in charge. Men are there to fulfill reproductive and domestic functions. And then it kind of goes on from there, so moving from this realist mode into speculative fiction and kind of telling us the story of life on this island, and wellburn's experiences with these women.

AMY: Almost a little like Gulliver's Travels or suddenly arrived in like feminist Oz. 

LORI: Yes, exactly. 

AMY: Um, okay. So this book came out in 1912. Remind us a little bit of some of the historical context that we need to know for this time period.

LORI: Sure. The suffrage movement is really ramping up, and in 1911, California becomes the sixth state of the Union to grant women the right to vote. That's where Michelson is living, and she's involved in the suffrage campaign at this point. So she's kind of taken the celebrity, um, as a journalist and a writer and turned that into kind of getting crowds to attend her suffrage speeches. So she was involved in that successful suffrage campaign in 1911. Right on the heels of that, she writes The Superwoman. So I think in many ways we could see it as a kind of celebratory text, right? She's celebrating the fact that women have this newfound power, but also because it's only the sixth state, right? There's not yet a suffrage amendment, it's a call to action. And so in that story, we see a really strong critique of patriarchy.

KIM: Yeah. And of course we are still fighting that battle for gender equality today. And that's why Amy and I think this novella is such a great read right now. It really is timeless on some level because it's still revelatory to read about a world where women are completely in charge. I was wondering if you'd like to read a passage from The Superwoman, Lori, to give listeners a feel for the prose?

LORI: Sure I'd be happy to. , so I'm gonna read. A passage that comes from, the moment where well burn the protagonist, first meets the leader of this society. Her name is win the mother goddess, and they have a conversation. So most of what you hear is going to be, dialogue, and that it starts with her.

So she's speaking here. Then you may tell where you came from. What is your place? Who is your mother, how you came to be struggling in the water. When the captain of the boats found you? Well, burn sat up. That's all very well. He said deliberately, but I think I'm entitled to know first where I am, who you are you people?

How soon I could have a ship to take me to America above all, where my clothes are, particularly my belt that I wore under my shirt filled with valuables and papers. An indignant murmur arose to his surprise. Well burn watching the men at the table on the left saw that their dissatisfaction was even greater than the women's, but the mother's voice still did.

You are entitled. If you understand the use of the word, you have spoken to nothing. She said gravely to well burn, but without anger, you are thrown naked upon our bounty. Our mercy, you are besides a man and we have already too many men. Well burn turned in amazement from her to the men at the small table, but all he could read in their faces was approval of the speech.

He had heard that and a curious grudging resentment of himself. Do you mean to say he demanded attorney again to win? That I'd be more welcome. If I were a woman of the last hundred babies born to the Klans, 79 are male children. She said severely more than three quarters at I congratulate you. Well, been remarked easily.

They stared at him amazement in every eye and he smiled back politely as one might who questioned the relevancy of such statistics to his own case, but was ready to be interested in them. Nevertheless, Let us understand each other, the mother leaned forward in her great chair and spoke very distinctly.

Do you mean to imply that in the country, from which you come such a proportion of male births would be caused for congratulations? I have never in my life heard of an unwelcome boy, baby laughed well burn, but what has that to do with me? Authoritatively, the mother rose to her feet with a gesture. She dismissed the men at the side table and they withdrew without a word though.

Now upon their faces was a look of doubt and delight the look of a child as it listens to a fairytale, surely well burn interposed, a secret, something in him, responding to the look in every one of their faces. Surely I may speak before men, as well as what have men to do with counseling interrupted the mother harshly concerning war.

Yes. Concerning hunting expeditions. Yes. Or the sailing of the boats. But what have men to say about management of the Klan? I, I guess I don't exactly understand your language sta well burn bewildered. We shall see, she said briefly, the men having departed with another gesture, she bathed the women to be seated, then seated herself and faced well burn.

I am mother of all the tribes she said with dignity, these, she indicated the women about her are mothers of the clans. You may speak openly. Why is the birth of a male child caused for congratulations among your people? Why, why, why? It's obvious. He said impatiently baffled by the parity of the topic and her determination to pursue it.

If a boy has 10 chances to a girls want to make a living. If he has a hundred chances to a girls, want to distinguish himself in business, in the professions as a statesman, an artist, anything, if he is a thousand to one to get the mate he wants and Liberty to, to enjoy himself, besides would you want your child to be a girl or a boy?

She did not answer evidently she could not. She and the women about her were staring at him as though he were mad. It compelled him to further expression. It seems he began tentatively stumbling over the words and trying to make himself clear. It seems to be somewhat difficult for you to credit, but it's true.

I assure you, in fact, I don't see how it could be. Otherwise it's natural and it's right. Who can imagine a world where the ruler is big and little in family and in state were not men, the real rulers. I mean, however, the title of royalty may be vested. We give our women a chance, a very fair chance, but the prizes that the world belong to the men, of course, how else could it be?

How else the mother spoke threateningly her breast teethed and her somber eyes shown with displeasure. How else we shall teach you? How else? An insulted dignity. She faced him. Hush, hush. The woman closes her, but a hand upon hers. C do not be angered mother a wise woman is never angered by a fool nor a truthful one by her who tells lies.

True. True. Thank you. Brida. The mother turned from her and faced well burn. Calmly. What is your name? She asked son of what mother or would you pretend that your top C turvy country dissent is through the father as the man there bear the child and leaning back in her chair. She laughed heartedly while the women about her gave way to a moderate laughter.

AMY: Oh, my gosh. There's so, okay, so much I want to say. First of all, I love every time the mother Wyn, supreme goddess woman is in a scene because she basically is like, sit down, shut the eff up. She is so commanding and stern with him, and at one point he kind of brags like, "Oh, where I'm from my dad is a big deal. My dad is like Rupert Murdoch." And they all just stare at him deadpan. And they're like, "But what does your mom do?" 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: And this whole idea of whether a society descends from the mother's line or the father's line made me laugh because this topic actually occurred when I gave birth to my daughter, Julia. So we were at the hospital. My husband and I are in the room. The nurse comes in with the birth certificate and she has me sign the birth certificate. Then my husband steps forward and grabs the pen. And he's like, "So where do I sign?" And the nurse just looks at him and she's like, "Oh, we don't need your signature." And he's like, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, we know that she is the mother. We don't know that you're the father." And I mean, he was floored, but that's exactly what Michelson is pointing out in this book. There's a line "Who can say what man is one's father? But the mother is different." You know, we can prove it.

KIM: Yeah. And it's so interesting to watch him struggle against all this yet start to kind of get it, too, at the same time. It's actually really a nice comeuppance.

AMY: It is. And it's also funny. I got a kick out of it, so I can only imagine a hundred years ago a woman reading this and just hooting with laughter. So a lot of the story once he gets to the island, a lot of the story involves them just kind of explaining, like, here's the rationale. Here's why we believe women are the ultimate power figures and should be the ultimate rulers of society. The reasons make a ton of sense. 

LORI: Yes. Yeah. 

KIM: So we have this matriarchal, Amazonian society, like Wonder Woman. This way of turning the tables, it's really a great device for illustrating gender inequality. How common was this at the time?

LORI: So it was a kind of amazingly common in the suffrage movement. You had suffrage speakers like Elizabeth Cady Stanton giving speeches in which they would evoke ancient matriarchal societies when women were in power. And I think exactly for the reasons that we were just discussing, to suggest that there's nothing really natural about patriarchy, right? That society could be formulated in a different way. And what's interesting about this, um, that, you know, we've been saying in a couple of different moments that there's something familiar about the story and certainly familiar because this feels very much like the opening of Wonder Woman with paradise island and Steve Trevor arriving. Then the other text that it may remind people of is a novel by Charlotte Perkins Gilman called Herland. Because that's a text that's often assigned in college classes. And I'll tell you that when I first discovered this novel by Michelson, it was never published as a book, by the way, it was published in a magazine called The Smart Set, which is a precursor to The New Yorker. So a very popular magazine and, when I first started reading it, I thought, "Oh, she was inspired by Gilman," because I knew that Gilman novel. I had assigned it several times in classes. And then I checked the dates and I see Michelson published hers in 1912, Gilman in 1915. So it was exactly the opposite. Gilman had been inspired by Michelson's The Superwoman.

AMY: I had the same experience, because I had read Herland in college, and I was like, "Wow, this just seems like a rip off." And then it's like, "Oh wait, what? Hers came first." So now I'm kind of thinking, well, "Seems like Charlotte Perkins Gilman kind of ripped her off," but talk about that a little bit. Was she influenced? I mean, she had to have been; it's so similar.

LORI: Think so. The two women knew each other. Um, they actually met at that women's convention that I mentioned that happened in 1895 because Michelson was working as a reporter. Gilman was one of the speakers. Michaelson interviewed Gilman a couple of times, and she reviewed a nonfiction book that Gilman published called Women in Economics. So they had an interesting relationship in that Michelson very much admired Gilman and Gilman, um, didn't really like Michelson very much. And I think there are a couple issues here. I think that whereas we seem to really appreciate Michelson's use of humor, I don't think Gilman appreciated it. She was addressing these feminist issues in a much more serious, straightforward way, whereas Michelson was kind of trying to disarm people through this use of humor. Um, so they had very different strategies, even though their end goals were similar. And Gilman also had a lot of difficulty getting published in mass circulation magazines because of the kind of evident feminist message of her work, whereas for Michaelson, she was often kind of disguising that using elements of popular fiction or genre fiction. So you could see that in The Superwoman, in the ways in which I think the feminist message is clear, but she's also kind of disguising this in science fiction and using an adventure story in many ways, um, as a kind of cover for that. So I think that Gilman probably read this, and it influenced her to write Herland. And what's interesting about Herland is in that female utopian society, she gets rid of men. So it's a society of all women. The story, like Michelson's is told from the point of view of men, three male explorers in that case, who come upon this society and in a very similar way need to be schooled in the way of the matriarchy. But I think that that intervention is really interesting. You know, one kind of flipping the gender roles and the other getting rid of men altogether is suggesting the ways in which the two of these pieces may be in dialogue with one another.

AMY: And we know if The Superwoman was published in The Smart Set, it had a wide audience, whereas I think you point out in your book that Herland was not super widely read when it was first out. I mean, now it's in college courses everywhere... 

LORI: yes. 

AMY: It wasn't a big deal when it came out.

LORI: It's so fascinating. It was published, it was serialized in the Forerunner, which is Gilman's own magazine that she started. She edited and wrote all the content herself. And she did that because she couldn't get published in some of these mass circulation magazines. But you have to think about who would've read the Forerunner, right? It would've been someone already predisposed to the feminist cause and the suffrage movement, whereas Michelson's reaching a much wider audience because she's publishing in these popular magazines. And so I think it's fascinating that that's changed today. There are actually multiple editions of Herland currently in print, whereas, you know, my book is the only one, um, that contains The Superwoman.

AMY: Crazy. At the beginning of your book, I love that you kind of start with that tension between the two authors and there's that moment where Michelson is interviewing Gilman, who's visiting the West Coast, I guess. It's so funny, first of all, and it's also just so awkward because 

LORI: Yeah. 

AMY: Gilman is such a stick in the mud.

LORI: Yes. absolutely.

AMY: And then it makes you love Michelson. You're like, "I wanna know who this woman is!" Yeah.

KIM: So you write that Michelson wasn't as productive or successful after The Superwoman. She died at age 72 in 1942, but over her career she had quite an impact on her readers. I loved in particular finding out in your introduction that her journalism actually inspired one of our previous lost ladies, Edna Ferber, to become a journalist. Listeners, she's a subject of her episode number 45 with guest Caroline Frick if you wanna go back and learn about her. She went on to become the first Jewish writer to win a Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Lori, why do you think Michelson isn't more well known today? And why do you think she should be?

LORI: Um, sure. So, and I also have to credit Edna Ferber with the fact that I found Michelson in the first place, because in Ferber's autobiography, she talks about the influence of Michelson on her, and that was the first time I ever heard of Michelson. And then I started to search from there. Um, so I think there are a number of reasons why she's not as well known. And I think this probably applies across the board to many of the writers that you feature on the podcast, which is the way that the canon got constructed initially, right? It's centered on great white men, um, and so many famous and important women writers kind of got lost to history as a result. And then I think some of this has to do with feminism as well, that when the initial work in the 1970s was done to recover these women writers, certain figures like Gilman were immediately recovered. And then there was this kind of sense that they did the work, they filled the gap, so there was kind of no reason to probe further. But in fact, what I'm showing here is that we could see these kind of more interesting, diverse conversations going on between figures who are using different strategies like Gilman and Michelson. But I think also right, the greater diversity that's going on in a lot of the scholarship now of showing the ways that women of color, as well, contributed to our ideas about feminism and suffrage and so forth. But then also I think the popularity of Michelson' s writing, right, the fact that it, you know, wasn't taken that seriously in its time. It was seen as a literary joy ride. That may be part of why she's not well known today in the way that someone like Gilman, who was much more serious and published very serious books like Women in Economics, is.

AMY: Going back to sort of what I said at the beginning of the episode, I just, there is a place for both of those strategies. Why can't we have a little fun fighting for progress? Why does it have to be stodgy and serious all the time? When we were discussing Heterodoxy a few episodes ago, which Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a member of, our guest Joanna Scutts, she had talked about one of the strategies the suffragists used was likability. When you start to like something, you start to listen more, you know? And so I think she had a power there.

LORI: Right. And then you could be entertained at the same time. 

AMY: Yes. 

LORI: important part of her 

AMY: Yeah, absolutely. Her newspaper articles are entertaining. This story was entertaining, but actually, because I had already read Herland, I kept drifting over to want to know some of these other books. I assume you've read some of the other ones. Which would be your next, that you would recommend?

LORI: Sure. I love her journalism. So I would certainly recommend that people read her journalism, but A Yellow Journalist is the fictional book about her experiences as a reporter, but she really kind of sensationalizes everything, too, in extreme. And it's a lot of fun. The kind of voice of this career woman is really interesting, and she addresses a lot of issues that are incredibly relevant. In one of them that I just want to point out, um, is kind of, an early manifestation of the Me Too movement. She captures what it was like for this woman reporter in this male dominated environment where basically she was being sexually harassed all the time by male reporters. So again, it's another text that feels incredibly relevant to our current moment.

AMY: Is that the one where the main character has a date or is she supposed to go get married or something, but she's like, "I gotta go cover this story instead"? 

LORI: Yes. 

AMY: my engagement or 

LORI: It's a great again, that, that use of humor. Um, this man who's been pursuing her throughout the text and apparently in a weak moment, she agreed to get engaged to him. Um, and then he, you know, shows up for the date to celebrate their engagement. She's in the middle of chasing down the story and she had forgotten that they got engaged and she's like, to get my story in on time.

AMY: Well, that's very Lois Lane.

LORI: Yes, exactly. 

KIM: Yeah, it's also very screwball comedy. If Carey Grant came in at the end and married her instead.

LORI: Yeah. 

KIM: yeah. 

AMY: Um, so Lori, we really enjoyed learning more about Miriam Michelson and reading The Superwoman. Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion and bringing her to our attention.

LORI: Thanks so much for having me. This has been great. It was really fun to do.

AMY: So we'll sign off now, but we encourage you to pick up a copy of The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson. It's actually the only place where you can find a copy of The Superwoman in print. It includes a lot of her journalism reportage, too. It's worth your time.

KIM: And as always check out our website, Lostladiesoflit.com for a transcript of this show and further information.

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

103. Laura Valentine — The Secret Shakespeare Editor

AMY: Hi everyone, and welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I'm Amy Helmes.

KIM: And I'm Kim Askew. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about a lady novelist who is also thought to have secretly edited a Victorian-era edition of Shakespeare. That edition eventually sold over 340,000 copies.

AMY: Okay, I'm excited to discuss this, but before we do, we need to celebrate the fact that this summer we were finally able to get back to seeing Shakespeare in the Park, which is a tradition of ours, right?

KIM: Yeah, we love doing that, and we haven't been able to do it for a couple of years, so that was very exciting.

AMY: So the group that we usually see is called Independent Shakespeare Company, that's our go-to, and they have their stage in an interesting place because it is a former zoo; like a zoo from the 1930s. So surrounding the area where you watch the play, there's all these old animal enclosures, like metal, rusty cages, like a very janky old kind of creepy... 

KIM: It's creepy. Not even “kind of,” it is creepy.

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but it's a neat place to do it. Shakespeare outside is always magical. It's so fun.

KIM: Yeah, for sure.

AMY: Although the one we saw so far this summer wasn't even Shakespeare.

KIM: No, it was Francis Beaumont, a Shakespeare contemporary, and I think they said even friends with Shakespeare, though I didn't know that. Um, I had read it before when I was in undergrad, so it was a long time ago. “Knight of the Burning Pestle” was what we saw.

AMY: Yeah, it was new to me, but it was very Shakespeare-esque, for sure. Um, and then they're doing “Macbeth” later this summer, and I think we're hopefully gonna get to that too.

KIM: I know, which is crazy, how excited... I'm so excited to see “Macbeth,” and it's like, I've seen it so many times, but it never gets old for me somehow.

AMY: You know what, I also feel like it's like one of the shorter of his plays too.

KIM: It's also just really good.

AMY: It's also really good. You know what's gonna happen. Sometimes they put an interesting twist. Oh my gosh, one time... you went with me... this was not the Independent Shakespeare Company, but remember when we went to see “Fleetwood Macbeth?”

KIM: Oh, yes.

AMY: It was like a mash-up of “Macbeth” and Fleetwood Mac songs.

KIM: Didn't we see a Simpsons one too?

AMY: Yeah, "MacHomer." Homer Simpson was the main character, Macbeth. That was really good too. There's a guy that does that, we'll link to it in our show notes. I don't know if he still puts on that production, but I think he tours with it. It's so good.

KIM: One of the pluses of living in Los Angeles, um, if you can call it a plus.

AMY: Yeah, but what I want to do though, and Kim, I'm springing this on you, but I want to run through a little list I came up with of "Five Things That You Can Always Expect At Any Shakespeare in the Park Performance." There are just certain things that you know when you go you're gonna encounter. 

KIM: Uh-huh. 

AMY: I'm sure you can think of a few things right off the top 

KIM: At least one is popping into my head.

AMY: Well, we'll see. And if I don't say it, then you can add it. 

KIM: Okay. 

AMY: So number one on my list, drum roll, please: Bees.

KIM: Oh, bees. If you're outside. Okay. Got it. All right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. 

AMY: When we went to see “Knight of the Burning Pestle,” it was like a cartoon; there were so many bees attacking our amazing spread. We had amazing spread of food, and... 

KIM: And your teen daughter was like, oh, it was Julia. It was majorly...

AMY: Yeah. She was being very dramatic, but I mean, there were like…

KIM: A lot of bees. 

AMY: At least 50 bees.

KIM: We were trying to act mature, but we were also like, it's kinda bad. Mm-hmm. 

AMY: Bees and flies attacking your picnic basket. Okay. Number Two would be Renn-Fair kids. You're always gonna see like a group of... 

KIM: Thespian wannabees.

AMY: Thespian wannabees. They're usually dressed up, which we did see that; people showed up in like princessy dresses.

KIM: I was kind of jealous, I will say.

AMY: Yeah. Sometimes, not so much anymore now, but in years (and probably decades) past, a hacky-sack circle would form around those people. So there's that group. Um, Number Three: pelvic thrusting.

KIM: If you didn't say grabbing the codpiece or pointing at that area or pelvic thrusting… there's no list that’s complete without that. Yeah. It's like, “In case you don't get that this is a sexual joke or an innuendo, we're going to make it absolutely clear with, you know, very strong, um, sign language.” (Loosely called sign language.)

AMY: Um, okay, and this spirals into the next item on my list, which is the obnoxious laugher. So always in the audience, sometimes as a result of the pelvic thrust on stage, you have somebody, I'd say it's usually an older man…

KIM: It's always a man. Let's just say it's always a man.

AMY: And they do this, like, knowing, over-the-top laugh at something just to let the rest of the audience know that they understood that cerebral joke.

KIM: So then every time I laugh, I'm self conscious because I don't want to be the person…

AMY: You don't wanna be that lady. 

KIM: Yeah. I shouldn't worry, because it's always a man.

AMY: We shouldn't make fun of it because they're really just having a good time, but it is slightly annoying that it's like, "Okay, dude, we get it too. And we get that you get it now, but thank you." Um, and then the last thing on my list would be the bucket-dodgers.

KIM: Oh yeah. I was gonna say the obligatory bucket-passing, but then there are the dodgers. 

AMY: The dodgers are the ones that are the funniest to see because you... it's usually free Shakespeare in the Park. Uh, the Independent Shakespeare Company is, which is amazing because they want Shakespeare to be for everyone. However, If you're going and you can afford to drop a little bit in their bucket and the buckets are, um, prolific. They're everywhere, they, the whole cast comes around with the bucket after the show, and you can kind of see the people that are looking for the exit. Just put some money in the bucket. I think it was sad because when we went to see the play this summer, they had said something like some nights they only average like $2 and 30 cents or something per audience member, which is ridiculous. So just do the right thing.

KIM: Yeah. And shout-out to Independent Shakespeare Company. They are awesome. 

AMY: Oh, my gosh, we've gone for so long that I think they said it's been around for 19 years. That main guy, that British guy. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah. He and his wife, I think co-founded it.

AMY: I wish I knew his name, but if you don't live in LA it's beside the point anyway, I guess. Okay, so also as a quick aside, all of our listeners might not know this, but Shakespeare is especially near and dear to Kim and my hearts, not just because we're former English majors, but because together we wrote...I guess it was like a decade ago, oh my gosh... we wrote a series of young adult novels based on Shakespeare's plays. It's called the Twisted Lit series if you want to look it up,

KIM: Right. And I guess you could say we feminized or "feminist"-ized -- that's not a word -- them, because the heroines are all teenage girls. So we do our own spin on Shakespeare, for sure.

AMY: Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, these productions that we see, they always kind of try to put them in a, you know, new and interesting era or location, you know? Yeah, exactly. That makes it fun. Okay. So when we heard about Molly G. Yarn's recent book, Shakespeare's Lady Editors, needless to say our ears perked up.

KIM: Yeah immediately. So this book began as Yarn's PhD dissertation at Cambridge. She graduated from there in 2019, and in the prologue to the book, she investigates the unsigned Chandos Shakespeare.

AMY: I'm sure a lot of our listeners don't know what the Chandos Shakespeare even is. Can you explain?

KIM: Yes. Good idea. I'll actually back up a little bit more even. So over the centuries, since Shakespeare's death, there have been literally hundreds of editions of his plays, as you can all imagine out there. Um, everything from textbooks to be used by school children, to these really fancy leatherbound editions that you'd have in the library of your castle or what have you. And editors were responsible for each of these editions, of course, and they made key decisions that impacted the reading and understanding of the plays going forward. So like, which of Shakespeare's folios to use, that sort of thing.

AMY: Okay. That's interesting to know, because I didn't ever really think of that. I always thought like Shakespeare was Shakespeare and what he wrote was what he wrote and there wasn't a lot of margin of error there, but apparently not. Apparently you could pick and choose from. So, okay, who were these editors? Who were all these different people? 

KIM: Well, we do know who they are, um, up until a certain point. So we have the names of the people that edited these books throughout history until around the beginning of the 19th century when women actually started editing some of the editions. And that's when things started to get ominously anonymous, let's say.

AMY: Oh, women's work, getting swept under the rug? You don't say! 

KIM: Uh-huh. Yep. And that's what Yarn is trying to accomplish with this work. She's tracing the women who are involved in editing Shakespeare and bringing these formerly unacknowledged names and their stories into the world, which is really cool.

AMY: Okay. So I don't know that we've still got to the bottom of the Chandos Shakespeare yet.

KIM: Yeah. So it was published in 1868, and it was an important edition for the Victorian era. Arthur Konan Doyle owned it for example, and James Joyce did, too. And of course Joyce's specific reading of Shakespeare actually comes up in Ulysses. But strangely, no editor was listed for these Chandos editions. So in her book, Yarn goes back and shows how she was able to uncover that the unsigned Chandos Shakespeare was very probably edited by one woman. Her name was Laura Jewry Valentine, and Yarn then uses this as an entry point to dig into the history of these often uncredited women who edited Shakespeare's works.

AMY: Ooh. So it's kind of a detective story, which we love. All right. So let's talk more about Laura Valentine, such a great name for an author or anyone. I think. In 1814, she was born Laura Belinda Charlotte Jewry. She was primarily known for historical romance and children's literature, including The Young Folks' Shakespeare Series. Hmm. What else do we know about her?

KIM: Well, she actually has a pretty interesting story. Her father was a lieutenant who served in the Royal Navy, and rumor had it that she was actually born on a ship called The Victory, but Yarn thinks that may have been an exaggeration. Either way, though, she did spend some time actually living some of her early life aboard The Victory, which is pretty cool. Um, I know that you probably, you know, love that, particularly, Amy, because of your love of Horatio Hornblower. Anyway. 

AMY: I mean, I never think of kids necessarily, or a family, you know, situation on a ship like that, but...

KIM: Yeah, I know. That's really interesting. I I'd actually love to learn more about that. And we can, because she did write a book about that, which I'll mention in a second. But eventually she became the governess for a family in Bath. And when they moved to India in 1842, she went with them. Upon their return to England in 1846, her first novel, The Ransom was published. She then married the Reverend Richard Valentine in 1851, thus her wonderful name, Valentine. And that was the year her historical romance, The Cup And the Lip was published. And in this novel, the heroine goes to live aboard The Victory with her uncle, and it's all about life aboard ship. So I feel like I've heard of this book, maybe because of this podcast. At some point it came up, I think it might have been on our list. Is it ringing a bell for you at all?

AMY: No, not at all. But yeah, the maritime aspect really ignites my interest, for sure. 

KIM: We need to read this or look into it.

AMY: So a year after her marriage, Valentine became a widow, sadly. That didn't last long. Um, she was actually pregnant when her husband died, and she delivered a stillborn child six weeks later. So she then applied for help from the Royal Literary Fund. I guess she was in some financial straits, and Yarn actually was able to access this organization's case file to learn more about her life at this point.

KIM: Yeah, it's really cool. This book feels like a dissertation and a mystery at the same time, which is very intriguing. Um, I loved reading it and seeing how she went about all this research. It's really cool. 

AMY: Yeah. So in a letter that Valentine wrote to this fund, in which she asked for assistance, she said "It may be very long, if I ever have strength again, before I can return to my pen for support." But she did, in fact, return to her pen eventually. And she wrote several more novels. She began working for a publishing firm in 1865 and was making a living as an editor in the Victorian era.

KIM: Yeah, Yarn is able to dig up all this information that eventually pretty much proves, though not definitively, that in addition to all the novels and children's books she was writing, she was also editing this important edition of Shakespeare's works at this publishing house.

AMY: And yet she wasn't credited. So we don't know why, for sure. Yarn surmises actually that it may have been her gender or just maybe the fact that she was a children's book author. People felt like that wasn't serious enough, you know, to give her the credit on this. But though uncredited, she was only the second woman that we know of to edit the complete works of Shakespeare.

KIM: Which is amazing. And Yarn then goes on to tell the stories of all these other uncredited women who came after her who edited Shakespeare, and quite literally, Amy, they were "love's labours lost."

AMY: Ba-dum-bump-ching! Anyway, listeners, we recommend you go pick up a copy of Shakespeare's Lady Editors if you want to learn more about her and these other women. And speaking of editors, our guest next week is Lori Harrison Kahan. We're going to be discussing a book she edited and wrote the introduction to called The Superwoman and Other Writings by Miriam Michelson 

KIM: That's going to be fantastic, but until then, don't forget to leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts if you're enjoying these episodes. We can't tell you how much it means to us, and it actually helps new listeners find us.

AMY: Yeah. 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 Kim Askew and Amy Helmes. 

102. Margaret Kennedy — Troy Chimneys

AMY: Hi everyone. Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off books by forgotten women writers. I'm Amy Helmes.

KIM: And I'm Kim Askew. So today's episode doesn't feature a special guest, but Amy, maybe our daring alter egos will make an appearance. 

AMY: Yeah, that would maybe be appropriate given the novel we're discussing today, Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy.

KIM: Yeah. And this one's going to appeal to all you Regency fans out there. 

AMY: Which should be all of you.

KIM: Yes, of. course. 

AMY: So this book was actually written in 1953, so that brings us to our word of the day: pastiche. And Kim, I will admit, I had vaguely heard that term and never quite known what it meant. So now I know, and just in case there's anyone out there like me who didn't quite know that term, I'll sum it up for you. A pastiche is an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work artist or period. If you had asked me before, I probably would have guessed it was some sort of French delicacy.

KIM: Yeah. Pastry shaped like a mustache.

AMY: Yes. I love it. 

KIM: Anyway, Margaret Kennedy, the author we're going to be discussing today, was hearkening back to the Regency Era with this book. It was recently re-released by McNally editions, so thank you to McNally for providing us with a copy of this book. It's a gorgeous cover too. 

AMY: Oh yeah. It's a really unique novel about a man with a split personality, and I'm looking forward to discussing it, Kim. So let's just raid the stacks and get started. So it's fitting to point out that Kim and I are working on an outside writing project that indirectly relates to the Regency Era, so we've been kind of wanting to immerse ourselves in that world, that style, that sort of language. So Troy Chimneys was a perfect read to get us in the mood.

KIM: Right. Um, and for research purposes, we also had fun going to a performance of Jane Austen Unscripted here in Los Angeles by the Impro Theater Group. What a blast we had. 

AMY: Yeah. They basically take a suggestion from the audience and then build an entire Regency plot around it. And the one they did when we were there, they really nailed it. I think my favorite part was when the men would pretend to be trotting around on invisible horses on the stage. And then they also gave us tea and specialty cocktails and a little bouquet when we first showed up. It was so much fun.

KIM: Definitely. Many people were dressed up in sort of Regency attire, so the people watching was amazing. But getting back to Troy Chimneys, the author, Margaret Kennedy, is probably best known for her novel, The Constant Nymph, which is not set in the Regency Era. It's set in the Austrian Alps and is said to be loosely based on the Bohemian painter Augustus John. It was considered pretty racy when it was first published. The podcast Backlisted actually has a great episode about The Constant Nymph, so we'll direct you there if you'd like to hear more about that particular novel. 

AMY: So getting back to Margaret Kennedy, what do we know about her life?

KIM: So she was born Margaret Moore Kennedy in London in 1896. Her family was well off. Her father was a barrister. And as the oldest of four children, she was educated by a governess. She started writing when she was at Cheltenham Ladies' College. And then she went on to study history at Oxford's Somerville College. This is also where Rose Macaulay studied history about 15 years prior. And we did an episode on Rose Macaulay with Kate MacDonald recently. 

AMY: Also, the author Winifred Holtby, who we should also do a future episode on at some point, she actually attended Somerville College with Kennedy, and Holtby had this recollection of her from when they were at school. And I'll just read it:

"She is an unobtrusive sort of person. Apart from two or three friends, she speaks to a few people, but now and then at a college debate or during dinner time discussion, she suddenly opens her mouth and makes about three remarks so witty, so disconcerting, and so shrewd that college picks up its ears and wonders whether perhaps there is more in the girl than meets the eye. Rather a brain at history, I expect she'll go down and write a textbook, said rumor." So that's a recollection Holtby gave in an article in Time and Tide magazine.

KIM: Quite flattering, I would think, to feel sort of discovered, um, in your unobtrusiveness. Anyway, the rumors she spoke of were spot on because not long after finishing college Kennedy did publish her first book, and it was actually a French history book called A Century of Revolution. Then her first novel, Ladies of Lyndon, was published in 1923. That book came and went without a lot of fanfare, although it was generally well received, but when The Constant Nymph came out a year later, she basically exploded onto the spotlight.

AMY: And she earned a fortune with that book, apparently selling more than a thousand copies a day for several weeks in the United States. She received congratulations from notable male writers of the day, including Thomas Hardy and J M Barrie, and many people were surprised that a woman had actually written the book because it was not like any typical woman's novel quote, unquote. This book basically overshadowed the rest of her career and is the book she's best known for, as we said at the top of the show.

KIM: Yes, and all that's actually reminded me of Kate Gibbons who wrote Cold Comfort Farm, and basically said that that book was like "some unendurable old uncle to whom you have to be grateful because he makes you a handsome allowance, but is often an embarrassment and a bore."

AMY: That still makes me laugh to this day. Um, yeah. And while I don't think that Kennedy felt that way about The Constant Nymph, it's funny that you should make that comparison because I actually found a book by Faye Hamill in which she compares Cold Comfort Farm to The Constant Nymph in one chapter and draws comparisons between the two heroines. I would not say those books are anything alike, story-wise or style-wise, but anyway, while she lived, Kennedy was definitely considered a literary celebrity. From what I read online, she seems personality- wise, pretty straight- laced and unassuming, just like Holtby's description of her. She wasn't a drama queen or flashy or anything like that. And I almost wonder, in a way, if that kind of normalcy about her is part of the reason that maybe we don't hear about her that way we might hear about other writers of the era, like Dorothy Parker or, you know, Virginia Woolf, people like that.

KIM: Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I wonder if that is the case. Getting back to her personal life though, a year after The Constant Nymph was published, she met the barrister David Davies at a party. They were both 29 years old at the time. He went on to become a judge and was knighted in 1952, so he must've been a pretty big deal I guess. They had three children, two daughters and a son. And her eldest daughter, Julia Burley, became a novelist herself. And actually, Margaret's granddaughter, Serena Mackesy, is also a well-respected novelist today. She sometimes goes by the pen name Alex Marwood.

AMY: Kennedy continued to live in London, raising her family and writing under her maiden name. She wrote a total of 16 novels and several plays, including a stage adaptation of The Constant Nymph. And then she went on to also write the screenplay for that book. It was made into a film in 1943 starring Charles Boyer and Joan Fontaine. She actually has two dozen film credits to her name. 

KIM: Wow. That's amazing. 

AMY: During World War II, Margaret volunteered their London home to be the local sector air raid station. And her husband volunteered as air raid warden. And obviously it was a stressful time to be in London, which had an effect on Kennedy. She became afflicted with Bell's palsy. It kind of distorted her face and made it look like she had suffered a stroke. She eventually did take the children out of London to live in Cornwall in 1944. That London house was completely destroyed by a bomb. Holy cow. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah. 

AMY: Though she did not write novels during the war years, she did write a memoir based on four months worth of her journal entries in 1940. It's called Where Stands a Wingéd Sentry. Yes, Kim Wingéd! It has that accent mark on it. 

KIM: I love it.

AMY: I knew you would. That was written when England was having its moment of realization about the war. I mean, things were starting to get very bad. They were really worried Hitler could invade England. That book, incidentally, was published just last year by Handheld Press, which is helmed by our previous guest, Kate MacDonald. I've got to say Kim, this book is so good. It's really moving and funny. It's so much more entertaining than I expected it to be. It doesn't read at all like a history book. It reads like a friend kind of filling you in on all the latest. So it's completely engrossing.

KIM: Wow. I want to borrow that book. That sounds amazing. Um, after that, Kennedy began to write more again following the war, including a biography of Jane Austen. And I wonder if working on this biography inspired her to write Troy Chimneys, which was published in 1953, three years after the Jane Austen biography? I could imagine maybe she wanted to stay in that world. 

AMY: Yeah. She felt like, okay, I know all this stuff now, why not turn it into something? Um, which I think is a great segue into discussing the novel. So why don't we start off with the title itself? Troy Chimneys is the name of a country house in the book, but its name is basically bastardized from the French. And here I'm going to bastardize the French: Trois Chemins,, Shema. if I'm saying that, right, which means three paths.

KIM: It's like she predicted people out there like us who are horrible with French pronunciation would exist and she just decided to make it easy on us. 

AMY: Yeah. If I had to say the French phrase more than once, I would have flung this book across the room, I guarantee. But anyway, in the book we don't really spend a ton of time at Troy Chimneys, but it is the residence that our narrator Miles Lufton aspires to live in as an adult. These three paths that converge in front of the residence are symbolic, you could say, for the various alter egos which reside within him. We're going to get to all that in a minute, but Kim, why don't you set the story up for us?

KIM: Yeah. So the book actually starts off in an epistolary style during the Victorian era. 

AMY: I didn't know pastiche, but I do know the term epistolary. It's basically letters compiled to create a novel.

KIM: Correct. And so the book begins with an 1879 letter from one Frederick Harnish to Sir James Cullen in Ireland. Frederick says he's investigating a bit of family history, particularly this weird cousin Ludovic who died in 1830. So Sir James writes him back and says, yes, we found all sorts of mention of Ludovic in these papers written by my great Uncle Miles Lufton. Turns out Miles and Ludovic were really good friends. He goes on to say that he knew nothing about his great uncle Miles, but when he asked his mother about him, she looked uncomfortable. " I believe she does know something and that he was not quite the thing," he writes. 

AMY: I want you to spill everything now. 

KIM: There must be something there. Yeah. 

AMY: Yes. So we find out also in this prologue that Miles Lufton, his nickname was Pronto, and he served as an MP and "cut quite a dash" is the phrase Margaret Kennedy uses. We're intrigued, right? 

KIM: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We want to know. 

AMY: Yeah. Um, what follows are a letter and some diary entries from Miles Lufton circa 60 years earlier in 1818. So the book kind of starts in the Victorian Era and then it tosses back to the Regency Era. And can I just say that I loved the way Kennedy starts off this book with all these letters and documents? It reminded me of the start of Frankenstein or Dracula. 

KIM: Yeah, a lot of Gothic books have this conceit to get you sort of into the story. I love that.

AMY: And boy does it work, you know? There's this real air of mystery. I'm also actually reminded of a much more recent book called His Bloody Project that's set up in this kind of same vein. It's by Graham McCrae Burnett, and it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2016 and that kind of purports to be a true crime incident, so it's all sorts of police reports that you're reading, things like that.

KIM: I did read that, and that's really good. Um, and then, you know, what also struck me is, um, Northanger Abbey, doesn't it start out with some letters?

AMY: I can't remember. 

KIM: Like maybe so that would be the connection. We'll have to look that up, 

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot 

KIM: more sense. 

Check. 

AMY: Okay. I'm sure some of our listeners out there who are huge Jane Austen fans are like, "Yes. How do you not know this?" 

KIM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and then I'm thinking also of The Blair Witch Project where you're convinced something has really happened. So with Troy Chimneys, right out of the starting gate, you're like, "Ooh, there's a story to unearth here." It's instantly intriguing. You want to know what's going on. 

AMY: Yeah. And I saw this book referred to online as a Regency puzzle. You do feel as if you're working a little bit while you're reading it, because it feels like there's a lot of moving parts, you know, things that are going to be important and tie in.

KIM: Yes. And given that we have these two personas -- there's Miles Lufton and his alter ego, Pronto -- I was also thinking right away of The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy or The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. 

AMY: Yeah, this idea of the alter ego is always a fun set up. I think, um, Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" also plays around with this idea. And coincidentally, I just picked up a book at a used bookshop called The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse. It's a non-fiction book about England's eccentric Fifth Duke of Portland who may have led a secret double life. So I'm really into this whole idea . Even today you think of like Marvel movies. We wouldn't have them without the alter ego concept. Right? 

KIM: Right. Yep. 

AMY: And I think that maybe I had a little too much build up because of all these other ideas that we're talking about. I think it all led me to believe that Troy Chimneys was going to have more of this adventurous swashbuckling element like The Scarlet Pimpernel, you know? I thought Pronto, this alter ego, was either going to swoop in and save the day or he was going to be some sort of nefarious problem that Miles Lufton would have to deal with. But I think what Kennedy's actually going for in this novel is a lot more subtle.

KIM: Yep. You're right. It's more, I'd say, a study of how someone can behave differently in different circumstances or have a different side of their personality come out in the presence of different people. I think we can all be a little bit like that sometimes. And it's actually, we call it code switching these days, right? 

AMY: Yeah. That's a good connection that you make. Um, I never thought of it that way. I mean, do you ever react differently depending on the people that you're with, would you say?

KIM: Absolutely. I mean, I could think of a couple of different things right now. I mean, at work, you know, you have your professional persona and you maybe don't show as much of your personality there depending on where you work. And then I'll say you have your family persona where, you know, you kind of revert back to who you were as a child. So that's just a couple ways I can think of that I probably do that. What about you? 

AMY: Um, yeah, I probably tend to be more shy and introverted in a group setting, whereas with people I really know, I can really open up and be more ridiculous and out there. It's funny because in the book, it's kind of the opposite. This Pronto character, when he's out in public, he's able to be more brash and, um, an entertainer with tons of charisma, you know? But then his true nature when he's by himself or just with a few close friends, he's more introverted. 

KIM: Yes. Yep. 

AMY: So in terms of Miles Lufton, let's talk a little bit about him. He is a parson's son who has kind of a subdued personality, as we just said. He appreciates the simple things in life, and he doesn't have grand ambitions other than to just settle down in the country someday.

KIM: Pronto, on the other hand, has these grand ambitions to enter Parliament, and he has a way with the ladies, as it were. He's a charmer, and you might even say, a rake, right? He basically holds court in a room full of other people and especially loves to wow a crowd with his singing.

AMY: Ladies man, yes. So early in the book, when we're learning about Miles's backstory, there's a passage that hints at his dual nature to come. Kennedy writes as Miles in his journal, "We have suffered all day from a superfluity of icebergs. My father can talk of nothing else. He has been reading an article upon the arctic regions in the gentleman's magazine. It appears that an iceberg exposes but one 10th of its bulk above the surface of the water, concealing nine tenths below for the inconvenience of shipping. Since I never intend to visit the arctic, this peril does not apply."

KIM: Cue the Titanic theme here. 

AMY: Iceberg right ahead! So obviously the iceberg is a metaphor for Miles and Pronto. There's a side that's showing right now, and a side that is submerged, that's going to come out. And there's also a warring tension between these two personas, like sort of the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other shoulder. Kennedy writes Pronto "never expects, never prepares for those sudden bursts of feeling on the part of Miles, which threaten from time to time a revolution, they always take him by surprise, and he is powerless before him. He takes cover when the gale blows up and only ventures forth when it is over. So far, they have done him little damage. Since they invariably blow themselves out, he very properly ignores them." So the Pronto side of the personality kind of thinks he's in charge a little bit I would say, you know, cause he's like "I'm the more confident guy. I'm not too worried about anything Miles is thinking." 

KIM: Yeah, it's interesting because I almost was, like, waiting at points for like a psychopath.

AMY: Yes, I really, really was waiting for Pronto to cause trouble and, and sort of like salivating for it. I really wanted it to happen. And yeah, we should also note that there almost seems to be a third personality in the works, the version that's sort of outside reflecting on both Miles and Pronto. So just like the three paths converging outside of Troy Chimneys, there are technically three sides to his alter ego. And he even says at one point, you know, maybe there's a third guy in here, the kind of observer of both.

KIM: But our protagonist is not the only one in the novel who's keeping certain things shrouded. For example, a young woman enters Miles's life. She's introduced as "the child under the cloak," which is so mysterious and interesting, but there's more than meets the eye to her, too. And that leads us circuitously to the denouement of the whole story.

AMY: Which we won't give away. Um, but also it goes without saying that when it comes to the ladies, Pronto definitely steers the boat. So this poses a problem when Miles begins to fall for a woman whom Pronto would most definitely not approve of. Um, this was my favorite section of the book because you really kind of see the warring sides of Pronto and Miles. And also, I just loved the chemistry between Miles and this female character. 

KIM: Oh, yeah. I think the other fascinating element of the book is that Kennedy is writing this from a male point of view. 

AMY: Yeah, absolutely. I don't read too many Regency novels with a guy speaking. 

KIM: No. 

AMY: And there's actually a passage I highlighted having to do with the sort of social rule that a young lady ought to always have a chaperone in the company of a man. And It kind of illustrates this really well, that she's writing as a man. Uh, so I'll just read this little bit. "To suggest that a man cannot safely be left alone with a woman is to turn his mind, inevitably, to thoughts of what might ensue if he were. It supposes a natural licentiousness to be so near the surface that neither his honor, nor her virtue, should be exposed to the ordeal of propinquity." Like, "What are you saying? I have a dirty mind?" 

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. Totally, totally. Um, it's funny because like the whole issue, um, in the book there's a marriage plot running through it, or the idea of who these women and men are supposed to marry, that is very Jane Austen. And it's really interesting to see the male perspective for that. Cause if you think about like, if Pride and Prejudice had been written from Darcy's perspective, what would that have been like? Um, and so it's just, I think it's really interesting that she decided to do a male protagonist in this particular era. 

AMY: 100%. I think that's the draw for the book. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: Um, and interestingly, Kennedy literally drops Jane Austen into this book when Miles and his young lady friend are debating the merits of two of his favorite novels. So he says that, you know, "My favorite novels are Emma and Mansfield Park." And she objects to the fact that the women in Austen's books are always confined to the parlors. And she adds "that lady's greatest admirers will always be men, I believe, for when they have had enough of the parlor, they may walk out, you know, and we cannot."

KIM: That is such an interesting line in the book and it really stood out to me because typically, you think of the Jane Austen fan as being a woman, but we can walk out of the parlor now. And we couldn't then. 

AMY: That's something interesting to go back and look at. Who was her demographic? Who was reading her? I think it was probably both, but yeah, you don't associate today, uh, Jane Austen with like favorite books for men. 

KIM: Yeah. And given that she wrote a biography of Jane Austen, I feel like, you know, she knows what she's talking about.

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. 

KIM: Yeah. So Amy, we actually compared notes briefly after we each read the book, as we always do. And I know you did have some complaints about the novel. What were the things you didn't like about it? 

AMY: Okay. So the main thing was what we said about expectations. I really was expecting Pronto to be even more dramatic than he was. I frankly didn't always see a huge disparity between Miles and Pronto, to the point where I didn't even sometimes know which one I was dealing with. They didn't feel that distinct. I also felt like all the different documents and characters started to make me confused at times. But I did love Kennedy's voice, and I loved the premise so much that I was willing enough to follow Miles's journey. I just wished more would have happened. So I think it was a good idea. Not entirely sure she executed it as well as she could have, but that's just me. I mean, this book went on to win a James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1953, so people obviously liked it.

KIM: Yeah. I mean, personally, I think my expectations weren't so strong in that direction, and I kind of was willing to be led, um, with her more subtle way of showing that the differences between the characters and how it was much more of a psychological book and not as dramatic, uh, as we might've swashbuckling, as we might've thought that it was initially. But now that we've looked into the book more, talked about it, researched it, I mean, do you feel like you appreciate that aspect of it more? Or do you still feel the same about it? I loved it.

AMY: I feel like I got to the end and I was a little disappointed. Um, there is an interesting play on words that happens with his fate. Uh, I don't even want to get into that because we don't want to say what happens, but, um, she did some clever things, for sure. But yeah, I feel like if you're gonna go with the split personality situation... I used to write for a soap opera magazine, so like that's a world of evil twins and, you know, there is always like crazy drama surrounding that. So, yeah. I think I just expected more.

KIM: You know, even though it is, um, Regency- inspired and it's set in the Regency Era, she does have a feminist perspective on the marriage plot that I think is very interesting, especially for the 50s, too. 

AMY: Honestly, any of our listeners interested in this era and this type of book, they're going to like the book. I'm not saying don't read it. I'm just saying know that it's more subliminal than just like Zorro or the Dread Pirate Roberts and Wesley from The Princess Bride.

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: It's not, it doesn't quite go 

to that. 

KIM: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Um, side note, I learned another P word from reading this book, and that is poplolly. 

KIM: that. I love that word. 

AMY: Um, oh, "he's got a little popularly on the side, has he?" Uh, it's kind of an old-fashioned term for sweetheart or someone you have a fondness for, and it comes from the French poupoulet, which means sweet baby, which is cute. Um, looking up that word led me to a 2005 nonfiction book called Poplollies and Bellibones by Susan Kelz Sperling. And that's a book all about long lost words like this. So of course everyone must be intrigued about what a bellibone is, right? That is also a British word stolen from the French term belle et bonne, which means beautiful and good. So that refers to a woman who is both good looking and has a good heart. So if somebody calls you a bellybone, everyone, you need to take it as a compliment.

KIM: Okay. Um, when you first said pop lollies and belly bones, my mind did go into the wrong place. I did not realize, but thank you for 

AMY: but yet.

KIM: Speaking of dirty minds. Anyway, that's all for today's episode. If you're loving all the book recommendations you're getting from this podcast, consider telling a friend and leaving us a five star review over at Apple podcasts. It means so much to us. 

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. 

101: Sylvia Beach and Ulysses

KIM: Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Kim Askew…

AMY: And I’m Amy Helmes. So we started the summer with a “Literal Beach Reads” episode, and I guess you could say we’re doing another twist on that theme for today’s short mini. Only in this case the “Beach” we’re talking about is Sylvia Beach, the American proprietor of the famous bookshop Shakespeare and Company on the Left Bank in Paris between the two World Wars.

KIM: Yes, she was a remarkable woman and we could devote an entire episode to her life and the literary impact she had, but today we’re going to talk about Beach’s instrumental role in the 1922 publication of a book many deem the single greatest novel in the English language: James Joyce’s Ulysses. We celebrate the book’s centennial this year.

AMY: Yeah, you’ll be noticing a preponderance of Ulysses articles (if you haven’t already, it’s going to be popping up a lot throughout the year.) The book consistently tops (or ranks very high) on those “best books of all time” lists. But Kim, do you think it merits that level of praise or all we all collectively being Punk’d?

KIM: Okay, at the risk of sounding like a complete literary snob, I have to say it does deserve that level of praise. And let me just say, I had the opportunity to read it in a course in grad school with a lot of other students and an instructor guiding us through it, and I found it an absolute joy. It’s like a puzzle that you’re unraveling the whole time. It’s almost like learning another language. It reminds me of when I studied Beowulf in Old English in undergrad. There’s a challenge to it, but it’s so rewarding. So I will say yes. Uh, yeah, again, at the risk of sounding like a snob.

AMY: So for all of those reasons, you just spelled out, I'm gonna say, no, it does not merit being called the “greatest book in the English language,” because can a book that is that inaccessible and really not read by 99% of the general public, really qualify as the greatest? I mean, if you have to have somebody hold your hand and explain it all to you… now, I think I read portions of the book in college with a professor. We didn't do the whole book,  but maybe if I had the opportunity, like you did, to really have somebody walk me through it, I'm sure I would get so much more out of it. And I'm sure it would be revelatory, But I don't know. I just… Virginia Woolf of all people, when she first read it, she hated it and she called it “ultimately nauseating.” Now she later back pedaled from that after everybody else was like, “No, no, no. It's amazing. It's amazing.”

KIM: Yeah, I, I get that feeling, and we've had it with some books that we've discussed where we're just like, “Everyone loves this and we don't.”  I will say, I just want to clarify: it was great having an instructor to run ideas by. I don't think…  I think it's more understandable than you realize.

AMY: Okay. Yeah, because I haven’t actually read the whole thing through, I don’t think.

KIM: And you do have to have, um, an English major's background almost, or a very widely read and wide and deep, um, knowledge of historical literature, because he uses so many references, you know, obvious ones are Shakespeare and things, but there's other things running throughout it too, that, um, you would need to be well read, I think, to fully appreciate it. Anyway…

AMY:  Okay. Listeners, let us know what you think. If you've read it, if you haven't read it – do you think it should be as heralded as it is? We want to know. 

KIM:: So anyway, whether you think Ulysses is pure genius or a total sham, it’s very interesting to me that a woman was actually the first to publish it as a novel. Which gets us back to Sylvia Beach. 

AMY: Yeah, so here’s the story of how it all came about. She and Joyce met at a lunch party at the house of a French poet. (and Ezra Pound was there, too, that day, incidentally.) She recalls being starstruck and said she was frightened and scared at the prospect of meeting the great Irish writer. In an interview later in life, she said: “I imagined Joyce up in the clouds somewhere with the gods. I never thought I could meet him in the flesh.” 

KIM: So although Beach felt like a nobody, upon meeting her, Joyce was very interested to hear about her bookshop. He wrote the address down and began frequenting it. He even signed up to participate in her lending library program. This alone probably had Beach feeling like, “Okay, I can officially die now.”

AMY: But let’s not forget that Beach’s bookshop had already become kind of a hot place, you know. It was a nexus for young writers. If you were an aspiring writer moving to France, you knew to look up Sylvia Beach. We’re talking people like Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein. Shakespeare and Company was their second home in Paris, and I want you to think of it like the “Central Perk” of the Left Bank. (You know, the coffee shop from “Friends?”) So there were comfy lounge chairs and a little kitchenette where refreshments could be had. The writers would hang out there and drink and converse. A lot of authors actually used the bookshop as their postal address!) There’s an anecdote that Hemingway had a letter of introduction when he went to meet Beach for the first time, and he forgot to bring the letter along, but she said she didn’t ultimately need to see it because she was charmed by him right away when he asked her if she wanted to see his war wounds and proceeded to take off his shoe to show her all his scars!

KIM: Oh my god. That’s hilarious. And actually, I’m thinking more like “Cheers” than Central Perk with all these men.

AMY: Oh, yeah. Totally.

KIM: … taking off their shoes to show their scars. Oh my god. So Beach (as Shelly Long, no…) Beach was known as the “Mother Hen” to all these writers, and one thing she remembered is that they were ALL clamoring to read Ulysses….. It was THE most highly-anticipated book at the time, and it was being released in sections in New York in The Little Review magazine. All the young writers were obsessed with it and wanted to read the entire thing.

AMY: Unfortunately, Joyce’s magnum opus was facing huge obstacles in America. The sections being run in The Little Review were deemed obscene and the US Postal Service actually seized the magazine. No American or English publisher wanted to touch Ulysses with a ten-foot pole given all the controversy surrounding it. (Which, of course, made everyone want to read it all the more.) 

KIM: So at the time when Beach met Joyce and he started to frequent her bookshop, he was a bit despondent over the trouble Ulysses was mired in. Beach recalled that he sat there with his head in his hands bemoaning the fact that this book might never see the light of day. So she said to him, “Would you like me to publish it?” He immediately said yes. History in the making! This was a book that took him 7 years to write, that he’d poured his heart and soul into, and he was entrusting it to this inexperienced young woman. She admits she was surprised that he chose her, but she got down to business. It actually took two years of working closely with Joyce in the editing process, working to secure funding and signing up advance subscribers for the book. (Can you imagine?) It finally came out on Joyce’s birthday, February 2, 1922. The initial print run was 1,000 copies. The cost of publishing the book (remember, it was 730 pages!) it nearly wiped her out financially.

AMY: Bear in mind, also, that it would be more than a decade before Ulysses would finally be published in the United States by Random House. So if you were able to get your hands on a copy in Paris and bring it back home to the States in the 1920s, that would be considered very cool cultural contraband. (And actually, Shakespeare and Company helped out its American customers by mailing the book with fake covers so that it wouldn’t get confiscated at the ports. I love that.)

KIM: I know, Amy, that makes me think of the section of Tess Slessinger’s The Unpossessed where the character Elizabeth and her boyfriend are in Paris and in their break-up they argue over who gets to keep their joint copy of Ulysses. 

AMY: Yeah, it makes a lot more sense now, right? Because it was like, “We’re not going to be able to get a copy when we get back home, so who gets to take it with them,” you know? And also, you have to keep in mind that Beach’s father was a Presbyterian minister back in America, so it’s a minister’s daughter publishing material that was considered obscene!

KIM: Yikes.

AMY: She’s a naughty girl! After Ulysses came out, tons of writers started flocking to Beach begging her to publish their erotic fiction, which she found totally annoying. The truth of the matter is, publishing Ulysses wasn’t some huge financial windfall for her, and at the end of the day, publishing books wasn’t really her line of business. She did end up publishing another collection of poetry by Joyce, and by the way, she basically served as his manager, literary agent and personal assistant in addition to being his publisher! It was basically her second full-time job apart from running the book store. She even managed his personal affairs (T.S. Eliot was surprised to discover that when Joyce needed money he wrote to Beach and she arranged it with his bank. Her friend, the French bookshop operator Adrienne Monnier thought Joyce was taking advantage of her and she grew angry with Joyce because of it.) Probably the fact that she’d been so starstruck by him made her willing to do anything he asked of her… I think anyone else might have told him off at a certain point.

KIM: Yeah, whow. That’s a complicated relationship. And interestingly, despite everything Beach did for him, Joyce got into a little bit of a business dispute with her over earnings from Ulysses, so she ended up giving him back  the publishing rights to the novel. He made a small fortune when he sold the book to Random House in 1932. He never gave Beach a cent of that money, we should note, even though she did not strike it rich publishing his book the first time around.

AMY: Hmm. Well, there’s a 1962 British television interview she did which we’ll link to in our show notes. In it she talks a lot about publishing Joyce (she speaks of him only with admiration). So if there had been any bad blood at all, she did not feel it later in life. She also in that interview tells some amazing stories about remaining in Paris when the Nazis invaded during WWII. So at one point, she obstinately refused to sell a German officer her last copy of Finnegan’s Wake. He had seen it in the bookshop’s window, and she said, “No, you’re not going to get it.” He threatened her, and she said, “No, you’re still not going to get it. This is my copy.” She ended up having to hide all of the books from Shakespeare and Company in an empty apartment to keep them safe. And this whole time, the Gestapo was tracking her and they eventually rounded her up along with some other Americans. She was detained at the zoo, of all places, initially, and later she was moved to a prison where she was held for, I don’t know, five or six months I think. Finally she was released and then when Paris was liberated it was none other than Ernest Hemingway, himself, who shouted her name from down the street, having come to find her. He swooped her up in a big hug and spun her round and round. She let him know there were still German shooters upon the roof. And, of course, he took some of his men and took care of it, so to speak. So literally, she was liberated by Ernest Hemingway. Watch the video that we’ll link to, because she has so many great stories like that. And honestly, she is the most adorable little old lady. You will just love her.

KIM: She sounds so brave. I mean, someone has to do a movie about her and her time operating Shakespeare and Company and all this that you’re talking about afterward with the Gestapo and everything. I mean, think about all the talent she fostered over those years… .the stories must be endless!

AMY: Yeah, and she comes across as just really unassuming, you know? Like, it’s not like she’s this badass. I mean, she is badass, but that’s why I say watch the video, because she’s like a sweet old grandma, you know? And honestly, now that I know about her own involvement with the publication of Ulysses and how much she admired Joyce and his work, it makes me have more of an open mind about that novel. I do think it would be interesting to maybe give it a go at this point in my life now that I’m older and perhaps, a little bit wiser. It might be a good time for me to check it out again.

KIM: Yes, although speaking of time, you’re not going to have any to read this book right now. We have too many others.

AMY: Yeah, that would be like my second Clarissa novel undertaking, which I still haven’t finished!

KIM: A Ulysses podcast?

AMY: Maybe that’s what I need to find. I’m sure there are Ulysses podcasts out there.

KIM: Oh, I was suggesting that as our second podcast!

AMY: No! N to the O!

KIM: Okay, all right, all right. You know me, always coming up with ideas. We don’t have to do all of them.

AMY: So that’s all for today’s episode, join us back here next week and don’t forget to share this podcast with your favorite literary-minded peeps. Help us spread the word about these amazing women of the literary world!

KIM: 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.

100. Nora May French with Catherine Prendergast

AMY HELMES: Hi, everybody. Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off forgotten women writers. I'm Amy Helmes, here with my writing partner and good friend, Kim Askew. 

KIM ASKEW: Hey everyone. The writer we're going to be discussing today was a talented American poet who tragically took her own life at a young age only to have her writing commandeered after her death by a not particularly great guy, also a writer, who was once her lover. Sounds like shades of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

AMY: Yeah, no kidding, but this poet, Nora May French, preceded Plath by about 50 years. She's not a name I'd ever heard of until today's guest resurrected her story in a wonderful biography that came out last fall. You guys, I can't rave enough about this book. It's an engrossing saga, and some big names from the West Coast's early 20th century literary bohemian society factor into it, including one of our previous lost ladies on this podcast. It's a story where literary history meets sex scandal meets true crime. Uh, all my favorite things, so basically my life came to a standstill while I was reading this book, and I knew we had to spread the word about it. It's a biography about two women, actually, and while it's terrifically juicy and full of all kinds of twists and turns, it also says so much, I think, about the way in which women get diminished by time, history, and well, let's face it, men.

KIM: I'm already on the edge of my seat for this episode. So let's read the stacks and get started. 

[intro music plays]

KIM: Our guest today is Catherine Prendergast, author of The Gilded Edge: Two Audacious Women and the Cyanide Love Triangle That Shook America. As Kirkus Reviews described it, the book "reads like a dramatic novel fueled by sex, alcohol and the quest for fame and fortune." The Los Angeles Times says "it takes on the cast of a great detective novel." Boy does it. Yeah.

AMY: Yeah, I hate to be so over-the-top about this one, but honestly, it's one of these books that I can't stop raving about. I've told so many people, anybody that I know, especially, that has a knowledge of Carmel-by-the-Sea, I'm like, "You have to read this, it's so good, you guys!"

KIM: Is it an audio book too? Cause I feel like it would be a great audiobook. 

AMY: Yeah, and that's how I read it.

KIM: Oh, you read it as an audio book?

AMY: Yes. And I will say, I would take my dog out on walks and I'd be gone for like three hours, like, "No, I can't go home." Catherine, we should add, is a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And she's been both a Fulbright Scholar as well as the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. Catherine, welcome to the show. We're so happy to have you.

CATHERINE: Thank you! Thanks for asking me.

AMY: Now, Kim and I hadn't heard of this poet, Nora May French, and reading your book actually reminded me of how much I love to read biographies of people I'm unfamiliar with because it's all so new and exciting, right? Like, so Abraham Lincoln, I know what happens, but for this one, it was all a mystery as we were going along, and I loved that. So how did you discover Nora and what made you want to write her story?

CATHERINE: One of the things I like to say is, she wasn't unknown at her time. Far from it. And, you know, while people were like, "Well, why are you writing about these unknown women?" I'm looking at, you know, front page newspapers that have their writing or stories of their events or, you know, their deaths or whatever. So we're talking about people who have been removed from history rather than just, you know, they never were appreciated. And I spend a lot of time taking the reader with me through the archives to see that process of removal, those ripped pages, the crossouts, the missing sheets. So I wasn't looking for, you know, a lost woman poet at all. I was after a sort of broader story about Carmel, but when I found this letter from Nora May French in her inimicable voice --and you really have to read it to understand how her voices drags you in, she was writing her boyfriend a letter about her self-administered abortion. This is 1907. So she brought pills. As she was administering the abortion and I was like, "what kind of woman does this? This is amazing." Because you really don't find first person accounts that many of abortion back then. And then, uh, I noticed a page was missing. Like it ended in mid-sentence, and this was a page that was in archives under her boyfriend's name, Harry Lafler, who really was, you know, kind of a mediocre poet in his day. She far out stripped him in terms of acclaim, but somehow it had made it to the Bancroft at Berkeley. I never got to see Harry's reply. I never got to see what that last page was. And this turned out to be a theme in the women's lives. And particularly Nora, wherever she came up, there was some over the top efforts to obscure this story. So of course that only made me want to look more.

KIM: So in the prologue you described this letter that she's writing. She's taken pills to induce an abortion. Why did you choose to start the book with that particular anecdote?

CATHERINE: Okay. I didn't initially, but as the legislation started rolling through, as I was writing all of this that's rolled up to the present. We're now actually having this conversation post-Roe of, you know, its fall, but it was clearly telegraphed, you know, so for years I knew it was coming. So anyway, I then moved it up to the front of the book. I started there because it is a pivotal point in her life. And one of the things about the book is that reproductive moments for women turn out to be very pivotal points involving life and death and changes of relationships and paths forking where they can't go back. So that sets her on a course. Um, but also because the voice in it grabbed me. And finally, because I just wanted to give a heads up. This is a book about unapologetic abortion -- abortion that actually improved this woman's life and allowed her to continue writing. And I knew there would be people who would pick it up and put it down, you know, just based on that. Um, the first line is "she was two weeks late," so you find out she's deciding to have an abortion on the first paragraph. Um, but I was like too bad.

KIM: Mm-hmm

CATHERINE: I guess those aren't my readers, so... 

AMY: I wanted to say, um, as soon as I started reading your book, I think you even said, but it made me realize that it's almost always going to be more difficult to write a biography about a woman than a man. you actually say in your prologue, I'll quote this: "Archives can resemble graveyards with marked tombs for men that also contain the scattered bones of various women. You have to do a lot of searching to reconstruct women's lives." So can you talk about this a little more? How hard was it for you to piece together this story once you got started?

CATHERINE: Hard. I almost gave up. Um, I didn't think there was enough about the women initially. And so I was writing about the men, but I mean, they're quite, atrocious. So, you know, that's eventually not very sustaining. So I decided to redouble my efforts and oddly enough, a source of this West Coast tale was an hour and a half down the road for me in Abraham Lincoln's, second mention, presidential library because her grandfather was a governor of Illinois. Her great uncle was Henry Wells who started American Express and Wells Fargo. Now you can well imagine then that neither of these people were mentioned in the many obituaries, salacious coverage of her death, because they didn't want to sully those two huge families. And that I found interesting right off the bat, but yeah, I was still concentrated on the Wells side and I went to Wells College and I researched the companies and all those histories and their correspondence. I forgot completely about the governor's side and his family papers being at the Abraham Lincoln Library in Springfield, Illinois. And that's where I was able to reconstruct her youth, and a lot of the first few chapters came through that. That said, there's never as much as there is about the men. And sexual lives about women, they're not something to brag about, they're something to be hidden, right? So a lot of those letters just get, you know, burnt, weeded out. Um, and so you have to really draw the dots in women's lives. And I felt bad about this initially, you know, being such a rigorous scholar, like, how am I gonna, you know, conjecture what happened here? And I had a coffee with a historian, 18th century historian, Dana Rabin , a friend of mine, who said, "You know, you have to, otherwise you write about men over and over again."

KIM: Yeah, yeah. So Amy and I were fascinated by the story of Nora May French's girlhood. Part of it was spent not far from where we live in Los Angeles. So that definitely piqued our interest. She was writing poems already from a very early age, but she was also getting recognized early on for some of that. Can you talk a little bit about that?

CATHERINE: Oh, my gosh, even from age 11, she won this statewide contest for kids, writing an essay about school. I mean, she was a prodigy, immediately, and Charles Loomis , a central figure in the LA literary community, took her under his wing and started publishing her poem when she was a teenager in Out West, or The Land of Sunshine ...it changed titles. And so she was hooked right into the life's blood of the California scene, but quickly exceeded that and started publishing nationally.

AMY: And I think we should point out too, because I think a lot of modern day readers kind of forget this, but poetry was a much bigger genre during her time period, right? You could be like a celebrity poet. People were reading poetry all the time.

CATHERINE: Yeah. I mean, the entertainment at the home would be reading aloud. You know, we are obviously pre-TV. Films are just coming in, you know, and eventually that's going to start replacing literature in people's recreational lives, but at this point, you know, in the newspapers, in the journals, you know, writers are getting paid sums that are larger than what they're paid today to do their work. Any freelance writer today would look at the sums that they were paid then and they would cry, because it would be equivalent, if not more, than what you get paid today.

KIM: Wow. 

AMY: Um, so at one point then, getting back to her personal life, Nora was engaged to a young man, and the whole family was thrilled about this, because they thought, "Okay, he's pretty well off. This is gonna make her financially secure." The problem is she could not go through with the wedding. He was not keen on her continuing to write, so that was a dealbreaker.

CATHERINE: No. He wanted her yeah, to, to be a lady. And, uh, being a lady at that point meant you devoted yourself to her husband. Now denying this comfortable life throws her back into penury, throws her family, you know, which is barely hanging on, into a state in which she can't help them either. It's a huge choice. And she's marching ever forward into her twenties where, you know, spinsterhood awaits, so this is not a casual breaking off.

KIM: That was a big choice for her. Um, can you talk a little bit about some of the poems she was writing around this time and maybe talk about some of the hallmarks of a Nora May French poem?

CATHERINE: So initially the hallmarks she takes from Charles Loomis's inspiration, the old Spanish legacy of Los Angeles. So that's a feature that is woven through her poems. So she's quite aware that white people are supplanting this. And yeah, there's a little bit of glorification of what that is, but nonetheless, it is through there that she sets sort of a scene and then takes her personal life and kind of imbues it. So at the point where she meets the next guy, who's turned out to be married, that she has an affair with, uh, she writes a poem called "The Spanish Girl" and it charts the rise, and inevitable fall of that, um, relationship. And always there is a lyrical quality of nature that is through it. Many of the poets at the time are writing very Victorian, ornate kind of like thees and thous and, you know, freighted with obscure illusions. And she is never doing that. She's not doing that from the start. And the next boyfriend, who's an editor, tries to edit her poetry to make it more Victorian, and she rebels and. 

AMY: Yes, we gotta talk about this because that was my laugh out loud moment in the book.

CATHERINE: So her next boyfriend is the editor of a Western journal in San Francisco. And this is gonna be her bridge to San Francisco, and they're falling in love through the mail. But he's also editing her work. So interspersed with this love letter is one where she's saying Uh-uh. He tried to turn the word wind to wynd. And she's like, "absolutely not." "We will disagree violently on the subject of wind or wynd. I know wynd is the approved version, but I don't know it personally, it isn't wynd I love, but wind — wind. A wynd is something that crawls around moated granges and sends chills up Mariana's spine, a wind whips through the sagebrush and sings in the pines and tries to take you with it, right off the top of the hill." She liked her expression to be uncluttered as raw and forceful as her own life had been. And in case he was considering exercising his editorial prerogative, she informed him, "I will have wind with a short ‘I’."

AMY: Love it.

CATHERINE: And my, my agent made me a coaster with wynd. She was making, you know, when the pandemic started, coasters for her clients with curse words. I was like, I want W Y N D! 

KIM: Love it.

AMY: I just love, "we will disagree violently..." 

KIM: Yeah. 

CATHERINE: Not having it. So, yeah, so she was actually more in step with the times. Walt Whitman is coming in. Jack London with his very stripped down tails of nature. So she's sort of following her own sense of you know, hiking, camping out, being, you know, just a true, the only actual true Bohemian in this book of Bohemians.

AMY: Okay. So we have Nora who has called off her wedding. She's now flitting from sort of lover to lover. Then on the flip side, your book simultaneously tells the story of another woman named Carrie Sterling. And this is the woman who would factor into the cyanide love triangle of your subtitle. So Carrie Sterling opts for the more traditional wifely role that Nora is eschewing. But she does not have happy results necessarily. So tell us a little bit about Carrie and George Sterling. Who were they?

CATHERINE: Okay. So George Sterling was kind of a Yankee blue blood whose parents had founded Shelter Island and Sag Harbor. And, you know, he's just a Mayflower kid all the way back, but a ne'er-do-well who flunks out of college, and his mom packs him off to work with his stockbroker uncle in San Francisco. And there they get into the real estate game that builds the East Bay. Carrie, however, is the daughter of a police captain who dies too young, leaving her and her four siblings and her mom to take in boarders, a common way for widows and single women to make ends meet when there wasn't much other way to make money. So she grows up in this environment closer to the Oakland docks, like around where Jack London was hanging out, um, takes the first chance she gets, though, to work in an office, and it happens to be George Sterling's office. So she decides very early with the experience of poverty, um, that she's marrying up. And George Sterling is, you know, he's good looking. If you've got that sort of addiction to potential where you look for the sad sack boyfriend that your love can make pure, that's sort of what happens. But it doesn't work out for her because George is a philandering drunk. 

KIM: He's awful. I mean, the men in general are pretty terrible.

CATHERINE: Yeah. Somehow I haven't been invited by the Jack London Society to give a talk either. 

KIM: I wonder why! I was disgusted with him after reading this.

CATHERINE: Yeah. Yeah. It's another side you find when you go at it through the women's lives, because they're trying to navigate this world that the men are making. And so if you're writing about the women, you're relieved of the burden of trying to make these men more presentable than they were.

KIM: Oh, I love that. Yep.

AMY: Okay. So George Sterling, he's a poet writing in all the flowery Victorian ways that you described that are kind of outmoded, but he doesn't kind of realize that he's on the tail end of all that.

CATHERINE: No cause he has Ambrose Bierce telling him he's a genius, and Ambrose Bierce is a huge deal. You know, Bierce, Twain, Brett Harte, they sort of built the West in terms of, you know, its literary foundations in San Francisco in the same way Loomis did down there. So he's got this guy telling him he's the shit. So he's thinking, "All I need to do is to quit this realty job and write poetry full time and Carrie, if you loved me, you would support me."

AMY: And she tried

CATHERINE: She did. 

AMY: Um, so he has earned the nickname King of Bohemia, or maybe it's self appointed nickname. I don't know. 

CATHERINE: No, he earned it. 

AMY: Okay. Okay. But that also brings us then to this Bohemian community Carmel by the Sea, which, tell us a little bit more about when, you know, they decide they're going to set up, partly for his realty schemes, um, partly because he fancies himself a Bohemian. They're going to set up and create this new community. 

CATHERINE: So you've got to understand California at this point is going through a land craze. You know, the Gold Rush is gone, right? The train is hooked up, though. And Oakland is the terminus of the Transcontinental Railway. So suddenly any strip of California real estate is hot. Now, the Pacific Improvement Company, which is the big four railroad, their land development arm of, the big railroad barons, they put a hotel in Monterey Peninsula, and they had a train going right to it and baths and a racetrack and, you know, sumptuous gardens and everything like that. Now going down the Monterey Peninsula there's Carmel, sitting at the bottom. This beautiful strip of beach, but with really nothing on it. And successive people had tried to make a go of it, but finally, this one lawyer in The Bohemian Club who knows Sterling buys it up. His idea is to make basically Monterey, you know, make a sumptuous wealthy resort that the train will go right too, because right then it sounds like the train's gonna go all the way to Carmel and then boom, this cheap, nowhere real estate that's hard to get to, people will just come right down. So he buys it, but people aren't coming. It's only in desperation that he settles on the Bohemians as a scheme to pull people down, because the flashy, you know, ads he's buying aren't working. This is what brings George Sterling and Carrie Sterling to Carmel. They're paid. They're paid to recruit. 

KIM: Yeah, it's a crazy story. I will never think of Carmel the same way again after reading about this.

CATHERINE: Well, it was interesting to write about it when you're in Carmel and you know, Carmel, as it is now, is a very wealthy resort area, but it's also one that pays homage to its Bohemian founders. But quite frankly, the Bohemians were just a short term, repeat, short term plan to get that, draw in the wealthy buyer.

KIM: Yeah. So can you talk about the people that George Sterling sort of began bringing down there?

and 

CATHERINE: Right. So as King of Bohemia, so to speak, he was the center of this group of writers at Coppa's in San Francisco, a restaurant where they all gathered. And he'd pick up the check, because he was the one with money because of his real estate gig. Um, so he worked through that crowd, sometimes a really hard sell, just like he would selling Piedmont real estate: "It's a thousand bucks, but it'll go fast. Write me right away if you wanna buy this, da, da, da," together with descriptions of what it's doing for his life. "Poetry, just rolling out of him! Salubrious breezes! His marriage restored!" You know, he's trying everything to get people to come down and buy. Meanwhile, he's actually renting.

KIM: And then the earthquake happened, right?

CATHERINE: Yeah. So while George was struggling, starting in 1905, to get his friends to buy, in 1906, the earthquake demolishes most of San Francisco, bringing a bunch of people then, and suddenly Carrie's running a version of her boarding house again, you know, to people. A refugee camp in Carmel, um, and some wind up staying, some go elsewhere. The Carmel community really sort of kicks off. The legacy of it starts from then.

KIM: Yeah. And, um, basically Carrie is like working super hard, doing all the things she didn't really want to do while George is running around... 

CATHERINE: Sleeping with whoever...

KIM: Sleeping with whoever, you know, just presenting this whole Bohemian lifestyle, but she's actually keeping all of it going in the background. And then, um, Charmian Kittredge London actually shows up, which our listeners will probably remember we did an episode on her last year, so she starts factoring into the story as well. And we should point out that Carrie Sterling wasn't too keen on Charmian, right?

CATHERINE: Well, so it was a huge scandal when London left his first wife and then married again. And Carrie knew a lot, because Jack London and George Sterling were best friends. So you know, Carrie was also friends with Jack's first wife, so she watched, you know, all of this unfold and she knew that it wasn't as innocent as they portrayed, that these relationships overlapped. And uh, she wanted George to denounce Jack, and he wouldn't, and she blamed Jack in his dissolute ways for, you know, George's increasing alcoholism and philandering. So her bid to go to Carmel was all about trying to save her marriage, but in the end, she does not wind up getting away from this crowd. Um, it sort of drags with him. That said, Jack London never buys in Carmel. He buys his own ranch, as we all know, in Sonoma, and the friction between his wife and George's wife is a lot of why.

AMY: I think it's funny though, that George basically used the Londons as like an optics PR scheme. So they had the Londons come down for a weekend to Carmel and took a bunch of photographs as if they were gonna be buying there, um, and the Londons just sort of went along with it, knowing like, "Yep, no, we're not staying here, but whatever." 

CATHERINE: They are getting something out of it too, though, because Jack really couldn't come up with his own plots. He took them from life. So whole books are with the thinly veiled Bohemian crowd, you know, as their subject, George is in three of them. So he's getting something out of it too. But yeah, no, definitely. If you Google photographs of old Carmel, the one of these four writers with Jack central on the beach comes up like that, but he was just down there on a weekend, just for that shoot. 

AMY: Yeah. "And if he's hanging out here, don't you want to be here too?" Sort of thing. 

CATHERINE: Precisely. Meanwhile, other photographs show Carrie in the background, feeding them, being ignored. Um, Charmian's diaries in the Huntington, you know, describe the trip. She always wrote "lolly" in her diary as code for having sex, right? So I'm thinking about like, you know, Carrie has to clean these sheets, you know? She didn't have a laundry, you know, and she hates her, you know? So like it's the worst thing. She made George promise she'd never have to entertain this woman, and like all of George's other promises, that one is broken.

AMY: Well, we do have a soft spot in our heart for Charmian, too, having done an episode on her, but I will say it's, you know, it's hard to even find fault with anything Charmian and you know, their little tension, given the antics of all the men in the group. Uh, and I love that you just sort of break into the narrative at times to acknowledge like, "Okay, can we all just say for a second what assholes they all are?"

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: Like, needs to say it and you did!

CATHERINE: All these women are put on collision courses, Charmian and. Nora and Carrie, by their limited choices that are exactly, you know, bolstered by the men who have paid no consequences for the general sexual liberation of the time. Meanwhile, Charmian goes through a terrible birth, loses her daughter, a later miscarriage. Another friend of theirs, you know, dies in childbirth. There is the cost of this written all the way throughout, but over and over the women pay it. The women pay it socially, physically, career-wise, in every single way. 

KIM: Yeah. They're all working in this system that they didn't create.

CATHERINE: It's patriarchy. 

KIM: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. 

CATHERINE: They don't have the choices women have today. And even when they take it, you know, you see uh, the consequences of the rash choices they take to get out of this system bring them down.

KIM: Yeah. And we've kind of said that if there's one true villain from this book, it's got to be George Sterling. 

CATHERINE: Unquestionably. 

KIM: I mean, how did Nora May French end up coming into his orbit, and how did she fall into this romantic liaison with him?

CATHERINE: So Harry Lafler, the editor that she met in San Francisco, was also George Sterling's good friend. Particularly, you know, Jack London was not in the picture early on. Harry Lafler was there first. They worked together at the realty syndicate. They wrote poetry together and at Coppa's restaurant they went trolling for, you know, lays together. I , I don't know any other way to put it! So they would like stand next to a woman's table and read sonnets they contemporaneously composed about their beauty. But you know, they're like running through women like tissue and they're both married, right? So when Nora goes to San Francisco to be with Harry Lafler, he's still actually married. Um, so eventually, uh, circumstances I don't wanna reveal wind up with their breaking up. And at this point, Nora is working for the phone company, another factory job. Her poetry is getting published more broadly and she wins a huge contest, et cetera, et cetera, but she is poor. And the 1907 crash is making employment scarce. There's strikes. The trains aren't working on time. Remember this is post earthquake. So there is just destitution everywhere. There's even Bubonic Plague, you know, making a march. So she is penniless and has no place to go. Meanwhile, Carrie and George, who know them, are like, "Okay, we need to kick our tenants out in our cabin out back who are just being like annoying. So this is a good excuse. Come down and stay with us for a while before you go off to your next plan." And she has a next plan at that time, but then circumstances don't pan out. And, uh, it's very clear, um, that from George's correspondence and from the events that she and George had become involved, and no surprise, they are two of the most sexually incontinent people in the book. So.

AMY: Um, okay, taking a little segue for a moment from the story. I want to pause to talk about your process of writing the biography, because you sort of tell us as you go along about your research. And there's a moment where you take us inside the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, where you're looking up records. Kim and I are big fans of the Huntington, obviously. Yeah, it's gorgeous, but we've never actually gotten to go inside where you were doing your research. So that was wonderful to read about. Um, but I wanna talk about that sort of oh my god moment with the ripped letters that...

CATHERINE: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, so the Huntington is a relic of robber baron money. CP Huntington's widow, um, it was her money that started it, the gardens, the restaurant, the museum, and then the part that most people don't go into, which is the research collections of American, largely Western, literature. So they have 66,000 items from Jack London. George Sterling, a lot of his letters were there, and I found in them, a poem that Nora had written on ledger paper, which was odd because this is unlike any other paper she ever wrote on. And I was trying to establish, you know, the smoking gun between her affair with George, who was at that point still working at the realty syndicate though their offices moved to Oakland, and I find a poem of his written on ledger paper. And then I line it up. Both of them are ripped halves, and I line it up and realize the same sheet of paper.

KIM: Whoa! Dun dun dun! 

CATHERINE: You know, and, and so was likely composed in his office... what was she doing there, et cetera, et cetera? So that sent me on the hunt for all the different coordinations of seeming coincidences. She of course was involved with yet another married man. He, of course, was head over heels in love with her. And you find out so much more after she dies about how much and why. And then she moves in, and this is apparently not the last time he's going to try to move a love interest into Carmel, as you'll find out later.

KIM: So jumping ahead to Nora's shocking suicide. She allegedly drank cyanide at around midnight one night in 1907. She was just 26 years old. Carrie Sterling was the only one home when it happened. Catherine, as you write in your book about Carrie's testimony of what happened that night, it is basically "a bananas account." Do you want to walk us through it? What happened?

CATHERINE: Okay. Right. So, George is out of town. He was frequently out of town because he was still working at the realty syndicate while ostensibly living full time as a Bohemian poet in Carmel. And it's, it's important to realize all these people were living these double lives. So they had a journal, a diary, that they kept, and it was kind of a public document because people who stayed there when they were out of town would fill in the weather, you know? So I knew like when it was rainy, when it was not, you know, it was great, like, day- by- day, who visited, what they ate, attempts to go hunting and mussel capturing. So, so much of the color of the book is out of that very detailed journal. But, um, the weeks he's gone, Carrie's hand takes over and she's describing how much fun she and Nora are having together, going out dancing and this, that, and the other. And then there's an entry, "Nora and I had toast on the porch, another beautiful day, 10:00 AM." And then George's hand finishes out the entry, "Phyllis, which was Nora's nickname, drank potassium cyanide at midnight and died." You know, basically like this shocking juxtaposition. So I'm like, "What the hell happened?" So I then go to the newspapers, which are very yellow tabloids, and find that her account, you know, a detailed account that she tells a friend is accurate and find that, yes, she's the only person home, um, that she heard Nora get up, go to the bathroom, come back. She said, "Are you okay?" And then heard something that sounded like hysterics and then goes over and sees her basically having, you know, almost seizure and flushing the cheeks, and like, foam and stuff. She tries to warm her up for an hour after she's already dead. And then she realizes, after an hour, that she's dead and then she goes running for help. And I'm like, This doesn't make none of it. I mean, that's just a tip of the iceberg on what doesn't make sense to me. And I invite the reader to try to pull it together themselves. My dream is for book clubs to have knock-down drag-outs about what actually happened that night. 

KIM: Yeah. 

CATHERINE: Beyond the newspapers, there's a lot of cleanup and letters afterwards where they're explaining things to their friends and they're hiding where the actual funeral is. And it's just crazy.

AMY: Yeah, something doesn't add up. And a, a note to listeners, Nora's death occurs about midway through The Gilded Edge, so there are still a lot more twists and turns remaining in the story. Um, we're gonna leave that all up to you when you read it, but what we can say, and, it's mentioned in the first couple pages of the book, so it's not a huge spoiler, Carrie and George both go on separately to kill themselves in later years by cyanide poisoning.

CATHERINE: And also what's said early on in the book is that Nora's death is so sensationalized it kicks off copycat suicides in New York where people are found dead with her poem in their pocket. So, um, it is this weird Goethe-esque, you know, phenomenon. Uh, and so as much as Carrie and George are trying to walk away from this mess, it keeps coming back. And so Nora, although she dies midway, haunts the rest of this tale and revelations keep coming out.

AMY: And the, the copycat suicides among random strangers points to the fact of just how much of a celebrity poet she was and how well known she was, as you said.

CATHERINE: Yes. And her poetry really called to the young and the aspirational and the romantic and her beauty, she was gorgeous, you know, was splashed all over the newspapers as well. So you're seeing really kind of a, a femme fatale treatment of her. And one thing I point out is that the manner of her death begins to eclipse her life. And that's part of what buries her as well.

AMY: Um, and then we see that the men start to recognize the blame that they've had to an extent, you know. This was a woman that they had been falling all over themselves to sleep with. Um, many of them were trying to sleep with her, some, some succeeded, some didn't. Um, so the writer James Hopper, who was one of those men who tried, he wrote to his pal, George Sterling saying, "She certainly did us, George, the swift-souled one. She was playing toy with us tangle-footed blunderers, and suddenly with a dodge and dart eluded us forever." Somehow they're the victims, you know, in this letter. 

CATHERINE: Yeah, absolutely. Everybody just sees Nora as a game. But over the next year, Hopper has something of revelation and realizes not only, um, a portion of the blame, but also that Carrie and George haven't told him everything.

AMY: And yeah, so he says in a later letter to George, he writes, "We thought we had the lifeboat out, but we were only hitting her on the head with our oars." So as you said, he kind of has a realization like, "Wait, she was the victim. Oh my God." 

CATHERINE: Yes. And I was one of the people with the oars. 

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Although in a sense, I mean, we saw that he was hopeful that maybe he could have a relationship with her, although he was married too, but, um, 

CATHERINE: Separated, but yes.

AMY: You kind of were like, maybe he would've been the good guy. I don't know because yes, he did come across as better than the other gents in the book.

CATHERINE: James Hopper is like, if you're gonna like one guy, he's the guy to like, because he does eventually come around. And so he, I think, did make good over his life, which George didn't bother to do.

KIM: Nora's ex, Harry Lafler, ended up putting together a book of her poems for publication after her death. And you say this ended up creating a distorted portrait of Nora. It must have been galling for you to see how the men in her life ended up overshadowing her, especially since you argue that her poetry was better than theirs. 

CATHERINE: Okay. You're not supposed to read the reviews, but there's one, two star Amazon review of a guy who's just like, "You have not credited enough what these men did for her poetic career." Putting her in the context of a neophyte, you know, to these men and so the whole that, you know, this Bohemian male, pioneer spirit has, has this modern day antecedent, and if you run afoul of them, they come at you. It's really funny that they still want to, in order to elevate the men they still admire and their poetry that they find spirit with, they have to, you know, keep this going, the very kind of selective comprehension of where the women were in this. Keep it going.

KIM: Right, right. And I'm sure that having spent so much time getting to know both Carrie Sterling and Nora May French, you probably hold a special place in your heart for each of them.

CATHERINE: Initially not Carrie, I want to be clear. 

KIM: Okay. 

CATHERINE: Nora, instantly. Carrie, not so much. It was only in researching her childhood where I began to understand it. And my uncle read a very early draft and he liked her more than anyone. And I that's, when I realized, she's my grandmother, who grew up in industrial working house in Ireland and then moved to her mom's boarding house sort of situation and, was never going to be be poor again, you know, and had no patience for pretense and, uh, glamorizing that. So, you know, all these parties with Bohemians dressing up as hobos and drinking, you know, beer out of tomato cans on the beach when they're having champagne in San Francisco Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, um, she would've not liked that. And Carrie's letter shows her increasing frustration. So eventually, yes, I do like her. Plus anyone who's had to, you know, survive being in an alcoholic home recognizes a story of really trying everything to get this man back on track.

KIM: Yeah. She really did. She really did. 

AMY: I understand that, um, kind of dichotomy of admiring her kind of stoicism and at the same time being so frustrated with her, for sticking around and being like, "You're putting up with it. You're basically permitting his behavior." So yeah, there's two sides of it where you're like, you're angry with her, and then also you, you have to be like, all right, she was really trying to make this marriage work and do whatever she could and be a supportive wife. 

CATHERINE: And it never got better. Just a word to you out there. It 

AMY: no.

CATHERINE: Those of you who were still, you know, afflicted by the addiction to potential, you know, get over it.

KIM: Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. So I was wondering if there was a particular poem or two of Nora's, maybe you'd want to share with us if you have any particular favorites or pieces that kind of give us a picture of who she was as a person.

CATHERINE: Uh, yeah, I'm gonna read the one called “Ave Atque Vale” which means "hello, goodbye." And she had submitted it supposedly the week before she died, but, um, she had composed it many years earlier. There is a poem “Ave Atque Vale” from Swinburne that is clearly, when you read it, has some influences in it. So I'll read part of it and you can see how her sort of sense of nature and trying to find a piece through nature that isn't through the sort of human interactions in her world, is part of it. Also the sadness that's sometimes, um, mixed with joy. Uh, there's a lot of bitter sweetness: 

Now nothing is the same, old visions move me,

I wander silent through the waning land,

And find, for youth and little leaves to love me,

The old, old liken crumbling in my hand. 

What shifting films of distance fold you, blind you, 

This windy eve of dreams. I cannot tell; 

I know through some strange mist they grope to find you–

These hands that give you Greeting and Farewell.

 And that's very much, um, her style. There's a sort of lyrical quality, a direct quality, uh, always taking inspiration from birds, flowers, uh, leaves, and always struggling with some interpersonal relationship on top of that. And there's also a perceptiveness that's always tied to the land that the Carmel River is dwindling. It's being overdrawn through development. And she sees this, you know, she sees the waning of California taking place in front of her eyes as so many of us do who wind up living.... you know, I grew up in New Jersey in the seventies and every woods became a new development, and that's her experience of moving through the land. And so she's kind of capturing that side too, which I don't think you pick up on unless you know the history there.

AMY: You also talk in your book about Nora being, you know, the quintessential "new woman," but then also pointing out that all of these new women at this time period who were seeking autonomy and freedom, there weren't any corresponding "new men" to help them along. And I had never really thought about that, but that makes perfect sense because what kind of strides can women make as they're evolving if the men are not evolving alongside them? And we are still seeing that today. We talked about Roe at the top of the show, but it's these male elected officials overwhelmingly who are still making the decisions, and not in our favor.

CATHERINE: A hundred percent. I hope, you know, people learn from this book that, um, it's always a step forward, you know, sometimes two, three steps back. All the women in this book are new women: Mary Austin, Carrie Sterling, Nora, they all would fall under that category, Carrie, for working in an office. Charmian for riding horses. Um, Nora for not getting married. But as I was reading all this new women literature, I was like, "Where's the new man?" There's no entity that's ever called the new man and that I think is, is the progressive curse. People think progress is inevitable and, uh, it's not. We absorb a lot of books that celebrate women's history and their accomplishments and rightfully bring them to the fore and give them acknowledgement in the day, but if we're not mourning what is lost, what creativity is lost through this, we are doing a service to history, that there's a lot to mourn, as well.

KIM: Mm-hmm. absolutely. Listeners do yourself a favor and go pick up a copy of The Gilded Edge. It's so intriguing, and we barely scratch the surface of the story in this brief time. So you'll love reading Catherine's more thorough account. It's actually coming out in paperback in October. And Catherine, we are delighted you could join us for an episode to share your knowledge of Nora May French. Thank you. 

CATHERINE: Thanks for all the great questions!

KIM: So that's all for today's podcast. By the way, this marks our 100th episode if you can believe it. We've put a lot of effort into putting out weekly content over the last two years. And if you're a fan, tell us so, by leaving us a glowing five-star review over at Apple podcasts or wherever you listen.

AMY: Yeah, your enthusiasm and feedback, you guys, is what really keeps us going. And we're excited to catch up with you again next week. Bye, everybody. 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. 

99. Mabel Walker Willebrandt — First Lady of Law

KIM: Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Kim Askew…

AMY: And I’m Amy Helmes. Today we’re going to talk about a lost lady of law enforcement. Her name was Mabel Walker Willebrandt and she was the Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 1921 until 1929. That made her the highest-ranking woman in the federal government at the time and, you could argue, the most famous woman in America who wasn’t a movie star.

KIM: Oh my god, this is so cool! As part of her role at the Justice Department, she went up against some of the biggest bad guys in the country. For a woman to have this much power back in that time period… I mean, we probably don’t really have to explain how unusual that was, right? She landed the job at the age of 32, only 9 months after women got the right to vote!

AMY: Yeah, that’s so surprising to me, and also, 32 still to this day seems surprisingly young for a role like that, right? Not that she wasn’t qualified or capable, but she was only five years out of law school when she landed this job.

KIM: Wow.

AMY: However, it’s almost laughable once you think about what her role actually was at the Justice Department. So she took on the job and was subsequently tasked with enforcing the Volstead Act, otherwise known as the National Prohibition Act. (The 18th Amendment was passed in 1919.) She was tasked with making sure nobody was drinking booze.

KIM: Okay, so you see… you’ve got to laugh here! Let the woman do that impossible and thankless task! The job no one else actually wants, right?

AMY: Right. Like, “I get to be the buzzkill, gee, thanks, fellas.” But lest you think Mabel Walker Willebrandt was some sort of prude who hated alcohol, no — she personally opposed Prohibition (as did most Americans… it was an extremely unpopular law and she liked an occasional glass of California wine, you know, so I’m sure she was kind of annoyed that this was going to be her scope of work, but she took her task of defending the Constitution seriously. It earned her nicknames like, “Deborah of the Dry,” “Mrs. Firebrand'' and “Prohibition Portia.” 

KIM: Oh, good Lord.

AMY: Now, she did actually become a teetotaler upon taking the job because she felt like she had to walk the walk if she was going to talk the talk. She wasn’t going to be a hypocrite about it. But she didn’t let anybody intimidate her, and she didn’t let anything stop her when it came to doing her duty, including the fact that she was nearly deaf (a fact most people were unaware of at the time.) She wore her hair in such a way that it hid the hearing aids she wore.

KIM: Wow. She sounds amazing. So what do we know about her life prior to landing this post? What’s her story?

AMY: She was born Mabel Walker in a sod dugout in Kansas in 1889. 

KIM: Cue the “Little House on the Prairie” theme music.

AMY: [hums it]. Her childhood was of the sort you’d read about in a Willa Cather novel.  And anybody who’s read those novels knows that it was a sort of brutal and demanding existence. Not quite the Michael Landon, “idyllic…” you know. Her pioneer parents were constantly moving from one failed farm and business venture to another. She was not raised to be “soft,” so to speak. One of her earliest memories was of a flash flood that overtook the family’s tent. So yeah, they lived in a tent at a certain point while they were being kind of itinerant. Her mom flipped over a kitchen table to serve as a raft until the water receded. She learned perseverance and determination from an early age in that life. 

KIM: Oh, wow. I have to say, my great, great grandmother came west in a covered wagon, and I did not inherit that pioneer stock, I don't think. I wish that maybe I was a little bit more… anyway, that's an incredible childhood. Wow. 

AMY: Do you know you can actually take vacations where you go in a covered wagon? Have you seen that?

KIM: Um, no, but I don't think I would want to do it even… 

AMY: I think it would be fun. I would totally do it. I mean, knowing that it would end. 

KIM: Yeah. As long as there's reading time built into the.. 

AMY: Yeah, you're sitting in that wagon all day bumping around and you've got nothing else to do. 

KIM: It probably has good biscuits. Anyway, we're getting off on it.

So back to Mabel, she started formal schooling at the age of 13. Her questioning nature later got her into a bit of trouble. She was actually expelled from a Presbyterian College for questioning the doctrine of the virgin birth. 

AMY: Understandable.

KIM: Yeah, exactly. I mean, everyone was thinking it anyway.

Eventually she embarked on a teaching profession, where she really knew how to lay down the law quite early. There’s one anecdote in which she threatened to discipline a boy with a rod and he came at her with a knife. She managed to wrestle the knife away from him and followed it up with what she described as “an enthusiastic licking.”

AMY: Don’t mess with Ms. Walker! She eventually moved to Pasadena in Southern California, where she served as, I think she was teacher and principal of an elementary school while at the same time attending law school at the University of Southern California. So I don’t know if she was doing night classes or what, but she was working her butt off! She became the first female public defender in Los Angeles with a special focus on prostitution cases, in particular. She was really irritated by the fact that the “johns” were rarely brought to justice while the women were taking all the punishments. She ended up representing about 2,000 prostitutes in police court. And one of the things she would do was she would kind of insist that if the women were going to be prosecuted, their Johns needed to be there also. So in that sense, she was kind of working to get, you know, a little bit of equity in what was happening here.

KIM: Yeah,  as it's still being worked on today anyways. So how did she end up working for the federal government?

AMY: Okay, so her predecessor in the assistant U.S. attorney general job was Annette Abbott Adams. She was the very first woman to hold the job, but she didn’t last long there. (She was only there for about a year.) So getting back to what we said earlier about women having recently gotten the right to vote, a lot of Republican politicians were eager to please all these new women voters, which they thought they could do by appointing another woman to replace Annette Abotte Adams. So Mabel Walker Willebrandt was starting to get noticed by progressive Republicans in California and they urged President Harding to consider her for the job. She did worry at the time that she was just being hired as a “token woman.”

KIM: Understandably. She was the token woman!

AMY: She was. And they were going to give her the crappiest task on earth. But she was also quoted as saying, “I am enough of a feminist to hold the opinion that there is no professional or public duty which a woman is not capable of performing.” So there! (She didn’t say “so there.”

But I also should mention, she’d never even planned on being a prosecutor, that kind of role. She had always enjoyed being a defense attorney and ideally what she wanted to do was move into civil law. So when she took the Assistant Attorney General job she’d never even actually prosecuted a single case, which is crazy.

KIM: That is crazy, wow. So she met with President Warren Harding as a formality before taking the job and he joked that she had only one actual shortcoming: her youth. And Willebrandt assured him that was something she’d outgrow. 

AMY: Oh, yeah, she’s got the political parlance. 

KIM: Yep.

AMY: “I can give a soundbite for the press that sounds good.” And yeah, she did, she really was good with all that stuff. So she earned the nickname “the Queen” by her staffers and she did receive the same salary as members of Congress, which I think is really nice. The law enforcement agents out in the field working under her orders were known as “Mabel Men.” The press, meanwhile, was too focused on the dresses she wore or her hairstyle du jour, more worried about that than her actual professional qualifications, which she hated, or you know, anything she was actually doing on the job. So there was even an article admiring the loveliness of her hands! I mean, that’s so stupid! She once said, “Why the devil they have to put that ‘girlie girlie’ tea party description every time they tell anything a professional woman does, is more than I can see.” (Speaking of her appearance, I’m going to do it for a second because I think she bears a resemblance to Angelina Jolie if you google her. Check that out and see if you agree. I think I could see Angelina playing her in the biopic.)

KIM: And so with all this, naturally, reporters were also inquisitive about her love life, too, the details of which she always kept under wraps. The skinny on that is, she was married to a man named Arthur Willebrandt, but they had been estranged for about five years when she took the job with the Justice Department, which is also interesting.

AMY: It’s very interesting. I think this was a guy she had met when she was first a teacher in wherever she was in middle America. I think he was a principal of a school she was teaching at, and they got married, but it sounds like that marriage fell apart because she felt like she was the one making all the sacrifices. She was the one who’d worked to put both herself AND him through law school, and she just felt he wasn’t pulling his weight. So she was done. At one point later she wrote that a wife should be concerned with “the preservation of her freedom, her self-respect her intellectual and executive attainments, her economic independence….finding the best outlet for her energies, finding the best protection for her spirit, and establishing a basis of mutual understanding with her husband in order to have both ‘a child’ and ‘a job’ if she wants both.” How modern is that?

KIM: That is so modern! I mean, and once again, we’re talking about the same things now. It’s just so crazy. She is amazing. So in addition to keeping mum about the details of her personal life, she also really didn’t want her colleagues or the country at large to know about her deafness. It’s not entirely clear to us what led to her hearing loss, but it was definitely something that added to her professional challenges, as you could imagine. 

AMY: Yes. In a letter to her parents she wrote, “The dread shadow of deafness all but submerges me. For Mama and Papa, dear, when from every quarter and indirectly… I hear the most extravagant marvelings at my capacities over the way I handle myself before the court, and when presiding over conferences, that surge of bitterness rises even at their praise when I think, ‘Damn you, you think that’s good, do you know what I could do if I weren’t struggling under the most horrible handicap that you do not guess.” Which gets us to our next point, really, which is, you know, what was she doing? She was not just some government paper-pusher. No. To put it bluntly, she was going toe-to-toe with some of the most brazen mobsters in America!

KIM: Yeah! I mean, enforcing Prohibition, it meant going after all kinds of bootlegging operations and big-time rum-runners and prosecuting the likes of crime bosses like George Remus and Al Capone (among many others) She was NOT intimidated by these guys or their goons! (And I bet those guys hated being taken down by a woman.)

AMY: Yeah, and she did so using pretty clever tactics, because the Volstead Act itself – the thing she was supposed to be enforcing – was kind of toothless and almost impossible to actually enforce. So she came up with this workaround of going after the bootleggers for income tax evasion. And that’s how she got them several times.

KIM: Oh my gosh! I know that that's how they also continued to get people in the mafia later, even. So I didn't know she actually started that. That is so cool.

AMY: I don't know if it was specifically her idea. I think it may have been, I think she was like, “What are we going to do? And  this was the means to do it.”

 KIM: That’s incredible. So in his documentary on Prohibition, Ken Burns spends some time diving into Mabel Walker Willebrandt. It’s easy to find clips from that online if you want to check it out. And if anybody watched the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, you’ll probably remember Mabel Walker Willebrandt was one of the characters in that show, too. 

AMY: Yeah, that’s a really good one to binge if you’re looking for something new. They have a lot of the real-life characters, the real-life gangsters, and Mabel. Also, I read a great book which talks about the crazy cat-and-mouse games Mabel had to run with the larger-than-life bootlegger out of Cincinnati, George Remus. It’s a book called The Ghosts of Eden Park by Abbott Kahler who previously wrote the book under the pen name Karen Abbott in case you want to check out a copy. So thanks to Kahler and that book, actually, because it basically inspired this episode… It’s a thrilling story centered around Remus’s murder of his wife, and it gives a much fuller picture of Willebrandt’s uphill battles to take him down throughout the years.

KIM: So despite the many challenges (and the lack of support, both publicly and within the government) Willebrandt was really good at her job. She stood up for herself — she didn’t always follow orders if she thought they were dumb. She also saw a lot of corruption in the government and FBI ranks, and she was often infuriated when her colleagues refused to take her expert advice. She thought her boss was kind of an idiot.

AMY: He probably was. Actually, I love this quote of hers… she said this at a dinner for the League of Women Voters In 1924. “Corruption in high places is only a boil on the body politic; it will recover. Women always are the wielders of the soap.”

KIM: I love that! She was attempting to clean up Washington — which still hasn’t happened!

AMY: Nope. Eventually she officially divorced that husband, which the press had a field day reporting on, as you can imagine. She did have another suitor at this time; a man named Fred Horowitz (and Kim, you’ll love this) He is the guy who built the Chateau Marmont here in Los Angeles, which we love!

KIM: Yes, we love the Chateau Marmont.

AMY: We used to go there, right? We should go again.

KIM: We should. 

AMY: Fred wanted to marry her, but she wasn’t ready to jump back into marriage. Instead, one of the first things she decided to do after the divorce was adopt a baby from an orphanage. She named her Dorothy. So she took on single motherhood!

KIM: I just couldn’t love her more. She’s very modern and incredible. After Herbert Hoover was elected president, Mabel sort of assumed that she was a shoe-in for the position of attorney general — she had helped campaign for Hoover, after all. But he ended up choosing someone else instead (a man.) And this felt like a slap in the face to Willebrandt, who ended up resigning.

AMY: I can’t blame her. And honestly, she was there for a good many years too. She was probably just ready to move on if she wasn't going to get promoted. So after leaving the Justice Department she moved back to California and opened a private practice, and what’s really interesting is that one of her first clients was an association of California grape growers who made table wine under a loophole of the Volstead Act! (So, irony!) She was now helping people who were doing the very thing that she was just fighting against,  which caused her to be criticized as being a trader to the prohibition movement. And you know what? She did not care.

KIM: Hey, as long as the table wine was good, right?

AMY: Talk to the hand, people. She went on to represent some aviation companies which led her to befriend the aviator Amelia Earhart, which I love. I can see the two of them getting on like gangbusters. She also had Hollywood Clients like Jean Harlow and Clark Gable and director Frank Capra.

KIM: Okay, so much more fun doing this type of law! 

AMY: Yeah, you hang on to Al Capone, I’ll go hang out with Clark Gable instead. She was a lifelong Republican, although she did admit later in life that she had an affinity for John F. Kennedy saying, “I do not like Nixon; I do not trust him.” 

KIM: Her instincts were dead on, right?

AMY: Yeah, but it just shows she thought independently.

KIM: Yeah. Upon her death in 1963 (I think she was about to turn 74 years old) one federal judge noted: “If Mabel had worn trousers, she could have been president.”

AMY: We’re still waiting on that! At the end of her stint with the Justice Department, she actually wrote a book called The Inside of Prohibition, and just a few other fun facts: She was interested in astrology and the occult and she also took daily ice cold baths.

KIM: Ooh, interesting. 

AMY: She had to steel herself, maybe.

KIM: Yeah, wow. Maybe that’s how she kept her energy up. What I love about her story is that she just put her nose to the grindstone even at a task that others would consider Sisyphean.

AMY: Right. She was tasked with this incredibly difficult job and she would be damned if she didn’t succeed at it. And you know, in her mind, a law was a law until that law was repealed (that didn’t happen until 1933. That’s when the 18th Amendment was done away with).

KIM: Okay. The irony is, after working a government job with a bunch of corrupt, probably chauvinistic men, the one thing she probably most needed at the end of each work day was a drink!

AMY: Totally. Maybe she wasn’t taking ice cold baths. Maybe she was making some bathtub gin!

KIM: Yeah, that’s what it was. I love that.

AMY: So that’s all for today’s episode. Tune in next week when we’ll be picking up with another forgotten female author you should know about.

KIM: 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. 

98. Heterodoxy with Joanna Scutts

KIM ASKEW: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew.

AMY HELMES: And I'm her co-host Amy Helmes. Listeners, try to imagine all the creative, badass, forward-thinking women from all different walks of life that you know.

KIM: Yeah, now picture them starting a secret club at a happening little restaurant in the cool part of town. A salon, if you will, to share all their thoughts and ideas about how to fix society.

AMY: A smart girl's superhero justice league! Sounds pretty incredible, right?

KIM: Yeah. And we were intrigued to learn about a club just like this that existed in New York's Greenwich Village a century ago. It was known as Heterodoxy, and the women who counted themselves as members were each uniquely incredible.

AMY: They were among the ladies catching that first wave of modern feminism, and they voiced their convictions through their work, their activism, and their writing.

KIM: Yes, scour the Heterodoxy rosters over its 25 years of existence and you'll find lots of writers among its ranks, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman of The Yellow Wallpaper fame.

AMY: We've got a special returning guest who's about as well versed in the Heterodoxy club as it gets. So let's raid the stacks and get started! 

[intro music plays]

KIM: Our guest today is literary critic and historian Joanna Scutts, and you may remember she originally joined us on the show back in Episode 21 to discuss self-help author Marjorie Hillis. Joanna wrote the compelling 2017 biography of Hillis, The Extra Woman. We had a great time talking about fancy pajamas, as I recall.

AMY: Yeah, I almost considered wearing pajamas on this Zoom, but I got dressed. Joanna's latest book out just last month is called Hotbed: Bohemian Greenwich Village and the Secret Club That Sparked Modern Feminism. I love that title. It's so enticing. Anything with a secret club, right? Kirkus calls it "an enlightening contribution to the history of feminism" and Bust magazine named the book a lit pick for this summer. Joanna, congratulations on this book. I remember that you had briefly mentioned that you were writing Hotbed the last time you were on the podcast, and so we're glad to have you back on to discuss it finally.

JOANNA SCUTTS: Thank you so much. Yes, that feels like a really long time ago. Um, but then also like yesterday, because what is time? 

AMY: It's funny, it actually seems like a short amount of time for me. When I saw you starting to promote it, I was like, "Wow, she got that done fast." 

KIM: Yeah, a lot happened in a couple years. So Joanna, how did you first discover Heterodoxy? And at what point were you like "I've gotta make this my next book"?

JOANNA: Well, it's a little connected to that question about time. I think that's why it feels like a long time to me is that I actually came across Heterodoxy in 2016. I was working at the New York Historical Society here in New York, and we wanted to do an exhibition that would mark the hundredth anniversary of women's suffrage in New York state. And we wanted to do something a little bit more unexpected, looking at suffrage not just as a sort of isolated movement, but as something that was embedded in the wider kind of social justice culture of the city at the time in the 1910s. And so we started zeroing in on Greenwich Village, and Heterodoxy was part of the larger Village culture. And what really interested me was the way that same women's names were coming up in connection with all of these different movements and groups, and sure enough, pretty much everyone that we read about who was prominent in the activist scene was also a member of Heterodoxy. But the story of the club was kind of not really told. And I think that's sort of always the short answer is always kind of, because I wanted to read the book that wasn't there. Heterodoxy has been written about. There's one book that really deals with it, but it was very old and very short and very limited in its research, and it certainly wasn't aimed at a general audience or something you would pick up in a bookstore. So I just really, you know, in the course of curating an exhibition, you're just always cutting things out and the stories have to be incredibly brief, so I really just felt like there was more to say and to really kind of try to get a flavor of what this club felt like in its time who was there and what they did.

AMY: So this idea of the club, Heterodoxy, is new to Kim and I, and I'm sure it's new to a lot of our listeners. We'd love to have you kind of set the stage for us a little bit by reading the very beginning paragraphs of your book.

JOANNA: Okay. “On Saturday afternoon in a place that feels just then like the brightly pulsing center of the universe, a group of women gathers to talk about the world and their place in it. They haven't come far. Physically, at least most have walked from shared apartments, boarding houses, cooperative lodging, or from red brick mansions and smaller family homes to a townhouse on McDougal Street in the middle of a busy scruffy block just below Washington Square Park, the heart of the Bohemian New York neighborhood they call Greenwich Village. In the basement is a restaurant everyone knows simply as Polly's. It's walls painted with sunny, yellow chalk paint and hung with local artists' work and its wooden tables cramed close together. The whole point is to overhear your neighbor's conversations, lean over and join in. It's what makes the Village, the Village, this contagious buzz, sitting elbow to elbow with artists and radicals, waiting for the chef and anarchist poet to bang down your plate of goulash, your liver and onions with his signature hiss, "Bourgiouse pigs!" At the head of the table in Polly's, a pretty woman in her early forties with a pile of dark gold hair, raps a gavel on the tabletop and brings the meeting to order. The women around the table describe themselves as the most unruly and individualistic females you ever fell among and pride themselves on their voracious interests and varied outlooks. They are Democrats Republicans, prohibitionist, socialists, anarchists, liberals, and radicals of all opinions. Sometimes they accuse each other of being cranks on certain subjects, but no woman obsessed by a single issue lasts long in their proudly eclectic meetings. To give each other space to doubt and disagree the women keep no records at their meetings. They give their secret unruly club a name that celebrates the difference of opinion: Heterodoxy.”

AMY: I love that. You just transport us there right away.

KIM: Oh my gosh. It's like, after two years of mostly being at home and also living in Los Angeles, too, the idea of everyone just being together and sharing all these ideas and everything sounds incredible.

JOANNA: Yeah. You even feel like the cigarette smoke would be kind of nice. Smokey basements.

KIM: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

AMY: the food wasn't so great, but that's okay.

KIM: Mm-hmm yeah, 

JOANNA: Yeah, it's probably terrible.

AMY: um, So why was Greenwich Village such an obvious location from which a club like this would spring?

JOANNA: I mean, it's got this history, even in the 1910s, of being a place where sort of poets and writers like to gather but at the time it was largely pretty cheap. It was still mostly an immigrant neighborhood. Lots of fairly laid-back landlords who didn't really care when you came and went. Everything felt very new and radical and a little bit daring.

KIM: A lot of the women that we've discussed, who lived in the U.S. actually ended up in Greenwich Village at some point or another, especially from a certain period. So it keeps, it comes up over and over. 

JOANNA: Yeah, it definitely has this identity that feels like it's welcoming to anyone who wants to live a slightly different kind of life or push the boundaries a little bit.

KIM: Right. So Heterodoxy was founded by a woman named Marie Jenney Howe sometime in 1912. The club met every other week and its members were college educated professionals from various career fields, including law, medicine, anthropology, psychology, artists, and there were many writers and journalists, of course. So what was the draw of a club like Heterodoxy for these women, and how did one get to join?

JOANNA: Well, that's one of the things that we don't really know, unfortunately, with a couple of exceptions. But for the most part, it seems to have been a little bit of a word of mouth sort of thing. Um, Marie Jenney Howe was a suffrage leader in the area. She was fairly new in New York, new in the Village, and so I think it just began sort of as a way to meet people, you know? Through her husband, she was connected to these sort of like left wing, liberal social circles, and so they met people that way. And then it's a little bit this sort of rarity of being a prominent woman. So there were women who were journalists and lawyers and they tended to know each other just because there weren't very many of them, you know? It was very nice to be able to meet somebody else who was also doing social research or who was a practicing doctor or was a practicing lawyer.

AMY: Makes sense. It's like, you're basically in amongst the old boys club and you need to somehow find your gals, you know?

KIM: Your people. Yeah.

JOANNA: Absolutely. 

AMY: So you say in the book that there were no real rules or bylaws of the club. It wasn't, you know, structured in that way in that they didn't really do anything, quote unquote, and yet as individuals, these Heterodites, as they called themselves were unstoppable forces in terms of moving the needle on big social issues of the day, right?

JOANNA: Absolutely. So suffrage was very visible and very much a place where women could kind of get a name for themselves. It was, for a lot of women, kind of an onramp into other forms of organizing. Suffrage is sort of the obvious cause, and pretty much everyone in the club was to some degree, active in the movement. But for the most part they were women who did not think that was enough. The vote wasn't going to do enough by itself to change things. So you also had the other very visible, very active cause when the club starts meeting is the Labor Movement. There were two women in particular who were really at the forefront of that movement. Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who was a labor activist, and then her friend and colleague Rose Pastor Stokes, who was a socialist organizer, married to a millionaire. So she was also very famous for that. So those two women actually sort of buck the trend of the club. Neither of them were college educated, and Rose was Jewish, which was unusual in the club. But they were really influential figures, and they kind of pushed the club a little bit more to more radical left positions. As World War I began in Europe, the Peace Movement was something that women were very active in, especially in New York, so, the New York City Women's Peace Party kind of overlaps with the Heterodoxy membership very closely. A lot of the women were also active in the birth control fight. There's a great moment of, a group of women, some from Heterodoxy, some just kind of friends of the club who rented a limousine to drive around lower Manhattan distributing leaflets about birth control until they got themselves arrested in Union Square. Getting arrested was a big part of their strategy. As wealthy women who were generally treated well, they could afford to take those kinds of risks. And then the final sort of movement that I'll mention is the movement for racial justice, which is something that the women of Heterodoxy were involved in. One of the things I really think is important that these movements are all, you know, people who are involved in different kinds of social movements are connected together. They know each other, they're working together and they're seeing connections between these different fights in all kinds of ways.

AMY: We still are. I mean, the, the list you just rattled off, those are all still things that are foremost on women's minds today. Now you mentioned the suffrage movement. Um, that was a pivotal. Issue for them and rightly so, because if they have all these other issues that they wanna tackle, you can't really do that if you don't have a say in who's making the decisions for society. I loved this whole section of your book because you make the story feel so visceral, I think. And there were so many stories I didn't know, just little fun anecdotes about, you know, what these women were going through trying to get the word out. Do you have any favorite anecdotes from any of the Heterodites' fight for suffrage that you wanna share?

JOANNA: Yeah, it's definitely a really new way of approaching activism and organizing, and they were very inspired by the labor movement and by the kind of the power at that time of women just physically being together in the streets. The sort of marching around with sashes and banners and waving flags, and this is all very new and very shocking to some of the older organizers who think it's not done for women to appear in public like that . So it's still controversial, even though it kind of very quickly gains traction. I think what I loved about it was how sort of theatrical it was. There's so much sort of joy and, and pleasure and fun to that period of organizing. It's very complicated and there's a whole other side to it that's a lot darker, but I do think that it's worth remembering how well they tapped into this idea that if you could get people to like the idea of something there was a power to that. So I think this sense of accessing kind of joy and, sort of the visual spectacle is very new. Photographs in the newspaper are quite a new thing and, and it really escalates. So the more they capitalize on the visuals, the more they realize, well, our big asset here is we've got beautiful young women. Everybody wants to photograph them. And so the movement really uses some of those activists and one of them who's a Heterodoxy member who I particularly love, is a woman named Ynes Mulholland. She was a Vassar graduate. She went to law school at NYU, having fought with Harvard publicly in the pages of the newspaper over whether or not she had a right to attend Harvard, kind of making fun of them for not letting her in. And so she's already kind of famous as you could be at this time. And she was always in the newspaper. She's very attractive, and so she's a really fun and interesting figure who was kind of ubiquitous in the early part of the decade. And then really tragically, she was actually very unwell and didn't know it, and as a result of her really overzealous campaigning, she had this infection that eventually killed her. Very suddenly she collapsed and never recovered while she was in the middle of a suffrage speech. She was only 30 when she died and she became this kind of martyr figure. So she's sort of an example of how the visual quality the movement was really powerful, but also kind of had this really unintended, um, effect. Her story isn't really well known, but I think she's an extraordinary, figure.

AMY: She was one of my favorite women from your book. The image of her riding that white horse down the street, that was one of the visuals that you mentioned that got everybody's attention. She's kind of like a more likable, smart Kim Kardashian. If you had that kind of person for your movement, you know, that everybody knew, everybody thought was gorgeous and she just knew how to take a good picture or whatever. I mean, you have her as one of the faces for your movement. 

JOANNA: Yes. Yes. She's quite something.

AMY: So every now and then the members of Heterodoxy would actually have what they called Husbands Evenings, where they would let the spouses come along for the night. Is it safe to say that these were supportive, enlightened husbands who were, you know, on board with what they were doing?

JOANNA: Sometimes. Rarely , um, let's say, to be fair, there were definitely some husbands and partners and boyfriends who were very interested in feminism and very aware that women's second class status in society was not only unjust, but also not what they wanted either. There were some men who definitely recognized that patriarchy was not working for anybody and certainly not for them. Unfortunately, when it came to being fathers, that's when it broke down as a rule. So simply the idea that women were naturally programmed to understand how to take care of babies and young children, that was very widespread. Um, I don't think it's that much less widespread now. I think it's very common for men to just assume that, I don't know, somehow women all get together and are taught how to take care of babies or it comes from inside us or something. And so, it's definitely a range. There are certainly marriages and partnerships that lasted. Often, when they were heterosexual, they tended to last if the couple didn't have children. Children were definitely the problem, the challenge and the thing that was hardest to maintain sort of equality and expectation and happiness. The other sort of situation that is very common in Heterodoxy was that women were in long term partnerships with other women. Certainly, the women had a lot of examples of alternative ways of living, and they kind of joked about them within the club, about just sort of how many different forms of partnership and family they were able to create. So it was certainly a club, I think, where women were emboldened to live more authentic and rebellious lives just by having the examples around them of people who were doing that or had done that and survived.

KIM: As we mentioned, you wrote this book during the pandemic lockdown. And you had a little baby at home, speaking of children. Amy and I are super impressed. We don't know how you managed that, so kudos to you for doing it all. But that does bring up an important point about the Heterodites in that they were struggling, as women still do today, to balance their careers with a happy home life. 

JOANNA: Yeah. I mean, I think there are several factors that went into it. One was birth control, which the women of Heterodoxy recognized as an issue as much of free speech and of class as it was of physical access to devices. They understood that birth control is something that wealthy women had always had access to. There was always a way if you're well enough connected, and if your husband was supportive, you know. Quietly and discreetly, it was possible to get not perfect by any means, but certainly, uh, reasonably reliable contraceptives. If you were a poor woman, especially one who was an immigrant who didn't speak English well, the chances of you being able to find a sympathetic doctor and be able to pay , it was just impossible. So, the women of Heterodoxy, for the most part, were able to make their own decisions about their families and tended to have much smaller families than women at the time usually did. Most of them had one or two children, which was very unusual back then. So it was about limiting your family in the first place. It was also about finding ways to care for them. And that was also something that was dependent on your means. There's all these wonderful ideas though, that I write about in the book, where members were trying to figure out ways around that. They were thinking like, okay, what about collective living? What about apartment buildings where we put a Montessori school on the roof and we employ highly trained childcare experts and highly trained chefs and cooks? And it will allow women to pursue, you know, professional careers outside the home if they want them but if they, you know, if their skills lie in sort of domestic work, then they can at least be well paid and respected for it. Um, they just could never make the economics work. It was always just too expensive. Women have relied, as they always have, on this kind of patchwork of other women's labor. This was how you managed to balance family and career, was by paying working class and black women to do the work that you otherwise couldn't do. It was absolutely an imperfect system. I think this has always been something that, unfortunately in the United States, women have had to figure out for themselves. And even though the situations are similar, for some reason, the ability to kind of come together and solve it collectively has just never gained traction. So yeah, it felt very relevant to what I was going through, the difficulty of just trying to do two things that were incompatible.

KIM: Yeah, it sounds exactly the same as now. I mean, there's really not much difference. But that Montessori building sounds great. Sign me up for that. 

JOANNA: Yeah. I know.

AMY: And then of course you had probably the most famous Heterodite, Charlotte Perkins Gilman who made the choice to ship her kid off, basically, to live with family on the other side of the country, right? And she's not the only woman of her time who made that decision. 

JOANNA: Yeah. This is kind of a moment, I think, where there's a shift in attitudes, because in a previous generation if a couple divorced the expectation was that the father had custody, and women had to fight for any kind of access, so the idea that mothers had a sort prior claim on their children as custod,y that's a relatively recent historical development. And Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who divorced in, let me see the mid 1890s. I'm not getting the exact date, but she had a child with her husband. She had a horrific, pregnancy and postpartum depression out of which her most famous now, most famous, uh, book, The Yellow Wallpaper, was written. And she wrote about the experience of kind of losing her mind and being forcibly detained by medical authorities, which was something she had gone through herself and she had a horrendous time. She never wanted to have another child. And her husband, when they separated, he married her best friend or one of her closest friends and she kind of engineered that. She's like, "No, you two should be together." So essentially, yeah, she decided when her daughter was, I think, nine, that she would be better off with the father. "I trust his wife, she's my friend. She's gonna raise you. Well, you know, you were gonna have better life with her. And this frees me up to be this kind of public figure." And we remember her now mostly as a novelist, but at the time she was much better known as like an economist, a social theorist, a leading feminist.

AMY: We should mention also that Zona Gale was a member of the club, and listeners, if you heard our episode on Margery Latimer, which was Episode 69, you'll remember that Zona Gale was sort of her mentor who had told her that you can either have a rich and fulfilling career, or you can have a family, but you can't have both. So some familiar names will pop up in Joanna's book.

KIM: Yeah. And we also thought it would be fun to learn about some other lost ladies of lit from the Heterodoxy club. So Joanna, could you tell us maybe about a few you think ought to be more widely known today than they actually are?

JOANNA: Well, there's so many. Um, 

KIM: Where do you start, right?

JOANNA: Well, I think one person who's actually maybe one of the better known names is Susan Glaspell. So she is best known as a playwright, although she won, I believe she won the Pulitzer Prize for a novel in the early 1930s. So another very important artistic aspect of Heterodoxy was the theater, but also, the kind of avant garde theater. So there were women who were Broadway actresses or kind of mainstream theatrical actresses. And then there was this much larger contingent who were really involved in, especially the Provincetown Players, which was the club that, um, so Susan Glaspell and her husband moved from the Midwest in 1913 and started this theatrical troupe when a whole bunch of the villagers were on vacation in Provincetown, um, in Massachusetts. They were rehearsing plays and performing them, mostly for fun and for each other, but it quickly became, bigger than that. And so Heterodoxy women were writers and playwrights actresses in what became known as the Provincetown Players in Provincetown. And then back in the Village when they established a theater on McDougal street. They're best known really now and best remembered for sort of launching the career of Eugene O'Neill who joined the group I think in 1916, and O'Neill kind of has overshadowed the history of that group. But Susan Glaspell tried to bring sort feminist ideas onto the stage and dramatize some of the personal costs of trying to live a feminist life that we've been talking about. She was trying to do this on stage. So her work is, is fascinating. Mary Heaton, her friend who owned this house in Provincetown where they started the theater, um, she made a living as sort of a writer of fiction, and she wrote a wonderful satire of Greenwich Village, which is really fun. But she basically kind of pivoted and became a labor journalist and she had been at the forefront reporting on strikes and labor movements for decades. And she really made these strikes feel personal. Like she focused on the women, um, and children. And she talked about the lives of the workers. So she was really covering this in a very human way, which is a very new thing in journalism. So she's a really, I think, uh, an important voice who we've kinda lost sight of. And then I, I would say , finally, Mabel Dodge, who wrote endlessly about her own life in this most extraordinary, self-dramatizing, self-mythologizing, way. But she's a really fascinating kind of chronicler of the period. And you kinda can't do better than her memoirs if you want to get a sense of how strange and exciting and " anything goes" this period really was.

AMY: Yeah, her salons sounded pretty fun.

JOANNA: Yeah. You know, they also discussed, you know, books and plays and art exhibitions. I mean, it's kind of, in some ways Heterodoxy was a glorified book club. And they kept coming back sort of week after week. I think Marie Jenney Howe was a very determined leader. People describe her as very motherly. She also was not herself, a mother, so she's... 

KIM: Her club was her baby ...

JOANNA: Yeah. She, she seems to have channeled her sort of maternal instincts into friendship and she really held the club together, and I think sometimes you need a leader like that to keep your club going. These things don't just go on ideas, you know, they continue on personalities and on, you know, warmth and love and friendship. And these are the ties that I think keep us connected. And that's how they were able to do so much is because they had this bedrock of support.

KIM: So they had a good long run with all of that until just before the start of 1940. So do you think there's any particular reason it ultimately came to an end?

JOANNA: You know, it changed shape over the years. The original group, they got older, they moved away. People's lives changed. Certainly, I think the run up to World War II was probably extremely difficult and disheartening and, as the Thirties kind of tick down there was probably a sense that, you know, "We were young and we fought so hard and nothing held." People moved away, people aged out, people died off. These women were not all young when they started to meet. You know, it's 20, 30 years later, and so they stayed in touch, but they never really found the second generation or third generation to kind of like, keep it going in a new form. 

AMY: Yeah, it makes sense. Um, so this book required you to research so many women, as well as all the people that the women were peripherally connected with. It was mind-boggling how many people's lives you delved into. And I was kind of in awe of the scope of your research there. How long did it take you to research all this, and was it a struggle to track down information about the women in the group, given that, as you said, there was really only the one other book that had been written about the club?

JOANNA: The problem was actually less about finding information than it was about having too much. I'm so glad that I had too much rather than too little. This previous researcher, Judith Schwartz, who wrote this book called The Radical Feminists of Heterodoxy in the late Seventies, early Eighties as a dissertation. I would go back to her book and be like, "Okay, let me see if I can find anything out about this woman." And every now and again, I'd be like, "I really hope this was just, you know, somebody who passed through the Village and then maybe went off to just like, I don't know, got married or went and just like lived in the country." And it was always like, "Oh no, she was the first woman to get this degree. Or oh, it turns out she's the first practicing psychoanalyst in the country. Oh, she's the head of this organization." and every single time I would think like, "Oh, this person is a minor character. I can bracket her off. I can just mention her once and have done." And you would Google it and be like, "Oh, the most prominent, like women's columnist in the 1910s." She was the first, she was the only, she was the leading blah, blah, blah, head of this head of that long careers. You know, these women who did multiple things, you know, had teaching positions for their whole lives at Columbia University, or did all these things. And it was just trying to organize this information and try to find a, a narrative thread that wasn't just kind of constantly going off and talking about, "Oh, let me research the history of legal education in the United States."

AMY: Yeah, I could see where you could get really sidelined. In terms of the club itself, though, this scrapbook that you came across wound up being pretty important, right?

JOANNA: Yes, the scrapbook is wonderful. We should link to it somehow. It's digitized. You can go into it through Harvard's Library Portal and you can look at the pictures. They digitized the pages of the scrapbook beautifully. It was put together for Marie's 50th birthday, which was in December of 1920. It's photographs and tributes to Marie personally, that talk about her, and this is where you get this sense of like the warmth and affection and the bonds and the ties of friendship, because they're constantly talking about how wonderful it is to be with these incredible women, feeling inspired, feeling intimidated, feeling just at one with their people and also giving these really emotional tributes to Marie as kind of the mother of the group and the person who holds them together and who disciplines them with her little gavel and is always bringing the meetings to order. It's this beautiful faded album you can go through if you're a little bit of an archive nerd. It's a wonderful document to just browse 

AMY: Yeah. We will definitely try to link to that in our show notes. If you guys wanna see actual pictures of the members of Heterodoxy and what they were writing in this sort of celebratory journal sort of thing.

JOANNA: And they chose the pictures, which is fun. So they're always like, "This is a picture of me from 20 years ago. Um, I just think I look great." And so here's me, or it's like, "This isn't what I look like anymore. But here you go."

AMY: Yeah, I love that. Um, so one of the things that, like the takeaway, when I read your book was all of these issues that they were fighting for... causes... there were moments throughout the book where I would feel like a punch to the gut when things didn't go their way; when legislation didn't go their way or when they didn't quite get votes for women just yet, it reminded me that progress comes in fits and starts and that's what they were living through. You know, there were moments of victory and moments of defeat and it's impossible not to read the book in light of the issues we're still reckoning with today, right, Kim?

KIM: Yeah, and listeners, that's why we think this book is really important for you to add to your reading list. Reading about the determination of these women and what I'm sure they felt at times was really an uphill battle is inspiring, and it's a reminder that we can't just shrug our shoulders and be apolitical, especially right now. Joanna, do you think the experiences of the women of Heterodoxy can shed any light on the battles we're still waging today?

JOANNA: Absolutely. I think you both said it beautifully. These setbacks are just a part of the process. Um, And really, I think the way that they survived and went through that is finding their people and finding their friends and having a place where they could talk and vent and rage together and also kind of pick each other up. That was, I think, essential. I don't think you can do this work alone. And even those times when they were kind of out there on a limb and feeling like they were the only ones who believed in having these rights even when they shocked people and got pilloried in the press, they had each other. They weren't on their own. And I think that's really what I took from it was the importance of that friendship.

AMY: One anecdote from the book that still lingers with me from the suffrage movement was when there were women in the bitter cold holding their signs in front of, I think the White House, unless it was like the state capital building or something. And it was so cold out and some of the other women would bring them hot bricks so that they could stand on them to keep their feet warm. It's those little stories that really make the book come alive, I think. 

KIM: I'm starting to tear up right here right now. Just hearing that. We really need to band together right now for sure. Yeah,

JOANNA: Extraordinary. 

AMY: I am so impressed with all the work you put into this book, and we are so glad to have been able to have you back on the show to discuss it.

JOANNA: Thank you so much. There's so many great stories, great women to discover in this book. Um, you know, I want biographers to pick up on all the people I didn't have a chance to talk about and just, there's so many stories to tell here. This was great, yeah, thank you. 

AMY: So that's all for today's podcast. As always check out our website, lostladiesoflit.com for a transcript of this show and further information.

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

97. Lost Ladies of Art with Sara Woster

AMY: Hi, everyone, and welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Amy Helmes.

KIM: And I’m Kim Askew. We don’t usually have guests for our mini episodes, but today is an exception, and one I think our listeners are going to enjoy. 

AMY: We’re going to be talking about some lost ladies of the art world, and we have an actual painter as our guest, which is fitting. 

KIM: Yes, joining us today is artist and author Sara Woster, whose new book Painting Can Save Your Life is out this month from TarcherPerigee / Penguin Randomhouse. Her literary agent, Nicki Richesin, is one of my very best friends and Nicki and I actually stayed at Sara’s Brooklyn apartment one night, years ago, when we were on a book tour for an anthology called The May Queen. Sara made a lasting impression on me then that carries through to her book, which is as warm, brilliant, soulful, and empathetic as she is. (I’m sure I’m embarrassing you, Sara, but it’s true.) I’m so inspired and impressed that not only are you a talented painter, but you’re a gorgeously talented writer as well. Thank you for joining us today! 

SARA: Thank you for that lovely and incredibly flattering introduction. Yeah, it’s so nice to reconnect with you after so many years!

KIM: So, before we get to the lost lady artists, I wanted to talk a little bit more about your new book, Painting Can Save Your Life. It’s part how-to guide and it’s also part memoir. It’s all woven together in this absolutely riveting way. I wrote to you that it made me want to pick up a paintbrush, but it also inspired me to want to write something so beautiful about being a creative person and a wife and mother, and just being alive on this spinning planet. So, thank you for that! 

SARA: Oh, that’s so nice. Whenever someone says it makes them want to paint, that’s like the penultimate goal, so thank you I was really excited when you emailed me that.

KIM: Yeah, I just need like a smidgeon more free time and I would absolutely be doing it. Anyway, in your book, you talk about your childhood in South Dakota and how painting saved your life, to a certain extent, because it gave you an outlet for coping with your anxiety and not fitting in. Could you talk a little bit about that and maybe what led you to write this book? 

SARA: Yeah, I think most artists I know, most creative people, they feel like a square peg often, and I know that's how I felt a lot of my life. You probably wouldn't have known that from the outside, but I just was kind of (and remain) a kind of unsettled person, an anxious person. And as soon as I realized that a creative outlet is just a trick, you know, almost to like calm yourself, release some of this stuff that we carry around. So yeah,  as soon as I could figure out that I could draw and paint, I just felt better and that's remained the case for my entire life. 

KIM: I think Amy and I know exactly what you mean.

AMY: Yeah, it’s like you get to go somewhere else besides your own brain for a bit.

KIM: Yeah, turn it all off and lose track of time and all that. So in your book, you write about being an artist who is also a woman, and as the book progresses, a wife and a mother. You have some funny anecdotes related to that--like when you were asked to pose nude by a classmate when you were in art school– and you’re also not shy about sharing those times when you really struggled with your identity as an artist. So I was wondering if you would read some of your book from the section where you’re in Marfa, Texas. It’s just after the birth of your second child. 

SARA: Yes, so, this part is when I'm doing a series of paintings in Marfa because my husband was doing a residency, but the residency program gave me my own studio also.  And I start doing  a series of paintings that's about UFO's and I can't figure out really why am I suddenly doing the UFOs? And then I realized… well, I'll read what I realized that I think the, the actual heart of this series is:

[reads passage]

KIM: That is so relatable, and there’s so manty parts of the book that you’re reading it and you’re like “Oh, yeah, I totally get that.” But you say it so beautifully. So, in addition to telling your personal story, the book also teaches the reader how to paint. I’m curious about what it feels like to teach someone to paint for the first time.

SARA: There is the weirdest global universal insecurity around painting. I think it has to do with our ideas of perfect depictions. Like the Mona Lisa, like the ones we know, they're pretty hard to do, no matter how many years you've been doing it, but that's our ideal, right? And so to introduce to someone to have them do their first painting (and in my class, it's always like very simple objects) to have them complete their first painting and kind of just get over that mental roadblock is so cool. And then to watch the progression where they start having confidence   it's so exciting.  

AMY: That statement you made about the perfectionism?  That really hit home for me because, when I was in my twenties for like a hot minute, I decided I was going to dabble in watercolor painting. And I found that I couldn’t paint actual objects in front of me, but what I could paint was other watercolor picture. And so I've decided that really my artistic talent might lie in forgery. 

SARA: That is not a bad talent. I’m into it. And it’s totally valid to do that. I mean, most great artists, historically, that’s what they would do. They would go paint the artwork of other people because you learn so much. Also, side note: watercolor is the hardest medium. You started with the absolute hardest. I would recommend backpedaling to acrylic.

AMY: Okay.

KIM: Can I just add that Amy actually teaches art at her son’s school?

AMY: Yes, I’m my son’s class art teacher (or I was this year at least) but confession: I avoided bringing those paints out because of the cleanup involved.

SARA: Yeah, when you get a big group of kids, it’s really messy.

AMY: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, let’s segue into forgotten women artists. [And listeners, if there’s a way for you to Google some of these ladies while we’re talking, you might enjoy actually seeing some of their artwork as you hear about them.] Sara, you brought these women to our attention--and they are fascinating, not just their artwork, but their lives. So let’s start with Gertrude Abercrombie. She was the daughter of itinerant opera singers and walked the streets of Chicago dressed as a witch. 

KIM: That definitely caught our attention! 

AMY: Yeah, that struck us. And then also jazz songs were written about her. Who doesn’t want to be the subject of a jazz tune, right? So tell us more about Gertrude Abercrombie.

SARA: Yeah, so not only did she walk the world as this kind of is this witch-like character, her artwork. Is a lot of witch symbolism. She does what's called a “noctrunal” palette, which is you don't really light it with daylight, you light it with moonlight. So there's turquoises and grays and stuff that you wouldn't see in the daytime. Um,  they called her the Queen of Bohemian Artists. And the way that she became so involved in the Jazz community is this was the era of Jim Crow. And even though she was in Chicago, in the North, still a lot of hotels would not allow black musicians and artists to stay there when they were doing their tours.  So her house was the one where  black musicians knew they were welcomed. They could stay, they could host their own music events in her home.  Uh, I actually found in  the Smithsonian archive, you can see her guest book with the list, and it's like Sarah Vaughn, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie (who was actually one of her best friends.) Well she had these jam sessions and these amazing, like, brilliant geniuses would come through. And I always think that her paintings look to me, what I imagined her house was like, because she had artists and music and cats and all these people and her in the hat — I just imagined she was the wildest. I do not know why no one has made a biopic of her or actually any of these women. I think we should open a production company and we just make biopics of these four women. But, um, what she was creating was so out of sync with what was happening in the rest of the contemporary art world, which is probably part of the reason she didn't have massive success. She was just using an entirely different platform and vocabulary.   I mean, she was well-known in Chicago, but she wasn't in the art world very well known until in 2018, a very cool New York Lower East Side gallery called Karma, they had a show and I remember it. It was the biggest deal. And now every kind of younger artist I know has been so impacted by her.  She's definitely someone who's had a very, very recent resurgence. 

AMY: You mentioned the turquoise and when I Googled some of the images of her work that kept coming up, just that bright blue, beautiful… I realized, I don't think I'd ever seen any of her work before, because I would have remembered that blue. 

KIM: It’s very striking.

SARA: It's the most amazing palette. And then even like her still lifes are just so moody and not our typical still life. So I imagine getting people to understand her art back then was not easy. They were so ahead of their time that now they're modern, you know? Now they make sense to us, I think.

AMY: We find that with writers too. The ones that were kind of really experimental and pushing the edge are sometimes the ones that get forgotten because people didn't really get it at the time. So let's move on next to talk about Augusta Savage. She was from that same era, but based in Harlem, and she had a hand in shaping the Harlem Renaissance. Can you tell us more about that?

SARA: Yeah, again, biopic somebody. It's amazing. So she was molding things in clay from a very early age, which was highly problematic because she had a minister father who thought these were, you know, a form of worshiping other idols. And she would be punished for making this, but she consistently made it. When she was in high school, I think it was Florida they moved to, and she found somebody who saw her talent for what it was, which is just out of this world kind of talent. And this principal would pay her a dollar a day to teach the other students how to mold clay.

And then she won a county fair contest and that led to her getting a scholarship at Cooper Union.  Her reputation began to grow and. W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey were sculpted by her. Um, a lot of just super well-known leaders in New York city. And then she won a scholarship to this very prestigious program in France. But when they learned she was Black, they took away the scholarship.  And so she was very vocal about racism back then.  She just thought white critics and white artists, their depiction of Black people and their coverage of Black artists was steeped in racist POV.  Um, so she was really vocal about that.  When she was in Harlem, she, founded the Savage, which is the best name ever for a school the Savage Studio of Arts and Craft. And this was where she taught people like Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight and Norman Lewis — the big, big names in the Harlem Renaissance movement.  She was their teacher. I mean, we're talking about  some of the greatest American artists of all time. She was going to start a magazine called Fire!! with two exclamation points, which I think is so amazing with Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. So she was in the epicenter of one of the greatest American art movements that we've ever known.  So her break came in 1937,  there was a world's fair and she did this amazing piece that she called Lift Every Voice and Sing, and of course the organizing committee renamed it The Harp (which, of course they did.) And you really can't believe it was made in 1937, and it's just was so beautiful, but it was, um, 16 foot tall and it was plaster. She did not have the funds to cast it in bronze, which is always like, it's so expensive to cast in bronze. Like today, most artists can't also cast in bronze. It's so expensive. She didn't have the money to do that or to put it in storage. So it was bulldozed at the end of the fair, which this has to be one of the great art tragedies, because this is such a pivotal piece in sculpture. And, and just in her story is such a great American artist.  I discovered her when there was, I think it was in a New York Times op/ed talking about, what could we replace all the Confederate statues with?  And somebody was like, “Can we please have someone remake?...”  I think there was a model of The Harp somewhere, she was like, “Let's remake it.” And I think that is the most brilliant idea

KIM: I love that idea. 

SARA: Yeah. I mean, so far, we've talked about two people that were at the center of these massive creative movements and that we really didn't hear of them until the past five years. But we can name all the men around them!

KIM: Absolutely.

SARA: The men in their orbit.

KIM: Yeah. It's the same with the writers. And that's so tragic about her piece getting destroyed. That kills me. Um, so I was really intrigued in the list of women, you suggested Florine Stettheimer’s work, which you described as jubilant, and that’s such a perfect word for her paintings. They’re so joyful and gorgeous. The Stettheimers were a trio of sisters, actually. They were all artists and art lovers. They wore pants, smoked cigarettes, disdained marriage, romance and children, and were constantly surrounded by artists. And I bet they threw the best parties.

SARA: I know!

KIM: What else can you tell us about Florine in particular?

SARA: I mean, I think there's a lot to be said for growing up in that matriarchal world with her mom and her sisters. There was a big show at the Jewish Museum, I don't know, five years ago or something, maybe it was even more recent, of her artwork and a lot of that focused on the gender fluidity. The shapes of  the figures, they're just like these fluid, curvy, not-of-this-world kind of shapes. Um, and, she kind of populated her world with a lot of ambiguity which I think again, super modern, way ahead of its time. The paintings often look like a stage design or, you know, they look like some amazing Broadway show or something. And they're just people all over and lights and flowers and surrealist moments.  She went to see, the Russian ballet and was totally moved by that and came home and began kind of sketching and making little maquettes of like her own idea for ballet. And then that kind of segued into the paintings.  Gertrude Stein did an opera and Florine did the set designs for it. You can actually watch it on YouTube. You can see some of that opera; It's very cool. But yeah, she was really good friends with Duchamp. She painted him a lot. She is credited as possibly doing the first female self portrait nude. And so in an era, when there was still a strict kind of boundaries, she just wasn't beholden to them at all. Marsden Hartley,  he called her disparagingly, ultra feminine. Her artwork was ultra feminine  and like she would glue beads on it and fabric and all these things that I remember in art school being told to avoid doing, because it was too feminine. Don't paint flowers.

KIM: Bedazzle…

SARA: Don’t bedazzle. I know! Now I wish I’d done a Bedazzler series! But I mean, I think she was so, again, in this world that didn't have the same rules and boundaries and she was like, “I'm going to do that.”  And again, the work was so not of its time that it didn't really get prominence until real recently.

KIM: That makes me wonder if you had known about these artists when you were first starting out, how do you think they would have impacted you had you known about them?

SARA: I didn't know about any of these artists. So yeah, this would have changed the game because this is actually the pallet I use now. So I probably would've stolen it earlier. And I think text in art was a big deal.

I mean, there wasn't a lot of people doing text in art. That's something that's often mocked by the serious, you know, East Coast, white male critic.  And her topics, like she called them the Four Cathedrals, which was like Broadway, Wall Street, Fifth Avenue, and then art galleries. Like, what man would probably have put Fifth Avenue shopping mecca as a cathedral? So I think even, we see new topics being covered by all these artists, it would have impacted me, not just  the approach to painting,  but just the idea that I could do a party, that it was a valid thing to paint would have been unheard of, impossible for me back in school. 

AMY: Obviously a lot of men during the same time period were pushing boundaries with art and doing new things. But I wonder if the women sort of  knowing always in the back of their mind, like “I'm never going to be really accepted by the Establishment, kind of liberated them?”

KIM: Like, “I can do whatever the heck I want because….”

SARA: Yes… if you’re going to lose anyway, you might as well do what you want to do.

AMY: Get that Bedazzling gun!

KIM: I love it. Yeah. So our fourth artists that we want to talk about is  ed Edmonia Lewis, and she's a 19th century black and native artist.  Can you tell us more about her Sara?

SARA:  Yeah. She was earlier in history than the other three women, and 20 years before the end of slavery. Um, so her success is even more astounding. She grew up with an Ojibwe name that translated in English as Wildfire, uh, in Niagara Falls, which must be one of the coolest places to ever to grow up. She sometimes traces her desire to be an artist to her mother, who was an artisan making moccasins and crafts. And she sometimes did that with her. She was orphaned very young, but she had a super supportive brother who was very wealthy. So he was supportive of her, and believed in her art and helped her make things happen.  And so she showed success early on, and wound up in Oberlin College, which was a total nightmare situation for her. She was accused of attempting to poison a classmate (very unfairly) and was beaten almost to death and ended up leaving school and going to Boston.  And then she ran into a problem that is very common for women for much of art history. In sculpture, especially, you kind of need an apprenticeship, like you can go to school, but it's really hard  to get to the high level without apprenticing with someone. And of course nobody wanted to apprentice her. So that  was kind of the thing she would run into, um, as both a woman and a person of color. But she finally found someone, and at one point she made her own sculpting tools. I feel like these women, like, were so desperate to make this art  that they just constantly had to find their way around everything. Like every barrier it's like, “Oh, I'll make my own tools. Or I'll find my own apprentice,” you know?  She made a ton of money in two years selling portrait medallions, because it was right after the Civil War.  So she made a fortune and got really wealthy in two years  and then was able to go to Rome, which was obviously the ultimate place you wanted to go to learn sculpture.

She told The New York Times in 1878 that she was, and this is a quote “practically driven to Rome in order to obtain the opportunities for art culture and to find a social atmosphere where I was not constantly reminded of my color.  The Land of Liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.”  Um, she did bust of many famous Americans, including Ulysses S. Grant, who actually sat for his portrait with her, which would have been a huge deal. Um, but then when she came back in 1876, she showed one of the coolest sculptures I've ever seen: The Death of Cleopatra.  And so it's based on the Shakespeare moment where someone's coming to get her to drag her through the streets and she instead takes a cobra, an asp, and poisons herself and dies. And so there's all these great articles about why her depiction is so amazing. We're given in this sculpture this proud woman who almost has this look of like she was in power at the end. She took away the last thing that this guy was going to do.  And so it was shown to great, great acclaim at  the Centennial. But, not long after that it disappeared.  Again, there was nowhere to really put it. It reappeared in a Chicago saloon, and then, uh, somebody who owned a racetrack bought it and brought it to the racetrack to mark where his horse had died.  Um, and then it reappeared in a salvage yard and then a bunch of Boy Scouts found it, and they, first of all, I think they repainted it with white paint.  So she was missing like her nose and I think a chin and I think they just painted over it with white. So the Boy Scouts rallied the community to save it. And they are responsible, I guess, for taking this out of the salvage yard.  It's now in its rightful place in American art history at the Smithsonian and is considered one of the great works ever of American sculpture. Um, but yeah, the whole story behind it, it just breaks my heart on so many levels because of her, you know, gender and biography and race.  To have it gone to obscurity for all those years is just heartbreaking. Just absolutely heartbreaking. Um, so yeah, I mean,  another one of these stories that you can't believe what all these women, how much they had to ignore about public opinion and pressure and everyone's thoughts about their right to make art. 

KIM: I mean  her story in itself  and the timing of when she was able to do this is incredible. And then I just want to underline what you said about when you look at her art, she's taking these subjects that other people were doing, but she was doing them from the  perspective of character or whatever that she is sculpting.And that is huge  to see art from her perspective and from a woman's perspective is incredible. 

SARA: Yes.

KIM: Amazing. 

SARA: One hundred percent. Yeah. We didn’t even start talking about the male/female gaze. 

KIM: Yeah, which is a whole other thing. Exactly. Yeah. And then Cleopatra really made me think about it, because everybody's like doing Cleopatra. The men are doing her and what are they doing with her versus what this artist is doing with her is just completely different. So yeah. Sara, thank you so much for coming on. We learned so much. I'm so excited to explore some more of these women artists and other artists that I may not have heard of.  

SARA: Well, thank you for having me. I loved it. And I hope to see you guys in person someday. 

AMY: Yeah. And listeners, you've got to pick up this book. Even if you think you don't want to try painting because you're too scared, get Sara's book and it's going to walk you through it. Baby steps, I mean, she really holds your hand going through this. And Kim, if you have a painting party, I'll come.

KIM: Okay. I'd love that. Um, and then also listeners, even if you're like just, I'm never going to be an artist, I'm not going to pick up a paint brush, read the book because  it's worthy of being read just as a memoir. 

SARA: Thank you so much, you guys!

KIM: So that’s all for today’s podcast. Join us back here next week when we’ll be welcoming historian Joanna Scutts back to the show to discuss an early 20th century “hotbed” of feminism… the secret Greenwich Village club known as Heterodoxy.

AMY: We hope you’ll tune in for that, and also, if you could take a minute to leave us a five-star review where you listen to this podcast, we’d really appreciate it.

KIM: It literally takes one-minute but it means the world to us! 

AMY: Bye, everybody! 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 Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.

93. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala — Heat and Dust with Brigitte Hales

KIM ASKEW: Hi everyone. Welcome back to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew...

AMY HELMES: And I'm Amy Helmes, and Kim, today's lost lady was a Booker-Prize-winning novelist (we'll be discussing that book today) but she was also a two time Oscar-winning screenwriter. I believe she's the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar. She wrote the adaptations for so many stellar films, some of which you and I, and I'm guessing our listeners, too, would consider among our all time favorite movies. And yet we both had no idea they were written by a woman. I guess we never paid much attention to the credits. Shame on us.

KIM: That's why we're placing this screenwriter and author, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, in our “lost ladies” file. She's well-known to some, but not to enough people.

AMY: And who better to join us as today's guests than a Hollywood screenwriter, right? We've got one, a good friend of ours, in fact, to talk about Prawer Jhabvala and her movies. Should we cut to the chase and introduce her, Kim?

KIM: By the side of the everlasting "why" (or "should" in this case), there is a “yes.” That's a quote from one of Jhabvala's films. So let's raid the stacks and get started!

[intro music plays]

KIM:  Today's guest is screenwriter Brigitte Hales, who was a writer on the popular ABC series "Once Upon a Time." Her most recent film project is Disenchanted — that's Disney's sequel to Enchanted, starring Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey, which comes out later this year. She's currently writing another big movie sequel, and we're not allowed to spill the beans on that just yet, but let's just say she continues to run with the princess/fairytale theme. In 2020, Brigitte also worked on Steven Spielberg's reboot of "Amazing Stories" for Apple TV. 

AMY: As a neighbor of mine, Brigitte also was a lifeline for me during the pandemic. I would drag a folding chair down the street and meet with her for coffee every Sunday morning during the pandemic. She'd sit up on her balcony and I'd sit below in her driveway, and it was like "Romeo and Juliet," only instead of two teenagers obsessively in love, we were just venting all our stress and boredom and panic to one another. And then of course, we'd also frequently detour with gossip about the British Royal Family, because we both share that obsession as well. But anyway, we attempted to keep each other sane during that first year of the pandemic and still to this day, I think we're doing that, but I very much look forward to talking about other things than COVID numbers with you in today's episode, Brigitte. Welcome to the show!

BRIGITTE: Thank you! I'm so excited to be here. I've been enjoying these episodes so, so much, and you know, it's, it really still makes me laugh now to think about that time. It was so sad. Like, I really did not feel good while it was happening, but those are really great memories. And I have to say that I was thinking about this book and how great it would have been as a pandemic read because it just totally sweeps you away and takes you to a completely different place, which I was desperately trying to get to when I was stuck in my house. So I'm really sad that this book did not come into my life two years ago. 

AMY: I know, I did read it during lockdown and it was, it was like grabbing a passport and hopping on a plane. The next best thing. 

BRIGITTE: Oh completely. I felt like I traveled after I finished this book. 

AMY: Yeah. Okay. So I think it probably goes without saying that we are all obsessed with Merchant Ivory films, and that's part of the reason, Brigitte, that I wanted to bring you on for this episode, 

BRIGITTE: Oh, absolutely. I feel like Merchant Ivory films are where my obsession with a very specific type of English movie started, you know, like very sweeping, great cinematography kind of repressed emotion, all that kind of thing. Yeah. I love that.

AMY: Kim and I are actually going to delve into this a little bit more in next week's episode. I don't want to get too much into that, but I will say, I found out that there was A Room With a View musical that I had never heard of or known about before. And I love musicals so I'm like, "How have I not seen this? And how do I go see it?"

KIM: I'm scared and excited at the same time to hear that. 

BRIGITTE: Someone needs to reboot that.

AMY: Yeah, 

BRIGITTE: You’ve got to get that going, someone out there.

KIM: So when we're thinking about Merchant Ivory films, we think of the two main guys, right? James Ivory and Ismael Merchant. 

AMY: Yes. And they were a romantic couple in real life as well, but there was actually a third person — a woman — on their team from day one: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. And yes, Kim, I have to clarify the pronunciation; we've been thinking the whole time. It was Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, but because she was from Germany and they pronounced the "w" as a "v" I believe it's Ruth [Praver] Jhabvala. I've seen it said both ways. But yeah, we know about Merchant; We know about Ivory; but Ruth was actually their go-to writer on their biggest films. She penned 23 movies for them in a partnership spanning 40 years. And I realized that "Merchant Ivory Jhabvala," it doesn't quite roll off the tongue with the same ease as Merchant Ivory, but it kind of seems like an omission if you ask me, especially since Ruth won more Oscars than those guys ever did. So Brigette, were you aware of her, before we started doing this?

BRIGITTE: Not really. I mean, I knew her name because of the Oscar for Howard's End. But you know, when I was thinking about that, it's not actually that unusual in movies, even today, for screenwriters to get almost zero credit or notoriety, unless they're also the director. And it probably doesn't help that she's a woman. But yeah, it's, it's sadly often the case.

AMY: I know. I feel almost ashamed, like, it's my favorite movie, A Room With a View, and I didn't know a woman was involved with it at all. She won a Booker Prize. She was so prolific. So I'm sure there's a lot of listeners out there that are like, "You guys are crazy. We've known about her all along." 

BRIGITTE: I mean, putting aside how many short stories she wrote and how many novels she wrote, the fact that she wrote 23 movies is insane. That is a massive career all by itself.

KIM: Yeah. That's a huge number. So actually, the story is, Merchant and Ivory first hooked up with Ruth because they wanted to adapt her 1960 novel The Householder. And according to a New Yorker profile, Ismael Merchant telephoned her in India where she lived to ask her about optioning the book. She put them off by pretending to be her mother-in-law, the other Mrs. Jhabvala. That's how interested she was in collaborating with them. It's pretty funny. 

AMY: Apparently she did that frequently. She'd just answer the phone and say, "Ruth is not at home," which, Kim, that reminds me of Mary Astell from one of our previous episodes. She would lean her head out of window and tell visitors, "Miss Astell is not at home." 

KIM: Yeah, that's great. 

BRIGITTE: I wish we could still do that. Can I just jump in and say that that wit is totally in her books? I read some of her short stories. I started reading and it's definitely there. It's great. I love it.

AMY: A lot of humor. Yeah. Um, so apparently when they approached her about adapting her book, she had not seen a lot of movies, so she wasn't really that keen on the idea. But they sweet-talked her and she relented and she wound up writing the screenplay for the movie, The Householder, which premiered in 1963. It was the first official Merchant Ivory feature. It is set in India, and it's about a young couple in the early days of their arranged marriage. 

KIM: So Heat and Dust, the novel we're going to be focusing on today, is also set in India. And this might be a good time to back up a little bit in Ruth's story, because one mistake people frequently make (and made in her lifetime as well) is thinking she is an Indian writer. 

AMY: Yeah, and I will admit, I made the same assumption before looking into her story more closely. Yeah. I actually went to the library to get a copy of The Householder, and when I was checking it out, the librarian looks up and he's like, "You know, she's not Indian, right?" And I was like, "Actually, I do know that." Um, but apparently that's a common misconception, that he had to point that out to me. So the fact that she's not Indian also makes her writing a little bit controversial, but before we get into that, Brigitte, would you mind walking us through some of Ruth's backstory?

BRIGITTE: Yeah, sure. so she was born in 1927 in Cologne to Jewish parents who were at the time very assimilated and successful in their society. Her father was a lawyer. Her grandfather was prominent in the synagogue. Then when she was around seven, both parents were arrested by the Nazis and accused of having ties to Communism. Luckily they were released. Um, and soon after they escaped to Great Britain. They were apparently among the last wave of refugees to make it out. At the end of the war, they learned that more than 40 of their relatives had been killed in the camps. And her father was so broken by this news that he killed himself in 1948. Um, you know, by the time he died, Ruth was already studying English literature at Queen Mary College in London. Although one of the interesting things that I discovered about her, was that she was six years old when she says she realized that she was a writer. She had been asked to write a story about a rabbit. And she said in this interview that I wrote the title "Der Hase," I'm probably mangling that. "At once I was flooded with my destiny only, I didn't know that's what it was. I only remember my entire absorption and delight in writing about der hase to think that such happiness could be." When I read this, I was like, "I don't think I have ever had this experience." I still don't ever say to myself, "To think that such happiness could be," as I'm sitting at my typewriter. It's the opposite. 

AMY: I feel like at one point in school, this teacher or somebody accused her of not having written one of the stories. They said her parents had to have written it, because it was that good. So she had some talent, that little one.

BRIGITTE: She sure did.

KIM: So as you said, she studied English lit at Queen Mary College in London, and at a college party there, that's where she met her husband, an architect named Cyrus Jhabvala. His nickname was "Jhab." They married in the early 1950s and moved to his native India — Delhi, to be exact — where they would live for the next 25 years. The couple had three daughters and they had a long and happy marriage. You think it might have been culture shock for her, and it probably was, but she also loved all the richness and vibrancy of India. She was particularly fond of all the Indian sweets. After all the rationing in England during World War II, she was just thrilled to be able to indulge. So that's a cute anecdote about her. 

AMY: So, yeah, actually being a foreigner wherever she lived became part of her lifelong identity. She once said in an interview with the BBC, "Once a refugee, always a refugee. I can't remember not being all right wherever I was, but you don't give your whole allegiance to a place or want to be entirely identified with the society you're living in." And to explore this idea a little further, at a lecture in 1979, she described herself as quote "a writer without any ground of being out of which to write, really blown about from country to country, culture to culture, till I feel, till I am nothing." She then added, "I like it that way." And she compared herself to "a cuckoo, forever insinuating myself into others' nests, a chameleon, hiding myself in false or borrowed colors." 

KIM: Yeah. And when her novels and stories set in India were published, most of the stories were published in The New Yorker. It seemed like Indian readers embraced her, at first. Based on her married surname, they assumed she was Indian, but when they discovered she wasn't, they accused her of satirizing Indian characters and being too critical of the culture and country. She shrugged her shoulders at the criticism. And at one point she told The New York Times, "If you don't say that India is simply paradise on earth and the extended Hindu family the most perfect way of organizing society, you're anti-Indian. I don't have any readers there." 

AMY: Yeah. This is a tough one. I guess I can see why Indians might instinctively resist an outsider writing about their culture, especially if she was sometimes being a little bit critical of it. They could have also felt like maybe she was taking the spotlight away from actual Indian writers. 

BRIGITTE: Obviously of course, regardless of this episode, for sure there are great Indian writers that you'll find. This issue is, I think, especially prevalent right now, um, and the conversation about who gets to tell what stories and what do you get to write about, or, you know, paint... I guess it's not probably as big of an issue in music, although there are some kinds of sounds and whatnot that are associated with specific, you know, cultures. But the more I thought about this, the more I was thinking about how there are so many fantastic writers that wrote about cultures that weren't their own. Writers like Hemingway or Graham Greene. They were able to walk into a place and observe it in a way that when you live there and you're rushing through life every day, you're not going to be able to pick up on the same types of things that someone who isn't from your culture is able to see. I don't know, it worries me a little bit that we're going to continually shun anybody who isn't from a specific group of people from writing about things that they notice that might be incredible observations for the people who live there. I don't know, it's a very thorny issue.

AMY: She always felt like she didn't have her own tradition to draw on. She didn't have a place. She didn't have her own sort of identity. That's why she says, "I felt like a cuckoo, always in another nest," but if you think about it, so at this point in her life, she moves to India, she had probably been in Germany 10 years before she left. She’d probably been in England for another 10 years. Now she's in India and this is like the longest span that she's been somewhere. She lived there for 25 years. She was married to an Indian. They had Indian children. Her life was there. I don't know, we'll get into this a little bit more, but I agree, Brigitte. She's kind of straddling the line. So she's bringing the outsider's perspective, but then she's also, there submersed in it, you know, related to it. Um, there was a New Yorker profile where the writer Maya Jassanoff says that she actually had “an anthropologist’s curiosity about how society functions…” and that “she’s a decidedly nonparticipant observer; her narrative stance brings together candor and detachment.” So that sort of gets to what you were saying, Brigette. But then on the flip side of that, her very good friend, the Indian novelist Anita DeSai, she kind of said the opposite. In an essay in The Guardian, she wrote that “Ruth, like a great actor, becomes her characters and presents them to us from the inside out, not the outside in. She does not criticize or satirize them – as so many Indian readers accused her of doing – she becomes those she portrays. 

BRIGITTE: I totally agree with that. I mean, obviously, I'm just speaking for myself here, but reading Heat and Dust, I did not feel like there were any caricatures in this book at all. And I actually feel like in a weird way, this book kind of combines both of those quotes that you just read, because there is a sort of anthropologist's curiosity that I sensed in this book, which, you know, I was actually reading some of it in London and it's not a place I've been that many times. And so I felt like that kind of sense was coming alive in me, too. It's what happens when you're in a new place, you know, and your ability to just see these little details about the world that you're walking through is just so beautifully present in this book. And then at the same time, she's writing real people, people that are very complex. She writes about the tensions that existed in the time between the East and the West. Um, she's very hard on the white characters I would say. She often talks about how the white characters have a sense of superiority, which they certainly do. And she even uses some of this to justify a little bit of the violence that's in the book, that there's this simmering resentment that is justified by the Indian characters. So again, just my point of view, but, at least looking at this particular book, I feel like it does justice to the place and the people that she knew and were living with.

AMY: I've heard it said about her that she was the first post colonialist writer and I think this book exemplifies that, because before this a lot of the people writing about India were writing about the Empire. Glorifying it. And she, in most of her literature about India, was writing more about contemporary India and also just real life day-to-day what it was like to be there. So I like Heat and Dust as an example of bridging the gap between those two. And we'll get into it in a second with a synopsis of what the book's about, but she's making those connections between the past and the present . She's making the connection between the East and the West, and who better to do that than a woman who has had a foot in both of those worlds, right?

KIM: Yeah. So this seems like the perfect jumping off point to really get into our discussion about the book, Heat and Dust. She wrote it during a summer dust storm the last year she lived in India. It came out in 1975. It won the Booker Prize that year. Brigitte, do you want to set up the story for our listeners? 

BRIGITTE: Sure. So the book's about two women in two different time periods. One is Olivia in 1920s India, which is the British Raj era. She's the wife of an English official in the colonial government there who slowly falls in love with an Indian prince. And the other woman is essentially her step granddaughter in the 1970s who's completely captivated by this story in her family, which no one likes to discuss. It's kind of a, like, "We don't talk about Bruno" situation.

AMY: I was just going to make that reference. If we wind up doing a musical version of this, a la A Room View, we're going to add in a, "We don't talk about 'Livia."

BRIGITTE: It writes itself, basically. 

AMY: Yes. 

BRIGITTE: So anyway, yes, our woman in the seventies, who interestingly, I believe is never named, and I searched to make sure that this was true because her part is written in first person. But yes, she decides to move to India and try and trace Olivia's path and she ends up on a fantastic romantic adventure of her own.

AMY: And the interesting thing about Jhabvala's process in writing the novel is that she wrote the two narratives separately in their entirety, and then she went back, broke them up and pieced them back together like a puzzle into Heat and Dust, which I thought was really interesting. And I don't know if I would have thought to do it that way as a writer. And you can't tell she did it that way. 

BRIGITTE: I would never have guessed that she did that. Um, I also found out that in the middle of this, she contracted jaundice and was kind of in this sort of dreamy state, 

AMY: Like a fever dream, yeah.

BRIGITTE: I just think the book has such a wonderful dreamy quality to it that I just really kind of sunk into. And when I found out that she was in this kind of basically altered state when she wrote it, it made total sense.

AMY: I have the impression reading it like, "Oh, I'm reading a Merchant Ivory movie." That's the experience I felt. 

BRIGITTE: When we get into talking about the book a little bit, I pulled out a couple of sentences that are a perfect example of action description in screenwriting, because you could take these four sentences, and a director and a DP and a production designer could just make the whole scene come to life. This is why they loved her. They found a writer who could write lyrically and visually, and her characters were really refined and restrained, so great actors wanted to be in these movies. I mean, I get why they loved her.

AMY: And I also want to talk about, this, you know, step granddaughter, from the 1970s who is really wanting to piece together the story about who is this Olivia woman from the 1920s. It's such a mystery built right into the beginning of the book. You know there's drama. You are immediately sucked in, right?

KIM: Absolutely. Yeah. And that same kind of mystique that surrounds Olivia also surrounds this mysterious Nawab that Olivia is said to have run off with. He's thought to be in league with these local bandits who are causing all kinds of trouble for the British colonial officials. And there's something really fascinating, but also a little dangerous about him. Our seventies-era narrator is trying to get to the bottom of this family secret when she asks her Indian guide if he has any intel. Jhabvala writes, “Yes, he had heard rumors about him and his dissolute bad life; also vague rumors about the old scandal. But who cares about that now? All those people are dead, and even if any of them should still be left alive somewhere, there is no one to be interested in their doings.”

AMY: Okay, this is genius on her part because she's just like, no, you don't want to know about this while the reader's just sitting there going, "I do! I'm dying to know! Please tell me!"

KIM: What a great conceit there. Yep. 

BRIGITTE: So good. And I also think that, um, this choice she made to tell it in first person, as diary entries, really makes it feel like you are the person who's arriving in India. And the way she observes the world, it just immediately makes it feel so personal to you in a way that I think is super effective in drawing you into the story. Actually, can I read my little part of this beginning where she notices India, the world that she creates? Um, okay. So here's the little section. This is like page four or something. Our unnamed character from the seventies has just arrived in India. And these are some of her very first impressions that she has. She says, " I go to the window and look down in the street. It's bright as day down there, not only with the white street lights, but each stall and barrow is lit up with a flare of naphtha. There are crowds of people; some are sleeping — it's so warm that all they have to do is stretch out, no bedding necessary." I mean, when you're reading writing like that, it may seem like it's really easy to do that, but it is not easy to do that! In that tiny paragraph you saw in your head a character walk to a window, look down and the whole world came to life. I mean, it's absolutely beautiful prose to read in a book, but if you were writing a screenplay and you wanted to write what a character would do, that's exactly how you would write it.

AMY: Literally it is just telling you the action to set the mood.

KIM: Yep. Absolutely. 

BRIGITTE: But it's giving you just enough detail to tell you what color the light is, to tell you how busy the street is, what the character does, but not with too much description that you really just don't need. Now, sometimes writers love to write that kind of description and it's fun to read, so I don't necessarily diminish writers who are very verbose, but the simplicity of her writing is really just truly beautiful.

AMY: That's why her career dovetails so nicely as a Hollywood screenwriter. 

BRIGITTE: Even though she hated it. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: I don't know if she hated it, but we'll get into that.

BRIGITTE: She looked down on it.

AMY: She saw it as trivial. Yeah.

BRIGITTE: Yes. And all great novelists do, so it's okay. I don't hate her for that.

AMY: Um, in terms of her being able to set the mood instantly, I had a similar vibe when this 1970s narrator goes and visits the old Nawab's abandoned palace from the 1920s. She writes at one point, “One curtain was still left hanging there - a rich brocade, stiff with dust and age. I touched it to admire the material, but it was like touching something dead and mouldering.”

BRIGITTE: And that again, like, what is that, two sentences? 

KIM: So short, but there's so much text in. 

BRIGITTE: You could see how that would become a film, and you could see how a great actor could bring across this feeling of touching something dead and mouldering. I mean, it's just it's Ugh. I'm jealous.

AMY: Um, when we're talking about the flashing back and forth between the two time periods, in addition to feeling like I was Reading a Merchant Ivory movie, I also felt like I was reading The English Patient a little bit. Um, you know, I, I had those vibes, if you liked, or remember that book by Michael Ondaatje. Is that how you say his name? I'm not sure. So if you liked The English Patient, you'll really like this book because it has a lot of the same characteristics.

BRIGITTE: Agreed. 

KIM: So Jhabvala instantly drops us into an India that is pulsing with energy and beauty in one sense, but there's also this feeling that's oppressive in both time periods she switches between. Here's a section early on I want to read where the narrator gives us a great description of that feeling:

 I have not yet traveled on a bus in India that has not been packed to bursting-point, with people inside and luggage on top; and they are always so old that they shake up every bone in the human body and every screw in their own. If the buses are always the same, so is the landscape through which they travel. Once a town is left behind, there is nothing till the next one except flat lands, broiling sky, distances and dust. Especially the dust: the sides of the bus are open with only bars across them so that the hot winds blow in freely, bearing desert sands to choke up ears and nostrils and set one’s teeth on edge with grit.

AMY: Ooh. So yeah, there's this literal heat and dust in terms of the weather and the environment, but then there's also the heat of passion, of course, and then kind of the dust of the bygone era. So even though Olivia, our 1920s era gal, she loves her husband. He seems like a relatively good guy, but she is just bored out of her skull with all the other British citizens in her circle. And then if we flash forward to the 1970s, our narrator there also has some of the same eye-rolls for the English tourists that she encounters in India, right, Brigitte?

BRIGITTE: Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting because during the seventies, the kind of British person that you might've encountered would be, you know, one of these people sort of looking for enlightenment, you know, on the road. And she actually has this couple, and the guy is dressed in an orange robe with a shaved head, a little bit of a poser, you know? He's throwing around language of enlightenment and searching for a guru and that kind of thing. Um, and actually of the girl she writes: “The girl was indignant – not only about this watchman but about all the other people all over India. She said they were all dirty and dishonest. She had a very pretty, open, English face but when she said that it became mean and clenched, and I realized that the longer she stayed in India the more her face would become like that.

   “Why did you come?” I asked her.

   “To find peace.” She laughed grimly: “But all I found was dysentery.”

AMY: So that goes back to, Brigitte, what you were saying: white characters in this book are not always painted in the best light, right?

BRIGITTE: Definitely not.

AMY: And you know, in that passage she's clearly poking fun at the European kind of distasteful attitude about India, and I think if you read some of her other stories, you find this kind of mocking of Westerners. They're either not cut out for life in India, or they have a sort of over-the-top obsession with India where you're just like "calm down, you hippie," you know?

BRIGITTE: Yeah. 

KIM: Yeah, there's actually a famous line Jhabvala wrote in the forward to one of her short story collections. It's about the experience of being a European in India. I'll read it. “It goes like this: first stage, tremendous enthusiasm — everything Indian is marvelous; second stage, everything Indian not so marvelous; third stage, everything Indian abominable. For some people it ends there, for others the cycle renews itself and goes on. I have been through it so many times that now I think of myself as strapped to a wheel that goes round and round and sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m down. When I meet other Europeans, I can usually tell after a few moments’ conversation at what stage of the cycle they happen to be.”

BRIGITTE: I suspect that this might just be the experience of most people when they move to a culture or a country that's completely different or even slightly different from their own.

AMY: Yeah, but then I also think it just seems like everything in India is intense, right? Intensely colorful, intensely hot, intensely miserable at times, you know? 

BRIGITTE: When you're in an extreme environment, it makes all of those feelings even more extreme.

KIM: Yeah. So anyway, back to the novel, Olivia's really languishing in India. She wants to be part of what she sees as the real India. She doesn't want to be stuck in her little bubble of proper Brits. 

AMY: And so enter this handsome, mysterious hottie, the Nawab of Khatm. He lives a decadent life in his palace and he has this magnetic charm, power, a little bit of cockiness, but also generosity, maybe some ruthlessness, even. Brigitte, anything else you want to touch on relating to this mysterious stranger?

BRIGITTE: Besides that I was completely in love with him? I totally was.

AMY: I'm glad you were because I think that's what she intended. I went hot and cold on the guy, but…

BRIGITTE: He's a bad boy, let's just be honest. That's what he is. And I fell for it, and I was really hoping that he was going to completely change his ways for Olivia, meaning myself, you know. I mean, like I just completely imagined the sexiest guy in the entire world reading this thing, but I will say that I also think that he's a great example of how rich her characters are, because he's really not just a one- dimensional hot guy, you know? He does very strange things, like he has this English character, Harry, who he basically keeps hostage in his palace and it's never really quite clear why. The guy wants to leave, and he won't, essentially, let them go. 

KIM: It's very mysterious. 

BRIGITTE: Yeah. In general, I feel like most of her characters are kind of unknowable in some way. And I actually found that some of the reviewers didn't like that about her writing. That was a criticism for them. For me, I love that. I like that you don't really get to know... do you ever really get to know anybody, frankly? 

KIM: It makes it much more interesting 

BRIGITTE: And people are never just one thing. The Nawab, for example… probably, there's a bit of truth in all of the things that you were saying, Amy. He is all of those things at times. Sometimes he's ruthless. Sometimes he's generous. Sometimes he's loving. Sometimes he's just hot. 

KIM: And he's a lot of fun! Like that game of musical chairs at the shrine that they were at. 

AMY: I like to call that "Musical Chair Foreplay." 

KIM: Yeah, I've never heard of "Musical Chair Foreplay." 

AMY: That's what it was. There was no other way to describe that! 

KIM: Sexy!

BRIGITTE: I mean,! Someone out there is doing it right now because that's the world we live in.

KIM: Okay. So naturally of course, Olivia falls almost instantly madly in love with the Nawab, but when she turns up pregnant, she's in a major quandary.

AMY: Yeah, Yeah, exactly. She knows when this baby is born it's going to be a dead giveaway that her very blond husband is not the father. And we don't want to give away anything else that happens after that, either to Olivia or to the 1970s narrator, whose own story sort of parallels that of her predecessor. So, we won't go into more detail about what happens. 

BRIGITTE: It's not what you're thinking though. I did not see where it was going, I will say that. 

KIM: No, I agree. 

AMY: Okay, so sometimes when I hear that a book has won the Booker Prize, I'm like, it's not going to be my beach read — my fun beach read, but this one really was a page turner. It was nice to read. It didn't feel like a slog.

BRIGITTE: No, no, no.

AMY: What was a slog, however…

KIM: Oh yeah.

BRIGITTE: Oh! 

AMY: …the Merchant Ivory adaptation of Heat and Dust. 

KIM: We did a little film festival, the three of us, and we watched the movie. 

AMY: Treated ourselves to some Indian cuisine. 

BRIGITTE: Which was really good. The food was great.

KIM: Yep. 

AMY: And how, how do you mess this up? Because like I said, she wrote it like a Merchant Ivory movie. All you have to do is just…I don't know. It didn't work. It didn't work. 

BRIGITTE: Well, I have a theory.

KIM: Yeah. Tell us what happened. What went wrong, Brigitte? 

BRIGITTE: I think, and it actually has made me want to read her screenplay for this, and also for Howard's End, um, specifically… I think in her early adaptation process, I don't want to say she didn't have faith in the filmmakers because I don't think she understood enough about screenwriting to have faith or not have faith, but what she tried to do was to take all the sort of subtext of the book and the undercurrent, and she just made it all text. Now that could have been alongside their direction. I'm not gonna blame her, you know, for those choices, but what happened was all of the mystery and the sort of subtle undertones of things were completely gone, and they hadn't really found their visual style yet. So this book that is just rich with these incredible descriptions of India, is just completely, the movie is just flat. Like, it doesn't really look nice at all. So it's just, it's sad.

KIM: Yeah, the characters are one-dimensional. And like you said, it's flat, too, visually. 

AMY: We couldn't finish it. 

KIM: Listeners, we didn't finish the movie. 

AMY: So read the book is what we're saying. Stick to the book. Um, but anyway, getting back to the elements that some people find problematic in the book, there's an Indian poet Nissim Ezekiel condemned the novel, saying it was “stereotyped in its characters and viciously prejudiced in its vision of the Indian scene.” Then, on the other hand, Ruth’s friend and literary protegee Anita Desai  wrote: “It’s very sad that there was, and continues to be, resentment towards a foreigner writing about India with such frankness and irony.”

KIM: I think the best we can do is let you, our listeners, read the book and decide for yourself. I can understand both sides of the debate, but I personally appreciated, for a change, a woman's experience of living in India as an expat during that time. And as you said, Amy, she was writing about what she knew and really attempting to give a nuanced perspective. 

BRIGITTE: Yeah, I think this is one of those things everyone's just going to go round and round and round about, and it could be a conversation you get in with someone that's really fun. And it could be one in which, you know, you have to maybe prepare yourself that your point of view isn't right. And I will say the one thing that I feel confident in saying is that she's a great writer. It's one of the better books I've read in a while.

KIM: I agree. It's a wonderful book, and I want to read more by her, so I want to get a list from you of what you've read after this. You can jot down what to read next. Um, and I will also say we would love to hear from our listeners, too, if they want to share their feelings about it as well, because we do want to listen to other viewpoints 

AMY: So Brigitte, I wanted to bring up a few remarks that Ruth had made about the process of writing for film and see if you sort of agreed with what she had to say or not.

BRIGITTE: Sure.

AMY: Okay. So she had one said, “I always find the first thing that really bothers me when I start a screenplay is, I have to find a different form. You can’t follow the form of the novel. It’s a different thing completely. It’s impossible. You just somehow have to find a structure for the whole thing. You have to crack that.” So I don't know if you've ever had to adapt a book... 

BRIGITTE: I did actually. My first staff job was adapting a Stephen King novel called 11/22/63. And it was a huge book, and obviously, for a multi episode show, that process is going to be way different than for a movie. But she's right. A movie is a totally different thing. The rhythm is different. When you start trying to put all your scenes into that kind of format, it just doesn't read the same. It doesn't feel the same. And sometimes things that were said in the book are much better not said when you have a great actor. So yeah, I don't think she's wrong about that. 

AMY: I actually watched an interview with Ruth where she was kind of talking about this. And she said that when she adapted The Householder, she thought she could just take the dialogue from her book and just plug it in. And she's like, "This is easy." But then she said, "After the fact, I realized that was a bad idea. Like, you can't just take the dialogue and put it in the screenplay." Okay, so, so the next thing she said, about Hollywood: “Film is not like a book; it’s not a writer’s baby at all. So many people have put in their talent, by that time that you feel grateful for what they’ve done, you don’t feel possessive about it in any way.” Do you agree?

BRIGITTE: Oh that's a tough one. I think sometimes that's true. If you've been on a project that's been really difficult, or that wasn't necessarily your original idea, then I a hundred percent agree. And she's right. In movies, it's not a writer's baby. It's just not. It's the directors. It's pretty much everyone but the writer, even though they wouldn't be there, like, if there wasn't a writer, but they don't seem to remember that most of the time. However, in TV and streaming as we would probably call it these days, that is not true. The writer is king there.

AMY: You know whyI think she didn't feel that possessiveness is that it wasn't her first love. Writing novels was what she enjoyed. She didn't feel possessive about the screenplays because it was a hobby. 

BRIGITTE: So many screenwriters just fell down weeping. "Just had a little hobby," when they're desperately trying to have a career!

AMY: I know, but that's how everyone who knew her described it. She just didn't care that much about the movies. Okay, one last thing. She says that she spent tons of time in the editing room on each Merchant Ivory film and was described as merciless in the editing process. Is that typical ?

BRIGITTE: Not in film. When you're in TV, you are in the editing room and you do have to be merciless by the way. And you often don't have a choice, because it's really obvious that it's not working or that a line that you really liked should go. In fact, most of the time, it's you taking out dialogue because a lot of it just plays better when it's just an actor doing their thing, rather than saying the stuff that you wrote. And one of the things I actually read about her, I think it was in regards to Howard's End, was that her writing really allows for actors to do the kind of thing that they love to do best, which is to sort of sit in emotion and just let it play across their face. And that's what you find in the editing room. It's those kinds of moments where you're like, you know what, I didn't need the 16 lines that I wrote around this. All I need is for Anthony Hopkins to sit there and do the thing he does, you know? Like, that's it.

AMY: I think for the very few screenplays that Kim and I have written, that's the part that's really hard as a writer, is that you can't just be like "Anthony Hopkins, figure out this blank spot." 

BRIGITTE: You have to put it in. And very often working in studios, they make you put it in. They make you put in every single line that would describe anything that anybody would be confused about. And then you get on set and actors look at you and they say, "Do you think I'm stupid or the audience is stupid?" And you have to sort of, you can't say... 

AMY: Maaaaybe.

BRIGITTE: You just say, "well, you know, I thought it better that we just have it there just in case." That's what you always say. "Just in case." But you know what? Almost all the time, when you have a good actor, you don't need it. You don't. 

AMY: So let's circle back to ...

KIM: Ruth's life. Yeah. Her story. So as she became more and more involved professionally with Merchant and Ivory, Ruth and her husband ended up settling in New York City. This was the third major move of her life. She and her husband bought her an apartment there with her proceeds from the Booker Prize. Actually, it was in the same building as James and Ismael's apartment, so they were always hanging out just an elevator's ride away from each other. That would be great, Amy, if we lived in the same building. Also, she and her family would spend the summer at Claverack, which is a beautiful house that James and Ismael had in the Hudson River Valley. Sounds gorgeous. 

AMY: I just love the idea that they were all friends and basically kind of family. 

KIM: For such a long time. 

AMY: James Ivory just published a memoir that came out last year, and he said the three of them kind of came to be known as a triumvirate, but Ruth didn't like that word, triumvirate. So maybe in a way she was kind of glad that she was not part of the official branding. Maybe she didn't want her name on that heading Merchant Ivory. Yeah, it seemed like she valued her privacy and I think maybe she was like, I'll let them be the front men and I'll just go back to writing my novels, which is what I really enjoy anyway. 

KIM: Yeah. 

BRIGITTE: I think a lot of writers have that personality, which makes it easy to be taken advantage of because you don't really want the accolades in the way that sometimes other people who have a more public role do. It's just not why you're in it, you know? You're in it to sit in a dark room and make stuff up, and the other part of it can be uncomfortable. I always hesitate assuming that she was happy to like never be mentioned ever, because I mean, I was a fan of Merchant Ivory and I never thought about her. Never, ever, ever. And I feel like they could have, without disturbing her privacy, they still could have said, "and also this woman!" more. 

KIM: Yeah, yeah, 

BRIGITTE: But they didn't.

KIM: I think we could have easily said “Merchant, Ivory and Jhabvala.” Come on.

AMY: We could have made it roll off our tongues. 

KIM: We totally could have. It would have, it would be so natural. So anyway, she died in 2013. In addition to all these screenplays she wrote, she wrote 21 novels and volumes of short stories.

AMY: You know, speaking of screenwriting, Brigette, we've been talking about it a lot, but I want to find out a little bit more about Disenchanted. When is it coming out, and also, what was it like writing a movie musical? I think that was a first for you, right?

BRIGITTE: That was a first, yes. It was very fun and challenging. I got to work with amazing people. Alan Menken, who is a Disney legend. And Stephen Schwartz, who was the lyricist who, you know, created Wicked. So I felt imposter syndrome every day of that experience, but it was probably a once in a lifetime. I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about what it is about, except that it's a musical and that it's really fun and big. And then it comes out on the Friday after Thanksgiving. So Black Friday basically, and it's a family movie. Everyone in your family will enjoy it. Um, and yeah, but all I can think about right now is that I need to write a lot of novels and short stories because woman's leaving me in the dust!

AMY: No, I feel like you're having your musical screenplay training, so that we're now going to go back and do "we don't talk about Bruno...

BRIGITTE: Right.

AMY: Well, "we don't talk about Livia"

BRIGITTE: I should pitch myself for this project. It's a perfect fit.

AMY: Because the first movie wasn't very good. 

BRIGITTE: No, 

KIM: I know, it needs to be redone. 

AMY: Yeah. Anyway, I am sensing another viewing party to watch Disenchanted. We can't wait for that. Brigittte, thank you so much for being a guest with us. We loved hanging out with you!.

BRIGITTE: Oh, thank you so much. It was so fun. I'm so glad that we don't have to see each other from what was that? 20 feet away

AMY: Oh my gosh.

BRIGITTE: Yearning for human contact.

AMY: I'm glad I had you. I'm glad I had you.

BRIGITTE: Ditto.

AMY: And also, as we mentioned earlier, Kim and I want to keep this Merchant Ivory kick going, so join us back here next week, because we're going to be giving you a rundown of some of their lesser known films. And we'll tell you which ones we think are worth your time. 

In the meantime, if you're liking our podcast, don't forget to give us one of those five-star reviews because it really helps new listeners find us.

KIM: 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 Kim Askew and Amy Helmes. 

92. A Very Brief History of the Proust Questionnaire

Note: Transcripts are generated, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

KIM: Hey, everybody, welcome to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode! I’m Kim Askew, here with my co-host Amy Helmes…

AMY: Hi, everyone! Kim, I was trying to think of a topic for this week’s mini episode, and I I don’t know, as part of my brainstorming, I was like, “maybe some of our listeners might want to know more about us.” And then I thought, yeah no probably not. We’re better off sticking to more interesting topics.

KIM: I’d rather talk about other people, personally.

AMY: Yeah, but anyway, this train of thought got me thinking about something else: the Proust Questionnaire. You’re familiar with it, right?

KIM: Oh, yeah. Vanity Fair magazine, famously, ends each of its issues by having a celebrity fill out the Proust Questionnaire. It’s a list of thought-provoking and kind of fun questions which are hopefully going to reveal a bit of the interview subject’s personality. (And typically, I think they do.)

AMY: Yeah, it’s usually the first thing I read whenever I pick up a copy of Vanity Fair. But then I started wondering, okay, why is it called the Proust Questionnaire? I gotta assume Proust, the French novelist, must have come up with the list of questions or something like that.

KIM: Yeah. I felt like maybe, um, he had a similar thing that he did and they took the name from that. But Yeah. I wasn't really sure. I'm curious to talk about it more in this episode. 

AMY: Yeah, so that’s what we’re going to do. And turns out he did not create the questionnaire. All he did was answer a few of them, because it turns out this questionnaire was a popular pastime in the Victorian Era. Some refer to it as a “parlor game,” 

KIM: They loved those games. They loved those parlor games!

AMY: Well, they had nothing else… they didn’t have Netflix! They had nothing else to do. THey had to come up with stuff if they had people over.

KIM: Yeah. They had their little science experiments and Blindman’s Bluff.

AMY: Yes. Ooh! We should do a mini episode on all the different Victorian parlor games!

KIM: Yeah, I think they all make an appearance in Dickens’s novels. We could probably just do Dickens novels and parlor games. Anyway, making a note of that.

KIM: Yes, okay, so this questionnaire actually has its origins in a printed book. It was called a “confession album.” I think there were various versions of them. But they would feature pre-printed questions with blank spaces that your friends and guests to fill out. (It feels very slumber-party-ish to me!)

KIM: Yeah, all of a sudden when you were saying that I was thinking Burn Book or something like that.

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Kind of. Yeah. So, for example, Kim, you would come over to my house one evening and then I’d give you this book and be like, “Here, fill this out!” It kind of keeps a memento of the person that came to visit you, but it’s also fun and something to do. And a lot of famous people from the era have filled these out and some have been saved. So there are examples from notable people like Oscar Wilde (which, I didn’t really have time to do a deep-dive looking for his responses, but can you imagine how good his must have been?)

KIM: Oh my god. I’ve got to go read those. 

AMY: He’d be really good at filling out this form. Umm…Arthur Conan Doyle…

KIM: Ooh! I want to read Arthur Conan Doyle’s!

AMY: Yeah. Paul Cezanne. Karl Marx did one. The author A.A. Milne also remembered them from when he was a boy.

KIM: That’s so interesting, but it still doesn’t answer why this questionnaire is now called the Proust questionnaire. Is it because his answers were particularly enlightened or amazing?

AMY: Yeah, that’s kind of what I was thinking. You know, maybe he somehow answered these questions SO REMARKABLY that he came to be associated with it.” Well, I found his responses, and I will let everybody judge for themselves. He first filled out the questionnaire when he was around 14-years-old. And it was from a book called Confessions. An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, Etc.” It was printed in English but he wrote his responses in French. So then when he was in his early 20s he filled out a second one which had slightly different questions. So I’m going to read you some of the answers and his questions from both of these just to give you a little bit of an idea. And you might hear my paper rattling a bit while I do this, so just disregard that. Okay, so I’ll just run through some of these:

So… your favorite virtue? His second one, he responded “the need to be loved more precisely the need to be caressed and spoiled much more than the need to be admired.”  

What do you appreciate the most in your friends? “To have tenderness for me, if their personage is exquisite enough to render quite high the price of their tenderness.” (Not really sure what he's going for there.)

Um, what is your idea of perfect happiness? “Not, I fear a very elevated one. I really haven't the courage to say what it is and if I did, I should probably destroy it by the mere fact of putting it into words.”

Who is your favorite hero of fiction? “Hamlet.”

KIM: I would probably have answered that at different points. I don't know. I'd have to think about it now, but yeah.

AMY: ​​Uh, what are your favorite names? “I only have one at a time.” (I don't think he really answered that one.)

 Um, which talent would you most like to have? “Willpower and irresistible charm.”

KIM: He put all of his work into his writing, not into this.

AMY: Well, I mean, remember that he was 14 for one of them, but…

KIM: Yeah. That’s true.

AMY: What is your current state of mind? “Annoyance at having to think about myself in order to answer these questions.” (I kind of sympathize with that.)

KIM: Oh yeah, for sure.

AMY: But then we have ones like, “Your favorite color and flower?” and he wrote, “I like them all. And for the flowers, I do not know.” (I mean, you could do better than that!)

KIM: He wanted to get into the party.

AMY: Yeah. He's like, come on. He was starting to get over it. Yeah. Um, let’s see. 

Your idea of misery? “Being separated from Mama.”

KIM: I was going to say something about his mom had to come up. If you didn't read one where his mom was the answer, I was going to be shocked. 

AMY: His favorite qualities in a man? “Feminine charm.”

KIM: That’s funny.

AMY: Favorite qualities in a woman? “Manly virtues.”

KIM: I love that he swapped that that's also very fitting as well. I'm very revealing. That's great. 

AMY: I'm trying to find a few more good ones. Oh:

If not yourself, who would you be? “Since the question does arise I prefer not to answer it. All the same, I should very much have liked to be Pliny the Younger.” It’s like, okay!

Anyway, so I don’t know. I’m not getting any major “genius” vibes with his answers.

KIM: No, no, no. I think he did save all of the good stuff up for his novels, which is fine with me.

AMY: And truly the whole concept of this questionnaire, when you hear the genesis of it, it feels very junior high, actually. Here I was reading Vanity Fair thinking it was this intellectual exercise and had, you know, something very “Proustian” about it. And no, it was just really  some dumb confession albums that the Victorians were doing. And I guess by the end of the 19th century, if you asked a guest to fill one out, they would probably roll their eyes and be like, “Really? Oh my God, this lame guy is still into this?”

KIM: Yeah, as would happen now, like I think it would be too silly at this point.  

AMY: Yeah, it’s kind of forced. There’s one line from a novel by the Canadian novelist Annie Sevigny in which she writes: “did any of you ever come under the torture of that modern Inquisition, the 'Confession Book?'”

KIM: I love it. 

AMY: So she’s kind of being snarky about it. 

KIM: She’s over it. Okay, so we haven’t quite gotten to the burning question, which is why Proust’s name came to be associated with the questionnaire? I still don’t know.

AMY: Right.  Because it's like yeah, he filled some out, but so did all these other writers.

KIM: Yeah, why is it not the “Oscar Wilde Questionnaire?”

AMY: Yeah, okay. I kind of have an answer, and that is that the first one Proust filled out when he was 14, that was a confession album belonging to his friend, Antoinette Faure. (And her father Felix eventually went on to become the president of France.) So Antoinette’s son eventually found that confession album in 1924 (two years after Proust’s death) and he ended up having Proust’s page published in a French literary journal. Now Antoinette’s son was a psychoanalysis, so alongside Proust’s answers he published an article sort of parsing out Proust’s responses with a psychoanalytic bent. 

KIM: Remind me to burn my papers, one, and two, that’s pretty funny. That’s pretty interesting to take that and do that. But yeah, I wonder what Proust would have thought of that. 

AMY: Yeah, so while confession albums kind of went the way of the dodo, the proust questionnaire made this resurgent comeback and it got people interested in this idea of the questionnaire again. started appearing in French literary magazines, sort of as Vanity Fair does now where intellectuals would answer the same list of questions. A German newspaper started running it and so did England’s Saturday Correspondent paper. Vanity Fair started featuring it in 1993, which is actually pretty recent all things considered. So then the idea of the questionnaire has also cropped up on TV a bit. I don’t know if you remember the TV show Inside the Actor’s Studio?

KIM: Oh yes.

AMY: With James Lipton. Yes. They made fun of that on Saturday Night Live, too, but he always ended his show with those sorts of questions. And today it kind of signifies that you are “somebody,” if you get asked to answer one of these today, right? Which makes it even more funny because it just started as this dumb pastime, as we said. I want to credit a 2016 New Yorker article by Evan Kindley, which provided some of the information that I've relayed here in this episode. And if you want to learn more about the Proust questionnaire and that story of how it came to light we'll link to that in our show notes.

KIM: It was interesting. I'm definitely wanting to read some more of these answers from famous people. 

AMY: Yeah.  And Kim, I don't know if you know this, but when I worked at, I had my magazine job for like 20 years that I did, um, one of my sections that I was in charge of it was called StarTalk, but it was basically, we would ask one question each week in the vein of, one of these Preuss questionnaire questions, , it's like a fan magazine.

KIM: Yeah, you’ve got to sound really interesting and pithy and a short answer. Like it's gotta be set sort of revealing. And if you want to present who you are, you want to come across as intellectual or whatever. That's a lot of pressure.

AMY:  You're always going to think of the correct cooler answer later that night when you’re lying in bed.

KIM: Yes.

AMY: Right. But part of the fun of it is that you do have to answer on the fly.

KIM: Right.

AMY: So that said, I know that we said we didn't want to bore listeners with anything about ourselves, Kim, but maybe we should try to do a few.  Maybe we should end the show answering a few of the Proust questionnaire questions, and I did not plan for this, so I have not premeditated my, um, answer so well, we'll just do a few and see if we come up with anything amazing. So we’ll just ask a few back and forth if you want.

KIM: Okay.

AMY: Um, I'll start easy. Your favorite color and flower?

KIM: My favorite color is black.

AMY: It is?! That is so dumb!

KIM: It’s a flattering color!

AMY: Okay. All right. Like your favorite color to wear, I’m guessing? Or anything?

KIM: Both. I like the darkness of it. I like it. Yeah.

AMY: Oh my gosh. I am getting real insight into you.

KIM: Oh, okay! So what else can we find out? Okay, so let’s see…

AMY: You didn’t do flower.

KIM: Oh, I didn't do flower. Um, my favorite flowers are Ecuadorian roses.

AMY: Oh, that’s specific.

KIM: Dark red and gorgeous.

AMY: Okay. Since that's an easy one, I'm going to answer it too, because I can just, I know the answer already. So my favorite color is yellow, cheerful. Happy. And then, yeah, I know, like you'll never see me wearing yellow, but it's my favorite color.  And then, um, flower is tulip.

KIM: A tulip is a cute flower, and yellow and tulip seem to go great together. I like it. I think it does show a little bit of who you are as well.  Okay. So, oh yeah. I think I see some of these that could be funny for you to ask me.

AMY: Which one?

KIM: Your favorite name? Do you remember the time? Long before I had my daughter…

AMY: Yes, I don't. I, you don't even need… does it start with a W?

KIM: I just, I had announced during… when we were shopping or something. And I said, “You know what I think would be a great baby name?”  And you said no. And I said, “Well, Waverly.” And you said “What?” And then later at dinner you were like, “Oh yeah, Kim said, um, that she wanted to name her kid Waverly.” And I was like, “Wait a second.

No, I didn't.” And then I was like, “Oh yeah, you're right. I did.”AMY: It sounds very Bronte-esque…like “Waverly climbed the moors.”

KIM: I used to love all those really dramatic names. Victoria Elizabeth, or queen leanings. Those were always my favorite. I don't know if that's going to sound funny to anyone besides us, but Waverly. I immediately thought of Waverly when I saw that question. Okay. Where would you like to live?  

AMY: England.

KIM: That doesn't surprise me. 

AMY: London.

KIM: The Anglophile in us. Yes.You know, what's crazy is you didn't come to visit me when I was living in London. It wasn't for that long. 

AMY: It wasn't’ for that long. 

KIM: Yeah, I’m surprised.

AMY: I was engaged at that point and…

KIM: You were planning your wedding. 

AMY: There was a lot going on.

KIM: Yeah, because I flew back for your wedding and then not long after that I ended up moving.

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: But anyhow…

AMY: I love how I answered that so quickly. That must truly be like, I didn't even miss a beat on that. Okay. 

KIM: We don’t need to analyze that one. That’s just right there for the taking.

AMY: I mean, Simon Thomas, the offer still stands. Subletting your house. Okay. I have one for you, Kim. What is your pet aversion? 

KIM: Cats.

AMY: What?

KIM: I know, that’s not the question.

AMY: Cats? Oh, like “pets.” Okay, okay.

KIM: Um, But it would actually be making any phone calls after 11:00 AM. I think it's kind of an introvert thing. I hate calling to make appointments or doing anything like that after 11, like I just don't have the energy for it. 

AMY: But before 11 is fine?

KIM: I only want to do it before 11, Like when I'm highly caffeinated and everything after that,  just, I just can't do it. 

AMY: I hear you. I don't even like to do it before or after 11. I would prefer neither. Yeah, I get it. I was always nervous as a kid, too, when I would have to make a phone call. 

KIM: Me too. I still am. Yeah. I don't know how we interview all these amazing people now. It just becomes it's become so, so fun and easy. But, 

 If you had told me this when I was like, you know, 21, even that I'd be doing this, like no way. What about your misery? The thing that is, what is the question…? Um….

AMY: Right. Where he said, “Mama.” My idea of pure misery.

KIM: What is your idea of pure misery?

AMY: Um,  accidentally taking someone's life, like hitting somebody in a car.

KIM: Oh, wow. You went, I did not expect you to go there. I was literally going to say being at the DMV without a book!

AMY: Kim! I’m taking these very seriously!

KIM: Oh my God. I'm like, I mean, I'm, I'm having heart palpitations because I can't even think about that.

AMY: The depth of human misery?

KIM: I can’t even go there. It’s awful. 

AMY: I’m taking it real dark!

KIM: I love that your colors are yellow and your flowers, the tulip, and

you're getting really dark. And I'm the one who's like black with Ecuadorian roses. And I'm like “My pet aversion is a cat!” Anyway. 

AMY: Okay, on that note…

KIM: Yeah, we should go. 

AMY: I need to go have a drink while I contemplate deep, morbid thoughts.

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: If you're still listening, we want you to join us next week when we'll be joined by a Hollywood screenwriter, Bridgette Hales, to discuss the life and work of Ruth Prowler job Vala. She's a Booker prize-winning novelist, and two time Oscar winner who pinned the lion share of Merchant-Ivory films. I didn't know that until we started looking into doing her for this episode!

KIM:  So, so crazy, so amazing. It's going to be such a great episode.

We both love Merchant-Ivory movies. So if you're loving this podcast, do us a favor and leave us a five-star review over an apple podcasts to let us know you're out there. We might even give you a shout out in an upcoming episode to thank you. 

AMY: We will.

KIM: We promise. Let’s just say we will.

AMY: Bye, everybody! 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.

AMY: So that’s all for today’s podcast. Join us next week when we’ll be joined by Hollywood screenwriter Brigitte Hales to discuss the life and work of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, a Booker Prize winning novelist and two-time Oscar winner who penned the lion’s share of Merchant-Ivory’s films!

KIM: I can’t wait for this episode! We both love Merchant-Ivory movies! Also, if you’re loving this podcast, do us a favor and leave us a five-star review over at Apple podcasts to let us know you’re out there! We might even give YOU a shout-out in an upcoming episode to thank you!

AMY: Bye, everyone! 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.

91. Rose Macaulay — What Not with Kate Macdonald

Note: Transcripts are generated, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

AMY HELMES: Hi everybody. Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast that celebrates the work of forgotten women writers. I'm Amy Helmes.

KIM ASKEW: And I'm Kim Askew. Today, we're discussing a novel set in the world of civil servants, government offices, and maddening bureaucracy. 

AMY: How many people are about to hit stop on this podcast right now? But don't do it, you guys, because this novel, What Not, by Rose McCaulay is totally wild, witty, and so clever. It will have you laughing and thinking,

KIM: Yes, it will. And thinking is the operative word in this novel, which was originally published in 1918. It's set in an alternative early 20th century England, where the government has raised the stakes on trying to improve the intellect of its citizens by passing laws dictating who can marry whom and have children. government run system of eugenics, basically.

AMY: And it's a dystopian novel, and yeah, Kim, I'm starting to warm up to these, but it's written in a satirical style that is absurdly entertaining.

KIM: Yeah, it's funny on one level, but it's also deeply disturbing on another. It's thought to have possibly inspired Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. And it's also pretty easy to draw parallels between this novel and the cultural and political quagmires we're facing today. We are so lucky that we have a literary historian who actually got this book back in print joining us today to help us put it all in context.

AMY: I can't wait to introduce her, but first we're going to ask you, our listeners, to take a number and please wait while we place you on hold. We'll be back momentarily to raid the stacks and get started. 

[intro music]

KIM: Our guest today is Kate MacDonald, an academic and writer with a particular interest in early 20th century popular British literature and the history of publishing from that time period. She's written and edited numerous scholarly articles and books, including the first collection of scholarly essays on Macaulay. She's currently a visiting research fellow at the Oxford International Center for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University. 

AMY: In addition, Kate is also bringing forgotten writers back into print through the Handheld Classics branch of the publishing company she spearheads, Handheld Press. She oversees pretty much everything from finding and commissioning books to editorial production and marketing. And I'm really interested in talking to her more about that job, as well. Kate was also a pioneer in the world of podcasting about forgotten books. She has retired that podcast, but she's still writing book reviews, which you can find over on her website, Katemcdonald.net. Kate, welcome to the show.

KATE MACDONALD: Glad to be here. Thank you for asking me.

AMY: Okay. So when it comes to today's lost lady, Rose Macaulay. I hadn't previously read anything by her, but Kim, I know you've read at least one of her books. Her name, however, is one that tends to pop up on my radar a lot. And I think maybe that's because during the first half of the 20th century, she wrote a lot: 23 novels, as well as poetry and scads of non-fiction. So Kate, I'm wondering where you actually think Macaulay falls in this scale of "lost," and do you remember how you were introduced to her?

KATE: Okay, well, I think she is a lot less lost now than she was about 10 years ago, but at that stage, very few people had heard of her unless they had read the old Virago reprints of some of her novels. Now Virago Press didn't reprint everything. They just did a few. And then another couple of publishers did reprints, but those novels had not been reissued since the 1980s. So we're talking a good 30 years, which is a generation, you know. That's fairly lost. I cannot now remember when I first started reading Rose McCaulay, but it was probably in my early twenties, and I'm pretty sure it was her most famous novel, The Towers of Trebizond, which is the one that really brought her a huge amount of fame, but it was also her last novel. I got into Rose Macaulay more because I wanted to teach her, and I couldn't find the texts that my students could buy. And that is critical because if you're going to bring a lost author back into better knowledge, you have to have the books to give to students so they can study them So I started reading around the subject and I said, "Well, there's very little work extent on Macaulay that's been collected." So there's plenty of academic papers, but that's no good for my mum who might want to read about Macaulay. She's not an academic. So that was one of the reasons why I thought, "Well, we can put together a collection of essays." It took six years as a project to get people together, to produce the essays, and I boiled them into a book. And I wrote quite a few of myself. And now we have the first proper collection of that. There have been three biographies and a fourth one if you count it, but you don't really because it's a special category of book. The last biography was published in 2003. Um, that could do with reprinting. My company Handheld Press, we re- published a book by the biographer Sarah LeFanu about her process of writing and researching that biography. So it's kind of a biographer's journal in which you revisit Rose McCaulay's life. And you learn about her and also discover all the secrets that she had and things that were very different to what she actually said they were like, and it's a great discovery book. So Sarah LeFanu and the biographical process have helped bring Rose McCaulay back to, I think, greater popularity now. But look for her in the mainstream bookshops and you might find The Towers of Trebizond and that would be it. But as you say, she wrote well over 20 novels. Where are they? Why are they not in print? 

KIM: So we're going to be discussing What Not today. And it was actually the first bestseller for Handheld Press, is that correct? 

KATE: Yes. 

KIM: How did you find it? 

KATE: Well, I found it because when I was putting this collection of essays together, I needed to do an annotated bibliography of everything Rose Macaulay had written and also all the criticism about her. So I methodically went through old her extant books and read all the novels right from the beginning. And then I came across this title going, " What is this? I've never heard of What Not. Where's this?" Couldn't find a copy anywhere. So I had to go to the British Library, which like the Library of Congress, there are libraries in Britain where publishers have to send a copy of every book they publish. So they're called the statutory libraries. So the British Library had a copy. Terrific. I went there. You can't take the books out, you have to go visit it. And I looked at it and thought, "Well, this is amazing. It's science fiction. It's speculative, it's dystopia. I detect Aldous Huxley, and this is such a great novel. Why is this the second edition? Why isn't this the first edition?" Because at the same time, I went back to Sarah LeFanu's biography and I realized that when What Not first came out, it had been pulled pretty quickly by the publisher and a particular section of text had been rewritten because they were terrified of being taken to court because the text was potentially libelous. And I realized that the British Library only had the revised edition. And I thought, "Well, I want to see the original, where can I find it?" I could not find it. So I had no idea what that was. So four years later, I think, I was leaving academia and setting up my own company. And What Not was top of my list as a book I wanted to bring back to print because it was science fiction, because it was a work by a woman who's not known for such a thing, and because it was just so readable and so interesting and so important for the eugenics, the post first world war political angle, the love story, which is pretty good. All these things. I really, really wanted to republish it, but I wanted to do it with that missing text. And I didn't know where to find it because copies of that novel are so scarce. And I was complaining about this when I went to visit a friend of mine called John Clute, who is a good bit older than me. He is one of the, oh, I don't know, the brave new world of science fiction writers in the 1960s. He's Canadian. He now lives in London. I said, "John, Rose Macaulay and science fiction and speculative novel and tell me what you know." And he said, "Oh, I've got the first edition here." He reaches out and brings 

AMY: Oh my 

KATE: the original first edition, because he's also a book collector. It was the most exciting moment. So he showed me and said, "This is the passage," and I went, "But what are these pencil marks?" and he said, "Oh my goodness, I've never seen these." This was the copy that Rose McCaulay's publisher had and wrote on the margins of the offending pages: "Cut here, cut this." So I reinstated the missing text, I added the replacement text as a footnote, so people can see and compare. And then as the publishing process goes along, I sent the information about What Not to The Bookseller, which is a British trade magazine. And the woman who writes the column which is relevant for reprints, she emailed me saying, "I want to see a PDF of this." I said, "Oh, nice. Very exciting." I was really very naive. Sent her that. Didn't think much more of it. And then about a week and a half later, I'd just come out of the gym and my phone started jumping up and down in my bag and I'm like, "Well, what is going on?" The orders were piling in because The Guardian newspaper had got the story that we were republishing and bringing back Rose Macaulay with the novel that Aldous Huxley had plagiarized from to create Brave New World. and because The Guardian were an online newspaper, they printed the link. So everybody all over the world was busy buying the book. I had to reprint it three times before March. So that was how we got our best seller,

AMY: This is what we love to hear! We just want people to know about these authors and start reading them and I mean, you, you did it! 

KATE: It was amazing. It was just the best thing. And it got reviewed and reviewed and people bought shed loads, and it still sells quite well. And I think also because of that, um, people like British Library Publishing, they started to go, "Oh, well, Rose Mcaulay, she's clearly marketable. People want to buy her, therefore, what can we publish?" And suddenly there was a little flurry of people wanting to bring back Rose Macaulay from the backlist and make it front list again. And I think that we proved it with our edition. She's marketable. She may be a century old, but my goodness, this book will sell.

KIM: So, Kate, what do we know about Macaulay's upbringing and early life? And what was her personality like? 

KATE: Well, it's very interesting. She was part of what has been called the intellectual aristocracy of Britain, and in a way she's similar to Virginia Woolf in that the parents and the generations above, they came not from the landed aristocracy or from very rich families, but they came from families where the men all went to Oxford or Cambridge, and the women were extremely intelligent. And Rose McCaulay was the second oldest of a family of seven children. Her father was a schoolmaster. He was also a professor. When she was about six years old, the family moved to a small seaside town in Italy, near Genoa, and they lived there because it was a heck of a lot cheaper. And I think the family were a little bit straightened for money, and with seven children, you can hardly blame them. And the father was writing a book or doing something that didn't require him to be in England. So you can imagine a very small seaside town, which was still fairly populated with Italians but there were very few other English people. And so Rose grew up over the next seven years with her brothers and sisters, this tight knit, flamboyant rampaging group, doing what the family thought was normal. And it was Sarah LeFanu who said in her biography, Rose didn't actually learn what it was to be a girl. She wasn't restricted by the Victorian conventions, or then the Edwardian conventions of how young girls ought to behave. So when the family came back to England, when her father had a professorship, suddenly Rose McCaulay was forced to learn how to behave correctly. And I think that colored her attitude to how she ought to behave in social situations ever after. So she went to Oxford high school and eventually she went to university at Oxford at Somerville College. Now these were the days where girls could go to university and even if they passed the exams for a degree, they certainly weren't awarded a degree. That did not happen until the early 1920s. And she studied history. She had a happy university life. She had friends. Some of them, she kept all her life. But in the end, she didn't take her final exams because we think she suffered a nervous breakdown and I think that was a sore point for her, for the rest of her life, because she was intellectually very, very able, but she didn't have a degree. So she went back home, and her father then got a job in Wales. So they had to move to Wales, and she started writing novels. Her sixth novel was, and I will say casually her sixth novel... She just wrote novels and they got published. And then the sixth novel won a prize and the prize was absolutely massive. It was about 75,000 pounds, nearly a hundred thousand dollars. It made her financially independent. And by this time she was in her mid twenties. And so she instantly moved to London, and for a precious two years, she mixed with people her own age and younger. So she mingled with these poets, artists, intellectuals, and then the war happened. So she moved back with her mother. Her mother was living in Cambridgeshire. She went to volunteer as a nurse. Absolutely hated it because she couldn't really cope with blood, so she gave up on the nursing and then she wrote a novel called Non-Combatants and Others, which was her eighth novel. And this is the one that really brought her. Into mainstream literature, and this was in her mid thirties and it's the first pacifist novel to be published in Britain during the First World War, and it's a stupendous work of art. I could talk about that for ages. And then January, 1917, she began work as a civil servant. First in the particular branch of the Ministry of War called The War Office, which examined applications for exemption from military service. So these are conscientious objectors. This is something she had written about in Non-Combatants and Others. So that was an interesting parallel. And I think at some point she also worked in the Ministry of Information, which is where she met Gerald O'Donovan. Now Rose is about 37, 38, at this point. Gerald O'Donovan is an ex Roman Catholic priest. He left the priesthood in about 1908 in Ireland. He married, he had two children and he and Rose fell in love and they had a secret passionate affair which lasted until the end of his life in 1942. And almost nobody knew about it. And when you read What Not, you'll think, "Ooh! Parallel!" There's a lot in What Not about the heady, emotional rush of falling in love when you know you're not supposed to, when social and legal barriers are in your way and you can't do anything about it. You're just in love and whoosh. There's a lot there to choose from. 

KIM: Yeah. So let's talk some more about her time working for the government during WWI, because that relates directly to the novel as well as this affair that we're talking about too. She actually dedicates the book "To all the civil servants I have known." Why might she have been inspired to write a novel set in this world of government bureaucracy? 

KATE: Um, probably because she found it completely ridiculous. The civil servants she is writing about in What Not belong to The Ministry of Brains. So she invented an entirely new department. Rose Macaulay clearly found the way people had to behave and the rules and regulations quite ridiculous. But I think her satire was really aimed at government departments trying to control people's lives and emotions. That's what she's getting at really. You know, she had a great friend called Marjorie Grant who we've also just published, who wrote a novel from 1921 about women civil servants working at the end of the war and about how they managed to make the life of a single young woman working in London. It's called Latchkey Ladies. And Marjorie was clearly drawing on the background that she and Rose together had experienced when they were working in offices in London. So it's not just, this is a target for satire. This is a target for criticism. It's just, this is what life was like. And for many, many women, it was really quite a new kind of life because it was only in the war when the men were all fighting that the women were allowed into these offices to hold these positions of responsibility, to make decisions that men had to abide by, and that's really quite exciting. 

AMY: Okay. So to summarize the basic premise of this novel, we have two single young career women. One is Kitty Grammont and the other is Ivy Delmer. They are both working for The Ministry of Brains, the department you described Kate. It's dedicated to increasing the average intelligence of England's citizens in the hopes of preventing another world war. And as part of the Mental Progress Act, people are classified according to their intellectual level. And so they can only get married or have children with people who are in the correct category for their classification. Now, if you follow the regulations, you will receive payment for your progeny, but if you break the rules, you have to pay sometimes insurmountable fines on these unsanctioned children that you might have.

KIM: Right. So as a result, many babies end up being abandoned at birth on church doorsteps, or even left to die. Anyone deemed to have deficiencies is prohibited from marrying or having children altogether. So the character of Ivy is an underling at The Ministry of Brains, but Kitty has a more important job in The Propaganda Department trying to convince society to go along with the government's outlandish edicts for the common good. Both women spend their off time visiting family in the village of Little Chantreys, where we get to see how everyday citizens are coping with and reacting to these government policies. Kate, can you give our listeners some historical context in terms of issues of the day that Macaulay was reacting to?

KATE: Okay, I'll do my best. Um, the first thing to remember is that the world was emerging from an exhausting appalling war, as well as the Spanish Flu epidemic. That level of death and destruction had not been seen for decades. So the economy is staggering, politics was in a foment, which is normal after war because everybody wants to get rid of the old faces and get the new ones in. Eugenics is part of what The Ministry of Brains was trying to do, to manipulate the population by breeding out those qualities which it deemed to be unfit. People with lower mental capacities, that's what The Ministry of Brains was targeting. The eugenics movement in Britain and in the USA was the target of Macaulay's very dark satire. Now the USA had enforced sterilization at this point in several states. Britain never went that far, but there was a small and vocal eugenecist movement which was advocating for banning people with lower mental capacity to breed. So that's a sort of a right- wing movement to control the populations through eugenics. At the same time in Britain, you have a pretty long history of radical left politics, which want to give contraception to the working poor to allow them to pull themselves up economically and not be burdened by large families they can't support. So in a really weird way, at the end of the First World War, you've got a policy of controlling and manipulating how people can have children which is being supported by lots of different political colors. It's a really odd moment. So this is the background to what McCaulay was writing against. 

KIM: Um, we would love it. If you would like to read a passage from What Not to give our listeners a feel for how the book sounds. 

KATE: Okay. So I'm going to read a passage which is about a London tube train. It's the Bakerloo line, and this is the line that Kitty Grammont and Ivy Delmer take when they get off their commuter train that lands at Marylebone and they get from the Bakerloo line and go to the center. 

The carriage was full of men and women going to their places of business. There were tired young men, lame young men, pale and scarred young men, brown and fit young men, bored and blase young men, jolly and amused the young men, and nearly all, however brown or fit or pale or languid or jolly or bored, bore a peculiar and unmistakable impress stamped, faintly or deeply, on their faces, their eyes, their carriage, the set of their shoulders. 

There were, among the business men and girls, women going shopping, impassive, without newspapers, gazing at the clothes of others, taking in their cost, their cut,  their colour. This was an engrossing occupation. Those who practice it sit quite still, without a stir, a twinkle, a yawn or a paper, and merely look all over, up and down, shoes to hat... They are a strange and wonderful race of beings, these gazing women; one cannot see into their minds, or beyond their roving eyes. They bear less than any other section of the community the stamp of public events. The representatives of the type and the Bakerloo this morning did not carry any apparent impress of the Great War. It would take something more than a great war, something more even than a food crisis, to leave its mark on these sphinx-like and immobile countenances. Kingdoms may rise and fall ,nations may reel in the death-grapple, but they sit gazing still, and their minds, amid the rocking chaos, may be imagined to be framing some such thoughts as these: "Those are nice shoes. I wonder if they're the ones Swan and Edgar have at 30 shillings. She's trimmed her hat herself, and not, well. That skirt is last year's shape. That's a smart coat. Dear me, what stockings; you'd think anyone would be ashamed. These women had not the air of reckless anticipation, of being alert for any happening, however queer, that, in differing degrees, marked the majority of people in those days. For that, in many, seemed the prevailing note; a series of events so surprising as to kill surprise, of disasters so appalling as to numb horror, had come and gone, leaving behind them this reckless touch, and with it a kind of greed, a determination to snatch whatever might be from life before it tumbled again into chaos.

KIM: I was hoping you would read from that part. It's such a great way to set up what's going on here, showing it in the microcosm of this little car in the train. 

KATE: And it's so modern. This is modern transportation that we have today. Every one of us listening has sat in a train, and thought, "What's she got that on for?" Or "Where'd she get those shoes from?" It's just so human. 

KIM: Yes. 

KATE: And it's a hundred years old. It's fabulous.

AMY: And this idea of, "Okay, we got through that war." The Ministry of Brains, what they're trying to do is make sure that society never has to go through that again, ironically, because we know that they will be having to.

KATE: Yeah. 

AMY: As we get into the book we're dealing with these unwanted babies and controlling who can have babies with whom. The satirical tone of all that reminded me a lot of Jonathan Swift's essay, "A Modest Proposal." I don't know if either of you guys are familiar with that.

KATE: I am not. I know Swift, but I'd never read that one.

AMY: Okay. He wrote an essay that was his idea of solving poverty in Ireland. And he was like, "I have a great idea, guys. We need to just start eating Irish babies. Let's turn them into delicacies." Just the way she approaches, it reminds me of his version of satire. 

KATE: What's interesting is that Sarah Lonsdale, in the introduction to our edition, she points out that Macaulay pulls the reader along with her along this logical train of thinking. Well, of course, if we're going to stop people breeding, we have to have a penalty. Then what happens to the babies? Well, they die. And this is slipped past the readers' consciousness. You're going nod, nod. Yeah. Whoa!!! Wait a minute. 

KIM: Yes. exactly. 

KATE: It's so clever.

KIM: Yeah, 

AMY: She's messing with you a little bit, because I did find myself wishing at times, you know, especially around election time, if we just had a smarter, more educated base of voters, this would solve a lot of our problems. So, Macaulay's criticizing government overreach, but she also is kind of poking fun at the idiocy of the common man in certain places, too. 

KATE: Yeah.

AMY: And Lonsdale, in the introduction, she says that "Macaulay's refusal to come down on one side or the other forces the reader to work hard at asking what their own viewpoint is." The characters in What Not do this as well. So it seems like a lot of the civilians are willing to go along with it, right? They're fine with it until it gets to the point where it actually impacts them. And therein lies the problem. 

KIM: Yes, exactly. And to that point, Kitty ends up having an affair with her boss. He's the Minister of Brains, a man named Nicholas Chester. And it's not just the fact that he's such a high-ranking public official that makes their relationship verboten. It's the fact that Nicholas is classified as "uncertified" due to his family background. He's not supposed to marry or have children with anyone, even though he is very intelligent himself. But Kitty and Nicholas are madly in love, and this leaves them in a quandary. Do they or do they not flout the very rules they are touting and expecting everyone else to follow?

AMY: And yeah, while I was prepping this episode, I see the headline in the news that Boris Johnson, prime minister for England, is issued a fine for breaking the lockdown rules during the pandemic. Instantly I thought of Nicholas Chester you know? The rules are for everyone but the people in charge. And of course we have politicians here in the United States who have been caught for similar sort of hypocrisy. Um, but in terms of Kitty and Nicholas having their unsanctioned affair, that gets us back to Rose Macaulay and what did you say his name was? 

KATE: Gerald O'Donovan.

AMY: Okay. Which we already kind of touched on a little bit, um, but I don't know if you have anything further to say.

KATE: Well, the thing is, Gerald O'Donovan's wife really liked Rose, and Rose was frequently a guest at their home. She became a godmother to one of their daughters. I have no idea how Beryl O'Donovan did not realize what was going on. Um, Gerald O'Donovan and Rose went on holidays together in Britain and abroad. So they carried on their relationship discreetly. She had her own flat in Marylebone and he could visit any time he wanted. She didn't have a servant on the premises. That meant that Gerald could come and visit Rose and stay overnight. And in her last novel, which was written long after Gerald had died, one of the subplots is that the narrator is in love with someone else who is married and it's a secret affair and then something dreadful happens at the end. And Rose is purely torturing herself with a reenactment of what she went through. Yeah, it's structured her life, this relationship.

AMY: It seems like some of her friends were shocked to hear about it after the fact. A lot of people painted her with, like, the spinster brush?

KATE: She did not look like a mistress. She was a stick insect. She was tall and skinny, not particularly pretty. She wasn't voluptuous. She wasn't a physically sensual sort of person in her appearance. Rose confided to possibly her closest sister and possibly also to a cousin, but until she died, nobody in her wider circle of friends knew that she'd had this long standing affair for about 20 years, except a Anglican priest who lived in the States, with whom she set up a correspondence in the last two or three years of her life. Because she was a really devoted Anglo-Catholic high church, and when she began the affair with Gerald O'Donovan, she decided she couldn't, in good conscience, take Holy Communion. And that was a great torment to her because she believed very passionately in her religion. So after Gerald died, um, I don't know when she went back to taking communion, but as part of the correspondence with this priest, they discussed the religious aspects. He encouraged Rose to go back to church, and she reports to him her great joy and pleasure of being in the church again. And then she dies, and her biographer, who was also her literary executor, a very remarkable woman called Constance Babington Smith, she published the correspondence between Rose and the priest, with his permission, and thus the affair came to light. So when these were published a couple of years after Rose died, her literary establishment was in a furor because a Dame of British literature, Dame Rose Maaulay, to find out had this secret affair with a married man and an ex- Catholic priest. And she's a big, big name in the Anglo- Catholic community, and an Anglo- Catholic priest broke the secrets of the confession, in effect. So you've got all these taboos being broken, and then underneath all that, you've got this probably quite personal response of, "Why didn't I know? Why did not Rose, who was my great friend for years and years, why did she not ever tell me about this affair?"

KIM: Yeah. And here it is, she's been writing about it, and nobody saw it. 

KATE: Absolutely. Yeah. So a lot of people were really upset, and Constance Babington Smith was really criticized for making these letters public. 

KIM: Fascinating. 

AMY: And you can see why in What Not, you know, Kitty and Nicholas are so worried about their affair coming out, because everyone would be having the same reaction that we're having right now to her affair.

KATE: Absolutely. It's such a foretelling of the thoughts and the deeply hurt feelings and the social codes being broken in all sorts of ways. So Rose knew right at the start what the stakes were. And she wrote about it in his novel, which then disappeared because of commercial reasons. I don't think she ever wanted to suppress it, but for commercial reasons, this novel did not do well. The secret of her affair was kind of buried, which is so strange.

KIM: Very strange. That's fascinating. There's so many fascinating aspects to her story. So let's talk a little bit about the influence the media plays, and it plays an important role in this novel. Um, it's a theme that Macaulay ends up diving into more in the next novel. She wrote Potterism, which is another book available from Handheld Press. We're obviously still talking about the power and influence of the media today, not to mention social media. Kate, do you want to tell us a little bit about Macaulay's particular interest in this subject? 

KATE: Well, even in 1916, she was writing very critically about the media, so in Non-Combatants and Others in 1916, her pacifist novel, she is really concerned about the way the wartime newspapers and the Defense of the Realm Act, which was the censorship law if you like, we're controlling the way people responded to the war and how news about the war was being disseminated. In What Not, the newspapers get hold of the story about Chester and Grammont. And this is what the libelous passages were about, because in the novel, a tabloid editor goes to see Nicholas Chester in his home and says, "Okay, I know you're having an affair, admit it," and Chester doesn't. But the reason why the publisher got very worried about this section was that it takes the view that this is what the tabloid newspapers do all the time: they blackmail people. And this was liable. Um, and also at the time there were two very, very important newspaper magnates in Britain who would have taken immediate offense, and they had a huge amount of money and could have completely sued this publishing company too high heavens. So that's why the passages were pulled. So Macaulay makes the power of the press not only an agent of truth, but also an agent of manipulation the same way the Ministry of Brains is an agent of manipulation. The press is not necessarily the bad guy. In a way the press is doing the right thing by revealing hypocrisy by a public figure. But it's also doing a terrible thing to two human beings who just want to love and be happy. So you've got two sides there and this is Macaulay absolutely through and through. She does not take a side. She says this and then there's that, and you decide. You can make the decision, because I'm just going to give you the facts. 

AMY: And she almost has like an anthropologist's point of view in how she's sort of dissecting what sorts of people read what sorts of publications. 

KATE: Yeah. 

AMY: But my favorite was Stop It. A magazine called Stop It, which I honestly, if we could just have one newspaper that would put everybody in their place, like, "Stop it, stop it with that." Um, yeah, I think that's brilliant.

KIM: Me too. I love that. So can you talk to us a little bit more about how this book is said to have possibly influenced Aldous Huxley's Brave New World? 

KATE: So Brave New World was published 14 years after What Not. Um, and Aldous Huxley uses a system of classifying people by grade that reflects their intelligence and also the nutrients they were given in their test tubes. This grade is bad. This grade is good, and so on. And each grade are given different brainwashing routines, if you like. So he uses alpha double to Epsilon minus; that's his different grades. And those are Greek letters. Rose Macaulay uses a similar grade, but she just goes A to C3. That's one of the big similarities between the two novels. Other interesting facts: Huxley was a friend of Rose Macaulay, and at the end of the war, she was renting a room in her friend Naomi Royde-Smith's house. So they have lots of parties. Aldous Huxley went to those parties while Rose was writing What Not. So that's circumstantial evidence. Huxley also uses Rose's mind training program that citizens are obliged to go and do by the Ministry of Brains, whereas Huxley creates his as emotional engineering. So he uses the idea of the population are obliged to go through propagandistic training in both novels. The societies are controlled by a shadowy elite. Rose has, um, a United Council, which takes the place of all the governments of the world. And Huxley has the World Controllers. So that was interesting. He's pinched quite a lot. And he did not acknowledge Rose in the slightest. George Orwell is routinely trotted out as someone who was also influenced by What Not. Personally, I cannot see it. But Orwell had probably read it and maybe he enjoyed it. Maybe he pinched an idea and then reworked it massively. In literature, ideas get recycled all the time, and it's quite dangerous to say, "this must be a completely different thing from that," or "this must be a borrowing from this." It's more useful to say, "Well, what did they do with it?"

AMY: Yeah, that makes sense. You can see how different people would kind of come to the same conclusions about government. Um, which brings me to my next point, which is the fact that she wrote this before the rise of fascism and Nazi-ism, it makes you realize, she was kind of prescient, and she even says in her kind of forward to the book, she said, "I'm not trying to make predictions, I'm making suggestions." 

KATE: Yeah, it was way too early to predict anything like National Socialism or fascism, but she wasn't stupid. She was politically very astute and she knew about the patterns of history. One of her forebears, I think her grandfather or great-grandfather was Thomas Babington Macaulay. He was one of the greatest historians Britain had. So she would have been brought up not only on the legend of her grandfather Macaulay, but she would have read his histories. And she studied history at university, so she knew about the patterns of political movements and the way that, you know, empires rose and fell. And she could not possibly predict fascism, but I think she could predict that something bad's going to happen, because we've been through one cataclysm and Germany's in a really, really bad way. And economic devastation is going to lead to really bad politics. I think that's what she might've assumed.

AMY: Right. The idea of we're in a vacuum now, and something has to fill the vacuum and yeah.

KATE: Hmm. 

KIM: Macaulay's final novel is widely considered to be her masterpiece. It's called The Towers of Trebizond, and it examines the conflict between adulterous love and the demands of the Christian faith. Ding, ding! It goes right back to what you were saying earlier about Rose Macaulay. Now that I know about her own affair, the subject matter for this book  Towers of Trebizond, um, it becomes an even more interesting choice for her. The narrator in that one is a woman who travels with a group of people, including, uh, the narrator's Aunt Dot, who is supposedly based on Macaulay's friend, Dorothy L. Sayers. And they go to Istanbul, and it won the James Tait Black Memorial prize in 1956. It's a madcap farce. It's very smart and very funny.

AMY: And then a year later in 1957, McCauley was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Um, she died at the age of 77, however, the following year. And incidentally Macaulay was acquainted for decades, I think, with the author, Rosamond Lehmann whom we did an episode on last year. And I read that Lehmann apparently had thrown Rose a little celebration party after she was appointed Dame or however you call that. 

KATE: When she received her damehood, I think 

AMY: When she received her damehood. Okay. but it does sound like they were maybe kind of frenemies. And this goes back to the fact that Rose Macaulay had written a not completely unkind, but not glowing review of Dusty Answer decades earlier. In that review, she said "the only question, Judith, who is the main character of Dusty Answer asked of life was 'does he or she love me?'" And given how many big, important meaning-of-life questions Rose is asking in her novels, you can kind of understand where she would have had that criticism.

KIM: I guess if she took it that way though, I felt like there was a lot more going on there then I guess Rose Macaulay. 

AMY: Well, but I mean, Rosamond's books definitely did not have the scope of, you know, it was a love story at the end of the day. 

KATE: Yeah. 13 years is a long time to carry a grudge for a slightly critical review.

AMY: Maybe they got over it. Like I said, she threw her a party, so... 

KIM: It reminds me of, uh, Mary Taylor. She was friends with Charlotte Bronte and rebuked her for not having a doctrine to preach in Jane Eyre. She thought Jane Eyre was too light. 

KATE: This is one of the reasons I like Rose Macaulay so much is that emotional attachments are strong for her, but her novels are never just about a woman sitting at home being vulnerable because she's not married. They're about far more: social history. There are intellectual questions. There are problems about human behavior and the way society is made up. And what can we do about changing it to make it better? So much more is happening. She took her fiction seriously. It wasn't campaigning literature; she wanted it to entertain, it's always enjoyable. And she exercises her wit and her very dry humor a lot in her novels, but it's never just about romance. 

KIM: We wanted to find out how things are going over at handheld Press. We're so fascinated with what you're doing there. Is there anything specific that you look for when you're deciding whether or not to bring back a lost book?

KATE: Um, the first criteria is I have to absolutely love it. The second criterion is I have to think it will sell. And many of Rose Macaulay's novels I don't think will sell so that's why I haven't brought them out. Because we can't afford to have a dud. We can't afford to print a book, especially with paper prices absolutely rocketing at the moment, so we have to be very careful. I'm also very interested in the kind of books that aren't supposed to be written. So Rose Macaulay writing science fiction. She did it once, with What Not; didn't do it ever again. I find that really interesting. We published a book by Margaret Kennedy who was a very well-respected playwright and novelist, but during the Second World War she wrote a memoir in 1940 from her diaries. And at that time, nobody knew if Britain was going to be invaded by Germany. So she sent this memoir to the States and it was published by Yale University Press and then promptly vanished from sight and was never published in Britain. And we republished it, and that helped bring Margaret Kennedy back into fashion last year. I love to publish discoveries that people have completely forgotten. So in November, we're bringing out two books by the Welsh writer John Llewellyn Rhys who died in the war, Second World War, at the age of 29, having written two novels. His widow put together a collection of short stories that he had already written. It won a prize, and then he vanished from sight. Nobody knew about his books. They're really hard to get hold of, but we're bringing out all his works in two volumes in November, and they're just amazing. You've heard of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry? John Llewellyn Rhys is the British de Saint-Exupery. He is an absolute discovery. I could not be more excited about him. So that's what we're doing in November. I mentioned Latchkey Ladies by Marjorie Grant, which is a 1921 novel about single women living and working in London and exploring their new social and economic freedoms, but also running the risk that every woman runs: getting pregnant. And somebody gets pregnant. And that got such a great review in The British Times, it's done really well. Next week, well, in May we publish a lost Australian writer, Helen de Guerry Simpson. Supernatural short stories. We do a lot of classic supernatural short story anthologies. Our first collection was called Women's Weird and its successor was Women's Weird II. And then we're producing single collections by some of the writers from those anthologies. We publish about six, seven books a year. And in June, on June 10th, we will be five years old, which feels amazing.

AMY: And how many books have you released in those five years?

KATE: We will by then have published 31.

KIM: That's incredible. 

AMY: It sounds like a lot of work, but I can imagine you must love it.

KATE: I do. It's the best job I've ever had.

AMY: That's amazing. And I just love that you're bringing us all these wonderful writers that we wouldn't have known about. I can't wait to read some more. And we also hope that maybe you'll come back again and join us to talk about them in the future.

KATE: I would be delighted. That would be really nice. This has been such fun. Thank you so much for asking me to take part.

AMY: So we'll sign off now, but don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter where we'll occasionally be giving out sneak peek info on which books we'll be featuring in future episodes. 

KIM: And as always, you can check out our website, lostladiesoflit.com for a transcript of the show and further information.

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

90. Literal Beach Reads

Kim: Hi, everyone! Welcome back to another Lost Ladies of Lit mini episode. I’m Kim Askew, here with my writing partner and longtime friend Amy Helmes…

AMY: Hey, everyone. Welcome to summer, if you’re listening to us in real time! My kids are just about wrapping up school and people are gearing up to go on some fun summer vacations. Maybe even to the beach! What are your thoughts on the beach, Kim? Love it? Hate it?

KIM :I love to read on the beach, under a big sun hat or an umbrella. I'm not, you know, like a beach person per se. I never thought I was until I moved to LA, and then I learned to find my place at the beach, which is, yeah, under a sun hat, with a really good book. 

AMY: Do you know that when I first moved to LA, I lived on the beach basically? 

Half a block from the beach. 

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: I just had to walk out my front door and I was there. Boom. 

KIM: Yeah. And remember when we first met, I lived in Santa Monica.

AMY: That’s right! I forgot!

KIM: So it was like half a block from Casa Del Mar, which is like a “Downton-esque” hotel, and Shutters on the Beach, which is where everyone has brunch.  And I used to go work in Casa Del Mar; I would write there. So I would work on whatever, you know, writing I was doing, by the fireplaces at the Casa Del Mar. 

AMY: I can’t believe you just segued to a fireplace. That kind of explains your and I, our relationship to the beach. 

KIM: That's our aesthetic.

AMY: We're not exactly California girls, even though we live here. Part of it, I just, I hate having to get all the sunscreen on. If they could invent another way. Like, if you could just take a pill and then suddenly you were protected with SPF, that would be a game-changer. But just applying everything to my pasty white skin is just, it's almost not worth the effort sometimes. 

KIM: Definitely not. And I love winter layering, but anyway, I'm getting off on a tangent. Yeah, I'm not going to be anti the beach and I'm not going to be anti this episode. 

AMY: But we're just, we're not quite, you know, the Beach Boys’ kind of vision for…

KIM: No. Amy, you at least are blonde. So you have that going for you. But we are both really, really pretty pale. We get sunburned so easily.

AMY: But I will say before we started doing this episode, Kim and I realized that we were both huge Gidget fans.

KIM: Oh yeah. I love Gidget. I watched Gidget reruns. I watch movies. I loved Gidget. 

AMY: Yeah, we didn't have cable TV growing up. And for some reason on like the three channels that we got in the summertime, they would run tons of Gidget. So yeah, I liked the, um, Doris Day movie and I liked the Sally Field TV show. I can still sing the theme song. Um, yeah, but I know you had read the books 

KIM: I had some of the books. I don't know if I had all of them, but one of our family things that we would do on the weekends would be to go to garage sales and look for, um, old books.  And so I collected  the Gidget series of old books. So I didn't have all of them, but every time I found a Gidget book, I would get it.  I mean, the books, the TV show, the movies, you can't get more wholesome than Gidget. So, you know, I was reading them pretty young, but…

AMY: And that book and the film and the TV series all kind of sparked 

surfing in the United States. 

KIM: I know how crazy is that? 

AMY: Yeah, so basically this guy, Frederick Kohner, I'm not sure how you pronounce his last name,, he was a Czech screenwriter in the German film industry, but he wound up immigrating to Hollywood in 1933  and he was inspired to write the book Gidget after watching his teenage daughter, Kathy and her friends  who were all, um, kind of getting involved in this nascent surf culture in Southern California.  So that book, the first book came out in 1957.  I don't know how many sequels there were, but it was very popular.

KIM: Yeah. And to people who don't know what the heck we're talking about, a very young Sally Field played Gidget in the TV series. 

AMY: So cute and Moondoggie and the Big Kahuna. Oh my gosh. 

KIM: Yeah, adorable. Yeah.

AMY: Love it. 

KIM: Yeah. But if you have plans to go to the beach this summer, maybe with a good book, we’ve got some recommendations for some  “beach reads” to get you all imagining the sand between your toes. Can you feel it?

AMY: Yeah. But I almost think that the selections we're going to be giving today are not your typical  light, page-turner beach reads — at least not all of them. 

KIM: It wouldn’t be us if they were your typical beach reads.

AMY: Yeah. I think there's gobs of popular fiction that said at the beach,  but what we're going for are the English major, literal beach books;  novels that are somehow set by the sea, the beach, the shore.

KIM: Yeah, we're taking it literally. “Beach reads literal.” 

AMY: So anyway, we’re going to go ahead and share some of our beach recommendations; you know, books set in beachy environments, And I think KIm, let’s just sort of toss it back and forth like a game of beach volleyball. You want to do it that way?

KIM: Yeah, I like it. I mean, I’m terrible at beach volleyball, but I can do this, sure. Let’s do it.

AMY: It’s a verbal sport. So let me get to my list. I got a few, but, um, I'll share my first one would be Jill Eisenstadt's From Rockaway. And the reason I chose this is because it hearkens back to the "Once Upon a Time at Bennington College" podcast, Kim, which we talked about at the beginning of the year how much we love that podcast. So Jill Eisenstadt went to Bennington College, and this was the novel that she wrote while the other writers there were having their big hits; this was her debut novel. And it is set in Rockaway Beach, as you can tell from the title. It's kind of, if I were going to describe it, it's kind of a mashup of "Jersey Shore" meets Catcher in the Rye.

KIM: Oh, I love that description! That's great!

AMY: I mean, they're not in Jersey, but  it's kind of like a group of recent high school graduates, kind of knuckleheads. They get up to all kinds of shenanigans. It starts at prom senior year, and then it kind of goes through the summer. A bunch of them are lifeguards on the beach. A few of the girls work at the little  amusement park right on the beach there.  Um, and then a couple of the characters go off to college. The main girl who I would guess is sort of based on Eisenstadt's own life, she goes off to college at a place called Camden College, which is very reminiscent of what I think Bennington was like. It  switches back and forth between her college experience and the experience of the guys that did not wind up going to college or sort of stayed back home.  And I say "Jersey Shore" meets Catcher in the Rye because there's a lot of imagery of like the end of childhood and lamenting that. And also children needing to be saved, a theme that's also in Catcher in the Rye sort of thing. So very beachy. Makes you feel very sticky, hot, sandy and drunk, because they’re drinking all the time.

KIM: Okay. I like it. It sounds good. Um, so I'm going to go in a different direction with a novel called Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead.  I'm a fan of his work. He's the author of The Underground Railroad, which I'm sure a lot of our listeners have either read or know about. And he likes to experiment with genre so he has a zombie novel Zone One and the recent Harlem Shuffle is a noir mystery thriller. That's really great,  but I don't think I've ever read his novel Sag Harbor.  It's about a teenager spending his summer in a black enclave in a predominantly white town. I'm definitely adding it to my list of summer reads. Have you read it, Amy? 

AMY: No, I haven't.  And you're right. That sounds interesting, and also, I can't think of a lot of books set at the beach that feature a Black experience either. So that's interesting. Okay. Um, I'm going to jump to what I would call my kind of "desert isle" reads. And I'm just going to throw a few in here: The Beach by Alex Garland. If you remember, that book was turned into a movie in like the early Nineties or something starring Leo DiCaprio, right? It's like a bunch of tourists, like young Gen X tourists that decide to start this commune on the beach, in like a deserted island.

KIM: Radiohead is probably in the soundtrack.

AMY: Oh yeah, probably. Um, and of course things go awry in the same way that, you know, in Lord of the Flies things go awry in that.  And that Lord of the Flies mention also makes me think of a book called A High Wind in Jamaica, which is by  the author Richard Hughes. Have you ever read that, Kim? 

KIM: No I've heard it, but I never read it. Tell me about it. 

AMY: Okay. I'm going to do a mashup comparison again. This one is Goonies meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets Lord of the Flies.

KIM: Ooh. 

AMY: I say Goonies as if it's some sort of mad-cap fun, and there is humor in it, but it is twisted and dark and there's some really upsetting parts. It's not a children's book, but once again, like Lord of the Flies, there's a murder. Things go really bad. Um, that book came out in 1929 and supposedly  served  as a bit of an inspiration for William Golding when he wrote Lord of the Flies. So...if you haven't read that one... but yeah, lots of pirates  so it's a little Treasure Island-y too, uh, basically some English families  live in Jamaica  and there's a kind of hurricane that destroys their home. So the parents decide to send the kids back to England on a ship, thinking they're going to be safe. Well, that ship gets hijacked by pirates, and so the kids wind up on a pirate ship and have to fend for themselves. And yeah.

KIM: Yeah, that does remind me a little bit of Treasure Island and  Swiss Family Robinson. When I was in, I think the first grade, those were some of my favorite books. I loved those seafaring adventure books. 

AMY: Yes.

KIM: Um, okay. So I was gonna mention Patricia Highsmith; The Talented Mr. Ripley --  it's obviously a classic, but if we're going to keep talking about more dark beach reads, what about Death in Venice by Thomas Mann?  Would you consider that a beach read? 

AMY: Or Tomas MAHN... I feel like if he's German, it should have that sort of yes, but we're American. So, um, I think, yeah, what I remember from that is  the narrator goes to the Lido a lot.

KIM:  Yes. And he would hang out there and look longingly at the boy that he was in love with. 

AMY: Yes. Yes. I've never been to the Lido.  That feels very sophisticated 

KIM: Yes. I haven't been to the Lido either. I've always thought I would get back to Venice again and I haven't yet.

AMY: It's probably touristy now. I mean, it's probably, I don't know if we'd like it or not, since we're not super beachy. 

KIM: Yeah. We'd have to go check it out in the winter when no one was, there 

AMY: Yeah. Yeah. 

KIM: It would be a different vibe but.

AMY: I feel, yeah, the idea of it sounds glamorous and I do remember that portion of the novel, so, yeah.  Okay. Um, So my last pick, A High Wind in Jamaica, I did clarify was not really appropriate for children, I  don't think.  Um, but  my next choice is actually a children's book.  It's called  The Penderwicks at Point Mouette. 

KIM: I love that title. 

AMY: Yeah, so it's not that old. It was written in 2011, but if you know the Penderwicks series, um, it's by an author, Jeanne Birdsall,  those books feel really old-fashioned,  in a quaint way. They feel like they could have been written in the forties. Um, it's a series about a group of sisters and in the Penderwicks at Point Mouette, they are summering on the beach, you know, for the duration of this book. If you love the Betsy-Tacey books, you'll love this one. 

KIM: Great. 

AMY: It's a girly book, because they're sisters, but there is a brother, I think. And Jack and Julia both liked these books. So.

KIM: Um, okay. So Amy, you probably guessed I was going to bring up this book that I'm going to talk about next, because I've been  raving about it, I think, for like a year or two, since I first read it.  It's called A Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff. It was published in 1931. But Persephone books has republished it and it is terrific.  Amy, I can't remember. Did you get a chance to read it? 

AMY: No. I remember you recommended it on that "Bennington" episode that we did.  It does sound like it's up my alley. I just haven't had time with all the other books we have to read. 

KIM: It's written by a man. RC sheriff is a man, so we don't have much time to read male authors because we're so busy reading lost ladies. 

AMY: Yeah. Uh, but I do want to read it. Do you have it? 

KIM: I do. I'll give it to you. Yeah, I'll give it to you. It's short and it's, um, you know, a pretty quick read, but so I'll talk a little bit more about it. It's about a working family's vacation to the seaside for two weeks. Thus the title A Fortnight in September.  Nothing much actually happens, but it's so beautifully poignant and about just the day-to-day experience of living.  And I read it, I think, near the beginning of the pandemic, and it really got me in the gut. So listeners, if you haven't already read it, I can't recommend it enough. Go get it. Go read it. 

AMY: Okay. I'm going to have to squeeze it in. Um, the next one I'm going to mention, I actually have not read, but I have watched the PBS series that is based on these books. It's the Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell. Um, his brother  is the novelist Lawrence Durrell who wrote The Alexandria Quartet. But this series by Gerald is basically autobiographical about when  the family, led by their single mom, moves to Greece.  My Family and Other Animals is the first book in the series. So I have to read them because a friend of mine raves and says they're so funny. And I love the series on PBS.

KIM: I need to watch that. You said that was good. I haven't watched it, but it looks beautiful from what I've seen 

AMY: Yeah. And they're always at the beach because obviously they live on a Greek island, so.

KIM: Well,  let's go back to Italy now to Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter. That's the 2012 novel set on the Italian Riviera. And it's loosely based on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton,  their filming of Cleopatra. Have you read that one? 

AMY:I have. Yes. I don't think  they are here, but it reminds me of when I visited Cinque Terre in Italy. 

KIM: Oh, yeah. 

AMY: The sort of seaside towns they're in. I don't remember specifically, uh, you said the Italian Riviera. They kind of jump around to, um, different little towns as I recall. Yeah, there's some drama there. 

KIM: Yep. Yeah, it's really fun. Read. There's got to be drama if you're talking about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton of course.

AMY: Yeah, exactly. Um, okay, my next book, Kim, I don't think you've read it and I'm halfway through it because it's a big, big, long novel.  I think you'd like it. It's called The Sea, The Sea, by Iris Murdoch. A lost lady of lit.

KIM: I love Iris murdoch. I have not read The Sea, The Sea though. 

AMY:I mean, I guess, yeah, she's not that lost; a lot of people know her, but I think this might be the first novel of hers I've read. It won the Booker Prize in 1978, so a big deal.  It's about this retired actor-slash-director in the British theater who has recently moved to a small seaside village in England, and he decides  he's going to write his memoir. It's like a novel-slash-memoir. And along the way,  I want to say ghosts of girlfriends past start, um, Influencing him. And there's something very Gothic about it all. The house that he lives in is on this like rocky outcropping overlooking the sea.  And it's almost like a haunted house.  It feels like a thriller, like something dangerous is going to happen.  I would call it a slow drip. You're just like, "Something's going to happen. Something's going to happen." And then stuff does start to happen.  There's lots of Shakespeare references throughout, because he is a former actor and he kind of compares himself to Prospero from "The Tempest." It's not your bright, sunshiny beach read, but it's interesting. And as I'm reading it, I'm like, "Oh, Kim would like this."

KIM: It sounds really good.  Um, all this talk of the ocean and cliffs and islands and everything. It has me thinking of a childhood classic. And I know you've read this. You know what I'm thinking about? Island... 

AMY: Islands of the Blue Dolphins!

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: Yeah. I loved That book. That was one of my favorite books.

KIM: It's unforgettable. I mean, I haven't read it since I was a child, and I still remember viscerally the feeling of reading that book. It just, it sticks with you.  Um, the author's name, I had to look it up, it's Scott O'Dell. I didn't remember his name. The book was published in 1960. And if you haven't read it, probably a lot of you have, but if you haven't read it, it's about a 12-year-old girl who gets stranded alone for years off the coast of California. And it's actually based on a true story of a Nicoleno native Californian woman who lived alone for 18 years on San Nicolas island. It's one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California. Such a good book. 

AMY:I read that for the first time in fifth grade and I don't even think I knew it was based on a true story, but I have always, even as a little kid, I've always loved, um, kind of those sort of adventure, survival, alone-in-the-wilderness sort of stories. Like I love My Side of the Mountain. Now, I'm getting to mountain reads, but whatever, we'll get back to the beach in a second, but anything where somebody has to fend for themselves all alone, I love those sort of books. So I was obsessed with that book.

KIM: And how interesting? Well, it was written by a guy, um, but there are very few  books like that with a female heroine where they're in sort of an really scary adventurous situation  of course there's Anne of Green Gables and all that, which I love, but this is like really an adventure tale where she

AMY: Survival. Yeah, exactly. 

KIM: Survival! That's the exact word. She has to take care of herself on this island. 

AMY: There's another one like that. Julie of the Wolves. 

KIM: Okay. 

AMY: Julie of the Wolves was another one of my favorite books, and taking you to Alaska. So again, I'm getting like way off the beach theme here, like a glacier.  She is an Inuit girl and she's by herself. I don't remember how she got  all by herself  in the Tundra, but she has to study the wolves to figure out how to survive. So she's going to die unless she figures out how to feed herself. And so she starts watching the wolves and kind of becomes part of their pack. 

KIM: Oh, wow. That sounds so cool. 

AMY: I forget who the author of that one is. Let me just look it up really quick so we can say it. Oh, my gosh, that's by Jean Craighead George also! So Jean Craighead George is the one who wrote My Side of the Mountain.

KIM: Okay. Which I have heard of, and I don't think I've read. I think I might've seen  a movie version 

AMY: Oh, it's so good. It's like a boy on the mountain with a hawk. Um, but yeah, so Jean Craighead George also  wrote Julia of the Wolves. So that makes sense why I love it so much. Okay. And actually, Island of the Blue Dolphins, they're still reading in schools. Because my daughter in fourth grade was assigned that one. 

KIM: It doesn't surprise me, though. I mean, like we said, it's unforgettable, 

AMY: Yeah.  Um, okay.  My last pick, and I'm very excited for this because we're actually going to be featuring this story in a full episode here in a few weeks.  It's a nonfiction book called The Gilded Edge by Catherine Prendergast, who Is going to be joining us to talk about this story. I pick it for "beach reads," because it is set in an artists' community in Carmel-by-the-Sea, in California. And it's about a group of California Bohemians, including a last lady of lit, Nora May French, who we will be discussing. The book is so good. So, and actually, if you guys want to gear up for that episode, I would suggest you start reading it now.  

KIM: Yeah, I just started reading it. You had been raving about it and I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Now I'm reading it and it is absolutely fascinating. So I'm so excited. We're going to be talking to her soon.  So that's just our little roundup for this week. We know there are so many  books that we're leaving out, which begs the question for you, our listeners. What are your favorite novels in which beach settings factor heavily?  Email us or leave us a comment on Instagram letting us know.  We'd love to hear from you. 

AMY: And don't forget to tune in next week when we'll be talking all about the English writer, Rose MacAulay, and her satirical, dystopian novel, What Not.  Joining us will be publisher and academic Kate Macdonald for that discussion. 📍 

KIM: I cannot wait. Thank you for the five-star apple podcast reviews and Instagram shoutouts. They keep our spirits buoyant, if you will. 

AMY: Oh yeah, that's a good metaphor there! Um, 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. 

89. Tess Slesinger — The Unpossessed with Paula Rabinowitz and Peter Davis

Note: Transcripts are generated, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

KIM ASKEW: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to championing forgotten classics by women writers. I'm Kim Askew, here with my co-host, Amy Helmes. 

AMY HELMES: Hey everybody. Today we're back with another lost classic that deserves a spot on your nightstand. Tess Slesinger's 1934 novel, The Unpossessed, is a satirical portrait of Depression era left-wing New Yorkers. Extremely popular for a brief period, it was printed four times within a month of publication, making Slesinger a minor celebrity almost overnight. 

KIM: And we are lucky enough to have two incredible guests with us today. The author's son, Peter Davis, and cultural critic and professor Paula Rabinowitz. As you know, Amy, when I read this book a few years ago it immediately became a personal favorite. I'm kind of obsessed with the 1930s, both in books and in film. We've done a few episodes on books from that era, and we've learned a lot. 

AMY: Yeah, and we highly recommend you also go back and listen to our episode on Margery Latimer's book, We Are Incredible. Our guests on that show, Joy Castro, gave us a really great primer on Modernism while discussing that.

KIM: But back to The Unpossessed, I have the New York Review Books edition and it is now heavily annotated and highlighted. And I know yours is as well, Amy, right? 

AMY: Yeah. And in fact my daughter actually said, "Mom, your book has a beard," because it had that many Post-it notes sticking out of it. Almost every line of this novel stood out to me and made me think.

KIM: It's true. There are just so many great lines and passages in The Unpossessed. We have a lot to discuss, so let's read the stacks and get started.

[intro music]

AMY: So as Kim said, we have two guests today. Dr. Paula Rabinowitz is an author and professor emerita of English at the University of Minnesota. Her area of specialty is American materialist, feminist cultural studies. And she's the recipient of numerous awards, including a Mellon Fellowship, a Rockefeller residency at Bellagio, Italy, and a Fulbright professorship in Rome, and then Shanghai. She also wrote the afterword to a new collection of Tess Slesinger's stories out this month from Boiler House Press's Recovered Book Series. That collection is titled Time: The Present. 

KIM: And our second guest, Peter Davis, is a filmmaker, author, novelist, and journalist. His film, Hearts and Minds, about American military action in Vietnam, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1975. Peter, I believe you're our first Academy Award winner on the podcast, so we're very excited. As a reporter, he covered the US war in Iraq for The Nation. He's also written for Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, New York Woman, The Boston Globe, and The Los Angeles Times. His most recent novel, 2015's Girl of My Dreams, follows a young screenwriter in the 1930s when Hollywood, the Depression, and the Communist Party intersected powerfully in the American psyche.

AMY: You're actually the first relative of a "lost lady" that we've been able to have on, so very exciting. How does it feel to see the world taking such a renewed interest in your mom's work in recent years? 

PETER DAVIS: How it feels is thrilling. I'm delighted to see her rediscovered for a new generation. The work speaks to this generation, to the generation that is of not only my own children, but my own grandchildren.

AMY: Absolutely. 

KIM: We'd love to start the show off by giving our listeners some background on her, because I think it will lead nicely into our discussion of the book. Tess Slesinger was born into a Jewish family in New York city in 1905. Her mother was a welfare worker who later became a prominent psychoanalyst, which is kind of fascinating in its own right. We were even thinking about maybe doing a future mini episode on her. She sounds great. Slesinger's father was a dress manufacturer, and Tess was the youngest of four children. She had three older brothers. Incidentally, Amy, I found out while researching this episode, that one of her brothers created Red Rider, the comic book character that most of us probably know from the movie A Christmas Story.

AMY: "You'll shoot your eye out kid," right? Clearly we've got a creative family here. Peter, is there anything else that you happen to know that can round that out a little bit? 

PETER: Well, her father actually was kind of a ne'er-do-well, and one of the interesting things about that marriage is that my mother went east to be at their 50th anniversary in 1942. And the morning after that, my grandmother Augusta Slesinger, kicked him out of the apartment and said, "I never want to see you again "

AMY: After their 50th anniversary party? 

PETER: Yeah. The morning after the celebration. 

KIM: Oh, wow. 

PAULA RABINOWITZ: Well, Tess foresaw that all in many of her stories about the morning after the party. 

KIM: Yep. 

AMY: That is incredible. So Paula, what else can you tell us about Tess's early years? 

PAULA: Well, um, she was born into a milieu that was part of the Upper West Side, upper middle-class and even very upper-class immigrant Jews who came mostly from Germany and the Austro-Hungarian empire. So this was a fairly established community. Uh, mostly they were quite secular, and she was educated at Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and then went to Swarthmore, and then went to Columbia. At Columbia, you know, she became part of a much larger group of left-wing Jewish intellectuals that I think we'll get into a little later. Much of her work draws on her autobiography. I mean, at some point she does say she's an inveterate liar. That's why she writes. 

PETER: My mother told me -- we had some pretty serious discussions, even though she died just after my eighth birthday -- but one of our discussions, I asked her, "Why are you a writer?" And she said, "Well, when I was late coming home for dinner, I would come in and tell tremendous whoppers. And they said to me, 'Okay, stop, stop. You don't need to lie. What you do is you make those stories, just write them and then there'll be stories.'" And so she said to me, "That's how I became a writer." 

KIM: That's wonderful. That's great. Um, at Columbia, Tess met and eventually married a classmate named Herbert Solow, and marrying Solow really opened up a whole new world for her. Can you tell us any more about that? 

PAULA: Well, um, the people who she hooked up with there were in the process of founding a magazine called The Menorah Journal, which is central to the novel The Unpossessed. And they were part of what are now known as the New York intellectuals. They're all aligned with the Left. These were people who were not, you know, necessarily part of the Communist Party milieu; they were maybe satellites of it. And some were students, some were faculty members at Columbia, or became faculty members, Lionel Trilling, and so forth. They were part of a anti-Stalinist side of the Left. And I think part of the reason that Slesinger's work is interesting, again, it's part of a resurgence that's going on. Unfortunately, we're living in a moment where, you know, we could be on the verge of World War III. People's livelihoods are very precarious. They don't have job security. I mean, we're not in a Depression, but I think there are reasons that there's a resurgent interest in the 1930s. 

AMY: Yeah. Kim and I have been doing several other novels from the 1930s for this podcast. I feel like I'm reading the morning newspaper and then I'm reading these novels and they're lining up in a scary way. And so we should also mention that Tess's marriage to Solow disintegrated. 

PAULA: I think that's the whole central, you know, point of The Unpossessed in a way. Um, I mean, it's almost written in real time as her marriage is coming apart at the seams.

KIM: Did you want to say something about that Peter too? 

PETER: Well, yes, because there was a political split between my mother and Solow too. My mother really did become a Communist. She would never, and my father, who also was a Communist, they would never call themselves Stalinists, but they were Communists. Solow was a Trotskyite, and that was a curse word among Communists. They used to say, "He's nothing but a Trot." Well, um, Solow, like a number of Trotskyites, took a fairly hard right turn, which was incredible. And Solow worked for Fortune magazine. Henry Luce, who was quite a right-winger, he hired a number of Trotskyites to work on his magazine.

PAULA: That's right. I mean, the Time Life Corporation, you know, Luce's corporation, Fortune, people were subverting things, you know, on the inside and they have many, many, you know, articles. about the Moscow subway station, as it was being built.

KIM: I had no idea. That's so interesting. Yeah. I had no idea.

PAULA: Everything is always more complicated than we think.

KIM: Sure, sure. 

AMY: Yeah. So needless to say. Having gone through this divorce, you know, all these complicated political things happening, she decides to write this novel, The Unpossessed. She's 29 years old. It's 1934. She basically uses her experiences among this radicalized Left and draws on all that for the book. And let's just say she doesn't pull any punches. So Paula, could you please give our listeners a little spoiler free summary of what The Unpossessed is all about? 

PAULA: Well, what's great about it is it really doesn't have much of a plot. It's really episodic, but it follows a kind of dual track of the Establishment and this dream of this left wing magazine that was going to be a home for these intellectuals who could critique Capitalism and so forth. And that's sort of the story of The Menorah Journal, which started in the late Twenties. And I should say my father-in-law published a poem in there. 

AMY: Wow!

KIM: I love that connection. 

PAULA: Furthermore, he and Tess shared the same literary agent, Max Lieber, who was probably a Soviet agent, but anyway, that's another story. Um, and then the other track is following the sort of disintegration or the problematic relationships of these three couples, two of whom are married, one is cousins of each other who have a kind of incestuous sort of desire for each other, and then sort of an orbit of people around them. And it's written almost like a rondo. It's very indebted to Stefan Zweig, so that each chapter will feed into another chapter. Even though they're on very different subjects, she will use a verb or she will use some gesture like in Hollywood of a door opening to introduce the next character or the next scene and so forth. So it's beautifully structured, which I have to say, I wrote my dissertation in part on this novel and I just in reading it now picked up on all these things that she had done, it's so sophisticated, that I didn't pick up on, you know, 35 or 40 years, whenever that was, uh, too long ago. Um, it's kind of like Edith Wharton, cause it's about New York, meets James Joyce, meets Stefan Zweig and many, many things, like Preston Sturges's movies, pick up on many of the things that she's pulling off there.

AMY: I love that analogy. 

KIM: Yeah, me too.

AMY: And what you said about having found something new that you discovered about it, I absolutely feel that you could read it every year for the rest of your life and not find everything that she was intending. And to be able to have a professor here with us, this is what I need! I need you to walk me through some of it. It's so layered. 

KIM: Um, and in the introduction to the New York Review Books edition, the late great Elizabeth Hardwick actually compares The Unpossessed's fractured eloquence and polyphonic pages, that's what she calls it, to the serene and controlled works of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield. 

PAULA: I should say that she's basically stealing that from Lionel Trilling's introduction from the 1964 papers.

KIM: Okay. So Lionel Trilling said it first. Okay. 

PAULA: She's in a way quoting him.

KIM: Perfect. Okay. So yeah, so we're adding Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield to our comparisons. I can see all of that. 

PAULA: I'm going to read a little section from early in the novel. You really get a sense of what Tess does so well. So she's always referring to actual things and objects and places and situations. So taxi cabs or going into the grocery store, the butcher or whatever. And then of course, those all have symbolic meaning. Then there's always the interior, you know, monologue of the characters. And then those are all being contained. In some larger social circumstance. There is hardly a paragraph that doesn't somehow refer to what's going on at the moment. It's set in 1932, so it's the Scottsboro Boys trials and the hunger march. Okay, so she, Margaret, she's one of the main characters, is in the kitchen with Jeffrey, one of the other main characters. They're not married to each other:

the reviews Jeffrey, tell me what they did to you. The reviews.

He said, obediently taking the sugar returned with characteristic absorption in his test. Idiotic as usual, his hands move, competently, opening bottles, all that economic drivel, you know, well miles subscribes to it and bring know too about my dot, dealing with social distinctions. When I'm concerned with life transcending class lines, where you hand me the lemons now, Maggie.

And anyway, thanks. I'm something of a mystic. He poured with an expert narrowing of the eye from a brown bottle into the cocktail shaker. They did speak of me though. Two of them, he numbered modestly and just studiously pushed the lemon peels back off the cocktail off. As America's DH Lawrence, more ice cubes tumbled in I'm terribly fed up with Grenadier and aren't you to hell with it.

And of course they missed my most symbolic meetings. I thought you were a Colombian earnest. She murmured and thought about how miles would add this week. She wished that miles, his ghost would stay outside with miles, arguing marks with Nora. Of course I'm a Marxist intellectual, I should say. He stirred and tasted, edit another spoon of sugar.

She wondered if his revolution existed just as cocktails did as something for Jeffrey to enjoy. And as a matter of fact, I have it on good authority that certain members of the left wing, you know, I'm pretty close to them. He paused and thought it's fine. Brow wrinkled. Oh, yes, I'm ready for the bitters. Maggie. 

AMY: Well you've read that beautifully. The action-packed pacing of everything she does. 

KIM: Yeah. And it encapsulates everything that we're talking about, like, what are these people doing? You know. It's very performative. 

AMY: She goes on a little bit after that to describe Jeffrey as synthetic cheese. 

KIM: Yes. 

AMY: He can be spread thin everywhere, like a synthetic cheese. And I'm like, oh, that is totally Jeffrey! 

KIM: Paula, did you want to talk a little bit more? Maybe you already said what you wanted to say, but you were going to talk about the structure of the novel and its sentences. 

PAULA: Yeah, no, I can, I can go on forever about this. So these two couples, Jeffrey and Nora, um, and Maggie and Miles are having drinks together at Nora and Jeffrey's house. And Jeffrey is a serial philanderer, and he's been after Maggie for a while, but she keeps pushing him off. But she and Miles have just had a fight, so she's kind of succumbing to him a little bit. Anyway, they have a kiss in the kitchen and, um, just at the point that everything seems to be, I don't know, they don't know what to do with it, they mentioned Bruno, the third of the three men. And then the next chapter happens. There's a knock on the door and Bruno enters. And that is how the whole novel moves from the beginning to the end. It starts with wilted celery. Margaret has gone to Mr. Pappelmeyer's grocery store and is complaining because the celery is kind of wilted and, you know, she can't really bring this lousy celery home to her husband. She says, he's from New England after all, he's not gonna take lousy, soft celery. And the motif of vegetables and fruits kind of runs through the whole thing. So here we have them mixing the cocktails with the lemon. Later on in this big party celebration scene, there's people sort of literally stepping on top of the table that's laid out with pineapples and so forth. And at the very end there's this giant mishegoss that goes on over this fruit basket. This vegetable fruit metaphor that runs through the whole thing is indicative of things. And, you know, there are moments when someone is lying in bed and then the next chapter, somebody else is lying in bed, and it's just brilliant. 

AMY: I mean, the way you're describing that feels very cinematic too. Like I can see the filmmaker making those kinds of decisions. 

PAULA: I'm surprised it hasn't been made into a film yet. 

KIM: Oh, it would be a beautiful film. So The Unpossessed shines a light on society, but it's also a story about a marriage that's imploding. And actually the marriage plot, which revolves around whether or not a couple, the Flinders, will keep a pregnancy. It seems like she's trying to explore whether or not it's possible to be a radical and also have a happy home. Paula and or Peter, do you have any thoughts on this? 

PETER: Well, this desire to have a child that Margaret Flinders has conflicts with her husband's desire not only not to have a child, but to remain political, political, political. And so that last chapter that Paula referred to where fruit comes into it again after she's had a D&C, an abortion, that was also very true to life. That's exactly what happened. Uh, my father told me about this. As a political act, he refused to have a child 

AMY: This is Solow then? 

PETER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. No, no, no way. My father also told me some interesting things about the Unpossessed. There were two reviews in the Communist paper and the first one in The Daily Worker praised it. "This is a novel of the Left. It's terrific!" About a week later they realized it was a satire. And the second one condemned it. Well, long after that, I interviewed for something that I was doing, Earl Browder, who had been the head of the American communist party. I asked him, "Did you ever remember a novel called The Unpossessed that was written by my mother?" He said, "Oh, yeah. I'll tell you what that did. The Unpossessed was like a breath of fresh air, which we needed to have. It's always a good idea to be able to laugh at yourselves, but we didn't know that then." Anyway, that was Earl Browder.

AMY: I think that's exactly what she's doing, is nobody gets a break, you know? She's got a criticism for every group in this novel, um, you know, the bourgeoisie, but also the magazine people, themselves, the students. Nobody gets a free pass. 

KIM: No one comes off looking great. Yeah. 

PETER: Yeah. Nobody gets a free pass, but she also has sympathy.

KIM: Yes. 

PETER: My mother's prose, which was anything, but prosaic, really shows itself in this chapter called Elizabeth, which was the greatest breakup chapter. Elizabeth, also one of the alter egos of my mother, had been living in Paris with this guy. And I just want to read it because what's not said in this chapter is so important: why it's snow?

She did not exclaim with joy as she flew to the window for a first fresh breath of morning. Why it's my first Paris snow. She did not cry out as she threw back the curtains and let showers of snow reflected sun spatter, Denny, and the bid in glory. Oh, it's snowing. And maybe this is love and I don't want to leave you.

She could not help. Not saying again, not, not once, but not numberless times as she ran about the room, looking for stockings without holes. Oh, but I like it here with you, Elizabeth. He did not reply. Although he heard plainly every word she had not spelled. 

AMY: I'm so glad you read that. When I read the chapter, Elizabeth, I just put the book down for a second. I texted Kim and said, "That's the greatest breakup scene in all of literature," like you just said, Peter. Everybody can understand that concept of a couple breaking up and all the things that they are thinking, but they're not saying that could even, almost maybe salvage the whole thing, you know what I mean? I don't throw the word genius around too often, but yes, I mean, that was incredible. 

KIM: It gives me chills hearing it again. 

PETER: And then two chapters later, um, The Fast Express, which I'll just mention briefly, she's on her way home now and their copy of Ulysses is left on the floor crying. 

AMY: Oh my gosh. Yeah. It's weeping on the floor, which gets us back to James Joyce, right? 

KIM: Yeah, exactly. 

AMY: I was going to read a little bit from fast express just because, I mean, that whole chapter is exhilarating. So it's after the breakup with Dennis, um, she's basically on a ship home, back to America. She's going to go back to her cousin, Bruno, who has cabled her. Her thoughts are basically echoing this idea that she's on a metaphorical train. You can kind of feel the locomotive in her thoughts, you know? So I'm just going to read a little section. Oh. And I should mention that she sees a man kind of noticing her as she's having these signs: Love don't touch me. Love. Keep your hands off this proud modern daughter. Happiness girl, no brooding there. It's a matter of friction, of scientific friction. If you go sentimental, you have only yourself to blame. Don't be obsessed by inhibitions. Don't be possessed by old traditions. Ah, stranger. I see you at yon corner table. You know me. You know me as if I were naked. Haywire play, girl drink-sodden gay girl. Sel-fpity is the lowest form of wit, wit is the purest form of self-pity. I was tired of artists, artists. I'm tired of unloved lovers. Bruno, what is the object of my game? Hell-bent for what is my fast express, my jingling jangling cocktail express. Lust without love and joy without joy, we pound down the tracks on our sex express, no stopping, no loving, no time to take breaths. So I'll stop there, but I mean, you can kind of get the chug, chug chugging along that she's feeling, like I'm just going from one lover to another, like, what's the point? What's it all about? Yeah. Love it.

KIM: So that's Elizabeth, then we've talked about Margaret. There's also Nora. She's the wife of Jeffrey. He's a charming and rakish philanderer, but she's really complacent and maternal in the face of all of his obvious affairs. Paula, what do you think Slesinger is trying to show with these three different women?

PAULA: Well, I mean, interestingly, you say she's maternal, but she does not want to have a child. When Margaret says to her I'm pregnant, why don't we have kids? Nora looks at her and says "What are you, nuts?" Like, "No, I already got one in the form of my husband". But it's fairly clear that these three positions of the woman who takes care of her man and that's her job, the woman who wants to be a mother, but keep some kind of identity, and the woman who is, you know, the ex-flapper; the new woman. I mean, 1932 is only 12 years after women got suffrage in the United States. And while the discourse has always been that the second wave of feminism didn't really start until the Sixties, that is not true. As Bruno says, at some point in the novel, the most important revolution is the revolution between the sexes. So I think what she's looking at are these various dimensions of what it means to be female and the fact that there really is no way in a sense to reconcile them, given the constraints of the social world in which they live and the economic constraints. And so forth. 

AMY: And yeah, moving over to the men in this book, the fact that they're trying to do something important with this magazine, it's basically farcical, but then she also does have some empathy and affection for the men because they're each having their own existential crisis. Is there anything else Paula, you could add on that? 

PAULA: Well, the novel is mostly interested in terms of the interior qualities in the women, but I don't think she's just mocking these guys. I mean, I think she's trying to understand what is going on amongst a generation of men who don't want to participate in this kind of bourgeois world of business. They have this problem of where they say, "We're sterile. We don't know what to do." Because they're intellectuals. They spend their time thinking. They're more interested in the idea of the thing than the act. That's what Bruno keeps saying, you know, "Is there a magazine?" He doesn't really want there to be a magazine, because he'd rather think about the magazine than actually do the boring work of proofreading it. So I think she's trying to come to terms with a new kind of masculinity. She's sympathetically trying to figure out these guys. There's a kind of undercurrent of pathos there, but there's also a lot of mocking of everybody.

PETER: One of the things that Elizabeth Hardwick said in her introduction, which I think is very true, she referred to the characters in The Unpossessed as "conversational communists." So they not only weren't going to really start a magazine, they also weren't really going to foment revolution. They were conversational communists.

KIM: Like "Let's start a literary 'zine!" 

AMY: Yeah, exactly. 

KIM: I did that once. Anyway. 

AMY: Um, so the novel reaches its climax at this fundraising party thrown by the magazine's rich benefactress. All the characters in the novel come together. It's really brilliantly written and we have this character of Bruno who gave us a showstopping speech. Peter, do you want to talk about that? 

PETER: Yeah, Bruno, when he harangues the crowd, he goes on and on: "Listen, fellow bastards," roared Bruno unheard at the punchbowl. "Drink, drink with me. Up with your glasses, down with your hopes. To the Revolution!" I have to just say that in my own novel, which took place in 1934, all the characters are fictional except for one. And that's Bruno Leonard. Bruno Leonard, he walked out of my mother's novel, and I apologize in the notes at the end. I said, I think it's okay to steal from your mother. 

AMY: I love that Bruno lives again, 

KIM: Yes. Me too. 

PETER: Yeah, he does.

PAULA: In a way, he's probably the one who never died. I mean, he has these great lines: "We believe in nothing but aspirin and sex. The full bladder is our only goal. We sponsor sublimation, constipation, procrastination, masturbation, prevarication, adumbration equivocation." And he goes on and on and on. 

AMY: It's a great speech. Yeah. 

PAULA: But you would think the novel would end at this disastrous end of the party, but then there's this Part Four called Mrs. Flinders. And that's the scene of her leaving the maternity hospital after her abortion, which as she says to Miles when he is putting her into the taxi cab, "What's a D&C between friends?" Kind of a devastating line, because, she doesn't want to have this abortion, but after this party where it seems clear that there's no hope for communism or capitalism, it's all just falling apart, they say, well, how can we bring this child into this world? And the taxi driver is carefully driving because she's coming out of this hospital with this gigantic basket of fruit that Miles has brought her because he doesn't know what else to do. 

AMY: I love that you brought up the limp celery at the very beginning with the basket of fruit at the very end. I hadn't really thought of the limp celery as a euphemism until now. And I know what that stands for now. It makes a lot more sense 

PAULA: Because all through the novel, the word sterile or the word empty, or the word barren is running through it. 

AMY: Also like a hostility from the men towards the women because of their ability to create. We intrinsically create something with our bodies, whereas these men failed to create something intellectual.

KIM: They can't even get their magazine going. 

PAULA: Well, I mean, this novel is also coming in just 12 years after "The Wasteland." I mean, we're in the great year of the hundredth anniversary of "The Wasteland" and of Ulysses, of the two seminal works of Modernist literature in English. And you know, "The Wasteland" is all about those empty kind of cardboard boxes, our intellectual men. And so, you know, she's talking to a lot of different strains of literary and social and political discourses simultaneously, and you know, there's a real pathos to it because there doesn't seem to be a way to get out of it. The magazine's a wreck. All the relationships are wrecks. They don't have the baby. So it's like, "Well, what is there?" She, Tess, goes on to write this great novel about it. 

AMY: Yes. Yeah. And then also she has even further success in her career. So let's circle back to Tess's life, Peter, you know, her second act. Do you want to kind of share what she went on to do after writing The Unpossessed?

PETER: Well, she went to California, kind of summoned by Irving Thalberg, to write the script for Pearl Buck's novel The Good Earth. And there is someone in The Good Earth, a wife, as a matter of fact, who says, "Forgive me for dying." Well, one of the people who wrote her dissertation about my mother's work and she, at one time had wanted to write a biography, she called it, forgive me for dying, which is also a sadness about my mother. Anyway, she met my father, Frank Davis, in California while she was writing that screenplay. And he was a young producer at MGM. He hated producing, and so they then wrote screenplays together, the last of which was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

AMY: They were nominated for an Academy Award for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? 

PETER: They were nominated, and my mother had died by the time of the Oscars and they didn't win. 

PAULA: But can I just mention one of her other films that they worked on together, which was 1940's "Dance, Girl, Dance," which is a feminist classic of different women who are in different circumstances, but who are all connected somehow. In this case, through a dance troupe and then a burlesque show. And the remarkable scene towards the end of the film when Maureen O'Sullivan breaks the fourth wall and just speaks to the audience. This is at a burlesque show, these men are laughing at these women and coming to look at their bodies, but these women are professional dancers and they're just doing their jobs. And so it's a remarkable moment. It's about voyeurism, about exploitation, about patriarchy and so forth and, and about class and how, you know, women bond together as performers. 

KIM: I loved reading about that in your afterward to the new collection. I want to watch that movie. Is that available to watch? 

PAULA: Oh yeah.

KIM: Okay, great. I'm going to look for that. So, Peter, as you said, your mom sadly died from cancer at a very young age, 39. Such a young woman. She'd accomplished so much in such a short time. We're so sorry for your loss, and so honored to be able to get the word out about her incredible life and work. Although you were quite young when she died, do you have any other childhood memories of her that you'd be willing to share?

PETER: I can remember so many things. Both she and my father moved away from Los Angeles to a place about 60 miles east to what we called a ranch. Tiny. Seven acres, but we had animals, chickens, and pheasants and stuff, and grew a lot of things. And they did that because they both wanted to see what it was like to get away from the city, away from Hollywood and away from the Communist party. Now they didn't stop being Communists, but they got sick of the humorlessness of the party, and the fact that, as my father did tell me, that there was this hierarchy and within the hierarchy of the party, there was also snobbery. So it was just the same thing that you had in the capitalist world. But so, yeah, and I can remember, um, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, my mother very patriotically would become a lookout. You had to go to a particular place where you could see the sky very well. It was like a hill. And on this hilltop, they would be from midnight until 6:00 AM. They would take the midnight to 6:00 AM and my mother did that, and on other nights, my father did. Also, she was a beautiful swimmer for whatever that matters. And when she would dive into our pool, it was as though there was no wake at all. My father would dive and create waves all over, but when my mother dove, it was just a very clean dive. And they also would sometimes go in the pool without suits.

AMY: She was a new woman! 

KIM: Yes. 

AMY: But you said your mom didn't make a splash when she dove into the pool, but she is making a splash now, in fact. This month we get to celebrate the release of a collection of her short stories called Time: The Present. Paula, can you tell us anything about this? 

PAULA: Well, the story about your mother being a great swimmer ties into the story in the collection that I find the most compelling, which is "Kleine Frau." It's about this young couple who are on their honeymoon in Austria. She's bought a dirndl and she's walking around in her native peasant costuming. And they come down from their hotel to the lake and there's all these local people staring at the water and it's because one of the children of one of the families has drowned. And it's all told from the point of view of the woman. Her husband has gone up to the shore and she's like "Really?" You know, she's this sort of petty annoyed, young woman, you know, privileged young woman, like "Why are these people doing this? I'm cold and where's this husband and what's going on?" And finally, when it's clearly determined that they're never going to get this boy who's drowned, the husband admits to her and says, "You know, I was a champion swimmer. I should have gone in the water and saved this boy." And she looks at him in sort of this incomprehending, what are you talking about? Because she's been angry at him in her head for not paying attention to her. And it's clear, at this moment at the end, that this marriage is already over. And I didn't realize that your mother was a great swimmer, but that sort of ties into this. And if you think about it, I mean, you know, people got married barely knowing each other. And many of the stories in this book are about the sort of tension in these young women who have gotten married and they're like 20, 21, 22, and they're still really tied to their mothers. And they've sort of left their mothers in order to marry these guys whom they barely know. I mean, they sort of met them and went out with them and got married to them and it's like, "Well, you know..."

KIM: "Now what do we do?"

PAULA: Exactly? 

PETER: One of the stories I really like a lot, and Paula mentioned this too in her afterward, is "The Times So Unsettled Are." It doesn't take too much of a reach for you to say that about today. 

KIM: Yeah, absolutely. We don't even have to state all the ways that there's the relevance between what we've been talking about and what's going on.

PAULA: Yeah. And again, it's really about the dissolution of a marriage, but it's also in the context of the politics of Austria and the destruction of the socialist government there as it's sort of eventually will become a welcoming zone for Nazis. 

PETER: The other story I want to briefly comment on is "On Being Told That Her Second Husband Has Taken His First Lover."

PAULA: The greatest title ever. 

KIM: It is! 

PETER: As my father pointed out, he was her second husband, and she didn't even know him when she wrote that! She wrote it while she lived in New York. She didn't have a second husband in New York! But once again, it's about infidelity in marriage, and she talks about in her first marriage, which was more kind of an open marriage, they were both unfaithful, but in this marriage only he gets to be unfaithful. So yeah, that is the patriarchy writ large. 

AMY: And listeners, I don't think we can stress enough how exciting it is that there's this new collection of stories out. And we have Boiler House Press to thank for that. It was released just this month.

KIM: Yeah. This collection is actually a really important companion to The Unpossessed book. I highly recommend readers who love reading The Unpossessed or are at all interested in Slesinger pick up this book as well. 

AMY: We also wanted to give a special shout-out to the man who was instrumental in the release of Time: The Present -- Brad Bigelow of Neglected Books. He was our guest from episode 59 on G.E. Trevelyan, you might remember, and he was actually kind enough to introduce us to our guests today. So thank you, Brad, for that. We appreciate you so much! And of course, Peter and Paula, it goes without saying that this has been truly a thrill and an honor. Thank you so much, both of you, for bringing your perspectives to the show.

PETER: Thank you. The thrill is mine. 

PAULA: I mean, I have to say Peter Davis has been one of my heroes since the Seventies, when his film came out. In fact, my other life is as a documentary film critic, and in part it's because of Hearts and Minds. So the fact that I get to not only talk about his mother, who was instrumental in one part of my life, but her son, who was instrumental in another part... I would never have contacted him personally. It's... I don't do that. 

AMY: I love it. I want you guys to be good friends now! 

PAULA: We intend to be! 

PETER: Well, yeah, so thank you, Amy and Kim. And Paula, lots of thanks to you, and it's a great pleasure to see you.. 

PAULA: Now this is what I feel. Thank you. 

KIM: Bye-bye 

AMY: So we'll sign off now, but don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter, where we'll occasionally be giving out sneak peek info on which books we'll be featuring in future episodes. You can get a jump on your reading if you're inclined to read along with us. Our theme song was written and recorded by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Amy Helmes and Kim Askew.

88. Maud Wagner — Lost Lady of Tattoo Art

Join us as we learn more about the first known female tattoo artist in the United States, Maud Wagner. Born in 1877, Maud grew up to become a circus acrobat and, once most of her body was covered with tattoos, a walking exhibition unto herself. 

Discussed in this episode: 

Pride & Prejudice Temporary Tattoos by Litographs

Lily Rose at Wayfarer Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles

Dark Academia

Gibson-Girl hair

Maud Wagner

St. Louis World’s Fair 1904

Winston Churchill

Lady Randolph Churchill

Tattooed Lady: A History by Amelia K. Osterud

American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill by Anne Sebba

Maud’s Circus by Michelle Rene

Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

Cate Blanchett

88. Maud Wagner — Lost Lady of Tattoo Art

Note: Transcripts are generated, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

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.

87. Kay Dick — They with Lucy Scholes

Note: Transcripts are generated, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

Episode 87: Kay Dick — They with Lucy Scholes

AMY: Hey, everybody, welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit, the podcast dedicated to dusting off great books by forgotten women writers. I’m Amy Helmes, here with my writing partner Kim Askew. 

KIM: Hi, everyone! Our guest today wrote of the lost dystopian masterpiece we’re going to be discussing: it’s “a surreptitious, later-career aberration…whose strangeness never seeped into what she wrote after.” So intriguing, right?

AMY: A weird one-off! Yeah, that is interesting. And Kim, as you said, this novella, They by Kay Dick, is dystopian, which is usually more your speed, but I actually loved it, too, I’ll confess.

KIM: I know, and I think, Amy, that this podcast is changing you, because you thought you didn’t like dystopian or sci-fi or noir, but I kind of feel like maybe you just thought you didn’t like them?

AMY: Could be. I’m not sure I’m going to agree 100% yet, but I’m definitely a fan of this book, and I’m of course a fan of our returning guest, the wonderful Lucy Scholes. 

KIM: Yes, we are  so glad to have her back on the show! So let’s raid the stack and get started! 

[introductory music]

AMY: Our guest today is Lucy Scholes, and after you listen to this episode, you may want to go back and listen to the episode we did with her last September on Rosamond Lehmann’s Dusty Answer. Lucy is a London-based critic who writes for The Times Literary Supplement, The Observer, The Financial Times, The New York Review of Books and Literary Hub, among others. In addition to all that, she hosts “Ourshelves,” the official podcast of Virago Books. Every two weeks you can find Lucy interviewing big names in the literary world, talking to them about their own favorite books, music, TV shows and more. We highly recommend you go check out that podcast. 

KIM: Yes, it’s one of our favorites. And in Lucy’s must-read column for The Paris Review, “Re-Covered,” she writes about out-of-print and forgotten books, which as you can imagine is a treasure trove of lost ladies of lit. In her August, 2020 column, she wrote about Kay Dick and They; we’ll link to the column in our show notes. Now, Lucy is also the Senior Editor of McNally Editions, and McNally has recently issued a new edition of They with an afterword by Lucy. Welcome, Lucy! We’re honored to have you back! 

LUCY: Well, thank you both so much for having me back; I’m really grateful that you invited me on the show again! It was such fun last time.

AMY: Yeah, absolutely. In your Re-covered column on Dick, you write “Kay Dick is a name all but forgotten today, but in the mid-twentieth century she was at the heart of the London literary scene.” I love the story of how you discovered her! Do you want to share it with our listeners? 

LUCY: Yes, so it was about two and a half years ago now, I guess not long before the pandemic hit, I stumbled across an obituary that the British newspaper the Guardian had run for Kay Dick when she died in 2001. But what was so fascinating about this particular piece was how spiteful and nasty it was. It was written by a writer named Michael de-la-Noy, and he accused Dick of  having —and I’m quoting him directly here: “expended far more energy in pursuing personal vendettas and romantic lesbian friendships than in writing books.” The thing was, though, the description of her life that then followed sounded so intriguing, and so full of achievement! So, I mean, she published ten books of her own, and edited various anthologies and magazines—which all seems pretty productive to me, or by my standards, at least it is! But anyway,  the very worst thing that de-la-Noy had to say about her— and he draws the obit to a close by describing her as “a talented woman bedeviled by ingratitude and a kind of manic desire to avenge totally imaginary wrongs”— so this only made me more fascinated to find out a little bit more about her. So I immediately tracked down copies of her books. 

KIM: When you actually started reading her, though, you were a little bit disappointed. Do you want to talk about that? 

LUCY: Yeah, I was a little bit. Her first five novels—which were published between 1949 and 1962—weren't terribly exciting. They’re written very well, but they’re just not especially noteworthy; I guess I’d describe them as elegant novels of manners. They’re set in polite society and they now feel a bit dated. But then I kind of persevere. I kept going because I thought there would be something maybe there eventually, and I picked up THEY: A SEQUENCE OF UNEASE, which was first published in 1977, and from the very first page—I mean, I guess really from the title.  I mean who titles a book with the subtitle  “a sequence of unease”?—I knew I was reading something very special. And I think this was partly because the voice was so utterly different to that I’d encountered in her earlier work, as was the style—it was very pared down, stripped back, quite raw and visceral—and then there was the fact that it was this kind of strange and uneasy dystopian tale, set in an England that’s both instantly recognizable, and also utterly alien. 

AMY: And you mention that subtitle, and I feel like that’s the first I’m kind of hearing of that subtitle. Does the McNally edition use that?

LUCY: Yeah, I think we use it on the sort of inside page.

AMY: Okay, it’s not on the cover.

LUCY: No, and I think even when it was first published, They was very on the front page, but then it has got this subtitle, this kind of strange one.

KIM: Yeah, I love the beautiful spare cover with the striking image and then the word They. It’s very nice.

AMY: But yes, “A Sequence of Unease,” though, as you said, tell me more! But let’s just back up some and find out more about Dick’s life. She was born in 1915 to a single mother who had left her somewhat privileged life to go be part of the bohemian cafe society. So, Lucy, can you tell us a little more about Dick’s childhood?

LUCY: Yeah, it was fairly unorthodox, I think, to say the least! Her mother had her illegitimately, and in those days that can’t have been particularly easy. I’m sure it meant that she was ostracized from her own parents if she hadn’t already made the break herself. And Dick told the wonderful story that the day after her mother gave birth to her, rather than heading home from the hospital, the new mother, with her baby in her arms, headed straight for the Café Royal, which was one of the most famous night spots in London, popular with this bohemian, fast-living crowd—and everyone there toasted the new baby with champagne! And Dick called this her “baptism” later, because she hadn’t had a church baptism. This had been her entry into the world.

KIM: I love that story; what a start in life! 

AMY: I know, Kim, why weren’t we going straight to the nightclubs from the hospital?

KIM: Yeah. It sounds so glamorous. But then, I guess when she was around seven, her life changed a bit. Do you want to talk about that?

LUCY: Yeah, this was when Dick’s mother married the Swiss man who she’s been previously having an affair with, I guess you would put it. Mother and daughter had always lived quite a sort of cosmopolitan, privileged life— and this was paid for by Dick’s mother’s lover. But the marriage gave them access to a very different world, something slightly different to the more haphazard, bohemian existence they’d lived up until this point. Dick was sent to boarding school out of London for a while, but I don’t think she got on particularly well there, so she was taken out of that school and then sent to school in Geneva in Switzerland, where she apparently lived with a host family, and this was much more to her liking. 

AMY: So did she have ambitions to write from a very young age? How did she get her start?

LUCY: Well, I think her stepfather had been quite wealthy at one point, and by the time Dick came of age, he’d lost quite a lot of his money, which meant she had to go out and earn her own living. But I don’t think she minded doing this; if anything, she had quite a great time! She worked as a bookseller, and as an assistant editor on various magazines, before being quickly promoted, and then she eventually started writing novels of her own.

KIM: So then it sounds like she basically reconnected with this bohemian community she’d been welcomed into as a child, right?

LUCY: Yes, absolutely! I found a wonderful interview that she gave a newspaper in the 1980s in which she recalled leaving home at the age of 20 to gad about London with what she describes as “a louche set”—and she talks about wandering Soho with her bisexual friend Tony, both of them wearing capes and sporting canes! Looking a bit like Oscar Wilde I’d imagine!

KIM: I love that image!

AMY:  Totally. So then we know that she worked at Foyles bookshop in London's Charing Cross Road and then when she was only 26, she became the first woman director in English publishing at P.S. King & Son. She later became a journalist at the New Statesman. While she was a journalist she wrote under the nom de plume Edward Lane. And she also edited the literary magazine The Windmill. Do we have any idea why she used a male pen name ?

LUCY: To be honest, I’m not sure. She used a couple of different male pen names for various projects, and “Edward Lane” was the most famous of the two. I doubt she was the only woman writer doing this at the time, but I’m also inclined to say it might not necessarily have been for the reasons that we might assume. In that interview that I just mentioned, she says at one point that she “cannot bear apartheid of any kind—class, colour or sex,” and then adds that “gender is of no bloody account.” So I think she was clearly quite a character, very dramatic, and, I suspect, liked to play with and tease people, so I would imagine she would take a certain amount of delight in pretending to be someone else, you know, male or female.

KIM: And given all that and what you told us, it’s actually unsurprising that she and her partner of many years, Kathleen Farrell, actually entertained some of the most successful and popular writers of the era in their home. But how were Kay’s own books received by the public and the critics?

LUCY: She got very decent reviews. None were bestsellers, or huge hits, but the writing was generally well respected. The novels were often described as “Proustian,” these early novels, which I think is pretty complimentary to be honest. And then in the early 1970s she went on to publish two volumes of interviews with her writer friends—Ivy and Stevie, as in Ivy Compton Burnett and Stevie Smith, and then a second volume called Friends and Friendship, which included interviews with people like Brigid Brophy, Olivia Manning and Francis King. And these were also well received. They’re not in print today, but amongst certain people today who are interested in these writers, they’re considered important artifacts.

AMY: I’m hearing some potential subjects for Lost Ladies of Lit in that list.

LUCY: Yeah.

AMY: And I love the fact that we can potentially mine some info about them from Kay Dick if we were able to get our hands on a copy of either of those books that you just mentioned.

KIM: I love that idea.

LUCY: Yeah, no I definitely recommend it. They’re out of print, but you can get second-hand copies, and they are a sort of wealth of information because she was very good friends with these writers so they have a very personal tone to the interviews, not the kind of classic interviewer-and-subject who don’t know each other. There’s a really kind of intimate element.

KIM: Oh, that sounds so good. So, let’s go back to that not entirely complimentary obituary you mentioned earlier. That was pretty harsh.… Do you want to talk about the dichotomy between what was written in that obit versus what you found out about her doing your research? 

LUCY:  Well, she was obviously not someone who suffered fools gladly, and she could certainly be prickly, and she did sometimes hold grudges, but she was also a woman whose friends meant everything to her. I guess because her own family life had been rather unconventional, as we’ve discussed, she had no children, and no life-partner—though she and Farrell did remain close, and an integral part of each other’s lives, long after they broke up. But this meant that Dick’s friends were everything to her. And to many of these friends she was deeply loyal and supportive. I’ve had the great luck of getting to know the wonderful executors of her Estate, as well of some of her other friends and neighbors from her later life, and all of them have spoken with such fondness of how much fun she was, and how much she loved spending time with people, and introducing the people she loved to one another, which I think is such a rare kind of talent and a gift to have, wanting to share your friends around with other people. And also they’ve all mentioned about how much she loved young people. She hosted these soirees in her flat in Brighton—which was where she lived after she left London in the 1960s onward after her relationship with Farrell ended. And apparently she served cucumber sandwiches and glasses at these and everyone drank Campari and orange or glasses of champagne. I mean, it  really sounds rather wonderful. And she devoted a lot of time, I think, to encouraging young, up and coming writers too apparently. In fact, the minute that awful obit was published in the Guardian, the paper received quite a lot of complaint letters from her friends who were outraged that she’d been depicted so shoddily in it. If I may read an extract from the letter her friend and neighbor the writer Roy Greenslade wrote. He writes: 

She was, in fact, a most perceptive critic, preferring too often to spend her time reading the works of others rather than writing herself. Few people read as much as Kay. “Darling, I’ve just been rereading Scott,” she once said. “He was brilliant.” I asked: “Which novel?” “All of them,” she replied, without the least sign of boasting. Her other great talent lay in introducing people she met to her wide network of friends and contacts. She loved our children, helped them, made them laugh, made them think. Both of them, like my wife and I, benefited from knowing the lady with the cigarette holder and the succession of dogs along the terrace.

KIM: That is so beautiful. I mean I love that her friends rallied…

AMY: Coming to her defense.

KIM: I know. Good for them, too.

AMY: And also, that description that he just painted, if you Google images of her, that’s sort of what comes up. She looks like she could be a little intimidating in the photos, but then she also looks extremely interesting. Like somebody you want to know.

LUCY: Yep, yep.

AMY: So let’s get back to her novel They. When you read it, was it a surprise given that you started with these novels of manners? How shocking was it for you to then stumble upon They in the list, and like, “What?!!” 

LUCY: Yeah, it was completely shocking. Like I said, I enjoyed the first novels, but I wasn’t particularly excited by them. And I guess I’d been lulled into a false sense of security after reading a few of them. And then I picked up They, opened it up, and it was a complete surprise.

KIM: I love that you kept going and didn’t stop too soon. That would have been really sad for all of us. It’s a good lesson to keep reading!

LUCY: Perseverance! It’s important!

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: I purposefully didn’t look up anything about the book before I read it, either and yeah, I was like, “Whoa!” I don’t think we’re going to give away too many spoilers, but we will set the premise of sort of what the book’s about. So Lucy, do you want to go ahead and do that?

LUCY: Yeah, it’s not a hugely plot-heavy book, which isn’t to say nothing happens in it—far from it, in fact—but the way it’s written, the chapters can almost be read as stand-alone vignettes. They seem to be linked by the presence of the same main character, but there’s no obvious chronology between them. In essence though, the novel is set amongst the countryside and the beaches of coastal Sussex, in England, which is home to the narrator—a writer—and her—or his—their gender is never revealed—various friends, all of these people are artists or craftspeople of some kind or other. It starts off all very beautiful and bucolic, but pretty soon, you realize that something is amiss. Plundering bands of philistines are actually prowling the country destroying art, books, sculpture, musical instruments and scores, punishing those artistically and intellectually- inclined outliers who refuse to abide by this new mob rule.

AMY: Is there any favorite passage of yours from They that you’d like to read to kind of give listeners a little bit of a feel for the prose? 

LUCY: Yeah, this was kind of a tricky ask, because I think each chapter brings a bit of a different dimension to the fear. And so I wanted to give you a bit of a taste of it. But I’ve chosen one from the chapter called Pebble of Unease. So we’ve got the narrator and a friend of hers are walking on the downs, which are the hills around Sussex, and although we’ve seen smaller bands of these “They,” these mysterious “They,” this is the first time we’re seeing them en masse as it were. Okay.

We turned round. There they were on the ridge. We looked behind us. A similar column in line, each one holding a pole to match his height. They began to move downward with deliberate precision. ‘Hold my hand,’ Julian said. ‘We must go on, as we intended, homewards.’ 

   They broke formation, in slow motion, gyrated towards us, executing a pattern of zigzagging movements, crossing and recrossing one another’s steps. 

   ‘If we’re lucky, we’ll miss the symmetry of their course,’ Julian said.

   We felt them as rank after rank of them moved past us. Pockets of air hit us as their intricate patterns of movement slid past us. I stumbled. Julian pulled me up fiercely. ‘We mustn’t alter our pace or sway in the slightest,’ he said.

   As we moved up the track they surrounded us on all sides, never deviating an inch from their rigid exercise. Others followed in their tracks. The crossings and recrossings of their lines went on, relentlessly slow, totally in unison. I was sweating. I was tired. I wanted to pause. Julian urged me upwards. I could see the kissing-gate in the distance. Another relay began their descent. ‘Don’t look back,’ Julian said. ‘Keep with the stream of our natural route.’ I saw one of the poles as one of the men moved a fraction past my body: it shone like steel. To the left and the right of my vision they swirled. I pressed my arms closer to my body, fearing I might knock against one of the poles. Their precision was monstrously accurate as they repeated the movements of those who had descended before them. I caught glimpses of eyes, heads, chests, arms, legs, and, ever, the shining steel poles. I saw the last three of them as they veered toward us. One went to the right of us, the other to the left. Quickly Julian pushed me away from him as the third one crashed into the space between our two bodies and went on. 

   We reached the kissing-gate. ‘Don’t look back,’ Julian said. ‘We must not appear inquisitive.’ He sounded frivolous. 

AMY: It reminds me kind of of the Death Eaters from Harry Potter. Like, “Oh my god, they’re coming” This terrifying mass inching towards you; how frightening that is. 

KIM: And that unease is so perfectly illustrated in that passage. Each of these chapters is its own story that could be in The New Yorker on its own without even reading the rest of them, although as a complete piece it’s beautifully woven together, but they are definitely stand alone and they all have that sense of unease. It also reminded me a bit of this book called Wittgenstein’s Mistress. It’s by David Markham. David Foster Wallace called that book "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country." (Meaning the U.S.)  Have either of you read that one?

LUCY: No, I haven’t. I think you’ve mentioned to me a couple of weeks ago that it was similar so I’ve been wanting to get hold of a copy ever since. I’m fascinated by it.

KIM: Yeah, it came out about a decade after They, but it has some interesting parallels, which is what made me think of it. It’s one of my husband’s favorite books, so I read about it because of him and I really loved it. The woman named Kate is the narrator. She believes she is the last human on earth (and she’s likely mad), but she’s remembering all the art and literature that have shaped her, from Brahms to Shakespeare. As you said, in They, the narrator is trying to retain the ability to write and, along with the other artists in the book, is trying to remember the works that have shaped them. And it really feels like the world is dying around them — for sure art is dying and maybe individuality even — and these are the last few vestiges of what humanity once was. 

AMY: Yeah, it’s like literally the narrator will return to their cottage and notice that books are missing from the bookshelf or pages are missing from the bindings. 

KIM: Yeah, on a certain level that could be innocuous, but within the idea of all of the books being slowly taken away, I think to people who love art and books and music, there’s nothing more chilling than the idea that these things are being taken away.

AMY: Lucy, I had finished the novel, started reading your afterword, and you mention that the narrator could have been a man or a woman, and I was like, “Wait, what?” I was just automatically reading it as if the narrator was a woman. It made me kind of want to go back and reread it thinking of it being possibly a man as well and seeing if it would give me any different understanding of it. But why do you think she kept the storyteller’s gender unknown?

LUCY: Yeah, it’s a tricky one, isn’t it? I would imagine that if it’s got to do with anything, it’s more her thoughts about gender being of little interest. I have to confess, I agree with you. I automatically think of the narrator as a woman, but I think that’s because I came to They after reading five of her earlier novels. I think I was already conditioned to think of the narrator in a certain way. So Sunday, the novel that she wrote before They is highly autobiographical, as is The Shelf, the novel she wrote after They, and even though They is set in this kind of strange, parallel version of England, I think it’s a book about friendship and love and art, all the things that Dick held dearest. So to me, it still feels like it’s actually a deeply personal book to Dick.

KIM: It definitely feels that way when you’re reading it. It almost feels like a diary or a memoir or something. And as we said, people and books are literally disappearing from the narrator’s life on a daily basis. Yet, the narrator makes this choice over and over in each of the stories to continue living alone. It’s an explicit choice to be a target, given the nature of these mobs, which targets single people. In doing so, he or she is taking a stand to continue to be a writer and also maintain that artistic part of their personality in spite of everything they are up against. Dick definitely seemed to live by her own rules. What do you think she’s trying to say about non-conformity and artistic integrity in They?

LUCY: She’s upped the stakes in They, of course, in that those who refuse to conform are risking actual bodily harm and violence , and being killed. But even without such terrible threats hanging over one’s head, I think she’s explaining that being an artist involves a certain degree of bravery, right? It’s a risky business. In Friends and Friendship (the second books of interviews that she published) she writes, “it is an extremely courageous act to be a writer, painter, composer, because you are out on your own, in limbo, totally unprotected, not much encouraged, driven only by some inner conviction and strength, and the discipline is yours alone.” So this is clearly what she believes, and this—I think—is what lies at the heart of They.

KIM: That’s a perfect quote to give context to the book. Wow. That completely makes sense with the narrator.

AMY: In your afterword, you talk about grief being an important theme in this novel. And it’s also key in the genesis of how the book came to be. Can you talk about what you think she might have been trying to convey about grief in the book?

LUCY: I find it so fascinating that she takes the time to note how influenced she was by this particular newspaper article—it was called ‘Coping with Grief’ that apparently described this new kind of psychiatric treatment in which one’s emotions are “burnt out” and the grief is expelled—she mentions it on the imprint page of the book, so it’s clearly super significant; and the “They” of the book’s title have a hatred of people showing their feelings; everyone has to be numb and calm, drama in any shape or form has been completely outlawed. It sort of suggests to me that Dick might have felt sort of stymied by something—whether it was polite society, convention, that idea of the English stiff upper lip, maybe the struggle of living in a world that didn’t afford her romantic relationships with other women the same degree of respect that heterosexual couples around her got. What we do know for sure, though, is that she went through a period of intense and prolonged loss and grief in the run-up to writing They, and I would suggest that she was still trying to kind of process all her emotions—she was still grieving when she wrote this book.

KIM: Yeah, so, as we mentioned in the intro, They came out later in Dick’s career — I think you said about a fifteen-year gap. Can you tell us a little bit more about what was going on during that gap and more about what might have driven her to write such a divergent work? 

LUCY: Yeah, so those fifteen years were really quite traumatic for her, I think. A few major things happened in quite quick succession: so her twenty-odd-year relationship with Kathleen Farrell broke down and the two women parted ways, though as I said, they did stay in touch but they weren’t together after that; Dick tried to kill herself, which she writes about in Friends and Friendship; and a woman that she had a brief affair with in the aftermath of her relationship with Kathleen, this woman went on to commit suicide (and this is talked about in much more detail in the novel that that follows They, a novel called The Shelf). And during this time Dick also moved from London to Brighton, she was getting older, she was no longer I guess at the heart of the literary scene that she had been for many years, and I think she was struggling to finish various writing projects that she’d begun work on, a couple of big biographies that she started and they never got started. And you know if you look at her archive there’s a lot of kind of unfinished projects there. I think all this loss seems to have taken quite a toll on her, and it seems to have drastically changed her writing as well. You know, I wrote in the afterword that in many ways, They reminds me a lot of works like  Anna Kavan’s novel Ice, which was published in 1967, and this is this kind of strange, enigmatic, almost psychedelic novel in which this man is pursuing a woman across a snowy, post-apocalyptic wasteland. Kavan famously switched the register of her prose after a huge kind of mental breakdown—she started out by writing relatively conventional, what you might describe as women’s fiction, and then she ended up in an insane asylum for a while, and she emerged out of this with bleached blonde hair and this kind of crazy heroin addiction, and a whole new way of writing. And I think something similar also happened to Dick’s friend Christine Brooke-Rose, another writer from this period. She survived a near fatal kidney operation in the early 60s, and then started writing much more avant-garde after that. Works that Dick, herself, described as quite Orwellian. And I think something similar must have happened to Dick; I mean her life was upended. Maybe not quite so dramatically; maybe through a series of events. But I think she became a different writer as a consequence of this huge upheaval. They is completely different to the novel that precedes it, Sunday, and there is that large gap in which something is obviously happening during that time. 

KIM: In his February New Yorker article, that you have a cameo in, Lucy, Sam Knight called They a collection of “quietly horrifying stories,” and I love that description. They is quiet in almost this sort of cozy English way. The characters interact with each other and the normal sort of things they say and do like trimming rose bushes, having tea together, having parties. They’re staying calm together and mostly stoic, while at the same time all this horrible stuff is happening around them and to them. 

AMY: You’re right, Kim. There’s something very calm and almost pretty to me (I don’t know if that’s the right word) but that’s kind of how I felt in reading it. So much attention is paid to color in the stories, so I’m just going to read a little excerpt that shows that.  

[reads excerpt]

To me, that reads like a painting, which is appropriate because the book is so much about art and tangled up in that. 

KIM: Yeah, it almost seems like everything could be more vivid to the narrator because these other things are being taken away. I don’t know. Anyway. The book came out in 1977. Do you want to maybe talk about maybe how it fits in, or doesn’t, I guess, with other dystopian books from this time and maybe hone in some more on what political statement Dick may have been making with They?

LUCY: Well, I think as I just said, it sort of sits alongside other “experimental” novels from the period—like Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out (1964), which is a post-apocalyptic race reversal story, Anna Kavan’s work, and also Ann Quin’s novels too, if anyone’s familiar with her writing.. But then, too, there are also similarities with earlier works, like Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 with the book-burning firemen. I think it takes something from that. I think more generally though, the 70s was quite a time of great unrest, especially here in England, where we were dealing with things like the miners’ strikes, electricity blackouts, IRA bombings, and a lot of racial prejudice and hatred. They doesn’t reference or engage with any of these things specifically, but I think the miasma of fear and violence that hangs over the book surely draws on things that were going on in the real world at the time. I would imagine that in a sense, Dick was responding to the real world in her fictional version. 

KIM: Yeah, and it also feels very timeless, too. I think we’ve been going through similar upheaval, so I think reading it, you wouldn’t necessarily know that it was written in the 70s.

AMY: No. And in fact, I was thinking it was set in the 1930s until I saw the word television set. But yeah, it’s very nonspecific, as you say.

LUCY: Well, I think, also, you have to remember that she was not young when she wrote this, right? She’s not like a young writer starting out in the 70s. She’s already in her sixties. So i think some of the more traditional elements about it, whether it’s the more pastoral scenes or some of the more dystopian elements are definitely harkening back to that sort of 30s and 40s version of dystopia and I think that makes sense because if you think about the time when she was young and when she was being formed as a writer, let’s put it that way.

AMY: Right, I’m thinking of fascism and all the things that the world was facing. That’s where I was approaching it.

LUCY: Yeah, and I think that bit I read earlier with the hordes of men coming down the hill, they almost seem like a fascist rally, right? That’s what it makes me think of.

KIM: Absolutely. So it is a very dark book. (And it actually made me think of the 2015 film The Lobster--I don’t know if I saw that with you, Amy.)

AMY: No, I’ve never seen that.

KIM: Okay. Singledom is also deemed unacceptable in that film: single people are given 45 days to find romantic partners or otherwise they’re turned into animals). It’s very surreal, but also very chilling. 

AMY: As if single people don’t have enough pressure on them.

KIM: I know, seriously. Yeah.  They is cataclysmic, basically. But do you feel that there’s hope to be found in it Lucy?

LUCY: I think I do, though perhaps only a fleeting sense. But then I do think there are moments of serenity and beauty in this book, friendship and love. And I also think there’s a strange sort of hope to be found in its style even—because it’s written in these vignettes, so even if one chapter ends in utter darkness—and some of them really do! They’re kind of horrific—you then turn the page and you start a sort of new story in this world. And I guess, I don’t know, it seems to be saying that as long as there are people willing to resist, there’s hope, and that even the tiniest action can be an act of resistance. And I also think it’s probably important to think about how that final story in the book ends, you know: “Hallo Love.”  The last lines of which are: “My tension relaxed. There were possibilities. ‘Hallo love,’ I said, greeting another day.” And I feel that if you’ve got these vignettes that you can technically move around, there must be something about ending on that hopeful note.

KIM: Oh, yeah, and actually, you need that I think.

LUCY: Yeah. That’s true

KIM: You want to believe there’s something that you can do and that the characters can do to retrieve what was lost. 

AMY: Yeah, and you get a sense throughout that the narrator just approaches everything like “just keep going. Just keep going.” In that New Yorker article we mentioned earlier, Knight quotes literary editor Becky Brown as saying, “It’s incredibly unusual to find a book this good that has been this profoundly forgotten. That almost never happens.” And Dick herself really loved this book too. So why do you think it did kind of fall off the face of the earth (well, until recently, thank goodness). Would you agree that this novel seems kind of appropriate for today? (I hesitate to use the word “relevant” because I remember from the last episode you don’t necessarily think a book needs to be relevant to be enjoyed…

LUCY: [laughing] Well done.

AMY: But I think this one in particular does seem like it really is relevant. 

LUCY: Well, firstly I completely agree with Becky. I think this particular cocktail rarely happens when you find such a wonderful book so forgotten, so relevant for the day it comes out in again. So all of us involved with the various re-prints have been incredibly lucky, and we kind of know this. And I guess every time I listen to any episode of this show and it’s an author I’ve never heard of, I end up asking myself the same question: Why has this person been forgotten? Why do I not know about them? And of course, the sad thing is that it’s often quite arbitrary, right? There are so many reasons why a book falls out of print. I guess in the case of They, the reviews weren’t amazing—a few critics did get it, others hated it, and some were just rather bemused by it. The Sunday Times called it “a fantasy sprouting from some collective menopausal spasm in the national unconscious.”

AMY: Oh, stop.

KIM: Yeah. Harsh.

AMY: Blame the uterus.

LUCY: Right. I mean, I also don’t really know what that means, but it doesn’t sound particularly great, let’s put it that way. I mean, the book did win the now defunct prize called the South East Arts Literature Prize, but it didn’t sell especially well, so it quickly fell out of print and thus was forgotten. Obviously there were people who recognized it throughout the years, but by and large it’s been off the radar. I think maybe the world wasn’t quite ready for it. Certainly didn’t quite know what to make of it—and although I’ve just listed all those other novels from the 60s and 70s that it shares similarities with, it is a little bit dated in other ways, a little bit old-fashioned, perhaps even quaint, we might describe it as. It does hark back to a sort of earlier era of English fiction. All the cream teas, and seed cakes, the pruning of the roses that you’ve mentioned, the beautiful countryside. And I think in terms of striking a chord today, sadly I guess it’s because the vision presented in the book feels closer to home than ever before right? We’re all quite conscious of certain freedoms being eroded. Mob rule has taken on this kind of horrifying new relevance, whether it’s actually out on the streets or online. And we’re on the brink of a climate catastrophe yet people are looking away and not kind of engaging with it. So I think it feels quite often that “They”—whoever “they” are—are already amongst us.

AMY: I just want to go back for a second to the menopausal spasm because I feel like if there were an entire genre, I would read it.

LUCY: Yep.

AMY: The “menopausal spasm” section of the book store. I’d probably head over there. 

KIM: I think that’s a great podcast name: Menopausal Spasm. Sign me up! I’m going to download that one!

AMY: But you’re right, when you talk about the quaintness of the book, that’s what appealed to me in terms of somebody that doesn’t typically like dystopian, this book does not have that “Bladerunner” feel, which I don’t get into, so I think that’s maybe why I liked the book. 

KIM: Yeah. That makes sense. Lucy, as we said, you are senior editor of McNally Editions, which is so cool, and we’re so excited to read some of the other books in the series. You must love all of them, of course, but are there one or two you’d like to particularly share?

LUCY: Thank you very much for this! Yeah, I would obviously recommend them all, as you said,  but there are a couple already that are out alongside with They that I think your listeners would be particularly interested in. The first is Winter Love by Han Suyin, which is a beautifully kind of brittle story about a doomed love affair between two women in London during the Second World War, and then there’s Margaret Kennedy’s Troy Chimneys, which is a Regency-set tale about a man torn between two different sides to his personality, and this reads like a lost Jane Austen novel; so it’s completely delicious. And last up, if I may, there’s soon to be published is Penelope Mortimer’s utterly brilliant Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, which is the most incredible story of a housewife’s breakdown in late 1950s England, and her desperate bid to arrange an abortion for her student daughter, so as to prevent history repeating itself. I’ve been  a huge fan of Mortimer’s writing for a long time now —I think she’s a genius—and it’s a real thrill in particular to be re-issuing this one in the States. 

KIM: I feel like I’m being pulled in three different directions here. Like I can’t even decide which one to read first!

AMY: I know! I’m salivating!

KIM: Yeah, totally. All of them, but then the Jane Austen and then the Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting… you actually sent us Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, so we can read that.

LUCY: Please read it! I mean, I’m sure everyone on this show says this, but like I say, Mortimer is such a favorite of mine and she’s sort of under-recognized, let’s say. It is of its era, absolutely, but it just feels so relevant as well, particularly with issues of aborition going on in the States right now and stuff like that. So yeah.

KIM: Yeah. Great. Lucy, thank you so much! This was a wonderful conversation. Love this book and love you.

AMY: Yeah, it was so great having you back!

LUCY: Oh, honestly, I’m just so grateful you let me come back and talk about, you know, this wonderful book, which I hope people read, but also McNally Editions. It’s a real pleasure to be here again. I love listening to this show, so please keep making wonderful episodes, ladies.

KIM: Oh, thank you. We will. 

LUCY: And, um, hopefully see you again at some point!

AMY: Yeah! Absolutely.

KIM: Definitely. Bye, Lucy! That was super interesting, and I can’t believe the incredible people we’ve been able to talk with over the last couple of years, Amy. I’m pinching myself every day. It’s basically a dream come true!

AMY: And the good news is we have so many amazing guests coming up, right, in the weeks and months ahead. (And amazing lost ladies to talk about, too.) So we’ll sign off now, but don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter, where we’ll let you know which books you can get a jump on for upcoming episodes. 

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