Speaker 1: We are talking now, we've been talking. Look who's talking to?
Speaker 1: Look who's talking? Also? It was just a great a
Speaker 1: great sequel. Title is one of the finest switches of
Speaker 1: the word to for a hominem, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: because like they do that all the time. But who's
Speaker 1: talking to? Look who's talking? Also? Because also Roseanne is
Speaker 1: here now, Yeah, it ain't just Bruce Willis anymore. Honestly,
Speaker 1: Look Who's Talking to is a good movie. It's funny,
Speaker 1: it's a great movie. Uh, fresh content. Yeah, fresh shot
Speaker 1: takes on movies from but hey, speaking of anonymous people
Speaker 1: like Roseanne, we're on collect he could bring it on
Speaker 1: the connection there, you saw the thread and you pulled it, pulled,
Speaker 1: that threat, unraveled, that whole sweater totally unraveled. A. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to see what year Lucus Talking Too came out?
Speaker 1: B Yeah, I thought Luca's talking was like okay, okay, Um,
Speaker 1: nine and nineties they were back to back Lucas talking
Speaker 1: now and we're still on it was. This movie was
Speaker 1: ninety three, um, which is a great year from movies,
Speaker 1: I must say so. Mononyms. Yeah, anyway, Rodan to Collette,
Speaker 1: that's what we're doing. Rosanne to Collette, I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. That's going to get us into this episode.
Speaker 1: Very excited to come back with part two of the
Speaker 1: Collette Saga, which is shaping up to really be something special.
Speaker 1: When we last left Collette, she had taken the Paris
Speaker 1: literary world by storm with her Claudine series That's Right,
Speaker 1: which was sort of sort of based on her own
Speaker 1: life sort of experiences. Remember, she would write local, local,
Speaker 1: other people into the story. They had that that girlfriend
Speaker 1: together that got written in. Who got really upset about it? Georgie, George, Georgie.
Speaker 1: That's why you don't date authors, they will mind their lives.
Speaker 1: For a plot point, she had separated from her first husband,
Speaker 1: En Rigoutier Villars, better known as Willie, another mononym the
Speaker 1: World's Worst Willie, the world's worst Willie. He's like not
Speaker 1: every lady will agree. Well. Um and Colette had also
Speaker 1: decided to tread the boards with George Waggs Pantomime Company.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what a shift from from being a famous
Speaker 1: author straight to pantomime. Right, but still sexy pantomime. Sexy pantomimes, pantomime?
Speaker 1: Is there any other pantomime? Because you pull on that
Speaker 1: invisible rope and I am interested. Oh, no, ZERI an
Speaker 1: invisible wall between us. However would we break through. I'm
Speaker 1: very I'm very turned on this. I'm seeing you doing
Speaker 1: like invisible wall turned boobs Hong Kong. Oh, we need
Speaker 1: to get this show on video because she just did it.
Speaker 1: Seeing my hand motions. Where that beret come from? That's
Speaker 1: the real question. I'm always ready for my situations. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: during this period of her life, Collette was really put
Speaker 1: in the Gay and Gay Perry. So let's learn about
Speaker 1: her life on the stage and her love affairs with
Speaker 1: the self proclaimed Queen of the Lesbians, Napoleon, the third
Speaker 1: gender bending niece, the heir to a department store, and
Speaker 1: what a collection. Let's go the French condition. Well, Eli
Speaker 1: and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking,
Speaker 1: a romantic tips. It's just about pardiculous relationships. I love
Speaker 1: my be any type of person at all, and that's
Speaker 1: draped cons that a concrete ball. But if there's a
Speaker 1: story with a second glance, ridiculous, roll a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. First off, I just want to ask,
Speaker 1: did you ever see the movie Gay Puri. It's like
Speaker 1: the Arista Cats. It's about it's a it's a cartoon.
Speaker 1: I want to say. It was probably the sixties or seventies,
Speaker 1: not Disney, but you know some parallel company that was
Speaker 1: making animated movies back then, and it's very similar. I
Speaker 1: mean I don't know about plot for plot, but similar
Speaker 1: style movie about some cats and they all lived in Paris.
Speaker 1: And it was called gay PERI p u r r e.
Speaker 1: Maybe gape purree. Where's the cooking show gay Puree? I
Speaker 1: would watch it. Hello, I am heterosexually. Can I still
Speaker 1: make this pure? You may not know. It's a gap.
Speaker 1: So Collette made her stage debut just a few months
Speaker 1: before she left Willie for good, at a house party
Speaker 1: thrown by Natalie Clifford Barney. Collette had a brief affair
Speaker 1: with Natalie, but this was far from unusual because Natalie
Speaker 1: is the self proclaimed queen of the lesbians in Paris.
Speaker 1: So she's having affairs all kinds of wives. Oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: very much so. And they're all from our previous episode.
Speaker 1: They're all like, oh my god, this is what he's
Speaker 1: supposed to feel like or amazing in uh. Natalie was
Speaker 1: an American writer. She knew she was a lesbian by
Speaker 1: the time she was twelve, and she decided to be
Speaker 1: as out and proud as possible. In fact, she welcomed
Speaker 1: the scandal that came along withouting herself because it meant
Speaker 1: that boys would stop bothering her. She's like, they never
Speaker 1: believe me when I tell him I'm a lesbian until
Speaker 1: it's in the newspapers. She was also a non monogamous.
Speaker 1: She did not believe in fidelity, even when her partners
Speaker 1: did so. She had so many affairs and lovers, famous
Speaker 1: and not famous. She definitely needs her own episode at
Speaker 1: something because it's just too many wonderful, wonderful relationships going on.
Speaker 1: With Natalie Barney, I'm interested, but we want to tell
Speaker 1: you about just one of them today. Yes, because in eight,
Speaker 1: which I can never say in eight, all my Newsies
Speaker 1: fans out there you know what I'm talking about, because
Speaker 1: the opening line of Newsies, at least the movie I
Speaker 1: haven't seen the stage show is Max Casell. In eighteen
Speaker 1: nine nine, the streets in New York City echoed with
Speaker 1: the voices and without here and that, well, you should
Speaker 1: do that line in that way. In eighteen nine nine,
Speaker 1: one of the most famous look in one of the
Speaker 1: most famous beautiful and sought after courtesan's in Paris was
Speaker 1: named Lean Depugi, who got offers from wealthy and titled
Speaker 1: men all the time. In fact, this woman was so
Speaker 1: famous that the eight nineties female impersonator Herbert Charles Polite
Speaker 1: named his drag character Deane de Lugie after Lean Depuge.
Speaker 1: Dean Druggie is pretty good able name. Yeah, alright. So
Speaker 1: one night Natalie Are, American lesbian party host, saw Leande
Speaker 1: de Puggie dance, and she was so struck by her
Speaker 1: beauty that she dressed up like a page and presented
Speaker 1: herself at Depuggee's dressing room doors, saying, I am a
Speaker 1: messenger of love straight from Sappho herself Sappho famously lesbian poet,
Speaker 1: and Puggie was so charmed by the audacity of this approach,
Speaker 1: she's like, damn, that's good. You know, like when somebody
Speaker 1: comes in which just like such an elaborate pickup line,
Speaker 1: there's a costume involved, and you're like, I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: be interested, but I just am, like, I gotta give
Speaker 1: you credit for this exactly. And so they started an affair,
Speaker 1: and Natalie inspired characters for a number of novels, including
Speaker 1: Leander Puggi's novel Ideal and also Natalie inspired British writer
Speaker 1: Radcliff Hall, who based one of the characters in her
Speaker 1: book The Well of Loneliness on Natalie. Whould just considered
Speaker 1: to be the most famous lesbian novel of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And I will say that separate from this story, Like
Speaker 1: three weeks ago, I added radcliff Hall to our list
Speaker 1: because she's got so many stories to tell. All these
Speaker 1: lesbians were piled up on top of each other around
Speaker 1: the literally and figuratively exactly exactly because they all crossed paths.
Speaker 1: It's just because I was so interesting to be in
Speaker 1: this period of time, because it just it spans so
Speaker 1: long that like, yeah, all this turn of the century
Speaker 1: cool stuff going on, they all met each other at
Speaker 1: some point. Do you think, like non famous lesbians or
Speaker 1: non artist lesbians, we're seeing them and being like, I
Speaker 1: wish I could be part of the cool group. You know,
Speaker 1: like you see movie stars all hang out now, and
Speaker 1: you're like, whatever, they're so cool and they get to
Speaker 1: hang out and do rich people stuff together. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I could. I could be friends with them if they
Speaker 1: just noticed me. Yeah, you don't even know what you're missing.
Speaker 1: Them hanging out with me, the common lesbians of France
Speaker 1: at the time, we're the common lesbians. Little jealousy. But
Speaker 1: anyway back to Collette. By five, Natalie and Colette are
Speaker 1: having their physical relationship and it helped usher Collette onto
Speaker 1: the stage, and that's when she decided to train with
Speaker 1: the famous pantomime George Wag and realized that Willie wanted
Speaker 1: out of their marriage just as much as she did,
Speaker 1: which is nice when it's mutual. But it wasn't that easy.
Speaker 1: As Collette wrote in her nineteen seventy nine memoir My Apprenticeships,
Speaker 1: she wrote, quote to desert the domestic hearth was to
Speaker 1: us provincial girls of nineteen hundred or so, a formidable
Speaker 1: and unwieldy notion, encumbered with policemen and barrel topped trunks
Speaker 1: and thick veils. Not to mention railway timetables, which is
Speaker 1: so true. It's really important too. It's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to grasp how little information a lot of women had
Speaker 1: about how the world worked because men were so much
Speaker 1: in charge of like arranging shit, Like they literally didn't
Speaker 1: know when the train came or where it went to
Speaker 1: or how much the ticket was, like, you really had
Speaker 1: to get a lot of help to leave your husband.
Speaker 1: It's not easy. Um. For example, when Leanne Depugie escaped
Speaker 1: from her abusive husband in the eighteen nineties, she had
Speaker 1: to sell her piano behind his back and flee in
Speaker 1: secret to Paris. And once she got there, you know,
Speaker 1: she had to support herself and what industry cannot nobly
Speaker 1: born woman support herself in but acting in prostitution. So
Speaker 1: she started training in those industries, I guess, and she
Speaker 1: quickly became dependent on cocaine and opium throughout her life.
Speaker 1: So when you decided to leave your husband, and not
Speaker 1: only meant you were leaving you know, the safety of
Speaker 1: your home, any children you may have had with that man,
Speaker 1: any money or property you owned was all his, So
Speaker 1: you were leaving all that behind. But you also knew
Speaker 1: that you had to support yourself by hook or by crook,
Speaker 1: and so it was a lot to do it. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: Collette had help with her escape in the form of
Speaker 1: Matilde de Morny. She was the Marquise de bell Buff
Speaker 1: and Colette met her through Natalie Barney, Queen of Lesbians,
Speaker 1: Queen Lesbians. All she's like let me five. Mattild who
Speaker 1: was better known as Missy, was born in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: three and she was the daughter of Napoleon the Third's
Speaker 1: half brother Charles and his wife Sophie. Now Charles was
Speaker 1: the illegitimate son of the Queen of Holland, and Sophie
Speaker 1: was the illegitimate daughter of Czar Nicholas the First of Russia. Hey, yea,
Speaker 1: So it was a lot of like illegitimate children, but
Speaker 1: they were still high born, so it wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 1: for nothing, um, but probably couldn't inherit power, No not,
Speaker 1: but it's given me like a neest Castro Peter Portugal vibes.
Speaker 1: All these highly born, very well connected, you know, but
Speaker 1: illegitimate people run around right like we gotta get married
Speaker 1: to somebody good. Also, Napoleon the Third, his whole family
Speaker 1: always causing trouble, was such a fast I want to
Speaker 1: learn more about him specifically, because of course we just
Speaker 1: got a pretty deep taste of his involvement in the
Speaker 1: Maximilian and carlottis ory. But he's been popping up all
Speaker 1: over the place. I mean, I guess when you're an emperor,
Speaker 1: you know, do involve yourself your fingers in a few pies. True,
Speaker 1: the pies of a nation, global pies. But don't worry
Speaker 1: about all those extra names. We're here talking about Missy.
Speaker 1: After her father, Charles de Morny, died when Missy was
Speaker 1: only two, her mother remarried a Spanish nobleman, so Missy's
Speaker 1: childhood was mostly spent in Spain. Missy didn't have a
Speaker 1: great relationship with her mother. Her mother called her tape
Speaker 1: beer because she had a long nose, like that's like
Speaker 1: that ant eater kind of animal. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's rude, very rude. Um. But Missy and her stepfather,
Speaker 1: the Spanish nobleman, got along great and they would go
Speaker 1: hunting together in the Castile countryside. Missy also loved bullfighting,
Speaker 1: and she had kind of a childhood crush on one
Speaker 1: of these bullfighters named Dolores Sanchez, who was called La Fragosa,
Speaker 1: which means the rough. It's a great name for female bullfighter. Uh.
Speaker 1: La Fargosa was also the first female bullfighter to wear
Speaker 1: the male costume. Yeah, there were apparently a few. It
Speaker 1: wasn't It was rare to have a female bullfighters, but
Speaker 1: there were a few. They just wore lady, lady clothes,
Speaker 1: and she was like, funk that there's a whole outfit.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing outfit, which I admire. You need to write
Speaker 1: clothes for the right job. Well, La Farragosa told Missy
Speaker 1: once that a woman could do anything a man could do.
Speaker 1: So I'm out here fighting bulls in pants, in pants,
Speaker 1: and look, the sun still rises in the morning. I'm
Speaker 1: out here fighting bulls and pants, and the thing people
Speaker 1: are shocked by is the pants. So it ain't that heart.
Speaker 1: This is just a period of time where women wearing
Speaker 1: pants was like, I mean, people were goings. You could
Speaker 1: send someone to an asylum by walking up walking by
Speaker 1: bio wearing some trousers. Sheeps like insane. Well this he
Speaker 1: took this lesson to heart. Spain is also where Missy
Speaker 1: had her first lesbian affair with a servant girl. But
Speaker 1: that sneaky little servant girl blackmailed Missy afterwards to keep
Speaker 1: her quiet. Okay, now this is a pretty common story.
Speaker 1: Well do you have the servants aint got nothing to lose,
Speaker 1: that's true, and everything to gain. That's true. In fact,
Speaker 1: around eight just a few years after this, in eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, is when Magnus Hirshfield, our favorite and scientist,
Speaker 1: was run around Germany and saying, hey, we should legalize
Speaker 1: homosexuality because it's really just letting people get blackmailed all
Speaker 1: day long. That's the only thing you're doing. Um, And
Speaker 1: that's that's how common that show was. It was literally
Speaker 1: his entire in argument. Wow. So when she was eighteen
Speaker 1: years old in eighteen eighty one, Missy married Jack Goodar,
Speaker 1: the Marquis de bille Buff and moved to Normandy. This
Speaker 1: sounds like kind of a conventional marriage, right, It's just
Speaker 1: like Marquis or Mayory. You're young, you're married a guy.
Speaker 1: Power marriage, great job everyone. But it was anything but
Speaker 1: conventional because Jacques Godard was well known as a homosexual man.
Speaker 1: Everybody knew it um, and Missy herself was becoming more
Speaker 1: and more open about her preference for women. So they
Speaker 1: were kind of each other's beards, I guess the lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, if you're unfamiliar with the term
Speaker 1: a beard, of course, like if you're trying to hide
Speaker 1: the fact that you're gay, you have sort of like
Speaker 1: a fake heterosexual partner who they would call your beard,
Speaker 1: your disguise. Yeah, it's making me think of local playwright
Speaker 1: tofor Payne wrote a play called Perfect Arrangements that in
Speaker 1: the fifties, and I think it's similar. It's like two
Speaker 1: gay men and two gay women and they marry each
Speaker 1: other so that they can be together, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So it's like a perfect arrangement. So this
Speaker 1: was like their perfect arrangement. And some sources say that
Speaker 1: Missy and Jacques disliked each other. Other sources say that
Speaker 1: they really appreciated each other because their marriage afforded them
Speaker 1: a lot of freedom to kind of like do their
Speaker 1: own things, um, and that they stayed on good terms
Speaker 1: even after they divorced in nineteen o three. So maybe
Speaker 1: they disliked each other's like personal company, but they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot for being my my shelter, you know,
Speaker 1: in this horrible place where I can't be myself. Who knows.
Speaker 1: But whether Missy liked Jacque or not, she's rich, she's unfettered,
Speaker 1: She's able to pursue any romantic relationship she wanted, and
Speaker 1: one of those relationships was with the famous courtesan Liane Dapucci.
Speaker 1: The story goes that Leane was already seeing a rich
Speaker 1: nobleman at the time. So Missy, dressed as a man,
Speaker 1: challenged the guy to a duel for the ain's affections
Speaker 1: Missy one, and then, to add insult to injury, ripped
Speaker 1: her shirt open to expose her breast so that he
Speaker 1: would know he lost to a woman. Which I kind
Speaker 1: of take two ways, Like I'm like, one way, I'm like, ha,
Speaker 1: fuck you. But on the other way, I'm like, but
Speaker 1: you're better, right, why are you do being a woman
Speaker 1: even relevant? If you're better, you're better. Well, just showing him,
Speaker 1: like maybe you should think it about what women can do. Buddy,
Speaker 1: you don't know. You don't know me. I'm missy bitch.
Speaker 1: So Missy dressed mostly like a woman in public traditionally,
Speaker 1: though she would do it as sort of manish as
Speaker 1: she could get away with. When she was with more
Speaker 1: like minded people, she preferred to wear men's clothes, so
Speaker 1: she had a garment made with this detachable skirt that
Speaker 1: she could wear pants underneath. Yeah, it's like a velcro
Speaker 1: rip off in pants today. I'm clear, where are my
Speaker 1: smelling salts? I know? Right? This is apparently a time
Speaker 1: to when women like to be daring, very daring fashion
Speaker 1: for women to wear a really short tie, like a
Speaker 1: man's short time that was like the Mannish dress. I
Speaker 1: guess I don't think it's just so funny again, like
Speaker 1: these things that were so like people and it's like
Speaker 1: a fucking tie, okay. And then after Missy's mother died
Speaker 1: in eight nine, Missy shed all the pretense. She cut
Speaker 1: her hair short. She began dressing exclusively in men's three
Speaker 1: piece suits that she ordered from Severe Row, even though
Speaker 1: at the time it was technically illegal for women to
Speaker 1: cross dress. They had to go get special permission from
Speaker 1: the police just to wear pants. That's right, but Missy
Speaker 1: was a marquees so she got away with it. Missy
Speaker 1: was always checking her privilege about that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: She would frequently say, thanks to my position in society,
Speaker 1: I'm able to do things like walking around in suits.
Speaker 1: A chambermaid could not do that. So she knew. She
Speaker 1: knew that her she she had privileges. She understood. Good
Speaker 1: for you, Missy. Now sources diverge here. Some say Missy
Speaker 1: either strapped down her breasts or had them removed altogether,
Speaker 1: and that she may have undergone a hysterect to me
Speaker 1: as well, which was at the time the closest thing
Speaker 1: you could get to a gender confirmation surgery. It's also
Speaker 1: said that she was one of the first people to
Speaker 1: install fitness equipment in her home in Paris, and she
Speaker 1: would invite people over to watch her workout naked. And
Speaker 1: I just got to say, that is a nightmare. I
Speaker 1: would wake up from a cold sweat in the idea
Speaker 1: of people watching me a exercise and be exercise naked. Horrible.
Speaker 1: Absolutely not first fitness influencer, Like, I don't like going
Speaker 1: to the gym fully clothed, you know the other people
Speaker 1: around it takes. Yeah, are good enough that she's like coming,
Speaker 1: come see me work out naked? Yeah? No, I'm good
Speaker 1: for her for her confidence. I mean, whether no matter
Speaker 1: how she liked, she felt good about it, right, do it? Missy.
Speaker 1: Missy also started going by Max or Uncle acts and
Speaker 1: called herself a marquis instead of a marquise, which is
Speaker 1: of course the differentiation between the masculine and feminine form
Speaker 1: of the word in French um. Although when she started
Speaker 1: sculpting and writing, her artist name was Y sim or
Speaker 1: Missy backwards. So all this gender bending and max this
Speaker 1: and marquis that it has some scholars feeling that Missy
Speaker 1: would be a transman today and that we should refer
Speaker 1: to her with he him pronounce. However, an article by
Speaker 1: Julia Diana Robertson on the Velvet Chronicle dot com argues
Speaker 1: against rewriting gender bending people like Missy as transgender because
Speaker 1: it basically erases butch lesbians from history. Interesting. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she heard the art. The author herself is a butch lesbian.
Speaker 1: So she's like, you're basically telling me that I did
Speaker 1: not exist in the past, and I would be a
Speaker 1: man rewritten as a man, like people will look back
Speaker 1: at my life and say, well, she must have been
Speaker 1: she must have considered herself to be a man, you know.
Speaker 1: And she's like, no, that's not what I'm saying here. True.
Speaker 1: I'm very proud of my femininity. It's I present it
Speaker 1: in a different way. So she points out many lesbians
Speaker 1: and history wore men's clothes or had male nicknames. But
Speaker 1: it was really more about defying gender norms, redefining what
Speaker 1: women could be and what they could do and what
Speaker 1: they could look like and all that stuff than it
Speaker 1: was about feeling like you're in the wrong body, which, again,
Speaker 1: when it comes to being transgender, it's literally like I
Speaker 1: feel wrong, not just I like to wear pants, So
Speaker 1: it's it is a really important distinction. Um Julia also
Speaker 1: mentions the rumor about Missy having her breasts and ovaries
Speaker 1: surgically removed is based on a single rumor. It was
Speaker 1: never substantiated anywhere else. Dr kaji Amin, who is one
Speaker 1: of the most well respected scholars on the Morning, is
Speaker 1: quoted in Julia's article is saying that the rumor is
Speaker 1: quote based on a single, unverified and never duplicated claim
Speaker 1: by philosopher and activists Simone Veal, who moreover, was not
Speaker 1: one of de Morny's intimates. It's not likely that someone
Speaker 1: has a notorious and subject to gossip could have had
Speaker 1: her ovaries and breast tissue surgically removed, as Veal claims
Speaker 1: without anyone else having taken notes. So an interesting point.
Speaker 1: And I that's true that I saw that claim a
Speaker 1: couple of times that she had surgery, and none of
Speaker 1: them had a source for m So that's very important.
Speaker 1: I just want to throw that out there. No, it
Speaker 1: is important, and it's important in the conversation when we
Speaker 1: do talk about historical figures that you know we're bending
Speaker 1: gender uh, and experimenting with gender or redefining their own gender.
Speaker 1: Before this sort of modern conversation that we're having about
Speaker 1: gender was ever even really happening in the in the
Speaker 1: larger culture. Because even now, again keep going back to this,
Speaker 1: we are living inside that conversation right now that we're
Speaker 1: still figuring it out, um, and and definitions are going
Speaker 1: to change, and just listen and just go with it.
Speaker 1: You know, who's who's out here pushing back. But it
Speaker 1: does mean that historically when we talk about these people
Speaker 1: until we get a time machine, all of these I
Speaker 1: mean from Ella Gabalus uh to um to Paully Murray, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, to even now talking about Missy, it's all
Speaker 1: where is it. It's in speculation station. It's the best
Speaker 1: we can do. But you know, just listen to people,
Speaker 1: take for what it's worth and do what you can exactly.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen o six, Missy was well known for
Speaker 1: her dashing suits, and after Natalie introduced her to Collette, oh,
Speaker 1: she was just wild for her. Well, this lady you
Speaker 1: probably read some of those books and was like, yes,
Speaker 1: please hot, can I be Claudine please in this story?
Speaker 1: Can you imagine maybe she read Claudine and was like,
Speaker 1: maybe one day a lady like that, and then she
Speaker 1: actually meets college. Don't let me have sex with you now.
Speaker 1: In November of that year, nineteen o six, Missy helped
Speaker 1: Collette move out of Willie's house into a flat her own,
Speaker 1: and she was helping financially support her. Like we said,
Speaker 1: this would have been really difficult for Collette to do
Speaker 1: on her own, but she had some help from some
Speaker 1: wealthy friends. But she also followed Collette to the stage
Speaker 1: and between the two of them, they caused a riot
Speaker 1: with a single kiss. And we're gonna hear more about that.
Speaker 1: Right after this we all venue back to the show.
Speaker 1: I should learn that entire phrase lingo. I see yes,
Speaker 1: duo lingo. Literally it's two languages, two words in one English.
Speaker 1: So Colette was doing stage shows with George Wogg from
Speaker 1: nineteen o six to nineteen eleven throughout France and Belgium,
Speaker 1: and they gained a lot of notoriety for their scandalous nature.
Speaker 1: You know, mimes of the day, a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of hands stuff. Um. They part cantally scandalized people
Speaker 1: with a show called La Chair La Share, in which
Speaker 1: Collette ready for this cover your children's ears? Why did
Speaker 1: she do? She bared abreast a nipple no On whistling
Speaker 1: Shade dot com. In the article titled the Endearing Collette,
Speaker 1: the writer Joel van Valen says that this caused scandal praise, cartoon,
Speaker 1: caricatures and even humorous poems in the press. And that's
Speaker 1: going to take us down to poetry corner, where we'll
Speaker 1: hear this short little gem from a Marseille newspaper I
Speaker 1: saw la share. Now it might not be fine art,
Speaker 1: but I admit Collette certainly has nice tits. And anyone
Speaker 1: who likes snuckers would agree, Oh my goodness. Well wait, man,
Speaker 1: is that you I love the A B B A uncommon? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this person was really pushing boundaries. So Collette had already
Speaker 1: done a number of these performances, so she's getting real
Speaker 1: famous for like licentious behave Like Colette's name is, you know,
Speaker 1: and means something shady and sexy and everything. So all
Speaker 1: this came to a head when she and Missy performed
Speaker 1: a pantomime together in nineteen o seven called Red or
Speaker 1: Egyptian Dream. We found a great write up about the
Speaker 1: pantomime and the riot that ensued on a website called
Speaker 1: Best France Forever dot com. Brilliant this Best France, Best
Speaker 1: France Forever, that's my new favorite. You are ill home
Speaker 1: page bookmarked now. Even though Collette is the writer and
Speaker 1: entertainer in this relationship, it was Missy who wrote this
Speaker 1: piece under her pseudonym Ya sim And it's about fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes long. And what happens in the pantomime is a
Speaker 1: male Egyptologist played by Missy, was flicking through a book
Speaker 1: and kind of like falls asleep, and then he's overcome
Speaker 1: with phantasmagorical visions, statues and paintings in the room coming
Speaker 1: to life. It's like night at the museum or something.
Speaker 1: And from the corner, a sarcophagus opens to reveal a
Speaker 1: mummy played by Colette, who dances seductively towards the scholar
Speaker 1: and putting kind of putting him under her spell. He
Speaker 1: begins to remove her bandages to reveal the woman underneath,
Speaker 1: and she comes closer to receive his kiss that will
Speaker 1: bring her back to life. But at the moment of embrace,
Speaker 1: the Egyptologists kind of wakes up and realizes it was
Speaker 1: all a dream. I swear to you, I've had this
Speaker 1: dream sexy mummy comes out of a sarcophagus and slowly
Speaker 1: takes all her bandages off, comes in for a kiss,
Speaker 1: and then I wake up. Every time, damn it. It's
Speaker 1: like the alarm going off, or like Hobbes is licking
Speaker 1: my face. Classic classic, Like the mummy just turned my
Speaker 1: head and started licking my cheeks. This mummy is like
Speaker 1: just licking my ear over and over again. It was
Speaker 1: kind of hot, but now it's a bit like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's the dog. Although I bet Hobbs's breath kind of
Speaker 1: is comparable to a thousands zero mummies breath. Definitely. Oh god.
Speaker 1: So miss and Collette were all set to perform this
Speaker 1: pantomime at the Moulin Rouge on January three of nineteen
Speaker 1: o seven, which is a time when I really want
Speaker 1: to go to a Mulan Rouge show. Absolutely, that's on
Speaker 1: the time Travel Yes, time Travel wish List, time Travel
Speaker 1: Itinerary with Mulan Ruge. Absolutely. Now the house was packed
Speaker 1: for this show. Everybody's ready to see it. Been a
Speaker 1: lot of buzz. One of the people excited for this
Speaker 1: Sexy Mummy dance. Missy had tried to keep her involvement
Speaker 1: on the d L because of course, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna know it's Missy. You're gonna be looking for something, right, um.
Speaker 1: But the Mulan Rouge thought that it would be good
Speaker 1: advertising to use her and her ex husband's family crests
Speaker 1: on their marketing materials. This really piste her off, so
Speaker 1: much so that she later sued the Mulan Rouge and
Speaker 1: one that's right, she was like, I never said you
Speaker 1: could do that. I was trying not to let my
Speaker 1: family know that I was a part of this whole thing. Yeah. Oh,
Speaker 1: not only did they know, but it looks like they
Speaker 1: co signed it. But Paris was also rife with curiosity
Speaker 1: about the exact nature of the relationship between these two women.
Speaker 1: They knew that Colette was a famous author and a
Speaker 1: scandalous performer, and they knew Missy was a cross dressing
Speaker 1: aristocrat connected to some of the highest society. So tongues
Speaker 1: began to wag about what they were doing together, and
Speaker 1: when about about what their tongues were doing? Where is
Speaker 1: their tongue wagon. One reporter even broke into Colette's house
Speaker 1: and started asking probing questions about the show and Missy,
Speaker 1: and I gotta ask, did you think that was gonna
Speaker 1: work likes. Is Collette just going to be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you broke into my house, so I guess I have
Speaker 1: to answer your questions. Now, I'll draw a little diagram
Speaker 1: for you about how we do it. Hell out of here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was like, Missy's fine and cool, get the funk out,
Speaker 1: and he's like Collette describes Missy and two words you
Speaker 1: won't believe the second one, Yes, find this one weird
Speaker 1: word that Collette called Missy. Doctors hate it. Did your
Speaker 1: ad blocker to find out. So with all this hype
Speaker 1: and hullabaloo and everything, it's really not surprising that a
Speaker 1: huge crowd turned out for this pantomime. Now, some were
Speaker 1: there to support, including Collette's estranged husband Willie Willy's like,
Speaker 1: I'm a supporter of the arts and lesbians. I was
Speaker 1: married to one, matter of fact. But just as many,
Speaker 1: if not more, we're there too just to show their disapproval. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got like Westboro Baptist styles, like they're like we're
Speaker 1: going best friends forever. Said they quote came prepared to
Speaker 1: disrupt the performance, carrying objects to throw and whistles too
Speaker 1: below and whistling and jeering started right away. Just as
Speaker 1: soon as they saw like lights came up and they
Speaker 1: saw Missy in a man's suit, they were like, let's
Speaker 1: start making noise. Um. They threw oranges and apples and
Speaker 1: old vegetables and lit cigars onto the stage. Very dangerous.
Speaker 1: When Collette emerged from the sarcophagus, they threw a bunch
Speaker 1: of old turnips at her feet. Um. Just so rude
Speaker 1: and bravely. I in my opinion, it would be very
Speaker 1: hard to perform with people screaming throughout the entire thing
Speaker 1: that they hate you and you're dead, right, But like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure they were staying that, but
Speaker 1: basically that's the energy you're getting. But they kept going.
Speaker 1: The crowd starts chanting at them to get off stage,
Speaker 1: like thumping canes and stamping their feet and just being crazy.
Speaker 1: When Missy started to unravel Collett's bandages, the items they
Speaker 1: threw got larger and larger, Like they started throwing cushions
Speaker 1: and even small benches. Oh my god, Like the you
Speaker 1: can knock someone out for life, Yeah, for real, knock
Speaker 1: someone out for life, by which I mean murder. I
Speaker 1: was permanently rendered unconscious. I mean I suppose that could
Speaker 1: be a coma. Well, yeah, at any rate, dangerous. It's
Speaker 1: a dangerous thing to do. Please do not throw benches
Speaker 1: at performers, or turnips for that matter. Turnips are hard, true,
Speaker 1: But the crowd was not able to derail the performance
Speaker 1: enough before it reached its climax, and Missy and Collette
Speaker 1: locked lips in front of everyone. Oh my god, mon dieu.
Speaker 1: It was pandemonium. People were up on their feet, shouting
Speaker 1: and jeering, and they start just it's like a soccer riot.
Speaker 1: People to start punching someone next to them for no
Speaker 1: reason at all. They just seriously just said riot breakout.
Speaker 1: Willie stood up to chastise that, He's like, you are
Speaker 1: our ridiculous, these are perfectly lovely women, just has his art.
Speaker 1: But he was surrounded and he was attacked by the
Speaker 1: angry mob with fists and sticks. The action spilled out
Speaker 1: into the streets where a bunch of windows were smashed,
Speaker 1: and there's just chaos going on, like cat Dela before,
Speaker 1: just losing their minds, just ship being thrown everywhere, boards
Speaker 1: being ripped off the side of the building and smacking
Speaker 1: people with them. You know, somebody throws a lantern and
Speaker 1: it probably bursting certain person to flame. Somewhere, there's cats
Speaker 1: and dogs screaming running around that cats running around, screaming
Speaker 1: and howling, just absolute chaos. Eventually the police come screaming
Speaker 1: in and they start breaking up this riot. At the time,
Speaker 1: this police was led by Louis Lepine, who would go
Speaker 1: on to reform the police by introducing forensic techniques and
Speaker 1: more formal procedures and trying to restore public faith in policing.
Speaker 1: It's like people don't like cops for some reason. He
Speaker 1: actually earned the nickname the little Man with the Big
Speaker 1: Stick for his skill in breaking up large crowds. Tells
Speaker 1: you how he broke up the crowds out of me. Yes.
Speaker 1: After it was shut down, Louis allowed the show to
Speaker 1: go back up the next night provided a man play
Speaker 1: the Egyptologists. He's like, I can't do this again, guy,
Speaker 1: so George Wog took over the role. But the next
Speaker 1: night was also a disaster, with the crowd shouting and
Speaker 1: whistling throughout the show, and after that it was completely
Speaker 1: banned from Paris. Two months later, Collette and George performed
Speaker 1: the show in Niece for three nights with no problem,
Speaker 1: zero issues, no problem, could not handle. Yeah, Niece was like,
Speaker 1: let's show those Parisians how we do it. We are
Speaker 1: much nicer than them. I was waiting for it. But
Speaker 1: it's so so good. Lesbians. Come have a nice time
Speaker 1: in Nie. Okay, I bet you could have a nice
Speaker 1: time in Niece. Now Collet is still writing novels. Okay.
Speaker 1: So her eight book, Tendrils of the Vine is about
Speaker 1: her relationship with Missy, and then in ten she published
Speaker 1: The Vagabond, about her life on the stage, and that
Speaker 1: same year she and Missy purchased a house together on
Speaker 1: the coast in Brittany, France. Or more accurately, Missy bought
Speaker 1: the house for them to live in together. Um. But
Speaker 1: even though Missy was the one with the money, the
Speaker 1: owner refused to let her sign the lease because she
Speaker 1: was dressed like a man and not a woman. Um.
Speaker 1: So that changes her signature somehow or something, I guess.
Speaker 1: So Colette had to sign instead, which just a little
Speaker 1: little humiliation for Misty probably presumably still had to sign
Speaker 1: the check and he took that just fine. Um. On
Speaker 1: the same day that they signed that least, uh, Colette's
Speaker 1: divorced from Willie was made official, So big day for them,
Speaker 1: probably popped a bottle of champagne. Meanwhile, plenty of men,
Speaker 1: you know, we're still trying to get with Colette because
Speaker 1: she's this hot lady who's showing off her titties on
Speaker 1: stage and there I want a pizza that right, So
Speaker 1: they would like steal backstage to give her flowers and
Speaker 1: invite her to exclusive gatherings and try to take her
Speaker 1: to dinner and all this stuff. And Joel Van Vallen
Speaker 1: writes on Whistling Shade that quote. Once, to discourage a
Speaker 1: would be suitor who had been hanging about Colette, had
Speaker 1: the maid conduct him to her bedroom. Then she got
Speaker 1: out of bed naked, ignoring her would be lover, and
Speaker 1: going behind her dressing screen, began farming until the shocked
Speaker 1: gentleman left. What a move it get him out. Now
Speaker 1: She's lucky it wasn't James Joyce, because that would have
Speaker 1: been even more. He would have been like, I'm more
Speaker 1: into it than ever all I've ever wanted. She's like,
Speaker 1: my backside has backfired, My backfires have backfired. True. I
Speaker 1: also love who who was writing this down? Like? Was
Speaker 1: the maid? Like, oh my god, today Collette farted until
Speaker 1: this guy sucked up. I bet Collette wrote it down.
Speaker 1: I found the trick, ladies, you're trying to scare a
Speaker 1: man off beans. I'm just amazed by the control dedicated farts.
Speaker 1: She's ready, all right, but not everyone got the fart treatment.
Speaker 1: Collette very much like this fellow August Area, who was
Speaker 1: this rich and some air to a department store fortune,
Speaker 1: who was thirteen years younger than she was. And August
Speaker 1: followed her around like a puppy, and he just like
Speaker 1: just spoiled her. He bestowed every luxury on her. He's like,
Speaker 1: I am the heir to a department store. So if
Speaker 1: you want perfumes or fresh socks, or probably lack a
Speaker 1: little one of those gift baskets, you know, with the
Speaker 1: cheese and a jelly jar and deodorant stick, a little
Speaker 1: nice h I've got it for you, baby, hul. He
Speaker 1: also took her to Italy, which should win me over.
Speaker 1: That's all I need. You got me um, and he
Speaker 1: drove her around in his fancy motor cars. I mean,
Speaker 1: he must have been incredibly rich to have a motor
Speaker 1: car at this period of time, because that show was
Speaker 1: wildly expensive, absolutely and maybe the most appealing to Collette.
Speaker 1: In Judith Thurman's book Secrets of the Flesh, she says
Speaker 1: they even shared a lover named Lily Darem when they
Speaker 1: were in niece together. Yeah, said, niece his niece for lesbians. Niece,
Speaker 1: his niece, very welcoming. Apparently Lily dream is also she based.
Speaker 1: Collette based a character in one of her books on Lily,
Speaker 1: and she's kind of like the original manic pixie dream
Speaker 1: girl type trope. Sort of interesting, what a trio. So
Speaker 1: Collette and August stayed together for two years, and during
Speaker 1: this time, Collette was still living with Missy by the way,
Speaker 1: in the house that Missy bought Colette signed for. But
Speaker 1: soon Missy and Collett's relationship kind of started to fall
Speaker 1: apart because Collette, despite all her other relationships with August,
Speaker 1: with Missy, with Lily Darem, with whoever was coming along,
Speaker 1: she fell madly in love with a journalist named Ride
Speaker 1: de Jouvenel. And Missy saw this guy and she was like,
Speaker 1: this ain't no side piece, this is a real threat
Speaker 1: to our relationship. She even tried tempting Colette away from
Speaker 1: him by letting the department store air August Harriott come
Speaker 1: live at their house, like telling Collette like, hey, you
Speaker 1: stick with me and you can have the best of
Speaker 1: both worlds. Yeah, we can both be you know, we
Speaker 1: can live in a manage together, right, But that just
Speaker 1: offended Collette. She was like, that's not what I'm looking
Speaker 1: for here. I'm looking for a connection. Maybe she wanted
Speaker 1: on re or No One. So at the end of
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, Missy and Collette parted ways, and Missy was
Speaker 1: definitely broken up about Collette dumping her until, as Collette wrote,
Speaker 1: she quote took up with a pretty fat woman who
Speaker 1: sings her praises to this guy's little jealousy. I think
Speaker 1: little jealousy. But would we all could find a pretty
Speaker 1: fat woman to sing our praises to the guy? Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. But Colette and Henri had to untangle
Speaker 1: some of their personal affairs in order to get their
Speaker 1: own affair going. And it's kind of farcical. So let's
Speaker 1: just take a quick break and come back for more
Speaker 1: of this crazy Yes, all right, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 1: Near the end of Collette had decided to subsidized her
Speaker 1: theater income with some journalism, and thanks to the success
Speaker 1: of The Vagabond, she was hired by one of the
Speaker 1: more respected papers in Paris, Lama him the Morning, the Morning.
Speaker 1: That's a nice refreshing title for a paper. I think.
Speaker 1: I think the morning paper is more widely read than
Speaker 1: the afternoon paper, but I could be wrong, I would think.
Speaker 1: So I'm busy in the afternoon. I go, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: these parisans and there get up and go out of
Speaker 1: business to take care. They don't linger over lunch anything.
Speaker 1: I love that Colette went from you know, basically his
Speaker 1: wife to author, well to ghostwriter to author, to mime
Speaker 1: to journalist, the true vagabond lifestyle. She's doing it with
Speaker 1: like in high society, which is great. Yeah, and it
Speaker 1: must be said, you know, she's really broke at this
Speaker 1: time because Willie owns the copyright to Claudine, so he's
Speaker 1: still breaking it in. They're still selling really well, but
Speaker 1: she can't make any money off of that. But they're
Speaker 1: like close kind of right. I mean, he came to
Speaker 1: her play, but he won't get any he won't give
Speaker 1: any money. Oh, Willie the worst, Willie, the worst Willie.
Speaker 1: So anyway, she started writing a weekly column for Limitan
Speaker 1: called Le journeal de Collette, and it was like her
Speaker 1: personal views on the day I guess what was going
Speaker 1: on in the world. And her colleague and the editor
Speaker 1: in chief of this paper was on Red Juvenel, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't long before these two were falling hard for
Speaker 1: each other. On Re was a handsome, proud man. He's
Speaker 1: three years Collett's junr. She likes him young, young, she says,
Speaker 1: like it's a little old for me, but you can
Speaker 1: make this work. He was smart and eloquent. He was
Speaker 1: also a bit of a spendthrift and a womanizer. She
Speaker 1: also like those guys he loves that um. But to
Speaker 1: do to Thurman, his attraction for Colette is obvious, beyond
Speaker 1: any physical charm or financial charm that he had, she writes.
Speaker 1: Quote for once Colette had met a peer, not a
Speaker 1: parent or a child, Henri did more than desire her.
Speaker 1: He recognized her. And one of the most revealing statements
Speaker 1: she would ever make about their romance was this one
Speaker 1: to sdo her mother, where she wrote, I received letters
Speaker 1: from d Juvenel that are truly worthy of me, if
Speaker 1: I dare to say so, oh wow, which I think
Speaker 1: is a good point because Collette's, of course, Willie's Willie
Speaker 1: was way older than her when they got married. Then
Speaker 1: she was with August who's way younger than her. Um.
Speaker 1: And between that she's with women who were her peers. UM.
Speaker 1: So she was connecting in different ways with these women.
Speaker 1: So now she's finally found a man who's like on
Speaker 1: the same level as her intellectually in his life and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Now it is interesting though, um, because
Speaker 1: well it just sounds like this guy like was not
Speaker 1: just her age peer, but maybe an intellectual peer in
Speaker 1: ways that Willie certainly wasn't that A Goose probably wasn't.
Speaker 1: We can assume, you know, she's just like, here's he's
Speaker 1: a writer. You know, he's a journalist. He's he knows
Speaker 1: how to read. Smarty pants know how to read. I
Speaker 1: also do love the the thisussault of arrogance in that
Speaker 1: claim the truly worthy of me? If I dare say so,
Speaker 1: can you believe someone wrote a letter worthy of me?
Speaker 1: Usually I'm, you know, very generous in accepting letters from
Speaker 1: these losers. But I think this guy might actually I
Speaker 1: might read this one. I actually like his letters. Now
Speaker 1: it wasn't perfect. Enrid de Juvenal was married with a son,
Speaker 1: but he was living with his mistress. Anyway, This was
Speaker 1: a fiery redhead named Isabel de Comminge. She was known
Speaker 1: as the Panther, and he had been living with her
Speaker 1: since nineteen o six. Isabel's family had a title but
Speaker 1: not much money, so she had been married off to
Speaker 1: some rich Parisian banker named Count play Will. But according
Speaker 1: to Judith Thurman's book, Count play Will had a psychotic breakdown.
Speaker 1: She writes, quote, he thought he was a dog. He
Speaker 1: shot his wife's great Dane. His family committed him to
Speaker 1: an asylum, where he spent the remainder of his life barking. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is like an insane thing to just throw out
Speaker 1: and then have zero follow up on, right, But there
Speaker 1: isn't much follow up on this guy, unfortunately. I want
Speaker 1: to know why he thinks the dog uses a gun.
Speaker 1: I want to know why he shot the great Dane.
Speaker 1: Did he say something like I don't, I just anyway,
Speaker 1: it's just a overly weird story, sad because you know
Speaker 1: they didn't really have any way to treat him in
Speaker 1: nineteen o seven. Is he like there could only be
Speaker 1: one dog in this house, Scooby, he scoots and he
Speaker 1: shoots the great Dane. Fuck? Maybe and maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it's a sad a little bit of a sad
Speaker 1: story for Count p They will. Yeah, Well, after Count
Speaker 1: Pila Will was sent to this asylum where he just
Speaker 1: spent the rest of his life barking. Isabel took back
Speaker 1: her maiden name and moved in with her lover, Enrid
Speaker 1: de Juvenel, and they had a kid together in nineteen
Speaker 1: o seven. This is just a couple of years before
Speaker 1: Collette was going to meet him, and neither of them
Speaker 1: were very interested in this kid that they had bad parents,
Speaker 1: had parents, a lot of bad parents in this story, true,
Speaker 1: but Henri at least was very interested in the sexy, sensual,
Speaker 1: and talented Collette that he would meet a few years later,
Speaker 1: and after a torrid affair they had together, he told
Speaker 1: her he quote couldn't and wouldn't live without her. He
Speaker 1: went home to Paris to tell Isabel that he was
Speaker 1: leaving her for Collette, and Isabel surely was like, well,
Speaker 1: I am shocked that this man's fidelity would come into question.
Speaker 1: This man who's who was having an affair with me, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, is now having an affair on me with
Speaker 1: someone else who could have suggested such a thing. I
Speaker 1: guess he also was like, and I guess I'll finally
Speaker 1: divorce my wife. Oh wow, okay he still married. Well
Speaker 1: that would best would Isabel off too? Maybe she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you'll divorce your wife for her, but not for me.
Speaker 1: Well I wondered that, but I don't think so, because
Speaker 1: Isabel probably could not get divorced from because he was
Speaker 1: not sane enough to consent to. Yeah, she was kind
Speaker 1: of a chained woman at that in that point. I
Speaker 1: think there was something about that where you couldn't you
Speaker 1: can't divorce on the basis of insanity or something like that,
Speaker 1: So she couldn't get divorced, so she didn't care. So
Speaker 1: she was like, I know we were never going to
Speaker 1: get married, but we were kind of living together as
Speaker 1: a married couple for years. We have a kid, like,
Speaker 1: we kind of had a committed relationship going. So she
Speaker 1: probably still was pretty pissed yea, And yeah, she did
Speaker 1: not take it. Well, the panther was riled up. People
Speaker 1: want to rile up a panther. You really don't want
Speaker 1: to piss off a panther. And uh, first she went
Speaker 1: straight to Missy and told her all about coletting and
Speaker 1: Henri run around behind Missy's back. That's how Missy found
Speaker 1: out about their relationship and started talking to a goost
Speaker 1: about moving in and stuff. Isabel came to Paris tracked
Speaker 1: down her illicit lover's illicit lover lover. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: picturing the Charlie Day conspiracy board that is Paris right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: everyone's fucking everybody. So after she told Missy and got
Speaker 1: Missy all upset, she then swore to Henri that she
Speaker 1: would kill Colette oh my god, and literally started prowling
Speaker 1: around Paris with her revolver looking for Colette. In fact,
Speaker 1: Colette had to sequester herself in her Paris apartment with
Speaker 1: like several of the investigative reporters from Lament like standing
Speaker 1: guard around her. Oh yeah, if there's one, If there's
Speaker 1: one group of people I want protecting me from a
Speaker 1: violent threat, it's journalists. Yeah, they're so brave. Well, journalists
Speaker 1: are very brave, but I don't know if they get
Speaker 1: a lot of time to spend at the gym. Also true,
Speaker 1: are they fast and they fight? Maybe they were like
Speaker 1: partly boxers so they could go out to investigate with
Speaker 1: their then you know a story. Yeah, break any caps
Speaker 1: for the story. All right, maybe I get some investigative journalists.
Speaker 1: Have you protect me? Uh? Anderson Cooper Anderson Cooper, don Lemon.
Speaker 1: I don't think that those two are really I'd be
Speaker 1: like Suze Orman, she would be so anyway, this is
Speaker 1: a dangerous period of time. Colette literally has a woman
Speaker 1: like calling for her blood in the streets of Paris
Speaker 1: and like carrying a gun around trying to jump out
Speaker 1: at her. And she's got people standing outside her door
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. But then suddenly one day the
Speaker 1: danger had passed and Colette was able to emerge and
Speaker 1: be free. And why do you think that is? Well,
Speaker 1: that's because Isabelle and our department store air August Harry
Speaker 1: all decided to rebound together what they've She's like, these
Speaker 1: two pieces of yarn just got crossed in the conspiracy board.
Speaker 1: That's the ending to this story. They embarked on a
Speaker 1: six week cruise on his yacht together, after, as Collette
Speaker 1: wrote in a letter quote, having shocked Lahove their home
Speaker 1: port with their drunken orgies. Isn't it nice? Isn't it
Speaker 1: theater a bit too much? No, wrote exactly what I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: just like this is if this was in a movie,
Speaker 1: i'd be like, that's unbelievable, but those two got too
Speaker 1: ridiculous romance. But exactly these two side characters just happened
Speaker 1: to pair off. Well, I guess that's a nice, clean,
Speaker 1: tidy ending. I'm like, did they meet each other? Like
Speaker 1: she's prowling around, like drops her revolver and kicks it
Speaker 1: by accus, oh, madam, you'd be returnial property. And she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. I'm just so pissed. My basically husband
Speaker 1: is run around on me with this other lady, Collette,
Speaker 1: like she's so special, and August is like, Collette, that's
Speaker 1: my girlfriend, and I'm mad at her for right around
Speaker 1: on me with some journalists. And they're like, let's get
Speaker 1: back at him by sleeping together. And it actually just
Speaker 1: solved other problems where he's like, you know, you seem
Speaker 1: so upset. Let me let me try you on a
Speaker 1: new pair of shoes. Come by my store a gift
Speaker 1: basket perfumes. L So with that threat gone, with that
Speaker 1: lover handled neutralized, I guess Collette and Henri settled in.
Speaker 1: They both were still working on the Batan. Collette was
Speaker 1: still working in the music halls and theaters as well,
Speaker 1: and then she got pregnant, so she and Henrid the
Speaker 1: Juvenel married in nineteen twelve, and six months later she
Speaker 1: gave birth to their daughter, also named Collette, who was
Speaker 1: nicknamed Belle Gazoo I mean beautiful gazelle. So I guess
Speaker 1: she had long legs maybe sure, or horns twist horns.
Speaker 1: History doesn't say, speculation station this girl had long, curly horns,
Speaker 1: like the corkscrew kind, you know, like an impaulas well.
Speaker 1: After Collette gave birth, she left the theater and became
Speaker 1: an editor of Lamentin, which by was one of the
Speaker 1: biggest papers in Paris, and she was madly in love
Speaker 1: with Henri, who she called c D, which means lord
Speaker 1: in Arabic. But CD here was another womanizer who was
Speaker 1: frequently absent. He worked long hours and saw lots of ladies,
Speaker 1: just like Willie had. Natalie Barney wrote of Colette, quote,
Speaker 1: torn between the desires of her two contrary natures to
Speaker 1: have a master and to not have one, she always
Speaker 1: opted for the first solution, so she was usually going
Speaker 1: with the idea of like, well, let me just get
Speaker 1: that classic husband, you know, even though part of me
Speaker 1: wants to live this kind of more libertine lifestyle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she well, we talked a little bit about in the
Speaker 1: first episode about how she felt like marriage was a
Speaker 1: shackle in a way, and like it took away your
Speaker 1: sense of sovereignty over yourself. So she was really divided.
Speaker 1: But she I think she did want to be loved
Speaker 1: and taken care of and felt like she was the
Speaker 1: main the main character, you know, in that person's life
Speaker 1: and all that. So she was kind of torn between
Speaker 1: these this sense of I would rather be single forever
Speaker 1: and be able to just call my own shots. Um,
Speaker 1: But in the world she lived in, women didn't really
Speaker 1: get to call their own shots, especially if they're not
Speaker 1: independently wealthy. So maybe if she lived in a world
Speaker 1: where she could be independently wealthy and really legitimately run
Speaker 1: around do whatever she wants, she would never have gotten married.
Speaker 1: But because marriage was also a bit of freedom for
Speaker 1: a woman, you know, it was just a weird I
Speaker 1: think it's just a weird dichotomy as she had within
Speaker 1: herself about whether or not marriage was freedom or not
Speaker 1: right not to mention, she probably had the same struggle
Speaker 1: between like I really love someone and that means I
Speaker 1: should be exclusively with them versus, uh, I really like
Speaker 1: sex with people, and I want to go have fun
Speaker 1: and stuff. And this was certainly a long time before,
Speaker 1: but there was a general conversation culture about polyamory and
Speaker 1: the idea that you can really love someone and also
Speaker 1: really love someone else and also want to have sex
Speaker 1: with someone else, you know, like that's obviously she was
Speaker 1: kind of living that life, but I don't think she
Speaker 1: fully probably even accepted it of herself, as she must
Speaker 1: have certainly had that struggle in her mind, like, but
Speaker 1: at some point and I got to settle down with somebody,
Speaker 1: and don't I really like Henri right well, and again,
Speaker 1: like Natalie Barney is run around saying, don't be fidelious,
Speaker 1: be polyamorous and have as many relationships as possible, and
Speaker 1: that's not a natural state of things. Um. But there
Speaker 1: was also some kind of talk about whether Collette, when
Speaker 1: especially when she was married, preferred affairs with women because
Speaker 1: she couldn't get pregnant. So it was also kind of
Speaker 1: like this is a you know, all the fear that
Speaker 1: you can have from an affair is gone if it's
Speaker 1: another woman. But also we talked a little bit about
Speaker 1: how she had never really intellectually connected with any of
Speaker 1: these men in her life, only the women. So she
Speaker 1: was getting just a totally different, you know, need fulfilled
Speaker 1: by these ladies. Besides a totally separate from sex. She
Speaker 1: probably also preferred to have affairs with women because women
Speaker 1: are hot, women are hot, are gross. I'm the first
Speaker 1: person to ever say that all men are gross. Grows sweet.
Speaker 1: Now hang on now, look, it's very untrue. Everyone's hot,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, quite frankly, everyone's hot. Everyone's hot. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that brings us to the end of this episode. But
Speaker 1: Collette's story is far from over because she still has
Speaker 1: Andre's first wife to deal with. Oh no, she's coming back,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, as well as his teenage steps on Bertram
Speaker 1: more along. But first there's a tiny little world war
Speaker 1: that she has to get through, So we will save
Speaker 1: all that for next time in Part three of our
Speaker 1: Collette series. Yes, I'm loving it, Isn't it great? There's
Speaker 1: so many affairs in this one. I was like, I
Speaker 1: almost I was going to try to get through get
Speaker 1: through her marriage with Andri, but it was just too
Speaker 1: many good, ridiculous romance much coming up in this single era.
Speaker 1: It's perfect because we're out of time anyway, that's true.
Speaker 1: We packed it in. This lady lived a life. We're
Speaker 1: only in the middle of it. She's got so much
Speaker 1: going on, man, I tell you, if we get to
Speaker 1: go back and relive people's lives afterwards, I'm getting in
Speaker 1: line for this one. There's a pretty good one. I mean, she,
Speaker 1: you know, downs having some fun to our point about
Speaker 1: whether or not she felt more free as a single
Speaker 1: person or free in marriage, or how she felt about
Speaker 1: that dichotomy. Um. There's a really great passage in The
Speaker 1: Guardian where they talk about the Vagabonds, the book The
Speaker 1: Vagabond she wrote, which, of course very much based on
Speaker 1: her own life and feelings. It ends with her character Renee,
Speaker 1: touring the south of France, having accepted an insistent, wealthy
Speaker 1: young fan as a lover and knowing that he wants
Speaker 1: to marry her, and she's tempted to marry him, but quote,
Speaker 1: of course, she would love to be loved, to be safe,
Speaker 1: to escape the drudgery of touring. Collette once did thirty
Speaker 1: two performances on consecutive nights in thirty two different towns. Exhausting,
Speaker 1: but the drudgery is also the price of independence. How
Speaker 1: to hold onto that and also be what society understands
Speaker 1: a woman to be. For days, she weighs it up
Speaker 1: until a moment comes when she realizes Missy has not
Speaker 1: been in her thoughts at all. Instead, she has been
Speaker 1: looking for words. And here they quote collect words to
Speaker 1: express how yellow the sun is, how blue the sea,
Speaker 1: and how brilliant the salt, like a fringe of white jet. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have forgotten him, as if the only urgent thing
Speaker 1: in the world were my desire to possess through my
Speaker 1: eyes the marvels of the earth. In that same hour,
Speaker 1: an insidious spirit whispered to me, and if indeed that
Speaker 1: were the only urgent thing, if everything save that, we're
Speaker 1: merely ashes, which is like her whole thing was that
Speaker 1: the whole purpose of life is to just marvel at
Speaker 1: everything you can, grab as much of it and experience
Speaker 1: as much of it as you can. And I agree
Speaker 1: with that philosophy on many made her very selfish. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people in this time period felt
Speaker 1: that way, and that's why they were bad parents, because
Speaker 1: they were like, I don't want to be a parent.
Speaker 1: You're tying me down, you know, which is like, well,
Speaker 1: you're you shouldn't had a kid. Well, and that's the
Speaker 1: difference to now where people are sort of having that
Speaker 1: same feeling, and so they're opting out of having children
Speaker 1: opposed to having one and ignoring them. Yeah. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: these kids were fucked up by how shitty their parents were,
Speaker 1: so they definitely were not people. Um, but I think
Speaker 1: that's so interesting that she was sort of like what
Speaker 1: she really wanted was to see and experience as much
Speaker 1: of the world as she could, and she simply could
Speaker 1: not do that as a again, not independently wealthy woman
Speaker 1: in the world, since it's not how society let you be.
Speaker 1: And so she was like, well, I guess I should
Speaker 1: get married, partly because I love the person, of course,
Speaker 1: but also because I can't just enjoy them and enjoy
Speaker 1: my life the same way that, Like maybe she's a
Speaker 1: little jealous of Willie and Henri who could be married
Speaker 1: and also run around and do whatever they wanted. Well,
Speaker 1: and doesn't it remind you of just today, like just
Speaker 1: the idea of a job at all from like all
Speaker 1: I want to do is travel and explore and see
Speaker 1: ship and meet people and eat food and all kinds
Speaker 1: of crazy things like that, and just experience as much
Speaker 1: as I can, But I can't do that if I
Speaker 1: don't attach myself to a job. But if I attached
Speaker 1: myself to a job, I can't do that as much,
Speaker 1: you know. So that's the closest I can relate to
Speaker 1: this notion of like, well, yeah, I can get married,
Speaker 1: but then I'm a wife. But at least as a wife,
Speaker 1: I'll have more opportunities to be free than if I
Speaker 1: were free from being a wife. It's very frustrating. It's
Speaker 1: two different which constriction am I willing to live under?
Speaker 1: Because it's either societies or societies and just two different things,
Speaker 1: which one nets me a greater life experience. And aren't
Speaker 1: we all asking that question every day? It's true, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very true. I love it. I hope y'all are
Speaker 1: loving it as well. We've got more for Collette next week.
Speaker 1: It just keeps on. She's a gift that keeps on
Speaker 1: getting she really is, And we'll break it up with
Speaker 1: another episode this at the end of this week with
Speaker 1: some other cool things. But please let us know your
Speaker 1: thoughts about Collette, your suggestions for other stories. Yeah, keep
Speaker 1: those segment ideas. Yes, we've gotten a couple of good
Speaker 1: ones already, so keep them coming um and we would
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. Please email us ridic Romance
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com right or you can find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dianamite Boom and I'm
Speaker 1: at Oh Great, It's Eli. The show is at riddic Romance.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to drop us a review on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: rate us on Spotify wherever you else see a rating,
Speaker 1: Throw one down and we will catch you all the
Speaker 1: next episode. Thanks for spending your time with us today.
Speaker 1: We love you By solo friends, It's time to go.
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