Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Hey, welcome back as well. Oh yeah, your
Speaker 1: world's feeling good weekends here? Yeah, what's coming up? Oh?
Speaker 1: I mean there's a what this election thing? There is
Speaker 1: an election. You should probably get out there and vote
Speaker 1: if you haven't yet already. Please, Oh good, exercise that vote. Exercise, exercise.
Speaker 1: It's good for you, It's good for all of us.
Speaker 1: Right um. And then also, we just got our tickets
Speaker 1: to work Gonda Forever next weekend, so you can't wait
Speaker 1: for that. I know I'll cry. I just can't wait.
Speaker 1: So good are you watching? And Or? Oh my god?
Speaker 1: And Or is so good? Honestly, they kind of raised
Speaker 1: the bar a little too high. Oh yeah, everything is
Speaker 1: a disappointment from everything. Star Wars now has to at
Speaker 1: least meet the bar that has been laid and Or
Speaker 1: and I've been so frustrated with Star Wars lately, but
Speaker 1: this is so good. So watch and Or and or
Speaker 1: watch something else while you're at it. Lord, I can't
Speaker 1: every time you just leave that there, come on and
Speaker 1: or never start. You're doing it? Oh no, I'm doing Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I said, we get right to it today because we've
Speaker 1: got a big, chunky, sweet sexy episode here. So true.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, this one was suggested to us by
Speaker 1: a listener, Tom Bray. I'm not sure I'm saying that right, Tom,
Speaker 1: or tamber tamber could be tamber um at tambron on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Very cool suggestion for Caress Crosby. I'm so excited for
Speaker 1: this suggestion. Thank you. Because Caress Crosby invented the bra
Speaker 1: in n and that might be the least interesting thing
Speaker 1: about her. She and her husband Harry Crosby lived wild
Speaker 1: expatriot lifestyles as American in Paris in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: Please let me do that. They published a little known
Speaker 1: but soon to be household name authors like James Joyce,
Speaker 1: Ernest Hemingway, A Nice Nan, and Charles Bukowski, with illustrations
Speaker 1: from artists like surrealist Max Earnt. They helped popularized photography
Speaker 1: as an art form. And they fucked. Oh boy, did
Speaker 1: they ever surface every surface well. These two had an
Speaker 1: open marriage. They had topless parties, bathtub orgies, opium fueled
Speaker 1: sex romps, and side pieces galore. And one of their
Speaker 1: side pieces would end their mad and extravagant life together.
Speaker 1: So let's hear about the doomed love of Caress and
Speaker 1: Harry Crosbie. Please let's go, hey, their French comlution. Well,
Speaker 1: Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. No matchmaking,
Speaker 1: romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships a lover. It
Speaker 1: might be any type of person at all, and abstract
Speaker 1: cons apt for a concrete wall. But if there's a
Speaker 1: story with the second clinch, ridiculous roles, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio all right now. Most of this information
Speaker 1: comes from Jeffrey Wolf's nine eight biography Black Son, The
Speaker 1: Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby and Linda
Speaker 1: Hamalians two thousand five biography The Cromoisty Queen, A Life
Speaker 1: of Caress Crosby. So too cool books, Check them out.
Speaker 1: Mary Phelps Jacob always called Polly to distinguish herself from
Speaker 1: her mother. Mary had the world on a platter. Born
Speaker 1: in Boston to a family that could trace its lineage
Speaker 1: back to the Mayflowers, she moved in the highest circles
Speaker 1: of society, even though her family wasn't ultra rich. Anything
Speaker 1: she wanted she could have to the asking do you
Speaker 1: think that her ancestors in the Mayflower you know they're
Speaker 1: looking down at her. They survived such hardships coming across
Speaker 1: the ocean, and she's out here just like getting railed
Speaker 1: smoking opium, and they're like, ah, yes. By lineage continues,
Speaker 1: that's why we came to the well. Like any blue
Speaker 1: blooded debutante of her stripe. I guess you could say
Speaker 1: she attended great schools, She learned dancing and writing, and
Speaker 1: she partied debutante balls all the time. She slept from
Speaker 1: four in the morning until noon. Okay, the podcast life.
Speaker 1: She was living that podcast life. But despite this privileged
Speaker 1: life of luxury, she was not afraid to buck the conventions,
Speaker 1: and in Nten, at the age of nineteen, she demonstrated
Speaker 1: for the first time her commitment to nonconformity. She was
Speaker 1: getting ready for yet another debutante ball, and she really
Speaker 1: wanted to wear a new fashion of gown. This one
Speaker 1: was like more flowey and filmy than all the eighteen
Speaker 1: nineties holdovers that a lot of women were still wearing.
Speaker 1: But the problem was the undergarments. Women were still wearing
Speaker 1: boned corsets at this time, and they're very rigid and uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: You couldn't really move freely in them. Even worse, they
Speaker 1: mashed Polly's impressive breast together into one unflattering mono boob
Speaker 1: and nobody likes that. And she could see the lines
Speaker 1: of the corset through the fabric of her gown. So
Speaker 1: she's like, this just is not working at all. This
Speaker 1: is not the move. So she told her maid, hey,
Speaker 1: go get me a couple of pocket handkerchiefs, some ribbon,
Speaker 1: and some needle and thread, and together they fashioned a
Speaker 1: backless brazier um where the ribbon was like attached to
Speaker 1: the inside of the shoulders of the gown and like
Speaker 1: helped support her breasts and everything. But she was totally
Speaker 1: able to move freely around. She was a hundred percent
Speaker 1: more comfortable, and most importantly, her dress and tits were
Speaker 1: looking at falling. Okay, so she literally created the over
Speaker 1: the shoulder boulder holder. Oh my god, she sure did,
Speaker 1: and it is like she had some significant boulders. Well.
Speaker 1: Of course, all the girls at the ball noticed. They
Speaker 1: were like, oh, my goodness, your boobs are incredible. How
Speaker 1: comes she gets to have two? So the day after
Speaker 1: the ball, all these girls bombarded her asking how she'd
Speaker 1: been able to move around so freely on the dance floor.
Speaker 1: They're like, you you were able to take a deep breath.
Speaker 1: How you didn't cry one time? Well, when she showed
Speaker 1: them what she had made, of course they all wanted well.
Speaker 1: And not long after, a total stranger came up to
Speaker 1: Polly and asked her to make them one of her contraptions,
Speaker 1: offering her a dollar for her time. And that's when
Speaker 1: Polly realized that her backless bra it could be a
Speaker 1: viable business. What if what if more women don't want
Speaker 1: to be exceedingly uncomfortable constantly? You know, I might not
Speaker 1: be the only one who hate this. So on February twelve,
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, she filed a patent for her design, but
Speaker 1: then she got distracted by more worldly matters. In nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: she married her long term boyfriend, Richard Peabody. There was
Speaker 1: another blue blooded, fabulously wealthy Bostonian who she had met
Speaker 1: at summer camp a few years before. In February of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen, their first child, William, was born, and Polly
Speaker 1: discovered that Richard was a pretty indifferent father. At first,
Speaker 1: he was kind of excited to have a kid, but
Speaker 1: then he got bored with all you know, the noises
Speaker 1: needs the children are always having. He's like they don't
Speaker 1: pop out ready to have a sensible conversation. How many
Speaker 1: times a day you gotta feed this thing? Anyway, poured
Speaker 1: him a brandy and he didn't touch it no respect.
Speaker 1: Richard only had three interests basically. One was gambling, just
Speaker 1: not too unusual among the rich sprigs of society. Another
Speaker 1: was drinking. Richard was a pretty bad alcoholic pretty much
Speaker 1: his entire life. And his third interest chasing fire engines
Speaker 1: and watching buildings burn. This one the yeah, we've all
Speaker 1: got our own hobbies setting fires. True. Some of us
Speaker 1: stamp collect right, some of us are into music. Richard
Speaker 1: likes to chase fire engines ash it must all burned.
Speaker 1: This guy even convinced the fire chief to rig up
Speaker 1: a fire alarm bell at their house so whenever it rang,
Speaker 1: no matter the time, Richard would throw on his best
Speaker 1: firefighter's outfit that he kept, and then he would go
Speaker 1: and just sit down and watch the actual firefighters try
Speaker 1: and put out the flat. I love the hand like
Speaker 1: cat a little. He likes caused playing as a firefighter.
Speaker 1: He must have put it on. He must have put
Speaker 1: on sometimes just for fun, like at night. He's like
Speaker 1: a firefighter. Apparently was a volunteer firefighter for a minute,
Speaker 1: but they said they had to let him go because
Speaker 1: he would show up drunk. And I like, you're too
Speaker 1: flammable right now, Richard, your breath is just making things work.
Speaker 1: Stand far away from the burning building. Then Richard enlisted
Speaker 1: in the army, first to go to Mexico to fight
Speaker 1: against Pancho BIA's cross border raids, and then he came
Speaker 1: home briefly. Their second child, Pauline, was born in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: but by then Richard was already in training to join
Speaker 1: the ranks of men who would fight in World War One.
Speaker 1: Polly and the kids moved in with their in laws
Speaker 1: and Danvers, Massachusetts, but when the war was over, Richard
Speaker 1: just remained in France for a while, just kind of
Speaker 1: enjoying the adulation of the French and his like bachelor
Speaker 1: lifestyle that he preferred to this domestic scene at home.
Speaker 1: At some point, at nineteen twenty, he did come home,
Speaker 1: but he was in and out of sanitariums for drinking
Speaker 1: and acute depression, so it was really trying to get better,
Speaker 1: but he just could not seem to keep it going. Now,
Speaker 1: Polly wasn't one to sit at home you know, pining
Speaker 1: and crying. Okay, she In May nine twenties, she finally
Speaker 1: opened her fashion form, Brazier Company to manufacture her popular
Speaker 1: broad design. But still those years were really lonely and
Speaker 1: difficult for her, and Polly's isolation did not go unnoticed.
Speaker 1: So on July four, Polly's friend Henrietta Crosby invited Polly
Speaker 1: to chaperone her son, Harry, and a couple of his
Speaker 1: friends to a dinner and a visit to an amusement park.
Speaker 1: Polly's twenty eight, she's married, she's got two kids. By
Speaker 1: Boston society standards, she was like a respectable matron. You
Speaker 1: can do anything, that old year old maid. She's she's
Speaker 1: basically a grandmother, pastor prime. But she's got some life
Speaker 1: life lessons to teach us. I'm sure so much you
Speaker 1: can learn from her. She's seen it all inside outside.
Speaker 1: But to Harry Crosby, she was a hot tomale, real cougar.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he was like wow. Who he was like one.
Speaker 1: He was like wow, I can't do it. That's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to hear again. Now, Harry Crosby, he was
Speaker 1: just a young boy of twenty two, six entire years
Speaker 1: younger than Polly, and although he was a slight, pale man,
Speaker 1: he was handsome, charismatic and a very intense individual, because,
Speaker 1: like Polly, he came from the upper crust of Boston.
Speaker 1: I say up a crust to Boston. I guess I
Speaker 1: should say apakrasta boston um. His uncle was the richest
Speaker 1: banker in the nation, JP Morgan Jr. Harry had a
Speaker 1: pretty normal affluent childhood and he probably would have lived
Speaker 1: a normal affluent life, but everything changed when he was
Speaker 1: nineteen and he volunteered for the American Field Service Ambulance
Speaker 1: Corps like many of his elite peers. During the Battle
Speaker 1: of ver Doon, he was close to the front and
Speaker 1: he ferried wounded soldiers for three days without relief, along
Speaker 1: with his friends Spud Spalding. In November, Harry was leading
Speaker 1: a few ambulances from the battlefield to the medical aid
Speaker 1: station when his ambulance was hit by artillery fire and
Speaker 1: completely destroyed. Harry managed to escape completely unhurt, but Spud,
Speaker 1: driving a second ambulance behind Harry, was hit in the
Speaker 1: chest with shrapnel. Harry saved his life by getting him
Speaker 1: to a hospital for treatment, and that night Harry was
Speaker 1: seen running laps around a track, just running running, no
Speaker 1: apparent purpose or direction. You know that he just you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, like that, The adrenaline must have
Speaker 1: been so crazy, and then once you get to safety,
Speaker 1: you just can't sit like insane. Yeah, his brain must
Speaker 1: have just been going a mile a minute. My body
Speaker 1: had to match, you know what I mean. Let's just
Speaker 1: think about that trauma showing up in so many little
Speaker 1: ways like that, right, I mean, a guy bumped into
Speaker 1: me at target the other day. I couldn't sit still
Speaker 1: for a week. Chaos. My brain was just a battlefield.
Speaker 1: Harry later said that after that experience on the battlefield,
Speaker 1: he no longer feared death. In nineteen eighteen, his team
Speaker 1: transported more than two thousand wounded during the Battle of Orm,
Speaker 1: which won him a quad de Gur, making him one
Speaker 1: of the youngest Americans ever to be awarded honor. After
Speaker 1: the war, Unlike Richard Peabody, Harry couldn't wait to get
Speaker 1: home back to the States, but he had to get
Speaker 1: his uncle JP Morgan Jr. To intervene on his behath. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most soldiers were just hanging out for a while awaiting,
Speaker 1: and they got shuffled around different places like, they didn't
Speaker 1: all just get immediately, you know, recalled home. But JP
Speaker 1: Morgan had lent a lot of money to the war efforts,
Speaker 1: so I guess when he called, they're like, okay, whatever
Speaker 1: you say. Pierre Proont, now when he met Polly, Harry
Speaker 1: was studying literature and fine arts at Harvard, but he
Speaker 1: was finding it tough to be back among the starchy
Speaker 1: elites he'd spent his childhood with. After his time in
Speaker 1: Europe and his wartime experience. He couldn't stand what he
Speaker 1: called quote dreary, drearier, dreariest Boston and quote Boston virgins
Speaker 1: who are brought up amongst sexless surroundings, who wear canvas
Speaker 1: drawers and flat heeled shoes. He really had an opinion
Speaker 1: about the ladies of the ladies of Boston. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: wanted to live completely in the moment he decided he
Speaker 1: did not care for risk or consequences anymore. So it's
Speaker 1: not that surprising that he would pursue a society matron
Speaker 1: like Polly. Um. That would have been a weird thing
Speaker 1: for him to do if he cared about other people's opinions,
Speaker 1: but he didn't. So he's like, let me go for it.
Speaker 1: He was like, I don't care what people think of me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to date an old woman. Twenty eight year
Speaker 1: old lady who here better slap sat the table and
Speaker 1: during dinner, Harry completely ignored the girl on his left,
Speaker 1: which was a major break with etiquette. You're supposed to
Speaker 1: like talk for a while on this side, and then
Speaker 1: every every few minutes everybody changes and they talked everyone
Speaker 1: on the other side. I think it's more of like
Speaker 1: a natural turn. I had an idea for a party once,
Speaker 1: because you know, like if we hold a party like
Speaker 1: a bunch of people, you kind of get stuck talking
Speaker 1: to some of the Sometimes there's some certain people that
Speaker 1: you get stuck talking to for a long time, and
Speaker 1: you're like, I love you, but you have been dominating
Speaker 1: my time. I wanted to have a party where there
Speaker 1: was like a bell that went off every like twelve
Speaker 1: minutes and you had to shift conversations to someone else.
Speaker 1: I love it. Let's call it the Palmadoro party. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of good because it's like, you know, oh,
Speaker 1: I went to this party. Oh man, I caught up
Speaker 1: so hard with so and so, but I never got
Speaker 1: to talk to who's his face? Right? And then they
Speaker 1: had to leave. Yeah, I know that looked up and
Speaker 1: face is gone. Who's his face? And I don't even
Speaker 1: know his name. That's how much I need to talk
Speaker 1: to him. So yeah, Harry's like, forget this other chick.
Speaker 1: And he spent his whole time talking to Polly at dinner,
Speaker 1: and two hours after meeting her, he took Polly on
Speaker 1: the Tunnel of Love ride and confessed his undying adoration,
Speaker 1: which I kind of think is funny, like a twenty
Speaker 1: two year old would be like, I'll take her on
Speaker 1: the Tunnel of Low And I wonder if Polly was like,
Speaker 1: oh that is so cute, Oh my gosh. And he
Speaker 1: kept pressing her to meet him alone, and only two
Speaker 1: weeks later, on July, she did. They had sex that night,
Speaker 1: and then two days later she went to New York
Speaker 1: with him and they spent the night together at the
Speaker 1: Belmont Hotel. When Polly described it later, she wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: for the first time in my life, I knew myself
Speaker 1: to be a person. Which that's some amazing sex I
Speaker 1: guess was Richard doing. But Elite Boston didn't feel like
Speaker 1: Harry felt. They were all about consequences, and to them,
Speaker 1: Polly had betrayed the trust that the public placed in
Speaker 1: her as a chaperone, and she corrupted a young man.
Speaker 1: They're too public affair soon became the scandal of the season,
Speaker 1: which made life pretty uncomfortable for Polly. In the fall,
Speaker 1: Richard came home finally, and she moved in with him
Speaker 1: to a three story tenement house. While Richard went to
Speaker 1: Harvard to finish his studies, Polly was pursued relentlessly by
Speaker 1: Harry kind of picked up a little puppy dog when
Speaker 1: we were alone. He sent her crates of flowers and
Speaker 1: boxes of toys for the children to her house in May.
Speaker 1: When she refused to see him, Harry threatened to commit
Speaker 1: suicide if Polly didn't marry him. My lord, the worst thing,
Speaker 1: the worst stop never ever do that. He pasted her
Speaker 1: to tell Richard all about their affair, and finally Polly
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, fine, hey Richard, here's what's
Speaker 1: going on. And Richard, without any prompting, was like, well,
Speaker 1: let's get a divorce. I mean, I guess neither of
Speaker 1: them were very happy, so he probably did was like, great,
Speaker 1: let me be a bachelor. You run off with this,
Speaker 1: what'd you say, twenty two year old? Whatever? Is have fun?
Speaker 1: You wanna have three kids? Are You're problem? But this
Speaker 1: divorce is pretty much unheard of at the time, and
Speaker 1: wealthy Boston could not believe that they would go through
Speaker 1: with something so scandalous. For months, Polly lived in New
Speaker 1: York City without seeing Harry to just kind of let
Speaker 1: the scandal died down, and finally, in February of nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty two, Polly and Richard's divorce was final. Now Richard
Speaker 1: ended up, he would go back into a sanitarium. He
Speaker 1: did finally get sober good and he remarried, and he
Speaker 1: started writing about alcoholism, and particularly was drawing attention to
Speaker 1: the effects of withdrawal, which was not very well understood
Speaker 1: at the time. Um he was the first person to
Speaker 1: assert that there was no cure for alcoholism. He said
Speaker 1: that alcoholics are either drinkers or teetotalers. They cannot drink
Speaker 1: in moderation. He was the first person to say that,
Speaker 1: and like throughout the nineteen twenties, he treated alcoholics on
Speaker 1: an individual basis from an office in Boston that he opened.
Speaker 1: He used techniques involving like rigid scheduling, and like trying
Speaker 1: to learn to manage your emotions with reason instead of drinking,
Speaker 1: and all of these therapies that he kind of developed
Speaker 1: himself in a way, probably through all his sanitarium treatments
Speaker 1: to but he kind of put yeah, he'd like put
Speaker 1: something together he that was working for him. So I
Speaker 1: think he was like, I'm just gonna share what's working
Speaker 1: for me. He allowed no religious or spiritual elements involved.
Speaker 1: He's like, I just want to you know, very very pragmatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: practical stuff. So addicts would come from all over the
Speaker 1: world for treatment, and even though he was not a
Speaker 1: medical doctor, they started calling him doctor Peabody. He published
Speaker 1: several articles. Finally, inty one he published his book called
Speaker 1: The Common Sense of Drinking, and it was read with
Speaker 1: serious interest by Bill Wilson, who was actually in the
Speaker 1: same Army training campus Richard, and he used that book
Speaker 1: as a guideline to start alcoholics Anonymous kidding yeah, and
Speaker 1: another Richard trained therapist opened the first free clinic dedicated
Speaker 1: to treating alcoholism at Yale in four So Richard, I mean,
Speaker 1: bad drinker, but he he took that on, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, And he really pioneered a lot of
Speaker 1: addiction treatment. I think that's cool. Sadly, Richard would relapse eventually,
Speaker 1: and he died of alcoholism in six That is too bad, um,
Speaker 1: Although interesting parallel Richard and Polly both recognizing a problem
Speaker 1: saying I'm going to do something about it, and then
Speaker 1: sharing it with other people once they find a solution.
Speaker 1: That is true. You can see what what maybe brought
Speaker 1: them together? What kind of sports of character together? Yeah. Meanwhile, Harry,
Speaker 1: who'd been working a bank job that his uncle got
Speaker 1: him for about eight months, went on a sixth day
Speaker 1: drinking spree and quit the job. I feel like the
Speaker 1: six day drinking spree would have made sure he didn't
Speaker 1: have the job anymore. But maybe he's like, no, my
Speaker 1: uncle's JP Morgan, I'd better quit. His family arranged another
Speaker 1: bank job for him in Paris, and so he really caated.
Speaker 1: In May, Polly followed him and they lived together in
Speaker 1: Paris for a couple of months, but in July Polly
Speaker 1: returned to New York City. She felt angry and betrayed
Speaker 1: because Harry had been messing around with someone else on
Speaker 1: the side, and this would not be the last time.
Speaker 1: But Harry did propose to Polly in September, and then
Speaker 1: he bribed his way aboard a steamship where she met
Speaker 1: him at the customs barrier and they went straight to
Speaker 1: city Hall to get married that same afternoon. Now, I
Speaker 1: gotta say, he's like in May saying, if you don't
Speaker 1: marry me, I'll kill myself. Yeah. Finally her divorce comes
Speaker 1: through and he doesn't propose to her for another like
Speaker 1: eight months. Yeah, right, and then also is like messing
Speaker 1: around with somebody else on the side. I know. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: what happened to all that? He's just a very dramatic person.
Speaker 1: He's like in bed, he's like actively banging another woman,
Speaker 1: and he looks over at Paul and he's like, Hey,
Speaker 1: if you don't marry me, I'm gonna kill myself. She's like,
Speaker 1: do you want to finish first and then we can
Speaker 1: talk about this. I don't want to watch this show
Speaker 1: you're doing for me. So two days after their wedding, Harry,
Speaker 1: Polly and Polly's two kids left for Paris and their
Speaker 1: new life together, and what ridiculous life it was. We'll
Speaker 1: find out more about their sex parties, their questionable lovers,
Speaker 1: and all their side pieces. Right after these words, welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show everyone. Polly and Harry established themselves
Speaker 1: in Paris with all the artists in Mont parnass and
Speaker 1: immediately started throwing off the yoke of their oppressive, blue
Speaker 1: blooded society that they had left behind. Weird Paris, baby,
Speaker 1: you take off that brazier singing around your head. One
Speaker 1: of the first things they did was lose Polly's kids.
Speaker 1: Harry had ordered them as much as he had Polly
Speaker 1: before the divorce, but now that he had to deal
Speaker 1: with them, he was totally uninterested, so they like shipped
Speaker 1: him off to boarding schools like as often as possible.
Speaker 1: Harry convinced her in to close up her shop. He
Speaker 1: did not like her being tied to some manufacturing business.
Speaker 1: He thought it was low um, so she sold her
Speaker 1: patents to the Warner Brothers Corset Company for fifteen hundred dollars,
Speaker 1: which is worth evaluating transferred twenty six thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: dollars today. It doesn't feel like a lot that much
Speaker 1: because Warner went on to make fifteen million dollars off
Speaker 1: the bra patent in the next thirty years, So yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like she could have probably gotten a bit
Speaker 1: more money for that. Yeah. Also, I didn't know Warner
Speaker 1: Brothers was in the bra game. I wish some of
Speaker 1: their characters could get that much support. I wish their
Speaker 1: animation studio on HBO Max could get that kind of support. True,
Speaker 1: I want there to be an article that's like Eli
Speaker 1: Banks drags podcast Boy, David Zaslav's a real bone corset.
Speaker 1: Isn't it rigid and uncomfortable? Yeah? I guess so? Unliked
Speaker 1: by many. America comes Alive dot Com does point out
Speaker 1: that there were similar bra concepts as Polly's out there
Speaker 1: when she invented her bra, because like, women all over
Speaker 1: the world had to wear these corsets, so women all
Speaker 1: over the world, we're trying to figure out how to
Speaker 1: get rid of them, find a new solution. So a
Speaker 1: frenchwoman named Erminid created a two part corset where the
Speaker 1: bra section was separate from the waiste section, and a
Speaker 1: lot of women would just wear the bra part. You
Speaker 1: just kind of leave off the center. But Polly was
Speaker 1: still the first to file a patent for her design
Speaker 1: in the US, and she would later write quote, I
Speaker 1: can't say the brazier will ever takes great a place
Speaker 1: in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it. Now.
Speaker 1: Harry worked this bank job that his uncle had gotten
Speaker 1: him in the place de la Concord, and Polly would
Speaker 1: row him down the river to work every morning, which
Speaker 1: I would move to Paris just to be able to
Speaker 1: take the river to work, saying, let me row myself
Speaker 1: to work. Talk about public transit, right, there's just a
Speaker 1: river you could swim to work. You could take a
Speaker 1: little boat. Although it kind of makes me think of
Speaker 1: Ozark when they be on their little Sometimes water is
Speaker 1: the best way to get around. Pretty. It worked for
Speaker 1: us for many thousands of years. It sure did. It
Speaker 1: still does. Harry would wear a formal suit and carry
Speaker 1: a briefcase on this little boat, while Polly wore a
Speaker 1: very revealing a red swimsuit. She liked to have those
Speaker 1: charms on disay. Oh, and she rode home alone and
Speaker 1: attracted all kinds of whistles and jeers from workmen who
Speaker 1: were appreciating the view. Now imagine a lot of people
Speaker 1: wouldn't appreciate such commentary today. But Polly did write in
Speaker 1: her autobiography that she thought the exercise was good for
Speaker 1: her breasts, and she enjoyed the attention. Fellas that's not
Speaker 1: an invitation or or a demonstration of how women are
Speaker 1: going to feel. If you came exactly we we you
Speaker 1: will soon learn, if you have not discovered already, that
Speaker 1: this is a unique woman here in many ways. It
Speaker 1: was less than a year before Harry quit his bank
Speaker 1: job to devote himself to poetry and life. He wanted
Speaker 1: to seize the day. Every day he wrote home, often
Speaker 1: for money, with excuses like quote to make up for
Speaker 1: certain past extravagances in New York or quote to enjoy
Speaker 1: life when you can, or in one of his last
Speaker 1: messages home, he wrote, quote in all caps, please sell
Speaker 1: ten tho dollars earth of stock. We have decided to
Speaker 1: lead a mad and extravagant life, to be a spoiled
Speaker 1: rich boy from Boston living it up and carress. If
Speaker 1: anybody knows anyone that I can write that letter to,
Speaker 1: who haven't email me? Do you? Because I wanna. His
Speaker 1: family would scold him for being so spend thrifty, but
Speaker 1: they always sent the money, so he never learned. A
Speaker 1: Part of the reason they never tried to live on
Speaker 1: a budget, Paully and Harry was because they pledged a
Speaker 1: suicide packed together in case you hadn't think they were
Speaker 1: crazy enough already. On October thirty one of nineteen forty two,
Speaker 1: the Earth would be the closest to the Sun in decades,
Speaker 1: and they decided that was the perfect time for them
Speaker 1: to jump out of an airplane together and then have
Speaker 1: their bodies scraped up off the cremated, and then have
Speaker 1: their ashes scattered from another airplane, like we just want
Speaker 1: to spend as much time in the sky as we can.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wish that they had included the scrape
Speaker 1: their bodies off the ground, because I feel like that
Speaker 1: that detail right there. I feel like there's been enough
Speaker 1: to say, you know what, let's not jump out of
Speaker 1: an air That is somebody's job. If they're right there,
Speaker 1: will somebody's got to go find them before they can
Speaker 1: get cremated. Unless they unless they jump out of an
Speaker 1: airplane straight into a furnace. You know, they would have
Speaker 1: to have incredible incredible it's like a point break thing
Speaker 1: with the two. I'm just like getting out. Maybe they
Speaker 1: got wingsuits and they'll just dive into the fire. What
Speaker 1: a what a choice. It seems like they decided to
Speaker 1: spend the twenty years left that they had in the
Speaker 1: most outrageous ways they could think of. So they quickly
Speaker 1: made friends with the art students who lived down the block.
Speaker 1: I mean the has invited them to one of their parties.
Speaker 1: They made quite a splash from jumping out of an airplane.
Speaker 1: No no, no, They both died their skin with red ochre.
Speaker 1: Harry wore a red loincloth and a necklace made of
Speaker 1: four dead pigeon, and he carried a bag of snakes.
Speaker 1: Oh that's just my like we asked for ice. But okay,
Speaker 1: is there a bag? Check here? Hold this for me.
Speaker 1: Polly meanwhile, wore a sheer chemise at her waist, a
Speaker 1: giant turquoise wig and nothing else. That's just like Marge
Speaker 1: Simpson porn I know, but red is steady yellow. But
Speaker 1: and some some sources that she wrote it on an
Speaker 1: elephant as well. Why not? Why not? And of course
Speaker 1: the kids loved her toplessness. Ten of them carried her
Speaker 1: around and their shoulders cheering, and she was probably like,
Speaker 1: bounced me up and down. Uh. They gambled. They bought
Speaker 1: and ran racehorses. They raced carriages through the Paris streets.
Speaker 1: They wore the most expensive clothes from the finest fashion houses.
Speaker 1: They even purchased an old mill outside of Paris that
Speaker 1: they called Les Moulon d s or the Mill of
Speaker 1: the Sun, and Harry went full emo. He wore all
Speaker 1: black suits, he painted his nails black, and he put
Speaker 1: a black silk flower in his button hole so he
Speaker 1: would be very at home at like a my chemical
Speaker 1: romance concert. Now, it wasn't long before Harry decided that
Speaker 1: Polly was too prim and proper of a name for
Speaker 1: his wife. We live this mad extravagant life. You need
Speaker 1: a mad extravagant name like Harry, like Harry seeah. He
Speaker 1: convinced her to change it to something else. He wanted
Speaker 1: it to be uh, something with a C and an
Speaker 1: R in it, so that it would have a literation.
Speaker 1: He wanted there to be common letter that they could
Speaker 1: cross their names at Crosby cross is what he wanted
Speaker 1: to call. So they briefly considered the name clitter Is
Speaker 1: before settling on the name caress I approved. They did.
Speaker 1: They think the name clitter iss uh people would be
Speaker 1: too sensitive about it. They thought it would really get
Speaker 1: on people's nerve And they were like, we could change
Speaker 1: your name to clitters, but then half of Paris couldn't
Speaker 1: find you and the other half might be rubbed the
Speaker 1: wrong way. So Caress Crosby became the name by which
Speaker 1: she was most well known, and they saved the name
Speaker 1: Clitters for their dog instead. I could never find that
Speaker 1: damn dog. Where is that damn dog? Paul He's like,
Speaker 1: I can always find it, right, It's not that hard
Speaker 1: right there in front of you. They told her daughter
Speaker 1: Pauline that the dog was named a Greek goddess. So
Speaker 1: I'm imagining this like underage girlfriend, like clitter is, where
Speaker 1: are you clitterest? Hello? Mr bourgeois, do you know where
Speaker 1: my clitter is? Oh? No, He's like, ah, out of here, yikes,
Speaker 1: whoa yikes. And then later Pauline must have learned the
Speaker 1: truth and been like, are you kidding me? Oh boy? Well,
Speaker 1: Caress and Harry also had an open marriage, one of
Speaker 1: the lesser shocking things they were doing at this time,
Speaker 1: But this was something that Caress was maybe not into
Speaker 1: right away. She was certainly surprised when she arrived in
Speaker 1: Paris only to discover that Harry was flirting with other women.
Speaker 1: I would be surprised too if a guy was like
Speaker 1: Pester and me for a year, saying he would kill
Speaker 1: himself if he couldn't have me, and you find them
Speaker 1: like here I am and he's like, actually, I'm busy
Speaker 1: with another person tonight. Get back to you late in
Speaker 1: a few months. Like what in Caress introduced Harry to
Speaker 1: her friend, and that brings us to this episode's first
Speaker 1: side piece. Okay, I guess Constance crowning Shield Coolidge was
Speaker 1: a firecracker, much like Caress, who loved gambling and anything risky.
Speaker 1: Constance and Harry met and started having an affair, and
Speaker 1: after a while Caress, even though she had introduced them,
Speaker 1: she could not handle this. She went to London by
Speaker 1: herself just to get away from these two, probably grossing
Speaker 1: her out all the time. Now, Harry told Caress that
Speaker 1: there was no way he could quote love her more
Speaker 1: than anyone in the world. This is absolutely impossible, Babe.
Speaker 1: I got so much love. I can't just give it
Speaker 1: all to you. This's just too much. Wouldn't be fair,
Speaker 1: It would be faired all the other ladies out there.
Speaker 1: I got so much, Harri's got so much to give,
Speaker 1: cares But that does suggest to me that that's what
Speaker 1: she wanted. She clearly asked him to love her more
Speaker 1: than anyone else. Yeah, why did he feel the name
Speaker 1: to need to say that? Right? So that's what makes
Speaker 1: me think. She was like, oh, is that what you want?
Speaker 1: Kind of like ended up being like, all right, I
Speaker 1: guess I can get into that eventually. But at first
Speaker 1: she was kind of like, oh, we can have an
Speaker 1: open marriage, but I'm number one, right, you love me
Speaker 1: more than anyone else. And he's like, he's like, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, we're married, but so far, I
Speaker 1: don't like, I don't like to put titles on things.
Speaker 1: You know, rank people, you bitch. She's like, I don't
Speaker 1: care how you rank the rest. You put me at
Speaker 1: the top. That's all I care about. So eventually Caress
Speaker 1: wrote to her friend Constance and said, you know, you're
Speaker 1: affair with Harry is kind of making me a miserable. Constance,
Speaker 1: she's a good friend. She immediately broke it off with Harry,
Speaker 1: and the three of them remained close friends for life,
Speaker 1: But this was far from the last time that Harry
Speaker 1: would step out on Caress. Outwardly, Caress kind of appeared
Speaker 1: fine with it, and she had lovers of her own
Speaker 1: as well, but in her private papers, she worried all
Speaker 1: the time about Harry's loyalty, and Harry kind of had
Speaker 1: a bit of a double standard. He insisted on absolute
Speaker 1: freedom for himself, but at the same time he would
Speaker 1: get jealous and yell at Caress about her own lovers
Speaker 1: my least favorite thing. Yeah, don't do that. That's the worst.
Speaker 1: So you want to here him. You don't want an
Speaker 1: open marriage, you know, like just be real, right, And
Speaker 1: I would say Caress also not really being real here either,
Speaker 1: if she is saying outwardly that she's fine with it
Speaker 1: and then writing in her journals like I'm nervous he's
Speaker 1: gonna leave me. Well, I I like what you said that.
Speaker 1: Maybe she was like, you know, the institution of marriage
Speaker 1: is dumb, and we should be able to be, you know,
Speaker 1: free with other people and all of that. Like she
Speaker 1: might have had all that, but then she was like,
Speaker 1: but he won't say I'm the one, you know that.
Speaker 1: I'm like letting him do whatever he wants with his body,
Speaker 1: but his heart is mine. That's what she really cares about.
Speaker 1: Maybe demands conversation and agreements and honesty, you know, like
Speaker 1: that's what it needs. Caressed once wrote about Harry quote
Speaker 1: he seemed to be more expression and mood than man.
Speaker 1: Yet he was the most vivid personality I've ever known,
Speaker 1: electric with rebellion. To know Harry was a devastating experience. Ah,
Speaker 1: there's I feel like you come across those people in
Speaker 1: history where they're just like, they're so you can't you
Speaker 1: want to spend all your time with them, and you're
Speaker 1: miserable for it. Magnetic yes, selfish, Yes, that's what I
Speaker 1: think the two words I would pick to describe Harry.
Speaker 1: If you let me have a third, i'd say melodramatic.
Speaker 1: I think I think those are the two that people
Speaker 1: were like, Oh God, this guy is cool, Like he
Speaker 1: really does draw people like flies. Who's very charming. I
Speaker 1: made tons of friends. I mean, women loved him. He
Speaker 1: was forever having affairs and running out seducing all these ladies.
Speaker 1: But it was like, oh, people just wanted to strangle you.
Speaker 1: Just got to relax, Harry, or just that like, and
Speaker 1: yet because I'm so magnetized to you, it's making me miserable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know there's people like that too, where you're just
Speaker 1: like the fact that I cannot get enough of you,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why because you're so frustrating. But
Speaker 1: there's just something about you that I just need more
Speaker 1: of all the time, even though it is poison. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But for the most part they're open. Marriage seemed to
Speaker 1: be pretty fun and sexy time galore for both of them.
Speaker 1: They would host like small dinner parties from their giant bed,
Speaker 1: and then afterward everyone would jump into their big, huge,
Speaker 1: sunken bathtub together and refresh themselves with bottles of ice champagne.
Speaker 1: Drunken orgies were fairly common at the Mill of the Sun.
Speaker 1: One year, Harry let loose ten snakes onto the dance floor,
Speaker 1: I mean for real. He later described the night in
Speaker 1: his diary quote, I remember two strong young men, stark naked,
Speaker 1: wrestling on the floor for the honor of dancing with
Speaker 1: a young girl. And I remember a mad student drinking
Speaker 1: champagne out of a skull which he had pilford from
Speaker 1: my library, as I had pilfred it a year ago
Speaker 1: from the catacombs. And in a corner I watched two
Speaker 1: savages making love, and beside me sitting on the floor,
Speaker 1: a plump woman with bare breasts absorbed in the passion
Speaker 1: of giving milk to one of the snakes. Wait a second,
Speaker 1: there was a part of me that. It was even like,
Speaker 1: I don't think you'd ever find me doing this, But
Speaker 1: two naked dudes wrestling for the honor of dancing with
Speaker 1: a woman. That's kind of cool. I'm at a cool
Speaker 1: I'm at a cool party right now. That student drinking
Speaker 1: champagne out of a dirty old skull from the catacombs,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you do you, dude, I am at a
Speaker 1: crazy party right now. I'm sorry. This lady with a
Speaker 1: snake on her boob? Am I in antony and cleopatcher
Speaker 1: right now? Why why was she doing that? So many
Speaker 1: questions hallucinogens. I'm astanding it was definitely a drug related.
Speaker 1: At the mill, they added a race course. They would
Speaker 1: play drunken donkey polo on it. Okay, this party is
Speaker 1: cool again. Again cool. A solid brass marine cannon would
Speaker 1: be rolled out and fired to announce special guests. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm planning our my birthday party for next month. This
Speaker 1: is happening. Incredible the cannon at least right I was
Speaker 1: thinking about our dinner party question from that listener mail episode,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I don't know. I'm wrestling with
Speaker 1: whether or not I would I would invite to a
Speaker 1: party sin Harry, because first of all, I can never
Speaker 1: throw a part into they would find anything but boring.
Speaker 1: And b if they were in charge of the party,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I could hang. Let me be afraid
Speaker 1: of some of the should they do. I'm going, I'm
Speaker 1: going to this party. I can handle myself. I will
Speaker 1: simply leave and near the stairway at the middle of
Speaker 1: the sun, they left a box of watercolors next to
Speaker 1: a whitewashed wall and they called it their guest book.
Speaker 1: My God. Tons of famous people signed this wall, um,
Speaker 1: including d H. Lawrence who drew a phoenix. Uh Salvador
Speaker 1: Dolly signed his name Douglas Fairbanks, the future King George
Speaker 1: the six which is like oh, King George plans On
Speaker 1: drunken Donkey, Polo had the Mill, Okay, King George, many
Speaker 1: many more names. And I love that idea too, having
Speaker 1: a wall that people just draw on like graffiti. I
Speaker 1: love it. I mean, they knew so many cool people
Speaker 1: that like priceless wall. Really, if you could cut it
Speaker 1: out into get somewhere now. When Paris or the Mill
Speaker 1: got boring, somehow, they would travel far and wide. They
Speaker 1: visited Lebanon, Africa and the running of the bulls in Pamplona.
Speaker 1: They first smoked opium in North Africa in n and
Speaker 1: that became a favorite pastime of theirs. One of the
Speaker 1: most exclusive opium dens in Paris was called Drosso's, and
Speaker 1: once they got an invitation they became regulars. Harry would
Speaker 1: sometimes spend days at a time there. Harry also loved
Speaker 1: cocaine and hashish, so really hitting both ends of the
Speaker 1: energy spectrum with his drugs. Like, I hope he didn't
Speaker 1: like smoke opium and then be like, let's do some
Speaker 1: cocaine just like literally can't wake back up again, or
Speaker 1: maybe it balances. I don't know, I feel sober as
Speaker 1: a god right now. Well, occasionally they would drive out
Speaker 1: to the country with two other couples, pull their cars
Speaker 1: into a circle with the headlights on, and then all
Speaker 1: swap partners, wing in super fun winging Crosby's. Well, before
Speaker 1: you get too excited, they also did some more objectionable things,
Speaker 1: as Peter Lyle in the Telegraph rights quote in their
Speaker 1: war on the repressive cruelty of social convention and the
Speaker 1: deadening impact of puritanical morals. The Crosby's could be very
Speaker 1: cruel themselves in Morocco, Harry and Caress took a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old dancing girl named Zora to bed with them.
Speaker 1: Harry's one known homosexual experience, another holiday dalliance with a
Speaker 1: boy of unspecified youth, left him in intense, if predictably
Speaker 1: short lived raptures. At another time, Harry slept with a
Speaker 1: fourteen year old girl he called Newbile with quote a
Speaker 1: baby face and large breasts. Yeah. Peter Lyle also writes
Speaker 1: that their friends quote held rape parties and paid to
Speaker 1: see female circumcisions to add to their stores of scandalous anecdotes.
Speaker 1: So gross, that's very uncool, extremely gross. These parties stuck
Speaker 1: again the like the youth is disgusting. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: also the idea that you're like, wouldn't it be cool
Speaker 1: if I knew about the worst ship in the world
Speaker 1: and soft, insane pain in front of me and misery?
Speaker 1: How cool would that be over a dinner party to
Speaker 1: talk about, like, who do you? What kind of cool
Speaker 1: do you think you are? That's so crazy to me
Speaker 1: that that that was seen as like a cool thing
Speaker 1: to do too. I mean, it's it's the same thing
Speaker 1: whenever you get into talking about hedonism and libertine activities
Speaker 1: stuff like that. It's all consent. I mean that is
Speaker 1: like should be the foundational line you draw. We can
Speaker 1: do all kinds of crazy shit, but we cannot involve
Speaker 1: people who are too young to consent. We cannot involve
Speaker 1: people who are not consenting, and we cannot you know,
Speaker 1: mutilate people. I'm gonna assume against their will. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think many women want to be circumcised. Um,
Speaker 1: the rape parties, I'm assuming that they were the ones
Speaker 1: doing the raping home, and I would assume that the
Speaker 1: person doesn't know that's what their party is, or if
Speaker 1: they are like hiring prostitutes that were acting out of fantasy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's hard to say, because there is consensual non consent.
Speaker 1: You know, that could have been a thing. Um, but
Speaker 1: it's given that they've already crossed these lines. I don't Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, so they Yeah, you know, crossing
Speaker 1: lines is cool until it's not. Is the lesson in
Speaker 1: this paragraph. Because we had a real fun time at
Speaker 1: the party. It was like, oh my god, I hope
Speaker 1: no one saw me here. I don't want to sign
Speaker 1: your fucking guess. I'm running for senator later. These pictures
Speaker 1: are definitely going to pop up. But it wasn't all sex, money,
Speaker 1: clothes and cars with them. After all, Harry was a poet,
Speaker 1: so they also spent a lot of money publishing their poetry,
Speaker 1: and they had a really important small press in Paris,
Speaker 1: and we will find out a lot more about that
Speaker 1: right after these words Welcome back everyone. So two of
Speaker 1: their first three books that Harry and Caress published were
Speaker 1: Caress's poetry collection Crosses of Gold and Harry's Sonnets for Caress. Now, money,
Speaker 1: of course, is no object, so they used only the
Speaker 1: finest paper and ink um. The type setting was flawless,
Speaker 1: they made sure there's no errors, and they had beautiful illustrations.
Speaker 1: Antiquarian books expert and actor Neil Pearson says quote, they
Speaker 1: were publishing books of love poems to each other. Of
Speaker 1: course they wanted them to be beautiful. But unfortunately we
Speaker 1: couldn't find any of Caress's poems online, but we did
Speaker 1: find a short one of Harry's. So let's go down
Speaker 1: to Poetry Corner to hear Harry Crosby's unanswered why should
Speaker 1: I be subservient to fate? Sepu The shows before a
Speaker 1: giant world, Poor little ship with little sail, unfurled to
Speaker 1: catch the sun breeze at the harbor gate. Why should
Speaker 1: I be a coal within a grate of never ending love?
Speaker 1: Why intercurled with some strange mermaid whom the tempests hurled
Speaker 1: far up the shore that mortals desecrate? Why all these
Speaker 1: wise and whereforees of the mind that strike like arrows
Speaker 1: on a marble floor, beyond whose frigidness read lions roar
Speaker 1: to guard this on? I gave my youth defined? And
Speaker 1: why should drowning in the blackest sea be better than
Speaker 1: to worship at her knee? It's no whitman, Yeah, just no,
Speaker 1: it's okay. Question, Just I don't know why now is
Speaker 1: when I'm wondering this, there's still just coasting off Uncle
Speaker 1: JP's money at this point. Yes, he apparently got like
Speaker 1: what would be equivalent today to about a hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty thousand dollars a year allowance. Wow, he did a
Speaker 1: lot with that. Well, that's he constantly overdraw his account,
Speaker 1: and that's why he called back and be like, give
Speaker 1: me more of my It was his inheritance that he
Speaker 1: was like, just let me because he really felt like
Speaker 1: again he's like I'm planning to kill myself, so I'm
Speaker 1: never going to inherit anything. So yeah, not, you know,
Speaker 1: the poetry is fine, it's nothing. I'm no analyst, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't. Yeah, it doesn't do much for me. Um
Speaker 1: And Caress also was like she called her own writing
Speaker 1: pretty pedestrians. She said, I was still rhyming love with
Speaker 1: Dove example, Like She's like, I'm just just you know,
Speaker 1: mechanical of a poet or so. Yeah. It's not like
Speaker 1: either of these writers as writers, they were not like
Speaker 1: culturally significant. There's a reason you don't hear their poachers
Speaker 1: and they're not classic. Um. But their their first few
Speaker 1: books were pretty well received. People liked them. I guess
Speaker 1: their audience score was pretty good. This is all I
Speaker 1: was looking for to think that hard. But their real
Speaker 1: service to the arts was that they decided to expand
Speaker 1: their press to serve other authors. Now, Harry had become
Speaker 1: obsessed with the sun, which was to him a symbol
Speaker 1: of perfection, enthusiasm, freedom, hate, and destruction, and he even
Speaker 1: had tattoos on the souls of his his feet. He
Speaker 1: had a Christian cross on one foot and a Pagan
Speaker 1: Son's symbol on the other. Which in my mind just
Speaker 1: looks like the sun from the Sublime at everybody in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties got tattooed. All I'm saying. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that's not what it was, but that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And his favorite color was black, so they named their
Speaker 1: business Black Sun Press. As extravagant as ever, they kept
Speaker 1: up with their quality papers and inks, their painstaking type setting.
Speaker 1: They published beautiful limited editions like three hundred copies of
Speaker 1: The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar All
Speaker 1: and Co. With illustrations by the German painter Alistairs. Amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean some of these books I would give a
Speaker 1: lot of money just to look at um, just from
Speaker 1: the descriptions. They also published avant garde writers long before
Speaker 1: they were well known, like James Joyce's Tales Told of
Speaker 1: Shem and Sean, which would later be incorporated into Finnigan's
Speaker 1: Wake Um, or Ca Boyle's first book length work, Short Stories.
Speaker 1: Other names include Ernest Hemingway, who Harry once said quote
Speaker 1: could drink us under the table. Well I know which
Speaker 1: I'm like, Well everyone knows that about Hemingway, but these
Speaker 1: two were parties, so he was probably very surprised to
Speaker 1: learn that anyone could do that. D. H. Lawrence is
Speaker 1: another person that they published, and Harry actually paid him
Speaker 1: in gold coins because he thought he'd like it, and
Speaker 1: he did. Ezra Pound was another one among many others.
Speaker 1: Just tons, tons of names. And these books are just
Speaker 1: so lovely that they're kind of like Picasso's for book collectors.
Speaker 1: They're so rare, there's such limited quantities. I did it
Speaker 1: just a quick Google search to see, like, if I
Speaker 1: wanted to buy one today, what would it be? And
Speaker 1: I found a rare copy of their version of Alice
Speaker 1: in Wonderland I Know, with illustrations by avant garde artist
Speaker 1: Marie Lawrenson, for sale for four thousand dollars. God, damn it.
Speaker 1: That's just above my birthday budget. Damn it just above
Speaker 1: my birthday budget. I said, four thousand dollars. But no,
Speaker 1: you said my birthday budget. Did I set your birthday budget? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you said my gift I could ask for it could
Speaker 1: be no more than we could stretch to four? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: I think I said thirty five dollars. I feel like
Speaker 1: you're really odd. Zero You're gonna get zero presents? Fine,
Speaker 1: I'll draw one myself. Yes, please, please, draw your version
Speaker 1: of Alice. I love Alice Winn and I probably could
Speaker 1: now Black Sun Pressed would evolve into one of the
Speaker 1: most important small presses in Paris at the time, and
Speaker 1: according to an article by Francis Booth on Literary Ladies
Speaker 1: Guy dot com, they also quote bullied, blackmails and kidnapped
Speaker 1: heart Crane into finishing his monumental poem Sequence The Bridge, which,
Speaker 1: along with Alan Ginsberg's Howell William Carlos WILLIAMS Patterson, is
Speaker 1: one of the great pillars of American twentieth century epic poetry.
Speaker 1: Caress actually locked him into his room to make him
Speaker 1: finish writing once, which reminds me of William Colette, if
Speaker 1: you recall Willie one Colette in her room, or that
Speaker 1: was the story they told, right, I mean, it reminds
Speaker 1: me of rumpel Stiltskin. Enough, you better turn the straw
Speaker 1: into go. Mr Crane, goddamn poh, Mr Crane. Wow, jeez?
Speaker 1: Is that? I mean? Like, what do you say to
Speaker 1: something like that and you get one of the great
Speaker 1: works of art in the world born of torture? I know,
Speaker 1: but there's something I kind of love about this that again,
Speaker 1: like this this um rich people helping artists be artists
Speaker 1: because they're like, what they're doing is providing a place
Speaker 1: for them to be without having to spend any money
Speaker 1: and just make stuff, and that is such an important
Speaker 1: part of an artist process. You just need time and space.
Speaker 1: So that's what they provided. I mean, I I will say,
Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to a wealthy person grabbing me off
Speaker 1: the street, throw me in a van, taking me to
Speaker 1: some posh castle in Paris and saying you're not coming
Speaker 1: out of here until you finish your screenplay. All right,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll finally get it. Don have good food and
Speaker 1: sex parties and drunken donkey polo whenever you want, but
Speaker 1: you have to finish that screenplay. Yeah, but you know what,
Speaker 1: I could use some drunken donkey polo to kind of
Speaker 1: get the juices flowing a little bit my creativity. I
Speaker 1: feel like it would inspire something. It would change my screenplay,
Speaker 1: that's for sure, because that is currently not in there.
Speaker 1: But I could add it. I could make it work.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about it. Another artist that they helped develop
Speaker 1: pun Intended was the photographer en Ricartier Bresson, who would
Speaker 1: later be recognized as a master of candid photography and
Speaker 1: the pioneer of street photography. So humans of New York
Speaker 1: take note exactly. Um. This guy was schooled in the arts,
Speaker 1: and he was fascinated by the Surrealists, but he didn't
Speaker 1: really care for his own paintings, and in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen nine, his air squadron commander had placed him
Speaker 1: under house arrest for hunting without a license. He met
Speaker 1: Harry Crosby by chance one day, and they bonded over
Speaker 1: their shared interest in flying planes and photography. Now, photography
Speaker 1: was still a pretty new technology in nine, and weirdly,
Speaker 1: a lot of people back then thought that this wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna last, or that maybe it was nice for portraits
Speaker 1: and group shots, but it had no artistic merit. TikTok
Speaker 1: is great for little dances, but you can't do anything
Speaker 1: good with it, said the olds. Not me, come hip,
Speaker 1: I see the value. Um. But Harry, like me, was
Speaker 1: not one of these people. He saw the value. He
Speaker 1: thought this was going to be the next big thing
Speaker 1: in artistic expression. He and Caress even print had some
Speaker 1: of their books with photographs instead of illustrations. So Harry
Speaker 1: persuaded Henri's commander to place Henri into Harry's custody and
Speaker 1: he took into the Moulan de Sole, where they spent
Speaker 1: the next few months taking and developing pictures together. Harry
Speaker 1: even presented Henri with his first camera, and he presented
Speaker 1: him to his wife, Caress, who Henri was very taken
Speaker 1: with when he discovered that the couple had an open marriage.
Speaker 1: Whoo boy, he was on that like uh photography, punt
Speaker 1: like a like a like the mercury that sticks to
Speaker 1: the paper develops the photo finger on a shutter like
Speaker 1: a flash on a like. He was on that like
Speaker 1: a portrait on a tin plate and Caress, look we're taking.
Speaker 1: He and Caress began an intense, long term affair, and
Speaker 1: that was good for Chris because Harry had a very
Speaker 1: intense thing of his own going on at the time
Speaker 1: as well. And that brings us to our next side piece.
Speaker 1: Got an idea. Josephine Noise Rach was a rich, blue
Speaker 1: blooded Bostonian. He was about to marry Albert bigelow In
Speaker 1: and she had traveled to Europe to buy the most
Speaker 1: beautiful clothes she could find for her wedding trousseau. Now right,
Speaker 1: Boston thought of her as fast and a bad egg.
Speaker 1: So I guess she was already kind of bold and
Speaker 1: flirty and stuff. So they were like, oh, this one
Speaker 1: might get in trouble. And she went on to prove
Speaker 1: it after she met Harry by chance when she was
Speaker 1: out shopping. He guess he grabbed her fancy right away,
Speaker 1: because they've he probably grabbed her something right away. She
Speaker 1: must have liked it, because they meant to have sex
Speaker 1: as often as possible during her eight day visit. How
Speaker 1: often is as often as possible in eight days? Might
Speaker 1: one say? I wondered that too, because I was like,
Speaker 1: surely she's she's got things to do, she's that family
Speaker 1: with her something watching her. How often could it possibly occur? Well?
Speaker 1: How often can Harry? You know, Harry'll make time. Harry's like,
Speaker 1: what I got to do? No, it's not the time
Speaker 1: I'm worried about for Harry. I'm like, how many times
Speaker 1: in a day can you do it? Pal? He had cocaine,
Speaker 1: and that's cocaine. He's like, don't worry about old Harry,
Speaker 1: all right. The biographer Jeffrey Wolfe wrote, quote, Josephine was
Speaker 1: strong willed and selfish, and she did not agonize much,
Speaker 1: and deciding to become Harry's lover. Harry wrote to his
Speaker 1: mother about this. He was apparently pretty used to confiding
Speaker 1: in her just like whatever he was doing, and so
Speaker 1: I'm like, good for Henrietta, I guess. But some of
Speaker 1: his letters must have been really hard for her to read,
Speaker 1: including this one where he told her quote, I am
Speaker 1: having an affair with a girl I met, not introduced
Speaker 1: at the leado. She is twenty and has charm and
Speaker 1: it's called Josephine. I like girls when they are very young,
Speaker 1: before they have any minds. What oh lord. His mom
Speaker 1: should have been like, first boat over there, I'm coming in,
Speaker 1: don't you dare? I raised you better? I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't know nanny raised you. And it was terrible. She
Speaker 1: probably told him, you know Mary as seventeen year old
Speaker 1: or some girl mind. Funny thing. Also for for a
Speaker 1: guy to say, who rapidly pursued a woman six years
Speaker 1: old him too, So what a world this guy sucks?
Speaker 1: I think he sucks to. I think I don't like Harry.
Speaker 1: No you can't. I mean you can't like him. He's
Speaker 1: having sex with underage people. He thinks women are dumb
Speaker 1: when they're young, and that's why he pursues them like
Speaker 1: open marriage, but he wants to yell at his wife
Speaker 1: for doing it, like he's just got a lot of
Speaker 1: things up right. I would just oh, I would have
Speaker 1: a real hard time with this guy. Harry called Joe
Speaker 1: Stephine quote the youngest Princess of the Sun and also
Speaker 1: the fire princess. Now. Their affair ended in June. After
Speaker 1: she went back to the US, she married Albert Bigelow. Done, done, done, Washington, Harry.
Speaker 1: It was a nice eight day sex soaked romp. That's
Speaker 1: the way to say it. Done now. Nope, just kidding.
Speaker 1: It started right back up again in August, so only
Speaker 1: a couple of months later. Once Albert Bigelow was at
Speaker 1: Harvard as a graduate architecture student, Josephine, I guess, was like,
Speaker 1: let me fill up his class hours with something else,
Speaker 1: And according to Linda Himalian's book, unlike Caress, Josephine was
Speaker 1: extremely jealous and she wanted to fight all the time,
Speaker 1: and she would constantly send Harry quote half coherent cables
Speaker 1: and letters like what am I going to see you next?
Speaker 1: Where you meeting up next? I want to see you
Speaker 1: right away? How dare you keep away? From me so
Speaker 1: long do you not love me? Like? Just always in
Speaker 1: his face now. On November, the Crosby's traveled back to
Speaker 1: the US to visit their families, and Harry and Josephine
Speaker 1: met up and they went off to Detroit together. Harry
Speaker 1: and Josephine checked into an expensive hotel as Mr and
Speaker 1: Mrs Harry Crane, and He's like, I need a last name.
Speaker 1: Who's that guy got locked up in my attic? Right
Speaker 1: in the poem Crane? That's it, That's it. And for
Speaker 1: the next four days they just smoked opium and had sex.
Speaker 1: They ate all their meals in bed, and on December seven,
Speaker 1: Harry and Josephine went back to New York. Josephine planned
Speaker 1: to get home to Boston and Albert Bigelow, but Harry
Speaker 1: had a party to go to. Black Sun Press was
Speaker 1: about to publish Hart Crane's poem The Bridge and Heart
Speaker 1: was throwing a big party to celebrate. Harry partied with E. Cummings,
Speaker 1: William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, and many others at that party,
Speaker 1: which lasted until dawn, probably a lot of big words
Speaker 1: being thrown around, and of course Cummings he starts talking
Speaker 1: and you just can't stop because there's no punctuation, especially
Speaker 1: on cocaine. I bet Commings on cocaine. I can't say
Speaker 1: that he definitely did cocaine, but I have a comma, sir.
Speaker 1: I gotta take a breath. A little E Cummings humor
Speaker 1: and therefore a p lit friends um now, according to
Speaker 1: Francis Booth on Literary Ladies Guy dot com, the next night,
Speaker 1: on December eighth, after this party, Harry very suddenly told
Speaker 1: Caress that he wanted to move up the date of
Speaker 1: their suicide pact. Remember that, I know right what She's like, what?
Speaker 1: We just have a great party. What is wrong with you?
Speaker 1: He wanted them both to jump out of their hotel
Speaker 1: room window the very next day and to achieve what
Speaker 1: he called a son death. Caress was like, no, I'm good.
Speaker 1: I kind of thought we were joking about that whole
Speaker 1: suicide pacting like that was just an excuse for us
Speaker 1: to have some wacky, crazy fun. Maybe I'm still down
Speaker 1: to wait till whatever it is some time left. You're
Speaker 1: drunk anyway, Harry, why didn't she go sleep? This crazy
Speaker 1: notion off right? And maybe maybe she was like he
Speaker 1: just got a weird ide because this was, you know,
Speaker 1: only a few weeks after the giant stock market crash
Speaker 1: of his uncle's busy trying to save the economy and stuff,
Speaker 1: so windows exactly. He might have just been like, this
Speaker 1: is the time, you know, I can see him getting
Speaker 1: real like worked up about a bunch of mass suicide events. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you know he did a bunch of cocaine
Speaker 1: and smoked a ton of opium at the same time.
Speaker 1: He's having all kinds of crazy ideas. You know, what's
Speaker 1: a great idea? Some death was that? But then on
Speaker 1: December ninth, a poem arrived for Harry from Josephine. She
Speaker 1: had not left for Boston at all. She was still
Speaker 1: in New York, staying with one of her bridesmaid The
Speaker 1: poem was thirty six lines long, and it en did
Speaker 1: with the line quote death is our marriage. That same day,
Speaker 1: Harry wrote his final journal entrigue quote one is not
Speaker 1: in love unless one desires to die with one's beloved.
Speaker 1: There is only one happiness. It is to love and
Speaker 1: to be loved. The next day, Caress met up with
Speaker 1: Harry's mother, Henrietta, and heart Crane to have dinner before
Speaker 1: heading out to see a Broadway play, but Harry didn't
Speaker 1: show up. That wasn't really like him, but Caress wasn't
Speaker 1: too concerned. She just called a friend named Stanley Mortimer,
Speaker 1: and she asked him to check his studio at the
Speaker 1: Hotel des Artistes because she knew that Harry used it
Speaker 1: a lot as a rendezvous for his various love affairs
Speaker 1: and stuff. So she's like, he's probably lost track of
Speaker 1: the time his with some chick. Will you go get
Speaker 1: his ass and tell him to get to Broadway for
Speaker 1: this play. So Stanley went, but the door was locked
Speaker 1: and no answer to repeated knocking, so he ended up
Speaker 1: getting some help to break open the door, only to
Speaker 1: find Harry and Josephine laying together in bed, fully dressed
Speaker 1: but barefoot, locked in an affectionate embrace, with two matching
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds through their temples. Harry was still holding the
Speaker 1: pistol in his hand, and his wedding ring, which he
Speaker 1: had promised Caress would never leave his left hand, was
Speaker 1: found crushed into the carpet. This, of course, made for
Speaker 1: some pretty incredible headlines in the newspapers, because you got
Speaker 1: two rich, married adulterers dying in an apparent murder suicide,
Speaker 1: which is already enough to make a newsman d rule.
Speaker 1: But in addition they got too breathlessly report on all
Speaker 1: the unusual details, including Harry's red painted toenails, his foot tattoos,
Speaker 1: and the lack of the suicide. Note that that made
Speaker 1: speculation pretty rampant, because was this a double suicide? Uh? Maybe,
Speaker 1: But the corner reported that Josephine died two hours earlier
Speaker 1: than Harry, So had she shot herself and then maybe
Speaker 1: he had doubts afterwards? Or had Harry shot Josephine. Peter
Speaker 1: Lyle in the Telegraph rites quote London's Daily Mirror speculated
Speaker 1: on psychological motives, while New York's Daily News blamed poetry
Speaker 1: and passion. Death itself had been the motive. Others speculated
Speaker 1: just as aspiring poet Harry's life had been his greatest artwork.
Speaker 1: Harry called cigarettes coffin nails and knew very well that
Speaker 1: the drugs he was using held dangers. While the couple's
Speaker 1: caretaker at their holiday home was also the village grave digger.
Speaker 1: Harry had erect to stone inscribed caress and Harry in
Speaker 1: the grounds, so the guy was like obsessed with death yea,
Speaker 1: And people were like, maybe that was enough, and he
Speaker 1: had been talking about committing suicide the night before Josephine's
Speaker 1: like death is our marriage. It sounds like he was
Speaker 1: really on one and they who were both on they
Speaker 1: were both on one and and probably a lot of
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol. Definitely, they had definitely smoked opium and
Speaker 1: they had drank a bottle of whiskey as well, so
Speaker 1: that's those were both found in the hotel room as well.
Speaker 1: So they definitely were not sober and they made that decision.
Speaker 1: But Josephine's family, including her husband Albert, thought that Harry
Speaker 1: had tried to seduce her and then murdered her when
Speaker 1: he couldn't have her. But this, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: sounds like wishful thinking. Yeah, Albert had said that they
Speaker 1: were totally devoted to each other and he had never married,
Speaker 1: He had never met Harry. Um, But I mean if
Speaker 1: they had been, it was almost a year that they
Speaker 1: had an affair going on, and she send him all
Speaker 1: these telegrams and ships, So I feel like he just
Speaker 1: wished that was true, but just oblivious or totally oblivious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was good at keeping a secret. I guess I
Speaker 1: don't know, but well, Albert Bigelow went on to design
Speaker 1: buildings for the nineteen World's Fair, and along with his
Speaker 1: second wife Sylvia, he became a Quaker and one of
Speaker 1: them prominent protesters against nuclear weapons. He was also a
Speaker 1: freedom writer early in the civil rights movement. Once he
Speaker 1: was beaten with chains, and another time the bus he
Speaker 1: was riding on was bombed in Alabama. He died in
Speaker 1: pretty amazing life to lead after all this, being disappointed
Speaker 1: in love so young, well man, Josephine sounded like a
Speaker 1: real handful. Okay, Sylvia sounds like a better match for
Speaker 1: Robert bigel Now, Kress, I mean, had to be devastating
Speaker 1: because first of all, she was always worried about Harry
Speaker 1: not loving her enough. Then she finds out that he's like,
Speaker 1: I want to die with the person I love and
Speaker 1: dies with someone else after they already had a suicide pact,
Speaker 1: going and find her ring in the carpet, like just
Speaker 1: so many ways of being horrible to her, in my opinion, terrible.
Speaker 1: The first thing she did was get her children to her.
Speaker 1: So she got her son and her daughter brought them
Speaker 1: to her and they both went. They all went to
Speaker 1: the mill together and she just lived there for a
Speaker 1: few months alone. But listen, she was far from done
Speaker 1: with her extraordinary life. Um. She didn't die until nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: She hasn't many years left to contribute to the arts. Um.
Speaker 1: She continued to publish important authors and artists in paperback,
Speaker 1: like Enrimatiss, Pablo Picasso, Dorothy Parker, and Nias Ninn, so
Speaker 1: on and so forth. She actually was even about to
Speaker 1: publish a paperback translation of Love Vagabond by Collette when
Speaker 1: her company ended up closing because she could not convince
Speaker 1: booksellers that paperbacks would ever be popular. God, she was
Speaker 1: so smart, and they just would not believe. Why wouldn't
Speaker 1: anyone want their booked away? Four? Like, what do you
Speaker 1: mean no one would want a paperback? I think they
Speaker 1: were likely probably associated with like dime novels or so
Speaker 1: they were like, no one will read a real book
Speaker 1: that's in paperback or whatever. But I did wonder. I
Speaker 1: thought they must have had so many similar social circles
Speaker 1: as co lead that I'm surprised their names never came
Speaker 1: up in each other's story, right, So I'm glad there
Speaker 1: was some kind of connection. She also had a decade
Speaker 1: long affair with a black boxer named Canada Lee that
Speaker 1: started in nineteen thirty four, even though, of course there
Speaker 1: are many laws at the time against interracial sex or marriage,
Speaker 1: so she would meet him in secret for lunch in Harlem,
Speaker 1: and when her brother said that he had a problem
Speaker 1: with it, she refused to speak to him for ten years.
Speaker 1: And Canada Lee was actually the only one of her
Speaker 1: lovers who never asked her for money. Even when his
Speaker 1: nightclub was going under, he wouldn't let her rescue it.
Speaker 1: She also married a guy eighteen years younger than her
Speaker 1: who did nothing but run up her bills, go on
Speaker 1: years long solo trips by himself, and drink so fortunately
Speaker 1: she eventually divorced him in nineteen forty one. She did
Speaker 1: have to leave Europe during World War Two, and she
Speaker 1: was distressed to learn that the Nazis had made their
Speaker 1: base camp in the Mulanda painting over her incredible guest
Speaker 1: book wall. So frustrating, even though ironically this wall included
Speaker 1: Ava bronze signature on it was Hitler's future wife, of course,
Speaker 1: so ironic. I guess Ava was hanging out at those parties,
Speaker 1: was hanging out with those chartings them a little more
Speaker 1: uncomfortable than they already were. Well, Ezra Pounds ended up
Speaker 1: being pretty big into passionate them as well, So I
Speaker 1: guess everyone was better than Ezra. Anybody you get a chuckle,
Speaker 1: just leave this house. Caress also helped an author named
Speaker 1: Henry Miller support himself by ghost writing pornography. This guy
Speaker 1: had gotten a nice advance to write some smut, but
Speaker 1: he didn't really like writing it, and he knew that
Speaker 1: Caress was writing pieces of erotica for a nice nin
Speaker 1: smut club, so he asked her for help. She apparently
Speaker 1: churned out two hundred pages with no problem, and the
Speaker 1: publisher was like, or please, it's probably like what did
Speaker 1: I do at one time? Chapter three, Donkey Polo. She
Speaker 1: bought a castle in Rome and made it into an
Speaker 1: artist's colony where they could stay for a season or
Speaker 1: a whole year at a time, just making stuff. Again,
Speaker 1: it cannot be overstated how important that is the artistic tellum.
Speaker 1: So I admire it, even though she herself said it
Speaker 1: was a very uncomfortable place that she would hate to
Speaker 1: spend any time. Uh As Ninn once said about her quote,
Speaker 1: Caress Crosby enters but the buoyancy of a powder puff
Speaker 1: caressing voice was that how she gained the nickname of
Speaker 1: Caress from Harry Crosby. Her fur hat, her eyelashes, her
Speaker 1: smile all glittery with animation. The word on her lips
Speaker 1: is always yes, and all her being says yes, yes,
Speaker 1: yes to all that is happening and all that has
Speaker 1: offered her. She trails behind her like the plume of
Speaker 1: a peacock. A fabulous legend. Wow, Caress Crosby, Caress, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: saying yes to everything can have such amazing things, and
Speaker 1: also you can have some really bad things. That's how
Speaker 1: you end up with Ava Braun at your parties, which
Speaker 1: again I do not want my photograph take. You know
Speaker 1: what I think? Actually, at the end of this, I
Speaker 1: have to skip the party. Oh yeah, you're not going
Speaker 1: Look it was it was all fun and games. We're
Speaker 1: drinking out of skulls and wrestling on the floor, and
Speaker 1: then there's miners. Uh, there's some weird mutilation happening. And also, oh,
Speaker 1: who's that over there? Oh it's just Adolph Hitler's wife.
Speaker 1: Come on, even future wife. Still I'm imagining that I
Speaker 1: have my current knowledge being invited this party and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry at a hard pass. It does feel like
Speaker 1: an Epstein's Island type thing. There's many names that you're like,
Speaker 1: how cool to party with them, and then when you
Speaker 1: find out what's going on or not, I'm so glad
Speaker 1: my name is not catch and anyway. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I really it was such a cool suggestion. Thanks again
Speaker 1: to Tombre, Tamber tom Brim. However you say it, let
Speaker 1: us know. I'm sorry if I mutilated it, but thank
Speaker 1: you for this suggestion. Because they just had a really
Speaker 1: complicated life. They weren't. They're not people that it's easy
Speaker 1: to decide when there another about I mean, they did
Speaker 1: a lot of terrible things. They did a lot of
Speaker 1: cool things, really rich and layered and complicated and terrible
Speaker 1: and awesome, just interesting wealthy Americans and Europeans in early century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all that. I mean, they were doing such cool
Speaker 1: stuff and also like the worst things. I know, it's
Speaker 1: so true to just to bring it back to and
Speaker 1: or I did see somebody say that what they were
Speaker 1: loving about the show is how much they would They
Speaker 1: were trying to show how bad people can be good
Speaker 1: and righteous and very like I'm trying to do the
Speaker 1: right thing, and good people can be very ruthless and cruel,
Speaker 1: and that just saying, like you just the actions alone,
Speaker 1: is it's really hard to just judge someone that they're
Speaker 1: individuality and how are they working in the system there
Speaker 1: in and all that sort of thing. It was just
Speaker 1: really interesting and I was like, that's how I'm feeling
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, I feel like we feel that so
Speaker 1: often on the show. And I think any historian, you know,
Speaker 1: not that we're like historians, but we're sitting here reading
Speaker 1: a lot of history, and you do find that it's
Speaker 1: really hard to just call someone a good or a
Speaker 1: bad person. Um. I mean, you know, there's certainly that
Speaker 1: like a drop of bad can really make can really
Speaker 1: you know, tent your whole color into something pretty bade um.
Speaker 1: So there's that, But also, you know, some fascinating things
Speaker 1: in the world would never have happened without some of
Speaker 1: these awful people were or they would have good people.
Speaker 1: That's what you don't know. I wish they had just
Speaker 1: been good people and not or it would have just
Speaker 1: been different art. You know, like that's the thing that
Speaker 1: that's sometimes I have to catch myself when I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: but how could we live without as repounds book or whatever?
Speaker 1: You know whatever, I'm not you know whatever, I mean,
Speaker 1: we could be fine with that, but you know what,
Speaker 1: never like James Droys or whatever, you know what your
Speaker 1: favorite author is that somebody helped usher them into the
Speaker 1: zeitgeist somewhere or another, and you're like, well, thank god
Speaker 1: they did that. I wouldn't change anything, because I would
Speaker 1: not want to not have this book available to me now.
Speaker 1: But like what was not made otherwise that you might
Speaker 1: cherish as much because you don't know about the other thing.
Speaker 1: You know, just time and how it works. Sure is well?
Speaker 1: I hope you'll enjoyed this episode. Who's Wild rid Crazy
Speaker 1: is wild, truly wild, so bumpy. It must be what
Speaker 1: it must be like to play a game aim of
Speaker 1: Drunken Donkey Polo and now we all know go through
Speaker 1: the cross flay. Uh, let us know how your game
Speaker 1: a Drunken Donkey Polo went. Listen to this one. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you, and please send us more
Speaker 1: suggestions like these. Please really give us so much to
Speaker 1: work with and it's so fun. We love hearing them.
Speaker 1: Shoot us an email ridic Romance at gmail dot com
Speaker 1: and we're on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dianamite Boom
Speaker 1: and I'm at Oh Great, it's Eli and we're both
Speaker 1: at ridic Romance is so follow along, reach out and
Speaker 1: we'll catch you all the next episode. Love you, Bob,
Speaker 1: So long. Friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening
Speaker 1: to our show Tell your friend's names, Uncle Sandez to
Speaker 1: listen to our show, Ridiculous roll NaNs