Speaker 1: Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
Speaker 1: partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: second season of Criminalia. This season, we're exploring the lives
Speaker 1: and motivations of some of the most notorious stalkers throughout history.
Speaker 1: I'm Maria Tremarqui and I'm Holly Fry and today we
Speaker 1: are going to be talking about one of the leading
Speaker 1: English novelists of the nineteenth century, George Elliott. Don't let
Speaker 1: that name fool you. If you don't know, we're gonna
Speaker 1: give you a spoiler right now. George Elliott was a woman.
Speaker 1: There are something like three dozen plus biographies about George Elliott.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, there are still questions about her.
Speaker 1: We don't know everything, but we do know quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Elliott was born as Mary Ann Evans in November of
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen in the English countryside. But in eighteen fifties
Speaker 1: she moved to London, and that's really where her story,
Speaker 1: certainly as a public figure, truly begins. Absolutely so, her
Speaker 1: move to London is what kicked off the time in
Speaker 1: her life when Mary Anne Evans transformed from her father's
Speaker 1: quote little Wench into the urban intellectual that we know
Speaker 1: her as today. A few years later, in London, in
Speaker 1: about eighteen seven, Mary Anne published her first work fiction,
Speaker 1: which was called Scenes of Clerical Life in Blackwood's magazine.
Speaker 1: And it's in this moment she became George Elliott, which
Speaker 1: was the name she continued to go by even after
Speaker 1: everyone knew that she was using a pseudonym. Yes, Scenes
Speaker 1: of Clerical Life, by the way, is actually three short
Speaker 1: stories that initially ran separately in the magazine, and now
Speaker 1: they're kind of grouped together as one larger piece of fiction.
Speaker 1: And each story features a character that is a member
Speaker 1: of the clergy. It's all set in the same fictional town,
Speaker 1: which is Milby. That clergy character isn't always like the
Speaker 1: most prominent or important character in the story, but each
Speaker 1: one has a member the clergy, and those three together
Speaker 1: were eventually published as a two volume set under the
Speaker 1: title Scenes of Clerical Life Outside of the Magazine. Also
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty nine. Just two years later, um George
Speaker 1: Elliott turned forty, and when she turned forty, she also
Speaker 1: published her first novel, which became an instant best seller.
Speaker 1: It was known that even Queen Victoria was a fan
Speaker 1: of this novel, and because of this instant best seller,
Speaker 1: um one of her best known works, in Milana Philoss,
Speaker 1: was published almost immediately after. So you may have some
Speaker 1: questions because it is probably pretty clear to you by
Speaker 1: this point that George Elliot's life was not really at
Speaker 1: all like most women at this time. The Victorian era was,
Speaker 1: of course, a time when women were supposed to be
Speaker 1: the mistresses of the household. They were often called and
Speaker 1: we have used this phrase on the show before and
Speaker 1: we likely will again. The Angel in the House, Virginia
Speaker 1: Wolf described these so called old angels as quote, immensely sympathetic,
Speaker 1: immensely charming, and utterly unselfish. I am reminded of Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria's writing where she kind of equates like being a woman,
Speaker 1: even if you are the ruler of an empire, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you're still a woman, you know.
Speaker 1: She compares like, once you become pregnant, you're just like livestock.
Speaker 1: Like she it's a great equalizer being a woman up.
Speaker 1: Actually right, But these angels also did not have the
Speaker 1: right to vote, sue, or own property. Also super weird
Speaker 1: when you consider that the head of the empire was
Speaker 1: a woman. And during the emerging Industrial Revolution in England,
Speaker 1: many of these women worked under abysmal and dangerous conditions. Elliott,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, was really pursuing a more radical life,
Speaker 1: taking a role that at that point was strictly the
Speaker 1: domain of men. She proposed marriage to a renowned palling math,
Speaker 1: Herbert spencer Um, and he ultimately did reject her. But
Speaker 1: she also then stirred up scandal when she and the
Speaker 1: writer George Henry Lewis began a romance. George, by the way,
Speaker 1: was married to a woman named Agnes Jarvis. But when
Speaker 1: George and Elliott met in eighteen fifty one, by eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty four they'd moved in together. And here's the thing,
Speaker 1: that moved in together openly while Louis was still married.
Speaker 1: And this was such a big deal that Elliott's female
Speaker 1: friends refused to see her anymore because seeing her might
Speaker 1: tarnish their own reputations. It was was that big um.
Speaker 1: Elliot and Lewis were together for more than twenty five years,
Speaker 1: right up until he passed away in eighteen seventy eight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I always love to remind people that when we think
Speaker 1: of the state and formal and rule, laden periods that
Speaker 1: have gone before us, there were always things like this
Speaker 1: going on. It's never quite as codified as you may think.
Speaker 1: So we really should talk for a minute about why
Speaker 1: Mary Ann Evans chose to publish her work under the
Speaker 1: more masculine sounding pen name of George Elliott. She believed
Speaker 1: that when female novelists wrote anything other than lighthearted romance novels,
Speaker 1: that they just weren't taken seriously. And she is not
Speaker 1: the first. We have a few examples, certainly, of other
Speaker 1: female authors who wrote secretly as males. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, Amentine Lucille roy du duvon Ne Dupin wrote
Speaker 1: under the male pseudonym, Oh, and I love her George Son.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad she goes by her pseudonym, because I'm
Speaker 1: also so glad you were the one say her real name.
Speaker 1: She's a favorite of mine. The Bronte sisters, also Charlotte, Emily,
Speaker 1: and Anne, very commonly known, first published their works under
Speaker 1: the male pseudonyms of Kerr Ellis and Acton Bell, respectively,
Speaker 1: Though Luisa May Alcott's Little Women, which is often considered
Speaker 1: her best known work, was published under her own name.
Speaker 1: She also used to the more ambiguous name am erred
Speaker 1: to write her gothic thrillers. They were considered let's say,
Speaker 1: unladylike for a nineteenth century female writer or reader, so
Speaker 1: she did not use alcohol. But a fascinating aside to
Speaker 1: her story is that her secret pseudonym actually wasn't discovered
Speaker 1: until the nineteen forties, if you can believe it, and
Speaker 1: it was a rare book dealer together with the librarian
Speaker 1: who figured that out. I think you've just written like
Speaker 1: a fabulous new thriller. It's the book dealer in librarian
Speaker 1: and they solve literary crimes of history. Could be great.
Speaker 1: I know what my next project is. I would watch
Speaker 1: that show. As for why so many women writers took
Speaker 1: this particular path, we're going to use Charlotte Bronte as
Speaker 1: an illustrative example. So in late eighteen thirty six, when
Speaker 1: Charlotte was just twenty years old, she sent a selection
Speaker 1: of her poetry to poet laureate Robert Southey, and soThe
Speaker 1: responded with the following very sexist quote quote literature cannot
Speaker 1: be the business of a woman's life, and it ought
Speaker 1: not to be soup. Yeah. In fact, I really have
Speaker 1: no response to In fact, Elliott herself wrote an anonymous
Speaker 1: essay that she called Silly Novels by Leady Novelists, where
Speaker 1: she criticized the works of her female contemporary authors, saying
Speaker 1: that they were all confusing We quote vagueness for depth,
Speaker 1: bombast for eloquence, and affectation for originality. She generally considered
Speaker 1: this genre to be full of those cliches and far
Speaker 1: fetched romantic endings that we all know from Hollywood stories. Um.
Speaker 1: But then there was also perhaps her biggest accusation about it.
Speaker 1: She believed that they made educated women ultimately look foolish.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, not so much in the women Uplifting Women category.
Speaker 1: On this women don't need to be educated, they need
Speaker 1: to be at home. Not alternate forms of literature is valid.
Speaker 1: It's a little snooty, by which I mean it's completely snooty. Today,
Speaker 1: of course, we still see modern female authors using male pseudonyms.
Speaker 1: This is not exclusive to the Victorian era. For example,
Speaker 1: there's a contemporary female author, Nora Roberts, who comes to mind.
Speaker 1: She's certainly not the only one, but she has written
Speaker 1: more than two hundred romance as well as crime novels,
Speaker 1: but she uses the pseudonym J. D. Rob when she
Speaker 1: writes her suspense novels. Gender bias was alive in Victorian
Speaker 1: literary circles certainly, but it has yet to be eliminated
Speaker 1: from today's publishing industry, literary circles, and even among audiences.
Speaker 1: So using pseudonyms to get these works published, whether it
Speaker 1: was Victorian era or even today, Um, it is interesting
Speaker 1: and we could spend a ton of time talking about it,
Speaker 1: but we're not here to talk about that. We're here
Speaker 1: to talk about George Elliott's biggest and I'm going to
Speaker 1: quote unquote this here admirers, UM. And they were Alexander
Speaker 1: Maine and Edith Simcox. And that's right. Elliott attracted two stalkers.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna take a quick break and then when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to talk about how Elliott
Speaker 1: met Alexander Maine. Welcome back to Criminalia. So this all
Speaker 1: started when a man named Alexander Maine asked George Elliott
Speaker 1: a very simple question in the summer of eightev one,
Speaker 1: and this was while she was working on her very
Speaker 1: famous novel Middle March. George Elliott received a short letter
Speaker 1: from a young Scott named Alexander Main. So, Alexander Main
Speaker 1: a little bit about him before we get into his letter. UM.
Speaker 1: He was about thirty year years old when he started
Speaker 1: his correspondence with Elliott. He lived with his elderly widowed
Speaker 1: mother in a really small town on the eastern coast
Speaker 1: of Scotland. And what we know of him is that
Speaker 1: he gave lectures on various literary subjects to grad students
Speaker 1: and perhaps undergrad as well, but he didn't really share
Speaker 1: much of his occupation with her. UM. We also know
Speaker 1: that he was really not very well off financially UM,
Speaker 1: and he would wait for Elliott's novels to be published
Speaker 1: in discounted editions and then he would buy and read them.
Speaker 1: It said that he preferred to walk along the cliffs
Speaker 1: and sit on the beach, and this is where he
Speaker 1: would read these books, and he would read them aloud
Speaker 1: to himself. So Alexander had a pretty simple and a
Speaker 1: fairly benign question in his initial correspondence with the author,
Speaker 1: what was the correct pronunciation of Romola? Elliott, super pleased
Speaker 1: that someone would ask about the title of a novel
Speaker 1: that she had published years earlier, that was back in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three, wrote back with the correct pronunciation, letting
Speaker 1: him know that you stress the first. Oh, and we
Speaker 1: actually have an excerpt from her correspondence, and you might
Speaker 1: imagine when you hear this that later she regretted the
Speaker 1: final sentence here, which is quote, my dear sir, I
Speaker 1: am grateful for, indeed deeply affected by your assurance that
Speaker 1: my writings have been long precious to you and others.
Speaker 1: I have not much strength and time for correspondence, but
Speaker 1: I shall always be glad to hear from you when
Speaker 1: you have anything in your mind, which it will be
Speaker 1: a solace to you to say to me that at
Speaker 1: some foreshadowing. So that opened a door she could not close,
Speaker 1: and opened like a black hole anyway. She also went
Speaker 1: on to share some of her thoughts beyond her own work,
Speaker 1: specifically about Florentine literature, as well as Sir Walter Scott,
Speaker 1: the Scottish historical novelist and poets, and instead of moving
Speaker 1: along or just sending a quick thank you, Maine replied
Speaker 1: almost instantly with another letter. This time it was much longer.
Speaker 1: Within its eleven pages, he told Elliott, quote, you are
Speaker 1: doing a work in and upon this age such that
Speaker 1: future generations shall rejoice that you have lived, laying it
Speaker 1: on pretty thick. Alexander called the novels prologue we quote,
Speaker 1: the sublimest piece of writing, thinking, and historical word painting,
Speaker 1: all in one that the pen of a human being
Speaker 1: has ever yet achieved in prose. This letter has since
Speaker 1: been referred to as Maine's Rhapsody of Romola. Sorry, it's
Speaker 1: quite rhapsodic. I think that's an apt name. I think
Speaker 1: so too, And I also was thinking, can you imagine
Speaker 1: if this man had email? Oh no, I mean he's
Speaker 1: already writing back pretty quickly, one quick interjection about that novel. Today,
Speaker 1: she's probably best remembered for writing the now classic books
Speaker 1: Middle March and Silas Marner. Yet these days is considered
Speaker 1: one of the least known among her works. But at
Speaker 1: the time she received a then record payment for her novel,
Speaker 1: and it was fairly popular. So these letters from Scotland,
Speaker 1: they just kept coming, and they began coming at a
Speaker 1: rather extraordinary rate. Again and again Alexander Main wrote Elliott
Speaker 1: long heartfelt letters, and then he would follow up with
Speaker 1: letters of a very different tone, demanding that she reassure
Speaker 1: him that he had not offended her with his previous letters.
Speaker 1: And after that then his letters would turn into apologies,
Speaker 1: and this cycle continued where he would kind of sense
Speaker 1: he had gone too far, asked her to tell him
Speaker 1: that he had not gone too far, and then apologize
Speaker 1: in case he had, and the cycle starts right. She
Speaker 1: tried to distance herself from her admirer, except that is
Speaker 1: when she did not um in act, because strangers would
Speaker 1: often physically touch her when they encountered her, in particular
Speaker 1: her cloak, and she allowed it and seemed okay with it.
Speaker 1: As these things played out, some of her contemporaries kind
Speaker 1: of thought Elliott was encouraging that sort of closeness from
Speaker 1: her fans. Alexander continued to write, of course and um.
Speaker 1: In one of his next letters, he praised Elliott and
Speaker 1: specifically praised her poem The Spanish Gypsy, telling her, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote this. I have felt myself face to
Speaker 1: face with the highest in humanity by reading that poem.
Speaker 1: So Elliott Radiant in this feedback wrote back, which we
Speaker 1: all know she shouldn't have done what she did. Um.
Speaker 1: It was not a simple thank you. She wrote to
Speaker 1: Maine to tell him that he through the understood her
Speaker 1: intentions in that poem and that she believed he clearly
Speaker 1: had perfect insight into her writing, also encouraging him. Oh
Speaker 1: Joe Orge, Okay, so in Alexander's mind, this was his moment.
Speaker 1: He wrote her back with a proposal for Elliott, he
Speaker 1: wanted to do her writing justice by turning the wider
Speaker 1: public onto her work and wisdom, and specifically highlighting her poetry.
Speaker 1: At that point, she was known pretty much as a novelist.
Speaker 1: But he was like, people need to be reading your poems, girl,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to do this by compiling them all
Speaker 1: in a single volume. He would then edit it. And
Speaker 1: he told her that she had done for the novel
Speaker 1: what Shakespeare did for the drama. So he was full
Speaker 1: of praise and then wanted to edit her poetry anthology.
Speaker 1: And yeah, here's the thing. Elliott agreed to do it. Um,
Speaker 1: there are a few things here that may have been
Speaker 1: going on when she made that decision, and it probably
Speaker 1: wasn't the like the chapter after chapter of letters that
Speaker 1: she was getting from Alexander m So, first, there's no
Speaker 1: doubt that she saw that this had potential as a
Speaker 1: marketing tool for her novels, because it did. But then
Speaker 1: there's the harder piece to it, which is the more
Speaker 1: emotional piece. So George, her longtime partner that we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: once referred to Elliott as having quote a shy, shrinking,
Speaker 1: ambitious nature and added that she was susceptible to crippling
Speaker 1: self doubt. So think about what it must have been
Speaker 1: like for her to be trying to distance herself from
Speaker 1: Alexander main while at the same time he's a man
Speaker 1: whose words have brought her to tears and made her
Speaker 1: feel validated as a writer. So this is where John
Speaker 1: Blackwood enters the scene. John was Elliott's publisher, and when
Speaker 1: Alexander became the editor of the Elliott Collection, which was
Speaker 1: titled Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse
Speaker 1: selected from the works of George Elliott, John was also
Speaker 1: going to publish that work. John wasn't really fond of Alexander,
Speaker 1: and he dismissed him as a sycophant. So privately he
Speaker 1: had a few nicknames for him, such as the gusher
Speaker 1: and the worshiper of Genius, the gutsher Ah. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: after their first encounter, John referred to Alexander as again
Speaker 1: another quote, a little fellow, dark with bright, clear looking
Speaker 1: eyes who and this is the best part of the
Speaker 1: quote and maybe the best part of this episode for
Speaker 1: me um that Alexander used his knife in a dangerous
Speaker 1: manner at lunch. We don't know the details of my imagination.
Speaker 1: Has taken it from me here, Sarah. Yes. John also
Speaker 1: wrote once to his nephew, who was a fellow publisher, saying,
Speaker 1: my dear Willie, the worshiper of genius appeared soon after
Speaker 1: eleven today and has just left. This has destroyed my
Speaker 1: day's work. You everybody who hangs around your desk for
Speaker 1: too long. Yeah, so a distraction as well as being
Speaker 1: a little too a brilliant in his praise. So Blackwood's
Speaker 1: not a fan. Regardless of all of this, though, and
Speaker 1: John not enjoying working with him, Alexander did get his
Speaker 1: collection published, and of course he dedicated the book to
Speaker 1: Elliott in we quote recognition of a genius as original
Speaker 1: as it is profound, and a morality as pure as
Speaker 1: it is impassioned, And in the preface he declared that
Speaker 1: she had and again we're quoting forever sanctified the novel
Speaker 1: by making it the vehicle of the grandest and most
Speaker 1: uncompromising moral truth, just like Shakespeare. So so if we
Speaker 1: fast forward this recognition of genius to the I have
Speaker 1: modern day criticism. Um, there's a journalist named Rebecca Meade
Speaker 1: who writes for The New Yorker, and she is one
Speaker 1: of Elliott's biographers and she's a critic as well, and
Speaker 1: she summed this in such a way. Alexander's book is
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century equivalent of the refrigerator Magnet, which I
Speaker 1: felt like I learned so much about that book just
Speaker 1: from that one sentence. And the reason for this assessment
Speaker 1: that me gives is that poetry was not really Elliott's strength.
Speaker 1: The wit and wisdom promised in the title never really
Speaker 1: delivers in the text. Yeah, she wants to give a
Speaker 1: really great lecture where she talked about seeing a refrigerator
Speaker 1: magnet with a George Elliott quote on it about I
Speaker 1: don't remember the exact quote, but it's basically like about
Speaker 1: your life's work can start later on, like you can
Speaker 1: achieve the actually know exactly what you're talking about. And uh,
Speaker 1: And how she was reading this compilation about that magnet,
Speaker 1: Sure she was. She was like, I knew it. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. That compendium was very popular in its time.
Speaker 1: It was published in multiple editions. It sold out. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: though Alexander story kind of ends for us here. For
Speaker 1: all we know he had a long, successful life or
Speaker 1: the opposite after his involvement with getting this book of
Speaker 1: poetry and wit published. But the details outside of his
Speaker 1: admiration of Elliott, as far as it goes in his biography,
Speaker 1: have really not been well preserved. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: take a quick sponsor break right now, and when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk about who Edith Simcox
Speaker 1: was in relation to Elliott. Welcome back to Criminalia. So
Speaker 1: we've talked about Alexander Main, but he was not George
Speaker 1: Elliot's only admirer. Meet Edith Simcox. Edith Simcox is perhaps
Speaker 1: best remembered as one of Elliott's most passionate admirers. But
Speaker 1: if you were living in the Victorian era in England,
Speaker 1: you would have been familiar with Edith's works or at
Speaker 1: least her name, because of her passion for her work.
Speaker 1: Edith had an amazing life and that is outside of
Speaker 1: her nearly lifelong infatuation with George Elliott. Um. She promoted
Speaker 1: women's suffrage and was active in the trade union movement.
Speaker 1: She was a shirtmaker with Hamilton's and Company, which is
Speaker 1: a company that she established with a woman named Mary Hamilton's.
Speaker 1: They ran their business as a women only co op
Speaker 1: that provided women with employment under humane conditions, which was
Speaker 1: not a common thing in Victorian England. She was really
Speaker 1: just engaged in making her community better. Yeah, she was
Speaker 1: an advocate for workers rights for women, really admirable work,
Speaker 1: and she also worked as an author and a critic.
Speaker 1: She herself, as many of the authors we've talked about,
Speaker 1: often wrote under a male pseudonym. Hers was h. Laurine,
Speaker 1: and she was a friend and an admirer of George Eliot,
Speaker 1: calling her, we quote the love passion of my life,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a very intense relationship, except there was
Speaker 1: no relationship between these two women other than a fairly
Speaker 1: superficial one. So what we do know about Edith and
Speaker 1: George Eliott is all basically from Edith's personal journal, and
Speaker 1: she started that in eighteen seventy six and she wrote
Speaker 1: it until about a few months before her death, which
Speaker 1: was in nineteen hundred. Um. Although many of her private
Speaker 1: entries are about things that are really mundane, like business issues, handling,
Speaker 1: personnel problems, dealing with customers, not all the entries are
Speaker 1: like that, though it's also where she detailed and she
Speaker 1: worked through emotional turmoil and frustration from her love for
Speaker 1: Elliott that was not returned. And as early as the
Speaker 1: very first entry in her journal, she sensed she was
Speaker 1: on a mission to and I mean quote that first entry,
Speaker 1: a mission to love rather than to be loved, and
Speaker 1: she called her journal the autobiography of a shirt Maker.
Speaker 1: So Edith and Elliott did meet in a teen seventy
Speaker 1: two and shortly after Edith had written a glowing review
Speaker 1: of Middle March, and then Elliott invited her to one
Speaker 1: of her renowned parties, and Edith quickly became kind of
Speaker 1: part of Elliot's circle. But while Elliott was open to
Speaker 1: developing a friendship initially, it said that she began to
Speaker 1: grow uncomfortable with Edith's intense professions of devotion. Though she
Speaker 1: was quite successful before meeting Elliott, Edith referred to Elliott
Speaker 1: as her quote idol, and attributed all of her late
Speaker 1: accomplishments to Elliott's influence, even though this was not a
Speaker 1: person that was actually in her life in any significant way,
Speaker 1: and she was highly successful without Elliott. You know, none
Speaker 1: of this needed to be there, but yet it was.
Speaker 1: And three days after Elliott's death, which happened in December
Speaker 1: of eighty, Edith wrote in her journal, um, and this
Speaker 1: is a quote. I hope to build your monument in
Speaker 1: the lettering of words and deeds to come. And in
Speaker 1: an effort to create a tribute to Elliott, the complete
Speaker 1: edition of her Autobiography of a Shirtmaker was published with
Speaker 1: the title changed to um a Monument to the Memory
Speaker 1: of George Elliott, and many hailed it as a monument
Speaker 1: to George Elliott. After her death, one literary biographer named
Speaker 1: Lyndall Gordon dubbed Elliott as a quote wise angel. And
Speaker 1: then two years after Elliot's death, Edith published another tribute
Speaker 1: to her. This was titled Episodes in the Lives of Men,
Speaker 1: Women and Lovers, and the work, which was made up
Speaker 1: of eleven sort of loosely connected tales, indirectly explores her
Speaker 1: love for Elliott, but only in fictional terms. This ends
Speaker 1: where Edith and Elliott have a relationship or lack of relationship.
Speaker 1: Edith passed away in September of nineteen o one, and
Speaker 1: she hoped to be buried at Highgate Cemetery, which was
Speaker 1: where George Eliot was, and she hoped to be buried
Speaker 1: near her instead, though she was buried with her mother,
Speaker 1: with whom she had lived with from most of her life.
Speaker 1: So those are George Elliott's two stalkers, neither of whom
Speaker 1: seemed particularly dangerous, yet just uncomfortable. Right. That means it's
Speaker 1: time for the chaser. It is it is time for
Speaker 1: the chaser. Why don't you take it to it? Of course,
Speaker 1: and thinking about George Elliott, what really struck me in
Speaker 1: both of these stories, but particularly in the Alexander main story,
Speaker 1: was this kind of duality in her reception to them,
Speaker 1: that in some ways she felt uncomfortable, but in other
Speaker 1: ways she clearly, I mean, like any human enjoyed praise
Speaker 1: and you know, felt validated by attentions in some ways. Right,
Speaker 1: And it did sound like from from Louis that she
Speaker 1: she maybe liked a little bit more, you know, she
Speaker 1: was a little insecure. It really played into her and
Speaker 1: then she would feel weird about it. So I came
Speaker 1: up with a cocktail that I all mixed feelings to
Speaker 1: reflect that duality. So it starts with butterfly pea flower tea.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that is like, it's easy
Speaker 1: to get. You can buy it online. A lot of
Speaker 1: specialty grocery stores have it. It's beautiful because it is blue,
Speaker 1: like it literally turns a bright blue when you grew it. Beautiful,
Speaker 1: it's absolutely beautiful. So you want to brew a lit
Speaker 1: cup of tea, you want to let it cool off
Speaker 1: and actually pop it in the fridge. Let it get chilled,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna use three ounces of that. Then you
Speaker 1: will add an ounce less if you don't like it
Speaker 1: as sweet. But I like a little sweetness of simple
Speaker 1: syrup or vanilla syrup. I like a vanilla syrup for
Speaker 1: this one. Just one ounce of vodka, so it's not
Speaker 1: a heavy cocktail at all, and you're just gonna combine
Speaker 1: this in a glass over ice. It's an absolutely gorgeous,
Speaker 1: deep like sapphire blue color. I like to put it
Speaker 1: in a martini glass just because it's pretty, because I
Speaker 1: was gonna say it because it's pretty. It's pretty. It's pretty.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing I promised you duality. So just
Speaker 1: before serving it or drinking it, maybe like if you
Speaker 1: put it down in front of a friend, you're gonna
Speaker 1: add a half of an ounce of lemon juice, and
Speaker 1: this drink completely changes before your eyes and it goes
Speaker 1: from its beautiful blue color to a magenta purple. It
Speaker 1: really is kind of the drink version of a stalker
Speaker 1: a chaser. Yes, and I see why you're saying that
Speaker 1: you were inspired by Alexander. I did put some thought
Speaker 1: into it. I just want to know how to pronounce
Speaker 1: the title. And then there you are years later, starts out, fine,
Speaker 1: this this seems great. This person thinks some of me.
Speaker 1: It's like, wait, it's something different. Although I will say
Speaker 1: the purple, the magenta purple color is also absolutely beautiful
Speaker 1: and lovable. Um and it is a very immediate change,
Speaker 1: so you kind of feel like a magician. I like
Speaker 1: to feel that way in the kitchen, right. It's the
Speaker 1: acidity and the lemon juice just changes its color and
Speaker 1: it makes it for the eiver. The flavoring of the
Speaker 1: tea on its own is a pretty earthy, soft flavor.
Speaker 1: It's not like a rose tea, or like a lavender
Speaker 1: tea or any of those other kind of botanicals. It's
Speaker 1: not even like a hibiscus. It's not quite that sweet
Speaker 1: to my palate. I think it it is used. Is
Speaker 1: it in Thailand that it's often used. It's served as
Speaker 1: an iced tea as like a greeting for visitors. It's
Speaker 1: super beautiful. I love it. I use it as an
Speaker 1: evening drink. I'll make a warm cup of it with milk,
Speaker 1: and it's like the best way to just chill out
Speaker 1: before bed blue milk. There's no caffeine in it, so
Speaker 1: if you're a person affected by caffeine, it's not going
Speaker 1: to hit you that way. The flavor doesn't have a
Speaker 1: full body if you taste it without the lemon juice.
Speaker 1: But once you have the lemon juice, it just adds
Speaker 1: that extra something and gives it another dimension and it
Speaker 1: becomes a cocktail worth consuming. Excellent. I was wondering about
Speaker 1: the addition of the lemon juice more than just the color,
Speaker 1: like if it added a little bit of pomp, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little little paper rouni. I always have to ask
Speaker 1: about the press. So that is the mixed feeling, which
Speaker 1: I had a delightful time testing yesterday. Excellent. So did
Speaker 1: you did you stop it one or did you know? Well? No,
Speaker 1: only because the first one, my my proportions were off
Speaker 1: on the first one. I had to shift some things
Speaker 1: around a little bit too much vodka really distorts the
Speaker 1: taste of it. I was just about to say, please
Speaker 1: tell me that the proportions were too much vodka. Well,
Speaker 1: it's um. I had initially both too much vodka and
Speaker 1: too much lemon juice, and it just it kind of
Speaker 1: tasted like a tart mistake. Like it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: yummy oh vakay, lemon juice sometimes can be yummy. This
Speaker 1: was like the combination just was like, Holly, no, you're
Speaker 1: doing it wrong. So we but the the Titan second
Speaker 1: draft was we dialed those back and now and it's
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, it's only a few ounces,
Speaker 1: so it's not a big drink anyway. So if you
Speaker 1: wanted to double it and make yourself an iced tea
Speaker 1: version of it, that would also work just fine. Criminalia
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