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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast

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Speaker 1: after a C. P. Wilson, And I'm Holly from Holly.

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Speaker 1: Do you know what I did this weekend? I do,

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Speaker 1: but tell me again. I went to Enda St Vincent

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Speaker 1: Malay's house. It's pretty awesome. Uh So a lot of

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Speaker 1: people have asked us to talk about Edna St. Vincent

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Speaker 1: Malays on the podcast. She was a poet and a

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Speaker 1: playwright and a generally fantastic character, so interesting, and she

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Speaker 1: definitely has like there's a cult of personality thing with her.

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Speaker 1: People just adore her, even while acknowledging her flaws well,

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Speaker 1: and when she was alive, people adored her, sometimes to

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Speaker 1: their own detriment. I know what I mentioned to you

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Speaker 1: when we were first talking about this subject that I

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Speaker 1: had a high school teacher that clearly just loved her,

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Speaker 1: and I um, he would literally showed like a slide show,

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Speaker 1: and whenever she would come up in this particular lecture,

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Speaker 1: they would just be a pause or he would just

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Speaker 1: sign Vincent just talk at her for a minute. We

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Speaker 1: all felt uncomfortable but also charmed. Right, So, uh, you

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Speaker 1: can go to her home which was called Steeple Top

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Speaker 1: and you can take a tour of the grounds on

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Speaker 1: a tour of the house, which is what I did.

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Speaker 1: And we're going to talk more about that part in

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Speaker 1: the second part of this two part episode, because as

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Speaker 1: sometimes happens, there's a lot, there's a lot, and it

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Speaker 1: it blossomed into something that required two parts to talk about.

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Speaker 1: So today's episode we're going to go from you know,

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Speaker 1: Edna St. Vincent Malay is born um until she gets married,

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Speaker 1: like that's going to be today's episode, and then the

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Speaker 1: next episode will cover the remainder of her life. Uh

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Speaker 1: she as I would put her into the larger than

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Speaker 1: life category for pretty much the entirety of that. For sure.

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Speaker 1: She definitely, you know it, was an extraordinary person in

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Speaker 1: many ways, in the truest sense of that word. So

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Speaker 1: known as Bencent to her family and friends and the St.

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Speaker 1: Vincent La was born on February in Rockland, Maine, and

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Speaker 1: while her mom was pregnant, her uncle almost died and

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Speaker 1: doctors at St. Vincent's Hospital saved his life and that

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Speaker 1: is where her middle name came from. And Vincent was

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Speaker 1: the oldest of three daughters of Cora and Henry Malay.

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Speaker 1: Cora and Henry actually divorced when Vincent was young. Uh.

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Speaker 1: Cora threw Henrie Ott of the house in nineteen o one,

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Speaker 1: and for years his involvement in the girl's lives was

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Speaker 1: really quite limited. It was pretty much just letters and

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Speaker 1: occasionally a little bit of money. More often it was

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Speaker 1: letters that said he would be sending them some money soon,

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Speaker 1: but the money either wasn't there yet or he didn't

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Speaker 1: have it in hand. Yeah, there was a lot of

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Speaker 1: I'm making money, but I haven't gotten paid yet kind

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Speaker 1: of yeah. Language. So, according to Cora's led rs and

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Speaker 1: witness testimony at the divorce proceedings, Henry was abusive and

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Speaker 1: he also gambled the family's money away. One of Vincent's biographers,

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Speaker 1: Nancy Milford, also suggests that Cora may have had an

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Speaker 1: affair that kind of prompted her to actually end the

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Speaker 1: marriage instead of continuing to soldier on through it. Coral

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Speaker 1: was skilled as a hair weaver, and she also studied nursing,

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Speaker 1: and to support herself and the girl, she found work

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Speaker 1: as a private nurse, but this work actually kept her

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Speaker 1: away from the family, sometimes for weeks at a time,

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Speaker 1: and at first they were dependent on relatives to look

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Speaker 1: after the girls. Walk Cora worked, but setback after setback

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Speaker 1: sort of kept them unable to really get on their feet.

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Speaker 1: When she was nine, Vincent and her sisters almost died

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Speaker 1: of typhoid, and they survived because Cora nursed them all

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Speaker 1: through it. Not long after she got her divorce from Henry,

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Speaker 1: Cora also herself got a flu that was so severe

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Speaker 1: that her brother arranged life insurance for her. If you're wondering,

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Speaker 1: it was not the Spanish flu was too early for

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Speaker 1: that um. Vincent's youngest sister, Kathleen, also got polio and

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Speaker 1: then had ongoing neurological problems afterward. Uh And no matter

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Speaker 1: where they were, for many years of Vincent's childhood, the

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Speaker 1: family was sort of constantly struggling. There were kitchen floors

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Speaker 1: that flooded and then froze over when it was both

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Speaker 1: rainy and cold. They kind of made lemonade out of

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Speaker 1: lemons in that situation because the girls would ice skate

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Speaker 1: on the floors. At one point, they couldn't afford coal

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Speaker 1: to heat their house, and they resorted to supplementing a

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Speaker 1: load of it that Cora's sister gave them as a gift.

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Speaker 1: With shingles that they ripped from a derelict house that

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Speaker 1: was next door. Kara would like climb up and ritty

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Speaker 1: shingles off and throw them across the fence for the

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Speaker 1: girls to go and pick up. Finally, Klara found the

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Speaker 1: right combination of housing and work. It was a run

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Speaker 1: down house in Camden, Maine, where they could get a

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Speaker 1: break on the rent if they helped fix it up,

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Speaker 1: and she got nursing work nearby. The house was in

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Speaker 1: pretty terrible condition and they were in debt right from

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Speaker 1: the beginning, but Vincent's life at this point finally started

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Speaker 1: to have a little little bit of stability, and it

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Speaker 1: also had a lot of work when Cora was away,

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Speaker 1: which of course was often, and for long periods of time,

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Speaker 1: Vincent was in charge. And this wasn't like a don't

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Speaker 1: just make sure that your sisters don't starve sort of

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Speaker 1: in charge. She was really running the household. She managed

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Speaker 1: the budget, She sawt all the cooking and the chores,

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Speaker 1: and she looked after her younger sisters from the time

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Speaker 1: she was about twelve, and she was so exhausted from

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Speaker 1: all of this work. Because that is a great deal

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Speaker 1: to ask of a child that she ended up getting

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Speaker 1: sick about once a month. So their existence was really frugal,

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Speaker 1: but it gradually moved towards a sort of semblance of

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Speaker 1: a middle class living. Cora sometimes seemed resentful of how

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Speaker 1: much the girls were spending on things like beans to

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Speaker 1: eat and dresses to wear to school, but they also had,

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Speaker 1: thanks to her, a life that was really rich in

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Speaker 1: literature and music. The family got musical instruments for the

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Speaker 1: girls to play, and Bencent learned to play the piano,

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Speaker 1: and Cora also developed an immense library. It was actually

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Speaker 1: recognized as the biggest and best one in the area.

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Speaker 1: There were volumes and volumes of books, They were full

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Speaker 1: of plays, There was verse, and Coora made sure her

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Speaker 1: daughters read the work of masters. Vincent learned to read

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Speaker 1: by reading poetry, and this library was as important to

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Speaker 1: her young work as a poet and a writer as

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Speaker 1: anything that she learned in school. Before we get to

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Speaker 1: her school years, let's take a minute for a word

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Speaker 1: from a sponsor, and now back to Malay. So at school,

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Speaker 1: Vincent was stubborn and brilliant. She was very responsible at home,

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Speaker 1: she was looking after everything, but at school she was

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Speaker 1: willful and disobedient. When she was in the eighth grade,

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Speaker 1: she talked back to her teacher, who was in the

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Speaker 1: habit of calling her any other woman's name that started

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Speaker 1: with a V instead of Vincent. And so when he

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Speaker 1: did this one day and she insisted that Vincent was

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Speaker 1: her name, her teacher was so fed up with her

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Speaker 1: that he threw a book at her that would probably

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Speaker 1: not fly today. There would be some police in involvement now, uh.

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Speaker 1: And thanks to her mother's intervention, Vincent was allowed to

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Speaker 1: skip directly to high school rather than having to stay

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Speaker 1: in the class with the teacher that she had such

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Speaker 1: a contentious relationship with. Yeah, he had pretty much said,

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Speaker 1: you've been ruling this school for too long. She started

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Speaker 1: publishing poetry and a children's magazine called St. Nicholas in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o six when she was about fourteen, and a

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Speaker 1: year later she won the magazine's highest prize. Her prize

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Speaker 1: winning poem, called The Land of Romance, wound up being

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Speaker 1: reprinted in the Camden Harold and then an anthologized in

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Speaker 1: the journal Current Literature. So people were already from the

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Speaker 1: age of you know, fifteen, spotting that she was really

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Speaker 1: gifted as a poet and She also started to pursue

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Speaker 1: acting more seriously, and that was something that she took

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Speaker 1: to very naturally. And she wasn't just doing this in

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Speaker 1: school plays. She actually started acting at the Camden Opera

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Speaker 1: House starting in nineteen o seven, and that would require

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Speaker 1: her to rehearse every night. And that is, keep in mind,

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Speaker 1: on top of her schoolwork and all the works that

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Speaker 1: came with basically being the head of household in terms

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Speaker 1: of uh with their domestic needs and taking care of

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Speaker 1: her sisters. So kind of a packed schedule, yeah, she was.

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Speaker 1: She worked herself to the bone all the time. So

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Speaker 1: during her high school years, Vincent started writing in her

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Speaker 1: diary about sort of conflicted crushes. She wanted to be

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Speaker 1: loved and to be in love, but at the same

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Speaker 1: time she kind of felt like a boy would just

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Speaker 1: hold her back. She had things to do. The boy

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Speaker 1: was going to get out in the way of that.

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Speaker 1: I can't understand that. I feel you, Vincent. You and

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Speaker 1: I are of one heart. Uh. While she was popular

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Speaker 1: with the girls, the boys in high school not so much.

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Speaker 1: She was very smart, as we've mentioned, she was really headstrong,

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Speaker 1: and she was really hotty in that rubbed them the

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Speaker 1: wrong way. It was a bit much for teenage boys

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Speaker 1: to take in. Yeah, probably in a story that's familiar

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Speaker 1: to women still today. Eventually Vincent would grow up and

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Speaker 1: she would become famous for her love poems, and she

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Speaker 1: would have a whole string of lovers who felt absolutely, deeply,

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Speaker 1: passionately in with her. But in high school, even when

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Speaker 1: the boys did start to pursue her, they mostly just

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Speaker 1: tried to make her miserable. Uh. During her senior year,

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Speaker 1: she wanted to write the class poem. Poetry was already

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Speaker 1: deeply important to her, and writing the class poem was

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Speaker 1: an enormous honor, and she was clearly the best poet

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Speaker 1: in the class. There really would not appear to be

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Speaker 1: any question about who should uh write this, and that

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Speaker 1: the honor should go to her. But a group of

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Speaker 1: boys who had made it their business to torment her. Uh.

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Speaker 1: They interrupted her whenever she talked, They taunted her, and

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Speaker 1: they sort of ganged up on her. Uh. These boys

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Speaker 1: all banded together to nominate a classmate who was actually

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Speaker 1: a terrible writer to run against her. She was distraught

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Speaker 1: and so humiliated that she pulled out of the race.

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Speaker 1: Her mother suggested that she deliver her commencement essay in verse,

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Speaker 1: which she did. And this was poor consolation because it

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Speaker 1: wasn't the honor that she had wanted, but it did

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Speaker 1: kind of let her get the last word in a

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Speaker 1: way she kind of love. After graduation, she could not

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Speaker 1: afford to go to college, so she stayed home and

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Speaker 1: she actually took on even more work running the household

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Speaker 1: so that her mother could spend more time with her

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Speaker 1: nursing work. And she was very lonely. She still deeply

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Speaker 1: wanted to be loved, and she started conducting this sort

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Speaker 1: of ritual seance in her room every night to try

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Speaker 1: to summon a dream lover to her, a thing that

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Speaker 1: went on repeatedly for a while until she actually made

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Speaker 1: some changes in her life. Um In February of when

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Speaker 1: she was twenty, Vincent got word that her father was dying,

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Speaker 1: and at this point she and her sisters had not

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Speaker 1: seen him for eleven years. But she went to kingmn

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Speaker 1: Maine to look after him, and when she arrived, the

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Speaker 1: doctor told her that Henry was probably only going to

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Speaker 1: live a few days at most, but while Vincent was there,

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Speaker 1: he actually defied expectations and he started to get better.

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Speaker 1: Vincent stayed with the doctor who was taking care of

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Speaker 1: her father, and she started this passionate and passionately physical

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Speaker 1: relationship with Ellis Somerville, who was the daughter of the

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Speaker 1: doctor that's whose home she was staying at. This relationship

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Speaker 1: and their trips seemed to really revive Vincent, who at

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Speaker 1: that point had really gotten just exhausted and burned out

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Speaker 1: on everything from you know, trying to write, to running

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Speaker 1: the household, to all of the things that had gone

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Speaker 1: on in school. And when she got home, she went

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Speaker 1: right back to writing poetry, and within a few months

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Speaker 1: she finished her very long, very exuberant poem Renaissance, which

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Speaker 1: she had started before she left. At her mother's encouragements,

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Speaker 1: she submitted Renaissance to publisher Mitchell Kennerley, who was holding

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Speaker 1: a writing contest. On July nine, twelve, she got word

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Speaker 1: that it had been accepted to the Lyric Year, which

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Speaker 1: was the anthology that was to be published of the

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Speaker 1: best entries. So this was sort of news that she

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Speaker 1: was in the running for one of the three cash

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Speaker 1: prizes that would go to the top three in the contest.

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Speaker 1: And what followed was a flirtatious correspondence between Vincent, who

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Speaker 1: at first thought she was talking to Mitchell Kinnerley himself

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Speaker 1: and an editor who thought e. Vincent must have been

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Speaker 1: a man. It turned out that the person that she

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Speaker 1: was writing to was Ferdinand Earle, and their letters escalated

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Speaker 1: until his wife found one of them and it began

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Speaker 1: to undo his marriage. It turned out that he was

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Speaker 1: writing to other entrants and making them promises as well,

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Speaker 1: so there was definitely some shady business going on with

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Speaker 1: Ferdinand Earle. When he realized that she was a woman,

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Speaker 1: she sent a picture and it just it got really racy,

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Speaker 1: and it didn't wind up going well for anyone in

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Speaker 1: this situation. So along the way um along the way,

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Speaker 1: Ferdinand Earle had basically implied to Vincent that she was

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Speaker 1: going to win one of the cash prizes, and when

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Speaker 1: she didn't, she was crushed and her family really desperately

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Speaker 1: needed the money, and the fact that she came in

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Speaker 1: fourth place was no consolation to her. Nor was the

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Speaker 1: fact that when the book came out there was a

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Speaker 1: specific mention of her poem like in the editor's note

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Speaker 1: at the beginning. None of that really made up for

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Speaker 1: the fact that she needed that money and didn't get it.

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Speaker 1: When the lyric here was published, it made huge waves

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Speaker 1: in the literary community. Letters poured in from writers and

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Speaker 1: poets who insisted that the judges had in fact made

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Speaker 1: a huge mistake and that Renaissance was clearly the very

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Speaker 1: best thing in it. It's kind of unclear exactly why,

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Speaker 1: given this unanimous outpouring, that Vincent didn't place in the contest.

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Speaker 1: I mean it really, to the entire literary community, seemed

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Speaker 1: like an obvious and bone headedly stupid maneuver um. It's

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Speaker 1: possible that she was her own undoing through her flirtation

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Speaker 1: with one of the judges and his consequently his wife

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Speaker 1: finding out about it. It's also possible that her sex

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Speaker 1: played a big role. The three other winners were all men,

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Speaker 1: and the grand prize winner, Orrick Johns, called the award

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Speaker 1: quote unmerited and said that Vincent's poem was obviously the

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Speaker 1: best thing in the book. In the end, though it

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Speaker 1: all actually worked out for the best. Getting Renaissance published

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Speaker 1: in the lyric year brought all manner of attention to Vincent,

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Speaker 1: including from many prominent poet poets whose work was also

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Speaker 1: featured in the book, and the spotlight on her was

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Speaker 1: even brighter because so many people felt like she had

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00:14:09,200 --> 00:14:11,440
Speaker 1: been wronged, so she kind of though she did not

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Speaker 1: get the cash prize, she really got all the attention right,

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Speaker 1: and before we talked about the awesome things, that attention

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Speaker 1: led her to brief moment for a word from a sponsor,

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Speaker 1: dper So, one of the most amazing things about Renaissance,

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Speaker 1: besides the fact that everyone was completely shocked that a woman,

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Speaker 1: and a young woman at that had written it, was

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Speaker 1: that at this point Vincent was almost entirely a self

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Speaker 1: taught poet. Her public education had been pretty poor in quality,

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Speaker 1: and she had had no college instruction at all. Not

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Speaker 1: long after the poem was published, Vincent gave a reading

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Speaker 1: of it at a hotel where her sister worked, and

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Speaker 1: in the audience was Caroline dow, an executive director of

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Speaker 1: the y w c A, who thought that Vincent could

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Speaker 1: go to college and she knew wealthy patrons who could

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Speaker 1: help her do it. So Vincent got a scholarship to Vassar,

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Speaker 1: but because her high school education had been so terrible,

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Speaker 1: she needed to take some sort of remedial classes to

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Speaker 1: get her knowledge up enough to pass the entrance exams.

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Speaker 1: So after doing some coursework at Barnard College to get ready,

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Speaker 1: she started Vassar in the spring of n and at

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Speaker 1: Vassar she was vastly popular. She had a series of

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Speaker 1: sometimes overlapping romantic relationships with classmates, including Catherine Fileen and

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Speaker 1: Catherine Tilt, who she sometimes played against one another so

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Speaker 1: that she could make the other jealous, and she came

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Speaker 1: to be known as the Sappho of North Hall. At

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Speaker 1: the same time, she was carrying on an ongoing affair

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Speaker 1: with her editor Arthur Hooley, and a shorter one with

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Speaker 1: Nicaraguan poet Salomonde La Selva. In part that one was

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Speaker 1: also to try to make Hoolie jealous, and one of

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Speaker 1: his many, many beautiful love letters to her, Della Selva

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Speaker 1: described her as quote a willful princess, loved of many,

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Speaker 1: loving some man who wouldn't wanna have things like that

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Speaker 1: written about them, But yeah, there there is an enormous

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Speaker 1: body of letters both by her and about her and

300
00:16:06,880 --> 00:16:09,960
Speaker 1: to her and their lovely A lot of them are

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00:16:10,040 --> 00:16:13,520
Speaker 1: by men like exceptionally gifted writers that she was involved with.

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Speaker 1: And so there's this whole beautiful body of love love

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00:16:16,640 --> 00:16:21,440
Speaker 1: letters to Edness Visiblay existing in various places about the world.

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Speaker 1: And on top of writing and starring in plays, wooing

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Speaker 1: so many of her classmates, and of course actually attending

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00:16:28,040 --> 00:16:32,360
Speaker 1: classes and studying. While in college, Vincent broke oh kinds

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Speaker 1: of rules. Had she not been such a prodigiously talented

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00:16:35,680 --> 00:16:39,359
Speaker 1: poet and already quite famous, she probably would have been expelled.

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Speaker 1: She had, in the words of the Dean quote, a

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Speaker 1: culmination of disregard for college. Right. She even got suspended

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Speaker 1: the week before graduation because she was supposed to be

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Speaker 1: confined to campus for having broken previous rules, and she left.

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Speaker 1: And uh, even though she had written two of the

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Speaker 1: songs and a whole lot of other material that was

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Speaker 1: going to be used in the graduation ceremony, she was

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Speaker 1: going to be prohibited from walking across the stage. She

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00:17:05,840 --> 00:17:08,560
Speaker 1: was only allowed to graduate with her class after her

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Speaker 1: mother wrote a letter in her defense. And the rest

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Speaker 1: of the student body, like hundreds of them, I mean uh,

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Speaker 1: not not not half of them, but approaching half, petitioned

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Speaker 1: and protested, And on top of her coursework and her

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Speaker 1: incredible love life and her social life, she managed to

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Speaker 1: keep writing this whole time, and most of what was

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Speaker 1: in her first book, Renaissance and Other Poems, was written

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Speaker 1: while she was at Vassar, and in spite of all

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Speaker 1: her hell raising while she was there, she had managed

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Speaker 1: to arrange a scholarship for her sister Kathleen to attend

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Speaker 1: the college as well. So she was out doing all

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Speaker 1: kinds of wild and crazy things and partying and having

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Speaker 1: life adventures, but she was also like taking care of

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Speaker 1: business the whole time. After graduating, she moved to New

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Speaker 1: York City. She was hoping to continue her work as

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Speaker 1: a writer while also making a name for herself in

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Speaker 1: the world of theater. Eventually, her sister Norm moved in

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Speaker 1: with her also, and the two of them shared an apartment,

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Speaker 1: and this was such a vastly different world from Camden

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Speaker 1: where they had been growing up, and you know, even

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Speaker 1: from vasser The two of them practiced swearing while doing

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Speaker 1: their their needleworks so that they could get used to it.

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Speaker 1: I love this. I mean, most people swear doing needlework

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Speaker 1: as something goes wrong and they stabbed themselves, but I

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00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:25,280
Speaker 1: sort of loved the idea that there they were really

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Speaker 1: practicing saying things. Concurrently, Yeah, they were practicing saying bad

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Speaker 1: words while while doing need work. So charming. The two

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Speaker 1: young women had very little money and when their mother

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00:18:36,640 --> 00:18:38,640
Speaker 1: heard that they were living without any sort of heat.

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Speaker 1: She decided that she would move down there herself. She

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Speaker 1: brought with her a pound of tobacco in a quart

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Speaker 1: of gin for her daughters. Cora lived in Greenwich Village

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Speaker 1: with her daughters for two years, and that was from

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Speaker 1: eight and nineteen twenty. She looked after them but tried

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Speaker 1: not to get in the way of their very bohemian lifestyle,

353
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Speaker 1: which was full of writing and drinking and parties. Instance.

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00:19:00,480 --> 00:19:03,320
Speaker 1: Income came from writing and acting and gifts from her

355
00:19:03,359 --> 00:19:06,640
Speaker 1: many friends. At first, this was really slow going. I mean,

356
00:19:06,760 --> 00:19:09,000
Speaker 1: she had established that she was very gifted, but she

357
00:19:09,080 --> 00:19:11,920
Speaker 1: was sending poems off to journals and getting rejections back.

358
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Speaker 1: She really persevered, though, and eventually she was getting published

359
00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:19,560
Speaker 1: in Vanity Fair. Her Vanity Fair editor, Edmund Wilson, would

360
00:19:19,600 --> 00:19:22,520
Speaker 1: eventually propose to her and she would turn him down.

361
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:24,639
Speaker 1: She had away with editors. She had a way with

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00:19:24,640 --> 00:19:28,320
Speaker 1: getting proposed to you. While living in Grinage, Vincent finally

363
00:19:28,359 --> 00:19:30,959
Speaker 1: met poet Arthur Fickey, who she had been corresponding with

364
00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:33,919
Speaker 1: since Renaissance was published in the Lyric Here and he

365
00:19:33,960 --> 00:19:36,240
Speaker 1: was about to go off to war. They carried on

366
00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:38,960
Speaker 1: a relationship in letters and sonnets and leader in person

367
00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:41,480
Speaker 1: that would go on for years. It's it's hard to

368
00:19:41,520 --> 00:19:45,000
Speaker 1: say who the love of Edna st. Vincent Malay's life was.

369
00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:47,479
Speaker 1: I really feel like she had several, and and he

370
00:19:47,560 --> 00:19:52,199
Speaker 1: was one of them. In Vincent finished what's considered to

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00:19:52,240 --> 00:19:55,960
Speaker 1: be her greatest play, Aria de Coppo, which broke box

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00:19:56,000 --> 00:19:58,720
Speaker 1: office records and went on to be performed all over

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Speaker 1: the world. She continue to act in plays until the

374
00:20:01,440 --> 00:20:04,480
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, when her writing career started to actually overtake

375
00:20:04,480 --> 00:20:09,200
Speaker 1: her acting work. So one of Vincent's most quoted bits

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00:20:09,200 --> 00:20:12,040
Speaker 1: of verse, which if you have heard anything about her,

377
00:20:12,119 --> 00:20:15,120
Speaker 1: you probably have heard, is about burning one's candle at

378
00:20:15,119 --> 00:20:18,000
Speaker 1: both ends. And that's really how she spent her life

379
00:20:18,000 --> 00:20:21,360
Speaker 1: in the village. She would just drive herself too exhaustion

380
00:20:21,480 --> 00:20:24,639
Speaker 1: on work and drink and love, and then she would

381
00:20:24,800 --> 00:20:26,600
Speaker 1: have to take to her bed. She would faint or

382
00:20:26,640 --> 00:20:28,560
Speaker 1: she would collapse, and somebody would have to come look

383
00:20:28,600 --> 00:20:32,800
Speaker 1: after her. When she finally left the village bound for Europe,

384
00:20:32,840 --> 00:20:37,440
Speaker 1: she was just completely drained physically and emotionally. And while

385
00:20:37,480 --> 00:20:39,920
Speaker 1: in Europe, she traveled and she wrote, and she became

386
00:20:39,960 --> 00:20:44,240
Speaker 1: increasingly ill with an ongoing stomach problem. Her family tried

387
00:20:44,280 --> 00:20:46,720
Speaker 1: to convince her to seek medical care, but she refused,

388
00:20:47,240 --> 00:20:49,720
Speaker 1: and Cora finally went to Europe herself to try to

389
00:20:49,800 --> 00:20:52,600
Speaker 1: nurse her. She had seen Arthur Fickie a few times

390
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:56,040
Speaker 1: in Europe also, and about the same time as her

391
00:20:56,040 --> 00:20:58,639
Speaker 1: mother came to look after her, she got the news

392
00:20:58,680 --> 00:21:01,120
Speaker 1: that Arthur, who she had really hoped she might get

393
00:21:01,119 --> 00:21:05,280
Speaker 1: married to one day, had divorced his wife. But also

394
00:21:05,440 --> 00:21:08,080
Speaker 1: part of the same news was that he had also

395
00:21:08,160 --> 00:21:12,040
Speaker 1: met someone else, Gladys Brown, who he would later marry.

396
00:21:12,280 --> 00:21:15,760
Speaker 1: Vincent headed back to the States in January of nineteen three,

397
00:21:16,119 --> 00:21:19,200
Speaker 1: and she headed back to the village. Her mother went

398
00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:22,240
Speaker 1: back to Maine, having gotten discouraged with her inability to

399
00:21:22,320 --> 00:21:24,960
Speaker 1: get Vincent to see a doctor for her stomach problems.

400
00:21:25,280 --> 00:21:28,320
Speaker 1: Everybody was really at the seriously go to the doctor point,

401
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:32,720
Speaker 1: like it was alarming everyone. That year, at a house party,

402
00:21:32,800 --> 00:21:35,760
Speaker 1: she ran into Eu Jim blossa Van. So I'm gonna

403
00:21:35,840 --> 00:21:40,520
Speaker 1: just say we had a lively discussion in the visitors

404
00:21:40,520 --> 00:21:44,160
Speaker 1: center at Steepletop about whether it's blossa Van or Blassavan.

405
00:21:44,480 --> 00:21:48,960
Speaker 1: So uh, we sort of settled on blossa Van. Yeah, yeah,

406
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:52,320
Speaker 1: So she she ran into Eugene blossa Van who she

407
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:57,040
Speaker 1: met briefly at a previous house party in nineteen eighteen.

408
00:21:56,520 --> 00:21:59,720
Speaker 1: The party was a pretty awkward one for Vincent. A

409
00:21:59,760 --> 00:22:02,480
Speaker 1: lot the guests were former lovers of hers who were

410
00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:05,040
Speaker 1: in attendance with their wives, and her stomach was also

411
00:22:05,119 --> 00:22:10,480
Speaker 1: really bothering her eventually. I mean, she uh was one

412
00:22:10,560 --> 00:22:12,879
Speaker 1: to have many loves. I would think if you traveled

413
00:22:12,880 --> 00:22:15,760
Speaker 1: in her social circle, it would be hard for her

414
00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:17,440
Speaker 1: not to be crossing paths with a lot of people

415
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:19,720
Speaker 1: she had been romantically linked to. So they just all

416
00:22:19,760 --> 00:22:21,679
Speaker 1: happened to be at the same party. Because a lot

417
00:22:21,760 --> 00:22:25,320
Speaker 1: of this was from the Greenwich village time and her hosts,

418
00:22:25,400 --> 00:22:27,600
Speaker 1: in an effort to try to cheer Vincent up, decided

419
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:30,800
Speaker 1: to play a sort of improv game, and Vincent and

420
00:22:30,840 --> 00:22:34,320
Speaker 1: Eugen were tapped to improvise a scene about two lovers,

421
00:22:34,359 --> 00:22:36,720
Speaker 1: but it was obvious to everyone that there was some

422
00:22:36,800 --> 00:22:40,879
Speaker 1: actual real chemistry between them, and their relationships started immediately.

423
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:44,639
Speaker 1: Eugen was a widower who was born in Amsterdam. His

424
00:22:44,800 --> 00:22:47,920
Speaker 1: first wife and as mil Holland, was another Vassar graduate

425
00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:51,480
Speaker 1: and an activist for women's suffrage. Vincent had actually met

426
00:22:51,520 --> 00:22:55,120
Speaker 1: Inn as well in school. Eugen's marriage to Dinas had

427
00:22:55,160 --> 00:22:57,960
Speaker 1: not lasted for very long, because only three years in

428
00:22:58,080 --> 00:23:00,719
Speaker 1: she collapsed during a speech that she was giving and

429
00:23:00,800 --> 00:23:04,760
Speaker 1: died shortly thereafter. After she died, Eugen moved to the

430
00:23:04,840 --> 00:23:08,840
Speaker 1: village and started an import business. And meeting Eugen at

431
00:23:08,840 --> 00:23:13,600
Speaker 1: that house party in very likely saved Vincent's life. He

432
00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:16,280
Speaker 1: got her to finally do the thing that everyone else

433
00:23:16,320 --> 00:23:18,679
Speaker 1: had been unsuccessful in attempting to get her to do,

434
00:23:18,960 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 1: which would see a doctor. And sort of a side

435
00:23:21,520 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: note at right as all this was going on, in

436
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:26,480
Speaker 1: April of that year, Vincent learned that she had been

437
00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:30,200
Speaker 1: awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. It's so very heavy

438
00:23:30,200 --> 00:23:33,439
Speaker 1: time in her life, extremely And not long after UH

439
00:23:33,960 --> 00:23:37,840
Speaker 1: doctors decided Vincent's stomach problems, which are theorized today to

440
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:41,520
Speaker 1: be Crohn's disease, we're going to require surgery, and she

441
00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:44,240
Speaker 1: wanted to marry Eugen before the procedure in case something

442
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:46,560
Speaker 1: went wrong, So they got married on the morning of

443
00:23:46,640 --> 00:23:51,280
Speaker 1: July eighth. Outside the home of a friend Vincent's vale

444
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 1: was a huge length of mosquito netting that her sister

445
00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:59,240
Speaker 1: had found on a porch. There are pictures. There are

446
00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:01,879
Speaker 1: wedding pictures in the visitor center at Steeple Top, and

447
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:04,800
Speaker 1: they're very striking because they're black and white pictures. Um.

448
00:24:04,840 --> 00:24:07,399
Speaker 1: And and she's wearing a dress. I don't remember what

449
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:09,080
Speaker 1: the actual color of it is, but it's dark in

450
00:24:09,119 --> 00:24:12,360
Speaker 1: the picture because somebody's wearing dark clothing. Uh, is how

451
00:24:12,359 --> 00:24:14,520
Speaker 1: it comes across its black and white picture with this

452
00:24:14,680 --> 00:24:19,600
Speaker 1: just enormous volume of white veil netting um flowing down

453
00:24:19,600 --> 00:24:23,680
Speaker 1: behind her. So Arthur Ficky and Gladys Brown were both there,

454
00:24:24,119 --> 00:24:28,520
Speaker 1: and Vincent's sister Norma and her husband Eugen, borrowed the

455
00:24:28,520 --> 00:24:31,399
Speaker 1: cook's ring. Her name was Hattie when he realized that

456
00:24:31,400 --> 00:24:36,400
Speaker 1: he had accidentally misplaced Vincent's. Vincent went in for surgery

457
00:24:36,440 --> 00:24:40,480
Speaker 1: that evening, and during the procedures, the doctors essentially rebuilt

458
00:24:40,480 --> 00:24:45,400
Speaker 1: her intestines because membranes and adhesions had made them completely dysfunctional.

459
00:24:46,080 --> 00:24:50,240
Speaker 1: And once Vincent recovered from surgery, Eugen took her on

460
00:24:50,320 --> 00:24:54,280
Speaker 1: a honeymoon around the world. They traveled all over the

461
00:24:54,320 --> 00:24:58,600
Speaker 1: place there. Uh, there are souvenirs from China that they

462
00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 1: brought back with them, and they're and the home mets

463
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:04,480
Speaker 1: people top which seems like a very happy place to

464
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:07,239
Speaker 1: pause until we come back to the story in the

465
00:25:07,280 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 1: next episode. Yeah, we'll enjoy this happy part. Yeah. Well

466
00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:13,879
Speaker 1: there's more happy parts still to come. But you know,

467
00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 1: if you want a hundred percent, maybe not ad percent.

468
00:25:16,320 --> 00:25:19,399
Speaker 1: If you want a really happy ending for this story,

469
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:23,320
Speaker 1: maybe put off listening to part two. Don't really put

470
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 1: off listening to part two. There's a lot of awesome

471
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,639
Speaker 1: stuff that is still going to happen in her life. Um,

472
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:30,920
Speaker 1: but there there is also some trouble to come down

473
00:25:30,920 --> 00:25:34,199
Speaker 1: the road. Uh. We will also talk a lot more

474
00:25:34,200 --> 00:25:37,199
Speaker 1: about speople top Um in the next episode because it

475
00:25:37,280 --> 00:25:39,960
Speaker 1: it became Uh, it was where she lived for the

476
00:25:40,040 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: last many years of her life, and a lot of

477
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 1: it is like an extension of her personality. Um, which

478
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,199
Speaker 1: is not really surprising. We have somebody who puts a

479
00:25:48,200 --> 00:25:51,399
Speaker 1: lot into the home that they live in. Very cool.

480
00:25:51,480 --> 00:25:55,120
Speaker 1: Do you also have listener mail that I do? This

481
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:58,199
Speaker 1: is from Anne Marie and and Marie says, I just

482
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:00,560
Speaker 1: listened to your latest podcast and it made me think

483
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:02,200
Speaker 1: a lot about a book I read recently from my

484
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 1: book club called The Child Catchers Rescue Trafficking and the

485
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:08,879
Speaker 1: New Gospel of Adoption by Katherine Joyce. It's They are

486
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:11,840
Speaker 1: Well researched, an important book that goes into many of

487
00:26:11,840 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 1: the problems that plague international adoption today. While many, if

488
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 1: not most, people who adopt internationally have only the best

489
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:22,680
Speaker 1: of of intentions, there are people involved in the process

490
00:26:22,680 --> 00:26:25,119
Speaker 1: who use the demand for children to make money, and

491
00:26:25,119 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 1: there are people who adopt in order to convert children

492
00:26:27,960 --> 00:26:31,359
Speaker 1: rather than to help them. So uh, since I didn't

493
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 1: say clearly before this came following our Orphan Trains episode

494
00:26:36,880 --> 00:26:39,399
Speaker 1: to go on with the letter. One important thing the

495
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:42,320
Speaker 1: book discusses is how certain segments of the adoption community

496
00:26:42,320 --> 00:26:45,399
Speaker 1: have rallied around claiming that there are many millions of

497
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:47,960
Speaker 1: orphans in the world. The number they use is one

498
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:50,760
Speaker 1: from UNI stuff that actually includes children who've only lost

499
00:26:50,840 --> 00:26:53,359
Speaker 1: one parent, and children who's who have lost both parents

500
00:26:53,440 --> 00:26:55,920
Speaker 1: but still have relatives who can support them, who we

501
00:26:55,960 --> 00:26:58,320
Speaker 1: would never think should be taking away from a family

502
00:26:58,359 --> 00:27:01,400
Speaker 1: in the United States, from this belief that there are

503
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:04,879
Speaker 1: so many children in need of adoption collides with reality,

504
00:27:04,880 --> 00:27:08,000
Speaker 1: and potential adoptive parents are shocked at wait times and

505
00:27:08,000 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaker 1: demand legal reform to speed up the process, which puts

506
00:27:11,080 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 1: these children's lives even more in jeopardy of dangerous adoptions.

507
00:27:15,560 --> 00:27:18,119
Speaker 1: The author shares stories of parents who think their children

508
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:20,360
Speaker 1: are going to be students in the US or who

509
00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:23,199
Speaker 1: shame who are shamed to thinking that they need to

510
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:27,560
Speaker 1: do what's best by giving up their children. In many countries,

511
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,919
Speaker 1: orphanages are used as temporary assistance for parents when times

512
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:33,119
Speaker 1: are tough, and parents are shocked when they return for

513
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 1: their children and they've been adopted out abroad. One group

514
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 1: that is doing good work as Parents for Ethical Adoption reform.

515
00:27:39,800 --> 00:27:43,000
Speaker 1: Adoption isn't the problem in itself, it's how it's implemented

516
00:27:43,040 --> 00:27:45,639
Speaker 1: because it can easily go so wrong. All my best

517
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 1: and Marie, thank you and Marie for writing this letter

518
00:27:48,760 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 1: to us. UM. I actually my cousin and his wife

519
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: spent a year of their life in newly weeds in

520
00:27:54,480 --> 00:27:56,040
Speaker 1: a country I'm not gonna say what country it is

521
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 1: in cases is wrong. Uh. They were living and working

522
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:01,840
Speaker 1: at an orphanage. UM. And that's the country that's shut

523
00:28:01,880 --> 00:28:07,280
Speaker 1: down international adoption, UH within the last couple of decades

524
00:28:07,720 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 1: because of a lot of the issues like these that

525
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 1: come up. UM. And they were like, we we need

526
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: to stop contributing to this as a problem we didn't

527
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: really go into in the Orphan Train episode. A lot

528
00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:22,360
Speaker 1: of the problems that do continue to plague the adoption

529
00:28:22,440 --> 00:28:27,800
Speaker 1: and foster care systems today, they definitely are present. Yeah,

530
00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:29,679
Speaker 1: both in the US and abroad. I mean there are

531
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: problems everywhere. It's a very difficult issue. Yeah. Yeah, Like

532
00:28:33,840 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 1: you hear some horror stories sometimes about um people who

533
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:42,479
Speaker 1: effectively like round up children and take them to another

534
00:28:42,560 --> 00:28:45,720
Speaker 1: city to be adopted to somebody who lives abroad, which

535
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:48,960
Speaker 1: is heartbreaking and terrible. So we were not intending to

536
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 1: gloss over that. It just wasn't quite part of what

537
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:55,560
Speaker 1: we were talking about in that particular episode. Um, I

538
00:28:55,640 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: guess that's the sad part to temper the lots of

539
00:28:58,080 --> 00:29:01,240
Speaker 1: happy things that just happened to Edna St Vincent Malain,

540
00:29:02,320 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 1: whose story we will continue in our next episode. If

541
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:07,320
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, we have a

542
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:10,560
Speaker 1: slightly new email address. It is History Podcast at how

543
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:13,720
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Our Facebook is Facebook dot com

544
00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: slash miss in History, and our Twitter is missed in

545
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 1: History or tumbler is missed in History dot tumble dot com.

546
00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:21,040
Speaker 1: And we're also on Pinterest at pinterest dot com, slash

547
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 1: missed in History. Our website is missed in History dot com.

548
00:29:25,280 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: And if you would like to learn a little more

549
00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 1: about what we talked about today, you can go to

550
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:31,080
Speaker 1: our parent website, which is how stuff works dot com

551
00:29:31,080 --> 00:29:33,240
Speaker 1: and put the word poetry in the search bar and

552
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:36,880
Speaker 1: you will find how poetry Works. You can do all

553
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:39,000
Speaker 1: of that and a whole lot more at how stuff

554
00:29:39,000 --> 00:29:45,160
Speaker 1: works dot com. Go more on this and thousands of

555
00:29:45,160 --> 00:29:58,040
Speaker 1: other topics because it has stuff works dot com