Speaker 1: Check check check check chicken chop chow chowder, chive chastity.
Speaker 1: Oh we gotta grumble at chastity from Queen Libertines over charity.
Speaker 1: Charity chivalry bit different chivalry, chivalry, chivalry, chives said chid chide.
Speaker 1: You chided me for saying chives when you already said chives. Child, Wow,
Speaker 1: choose your chives cheerfully, chair chair. Uh. And that was
Speaker 1: today's episode about the romance between the letter C and
Speaker 1: the letter H. H d be stepping out. H has
Speaker 1: a thing going on, essence G. Sometimes even though H
Speaker 1: is a little quiet about that one. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I've seen chat with I guess G is usually the
Speaker 1: quiet one. How about this? How about when P and
Speaker 1: H go out together and nobody even knows it's either
Speaker 1: of them, right, some people who might even think it
Speaker 1: is G. Some people are like, oh yeah right, these
Speaker 1: and cough. It's the same sound you guys see F
Speaker 1: last night at the body wasn't here? I saw and
Speaker 1: I saw H standing nearby G together. Anybody anybody's seen
Speaker 1: P around here lately? Oh? You what a what a
Speaker 1: world this letter land. We spend some more time there,
Speaker 1: I know, right, I'd go to a party with a
Speaker 1: bunch of letters because I'm very lame. W H is
Speaker 1: always stepping out with everyone, including W you horror or
Speaker 1: you whole horror? Wow, H gets around. Really thought about
Speaker 1: that before? H? Holy hell h H the horror of
Speaker 1: the alphabet. So we figured it out. That's why you
Speaker 1: joined us on this podcast. But he's hard hitting, hard hitting,
Speaker 1: heart hard hard hitting for these hard hitting histories, these
Speaker 1: have truths, hearts of hearts here say here's say yes totally.
Speaker 1: He's horrible headlines today's episode of Ridiculous Romances. Talked to
Speaker 1: you about the letter H, which we've determined is the
Speaker 1: side piece of the alphabet that's hot. It's hot. Well,
Speaker 1: we appreciate spending some time with H since we've been
Speaker 1: dealing with C nineteen this week with our COVID Do
Speaker 1: you not recommend unsubscribed? Unsubscribed for real? All the extra
Speaker 1: work I'm gonna do to edit out these coughs and
Speaker 1: sniffs because it's uh, we're climbing out of it. I
Speaker 1: feel close to better, Yeah, I think, Yeah, you had
Speaker 1: your worst day yesterday. Definitely I feel better today than yesterday.
Speaker 1: But I'm tired. Yeah, we're gonna park you up I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do the pulp fiction shot of adrenaline straight into
Speaker 1: her heart right before we during the theme song. So
Speaker 1: she's going to come back and be like, wow, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: I excited. Yeah, this is so exciting. We're back for
Speaker 1: Collette Part three. This has been such a saga into it.
Speaker 1: Where we at? What happened? Where we at? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well when we last left off, right, we got Collette through,
Speaker 1: like I guess, about like five years of her life.
Speaker 1: I think the nineteen twelve five years of her life,
Speaker 1: not the first five years of her life. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it would be a different, very different story, very different story.
Speaker 1: Also a boring lie. Yes, I don't think she had
Speaker 1: much to say about one through five unless she had
Speaker 1: written all those novels before she was five years old.
Speaker 1: Holy shit, incredible, that would be a story like we
Speaker 1: kep talking about Mozart. But listen, she wrote a whole
Speaker 1: book about being a fifteen year old girl at school
Speaker 1: when she was never even been to school yet. No,
Speaker 1: we had gotten her through about five six years of
Speaker 1: her life, which included the kiss that started a riot, UM,
Speaker 1: multiple partners and trists, many many awesome sexy adventures. UM
Speaker 1: also started her new career in journalism until she married
Speaker 1: her second husband, unread Juvenel, and they had a daughter.
Speaker 1: But now war is coming to France, and after that
Speaker 1: Collette has a sexy young stepson to contend with. So yeah,
Speaker 1: let's hear about wartime journalism and lavender languages and sexual
Speaker 1: initiation and so much more. I'm him. Let's go all right,
Speaker 1: hey the French come listen. Well, Eli and Diana got
Speaker 1: some stories to tell. There's no matchmaking, a romantic tips.
Speaker 1: It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love. It might be
Speaker 1: any type of person at all, and abstract concept, don't
Speaker 1: a concrete wall. But if there's a story, were the
Speaker 1: second Glance Ridiculous Roles a production of iHeart Radio. So
Speaker 1: Henri and Collette married in nineteen twelve, and it was
Speaker 1: like acrimonious right away. They almost split up within a
Speaker 1: few months. But when they reconciled, Collette got pregnant. You
Speaker 1: know how that is that makeup sex. They had their
Speaker 1: only daughter in nineteen thirteen. Her name was Bell Gazoo,
Speaker 1: which meant beautiful gazelle, and that was actually Collette's nickname
Speaker 1: as a child. Okay, well, and just a double back here,
Speaker 1: real quick Anri dis Juvenel was the editor of a
Speaker 1: newspaper where Collette worked, right, and that's sort of how
Speaker 1: they met and fell in love. Yeah, kind of like
Speaker 1: intellectual equals and stuff like that. But neither of them
Speaker 1: were great parents to Belle Gazoo. Unfortunately, they pretty much
Speaker 1: abandoned her to nurses and nanny's um. Not uncommon I
Speaker 1: think for rich parents who could afford to do that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Um. But Collette was like, she really
Speaker 1: was not interested. She would sometimes let six months pass
Speaker 1: without ever seeing her daughter. She thought parenting was a
Speaker 1: strain on her creativity and freedom. She called her daughter
Speaker 1: a rat sometimes just not a good parent. She sucked
Speaker 1: being a mom. She shouldn't have had a kid. Henri
Speaker 1: was not a great dad either, He was just really
Speaker 1: wrapped up in his own self and neither of them
Speaker 1: wanted to focus on this kid. But they all lived
Speaker 1: together in Rosven that house in Brittany, France that Missy
Speaker 1: had gifted to Collette when they broke up, you know,
Speaker 1: she still had that house. I can't say I've ever
Speaker 1: gotten a breakup gift, let alone an entire house in Brittany, France.
Speaker 1: How many Marquees have you dated few, but not many. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll say that, so that's fair. I think the best
Speaker 1: breakup gift I got was being broken up with and
Speaker 1: not having to be with that person to say, I
Speaker 1: think the breakup is the gift usually, alright, But in
Speaker 1: nineteen fourteen, the Great War began that it wasn't even
Speaker 1: called World War One because no one expected there to
Speaker 1: be a sequel. It was just the Great War. They
Speaker 1: didn't do the George Lucas thing where they were like,
Speaker 1: let me call this World War four, so that there's
Speaker 1: room to do some prequels and some sequels later, if
Speaker 1: we right, right, Because I got a theme park in mind.
Speaker 1: Oh no, the worst ever Franz Ferdinands free fall. Oh god,
Speaker 1: he well, of course, Henri was almost immediately called to
Speaker 1: active duty. Healthy man, you know you're you're going to
Speaker 1: the front. Sorry, bro um So Bell Gazoo was sent
Speaker 1: into the country to stay because it's safer out there,
Speaker 1: and Colette went back to Paris. Now only a month
Speaker 1: into the war. The Germans were at the gates of
Speaker 1: Paris and it was not pretty like A bomb fell
Speaker 1: on Isabelle de Canig's garden. Remember her, she was the
Speaker 1: panther mistress also famous writer. Friends of Collette's were killed,
Speaker 1: and in mid October, Collette volunteered as a night nurse
Speaker 1: at a school that was turned into a hospital. She
Speaker 1: worked thirteen hours shifts from seven in the evening until
Speaker 1: eight in the morning, which were obviously the hours nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to work, Colette was doing it. According to Judith
Speaker 1: Thurman's book Secrets of the Flesh, Collette had eight critically
Speaker 1: wounded soldiers under her care. Many of them were missing
Speaker 1: body parts like jaws, teeth, eyes, or whole legs. Insane
Speaker 1: to think about somebody's half their face missing, perfect bombs
Speaker 1: and trapnel were just they've sucked you up, Judith It's quote.
Speaker 1: When she wasn't changing their bandages, making them tea, administering anesthetics,
Speaker 1: or tending the hot water furnace, she sat with them
Speaker 1: and talked about her father, which, if you remember, her
Speaker 1: father had lost his leg in the Second Italian War
Speaker 1: for Independence. Judith goes on, they wanted to know where
Speaker 1: he had been amputated, higher than me, and he could
Speaker 1: still walk and he married all the same, What was
Speaker 1: his wife like? Tell us? They just wanted to know
Speaker 1: that there was still a life ahead of them if
Speaker 1: they had their leg amputated, because that was that's terrifying,
Speaker 1: how upsetting. I mean again, you know, and some people
Speaker 1: are missing half their face, like you know, they're definitely
Speaker 1: like life is over, um, but who better to tell
Speaker 1: them about all the romance that could be awaiting them
Speaker 1: that So I kind of like that idea that she
Speaker 1: was sitting there like, oh my mom was awesome because
Speaker 1: she did. She was pretty close with her mom um.
Speaker 1: I think she was a bit of an overbearing mother,
Speaker 1: but she's still was pretty close to her, so she
Speaker 1: was able to maybe lift their spirits a little bit
Speaker 1: and give them some hope, you know what I would say.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this is true or not,
Speaker 1: but it just might might. Inclination for the situation is, Okay,
Speaker 1: you've lost your leg. You're going to find someone you're
Speaker 1: gonna get married, and that person is You've already weeded
Speaker 1: out all the people who wouldn't marry you because you're
Speaker 1: you know, they consider you a burden or something like that,
Speaker 1: so you've got better chances of finding someone who is
Speaker 1: going to be so supportive of you and devoted to you.
Speaker 1: So you know, chin up there, hopefully. Yeah, that hopefully things.
Speaker 1: That's a good case scenario like that. Yeah. Well, after
Speaker 1: a week of this grueling schedule, collect was transferred to
Speaker 1: the day shift, so it got a little simpler, you know,
Speaker 1: people less left this graveyard shift action. But after two
Speaker 1: months she was missing her husband so badly that she
Speaker 1: decided to travel in secret to join him on the
Speaker 1: front lines in very gen and she was not the
Speaker 1: only soldier's wife to do so. But they technically were
Speaker 1: not allowed to be there, so they basically had to
Speaker 1: go into hiding, like they called themselves voluntary prisoners. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it was like Thurman rights quote. Her months at the
Speaker 1: front were the happiest in her life, in part surely
Speaker 1: because she had no rivals for Henry's heart, ardor or gratitude.
Speaker 1: She kept her shutters closed during the day, exercised, wrote, painted,
Speaker 1: scrubbed floors, and steadied chests, the ultimate proof of love
Speaker 1: that she could give to her husband. But while in Verdunn,
Speaker 1: Collette also became one of the first women to report
Speaker 1: from the front lines about the war. Now, her stories
Speaker 1: are mostly concerned with like the human cost of the war,
Speaker 1: like the women and children, even the military war dogs
Speaker 1: were subjects of her articles, rather than like, you know,
Speaker 1: the big heavy political implications which of typical word reporting, yeah,
Speaker 1: which she might have not been able to write about.
Speaker 1: Women journalists were not given that kind of assignments or
Speaker 1: were not asked for their opinion about that sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: So you know, it might have been her personal preference,
Speaker 1: and it might have been like, well, we don't care
Speaker 1: to hear your opinion about how it's going whatever, But
Speaker 1: since you're there, could you tell us about the dogs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: tell us about the dogs. But maybe because of the
Speaker 1: everyday stuff she covered, she managed to capture a side
Speaker 1: of war time that many other journalists hadn't been able
Speaker 1: to capture. In the book Her War Story, Twentieth Century
Speaker 1: Women Write About War, which is edited by Sair P. Sheldon,
Speaker 1: one of Collette's articles from ver Dunn is published here
Speaker 1: in full. And that's great because otherwise you'd have to
Speaker 1: read it in French, and I could not find another
Speaker 1: English one could not brush up my high school French
Speaker 1: well enough to capture a whole article. In this article,
Speaker 1: Collette describes getting to the front and asking the Le
Speaker 1: Marche family who's the couple that she's staying with? What's
Speaker 1: going on? And then I m our complain that the
Speaker 1: upholsterer is selling butter. That's actually Margarine. The piano merchant
Speaker 1: has a shipment of sardines for sale. They're charging insane
Speaker 1: prices for a single vegetable. You know, they're just giving
Speaker 1: all these like that's not what I asked for. And
Speaker 1: Collette kind of loses her temper and she's like, the war,
Speaker 1: for God's sake, how's the war going? People? Obviously it's
Speaker 1: a war on and they kind of chuckle. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's going. Don't worry. There's a war. Yeah, the war. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still happening. Don't you worry about the thing. There
Speaker 1: is still a war, if that's what you're worried about.
Speaker 1: Collette goes on to say, quote, I deserve that reply.
Speaker 1: It did not take me a week to realize that.
Speaker 1: Here and very donne Chocco block full of troops with
Speaker 1: the railway it's unique supply line. War becomes a habit,
Speaker 1: the inseparable cataclysm of life, as natural as thunder and rainstorms.
Speaker 1: But the danger, the real danger, is that one may
Speaker 1: soon not be able to eat. You know. The piano merchant,
Speaker 1: he's a piano merchant. He's supposed to be selling pianos,
Speaker 1: but instead he's dealing in sardine. The upholsterer is dealing
Speaker 1: about butter. Now they're not doing any of their normal ship.
Speaker 1: Everything has been suspended in favor of finding and selling food.
Speaker 1: That is the number one. Nobody gives a funk about piano.
Speaker 1: Nobody's buying a piano. They want a leak, you know,
Speaker 1: they want a piece of bread. And that's insane to me,
Speaker 1: because of course, our global supply chain is so different
Speaker 1: now that it's like kind of impossible to imagine that.
Speaker 1: It's just completely different. Now. It's impossible to think about
Speaker 1: not being able to find an egg, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, We're having to go down to lows to
Speaker 1: buy margarine. Imagine, I mean you go to the Ace
Speaker 1: Hardware and they're like, what do you want sardines? All
Speaker 1: we got is sardines hardware. We're now we're a sardware
Speaker 1: as in Sardines Sardware Friendly neighborhood, sardine sardine supplier, or
Speaker 1: a co op. Collet goes on to describe bombs falling continually,
Speaker 1: not causing many casualties, but people complain about their gardens
Speaker 1: being ruined and their sheds being smashed. One lady had
Speaker 1: to hide from quote a veritable hail of shrapnel. But
Speaker 1: her main complaint was, quote, just imagine. I had to
Speaker 1: take shelter under the porte cochere of ex family and
Speaker 1: we're not even on speaking terms. I love our human
Speaker 1: no matter what's going on around. UM. We all know
Speaker 1: about the shrapnel, but listen to this. I had to
Speaker 1: be polite to a family I don't like. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I feel sorry for me. Collette spent about three months
Speaker 1: in Verdun, and then she spent most of her time
Speaker 1: moving back and forth from Paris to the front, writing
Speaker 1: her war reports. In nineteen fifteen, she escaped to Rome
Speaker 1: as a journalist for Limit, and her next door neighbor
Speaker 1: was a writer and fighter pilot named Gabrielle de Nunzio,
Speaker 1: who would become one of her lovers, and by nineteen
Speaker 1: seventeen she and Enri de Juvenel returned to Paris. He
Speaker 1: had a diplomatic mission, and she had written a film
Speaker 1: adaptation of her book about her time on the stage,
Speaker 1: The Vagabonds that we talked about in the last episode.
Speaker 1: UM that was about to begin filming, and that made
Speaker 1: her one of the first authors to be involved in
Speaker 1: the new medium of cinemas. Collette also survived the Spanish
Speaker 1: flu pandemic, although some of her closest friends died from it.
Speaker 1: So this is just a super tragic time. People are
Speaker 1: dying from war, They're dying from disease. It's like some
Speaker 1: end time ship. Can't relate, right, what's that? But by
Speaker 1: the Great War was over and Enri was positioning himself
Speaker 1: for a political career. He charmed a lot of people
Speaker 1: by leading this campaign to have an unknown soldier buried
Speaker 1: at the art to trio, Was he the one who
Speaker 1: got it there? Because we went and saw Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he led that campaign. It worked. Everybody was like cool,
Speaker 1: that guy is awesome, and it kind of like helped
Speaker 1: to launch him as a national figure. Well, look at that.
Speaker 1: We've we've seen part of this story, yeah, part of it.
Speaker 1: We might have seen other things. I imagine we went
Speaker 1: to some maybe one of the cafes we went to
Speaker 1: Collette had sat at once or twice in her life. Oh,
Speaker 1: we might have had one of our butts in the
Speaker 1: same chair as Collette, but got around. Uh. Now. Henri
Speaker 1: was also an early adopter and a strong supporter of syndicalism,
Speaker 1: which was a belief that political structures are inherently corrupt
Speaker 1: and that organized workers, through their trade unions, should control society.
Speaker 1: I don't know that sounds pretty good to me, right,
Speaker 1: animal parious idea. In nineteen nineteen, maybe because of the
Speaker 1: demands of his new diplomatic and his like political career
Speaker 1: he's putting together, he made Collette the literary editor of
Speaker 1: Lametan in, a newspaper where they worked, even though their
Speaker 1: relationship was becoming more and more strained over his many
Speaker 1: infidelities and absences. Not that Colette isn't getting her own
Speaker 1: on the side here as well, right because besides this
Speaker 1: guy de nuncio. In Italy, some people think that she
Speaker 1: had an affair with her friend, a Parisian actress named Musidora,
Speaker 1: and Musidora played Irma Vepp in a ten episode series
Speaker 1: called Le Vampire. Mussadra also co wrote and co directed
Speaker 1: Collette's film adaptation of the vagabond Mr Doris Pretty coolsa
Speaker 1: is pretty honest. And in nineteen twenty eight, years after
Speaker 1: marrying Henri, she would finally meet his son from his
Speaker 1: first marriage, Bertrand but before we get to that, we've
Speaker 1: got some cool queer history to cover, so let's take
Speaker 1: a quick commercial break. So welcome back to the show everyone,
Speaker 1: And in this whole series about Collette, we have just
Speaker 1: been absolutely dying to talk about why Paris was such
Speaker 1: a haven for lesbians and all like these fascinating ways
Speaker 1: that LGBTQ people have found to communicate with one another
Speaker 1: in secrecy. So we saw this information from across the
Speaker 1: bar and we really loved its vibes. So let's take
Speaker 1: a quick fling with history to learn about lavender languages
Speaker 1: and gay perry. Yes, so even before the end of
Speaker 1: World War One, as we've learned in our two previous
Speaker 1: Collette episodes, being a lesbian in Paris wasn't that big
Speaker 1: of a deal. That's because the French Revolution decriminalized homosexuality
Speaker 1: in provided people were discreet, okay, And after that the
Speaker 1: queer scene flourished, especially in the Belle epoc era of
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. So, like we
Speaker 1: talked about Natalie Clifford Barney, the Queen of the Lesbians,
Speaker 1: who ran a weekly salon from nineteen o nine until
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, this is a weekly salon. She's still
Speaker 1: on parties every week for like six years. They were
Speaker 1: attended by famous lesbians like Gertrude Stein and her partner
Speaker 1: Alice Toklas. The culture trip dot com says, quote, there's
Speaker 1: not a famous modernist or lesbian, let alone a lesbian
Speaker 1: modernist who lived in Paris at that time who did
Speaker 1: not pass through her doors. Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas
Speaker 1: also hosted salons where they launched the careers of painters
Speaker 1: like Matisse and Picasso. Culture Trip goes on to say, quote,
Speaker 1: it was the visibility and vivacity with which sapphick desire
Speaker 1: could be fulfilled in Paris, albeit relative to your position
Speaker 1: in the pecking order, that made it, as far as
Speaker 1: lesbians were concerned, the queer capital of Europe, even more
Speaker 1: so than Berlin. Women who had the money and freedom
Speaker 1: to travel, came from the UK, the USA and across
Speaker 1: Europe to attend salons such as Barney's and drink and
Speaker 1: dance in the city's lesbian bars. So you know, again,
Speaker 1: check check the privilege. If you had money, you know,
Speaker 1: if you had a title like we talked about with Missy,
Speaker 1: it was a bit easier for you to be out
Speaker 1: and proud than it was for just a regular poor
Speaker 1: chambermaid or something right right, well, and how often has
Speaker 1: that been true? Where you know, if you have the means,
Speaker 1: you are offered a bit more freedoms than than different
Speaker 1: rules apply. Yeah, you're you're cute. Things become a little
Speaker 1: cute quirks and eccentricities instead of criminal behavior. Right well,
Speaker 1: in different rules apply, and different opportunities are afforded to you,
Speaker 1: like you can actually go to these salons and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, right exactly, freedom to travel definitely page part
Speaker 1: of that. Um. And after the casualties of World War One,
Speaker 1: of course, there were so few healthy young men left
Speaker 1: in Paris that this only got more pronounced in the
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties. So I was already a big scene.
Speaker 1: And then after all these men were killed, um, there
Speaker 1: were fewer men, more lesbians. One of these bars was
Speaker 1: called La Monocle, and it was in the montmart neighborhood
Speaker 1: of Paris, and women would show up wearing full tuxedos,
Speaker 1: monocles and men's shoes. Obviously great pictures, by the way,
Speaker 1: I'll bet oh man, classy, everybody out there looking like
Speaker 1: Diane Keaton. I know, right, I always wanted like a
Speaker 1: really well cut tuxedo. I think it would be such
Speaker 1: a cool, like, it's this hot look. Now, you'd look
Speaker 1: great in tuxedo. Now. Of course, who ruined all this
Speaker 1: The Nazis. To the Nazis, they came in screwed a
Speaker 1: lot of this up. But later in ninety sixties, six
Speaker 1: Eve St Laurent brought the legacy of La monocula to
Speaker 1: high fashion, where he unveiled his women's tuxedo loo smoking
Speaker 1: on a Paris runway because it's smoking hot. As culture
Speaker 1: trip dot com notes, quote, it was at once a
Speaker 1: radical statement of female empowerment amid the decades sexual revolution,
Speaker 1: and a nod with all the world watching to the
Speaker 1: free living, free loving lesbians who first donned the look.
Speaker 1: And it's so I mean, definitely look this up and
Speaker 1: we'll try to share some pictures. But it's really cool
Speaker 1: to see all these women gathered together and some of
Speaker 1: them are femed out, they're wearing beautiful dresses, but most
Speaker 1: of them are wearing this full tuxedo monocle look, and
Speaker 1: they have their hair slicked back and everything, and it's
Speaker 1: just really cool to like see them chilling and looking
Speaker 1: so awesome. Apparently a lot of them would wear full
Speaker 1: length blankets down the street, like to smuggle themselves in
Speaker 1: kind of and they wud like throw dat I look
Speaker 1: like ship, but actually look at faith. That's some like
Speaker 1: what's his name? In the Hunger Games. If you could
Speaker 1: show up in something that's all rags and then you
Speaker 1: do a spin and it burst into flames, then it's
Speaker 1: this hot tuxedo. I wish I would wear that. I mean,
Speaker 1: but in most of the gay world, even in the
Speaker 1: Roaring twenties, visibility was just a chance to get beaten up, blackmailed,
Speaker 1: jailed or killed because of course there's still illegal in
Speaker 1: most places. UM. And so there were a variety of
Speaker 1: codes that were used to kind of communicate within the
Speaker 1: queer community who you were, and like if you knew
Speaker 1: the code, you were a safe person to talk to.
Speaker 1: And if you didn't, great, now I know you're not safe.
Speaker 1: Like that was the point of that. UM. Lavender was
Speaker 1: the color most associated with homosexuality, so these codes and
Speaker 1: slang are called lavender languages, and sometimes the codes were
Speaker 1: in the language of flowers, very important, the language of hours.
Speaker 1: It's not really a thing anymore as much as it
Speaker 1: used to be. But like it used to, like if
Speaker 1: you sent a yellow rose to someone at the wrong time,
Speaker 1: it was like a big So the language of flowers
Speaker 1: pretty well known. Women would give each o their bouquets
Speaker 1: of violets to express interest in a romance. Oh well,
Speaker 1: what do you do if you just if you're like
Speaker 1: to turn that down? Do you like? Hand? Thank you
Speaker 1: so much? Um here will you hold these for me?
Speaker 1: I have to just step out for a minute, you know,
Speaker 1: where do you go plant them? You could probably throw
Speaker 1: him on the ground, stomp on him. Pretty rude, very rude.
Speaker 1: I don't know. And that month that's a that's an
Speaker 1: interesting one too, because if you didn't know the code
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my god, thank you, it is
Speaker 1: oka like suddenly the other ladies like great awkward things
Speaker 1: in sue oh man, and she's following around. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a rom com the Violet I would I
Speaker 1: would totally watch a violence about. Yeah. She gives them
Speaker 1: to her violet fems. She hands them over, she thinks
Speaker 1: she accepted them. They start paneling around. The woman who
Speaker 1: received the flowers thinks she's got a new best friend. Right.
Speaker 1: The woman who gave the flowers thinks that this they're
Speaker 1: in love with each other. By the end, they realized
Speaker 1: that the flowers they loved were the friends they had
Speaker 1: all along. I don't know somebody else should write this.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, world, it's be so funny
Speaker 1: if it got if you got to use some of
Speaker 1: that very flowery language that women and men would use
Speaker 1: with each other, that now is like confusing. They're like,
Speaker 1: I think they were gay, but they were just like
Speaker 1: my love. They would just call everyone my love. That's
Speaker 1: an additional problem where the girls like I I think
Speaker 1: we just just steer my love do a girl saying
Speaker 1: and the other woman's like, she really loves me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a misadventure in the making. Also, Oscar Wilde
Speaker 1: invited his friends to where green incarnations in their lapels
Speaker 1: to the premiere of Lady Windermere's Fan and according to
Speaker 1: LGBT Cultural Heritage dot Com, that made it a fashion
Speaker 1: among gay men to kind of signal to one another
Speaker 1: who they were. So they would just choose a green
Speaker 1: carnation for their button hole, and they'd see another green
Speaker 1: carnation and be like, let me get into that button hole.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm laughing because the idea that that's discreet,
Speaker 1: Like if I wear a green carnation in my lapel,
Speaker 1: it's a secret that I'm gay that no one will
Speaker 1: pick up on. And I'm like, okay, look, I mean again,
Speaker 1: I guess they really like if you knew, could you
Speaker 1: even but you weren't gay yourself, would people even be like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you hang out with all the wrong people, you know,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Well, if you don't know
Speaker 1: and you just see it and you're like, hey, that's
Speaker 1: a good look, green carnation on my lapel, then we've
Speaker 1: got our b plot of the rom com. The guy
Speaker 1: is like, oh, what a nice look. I'm gonna wear
Speaker 1: a green carnation around And then his friend is like, oh, sir,
Speaker 1: I had no idea you had such a good fashion sense.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, I love a good fashion sense. Like
Speaker 1: let's go ride horses together. Also on LGBT Cultural Heritage
Speaker 1: dot Com, it says that items of fashion accessories or
Speaker 1: even small tattoos that could easily be covered up were
Speaker 1: like other ways to sort of subtly advertise your sexuality.
Speaker 1: I think it's handkerchiefs in your pocket now, right, But
Speaker 1: maybe that was the early two thousands. I don't know
Speaker 1: that's a thing anymore. That was like there was a
Speaker 1: code which color you were wearing or something into Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was that more like kink based I think. I
Speaker 1: think like one color meant you were you were gay
Speaker 1: and trying. But then there were other colors that were
Speaker 1: like I'm in I'm a bottom, or like I'm into
Speaker 1: type of kind of black and white polka dot handkerchief
Speaker 1: that means you can you know, you can tie me
Speaker 1: up in your dungeon. And some poor gal was handkerchiefs
Speaker 1: like like the style, I keep getting the weirdest messages.
Speaker 1: This is also a round coom that will play through time.
Speaker 1: We'll have multiple like the hours timelines going on. And
Speaker 1: so there's somebody in the modern era who's like, I
Speaker 1: really like the black and white polka dot. Look. They
Speaker 1: end up downstairs on a St. Andrew's cross. How did
Speaker 1: this happen? It's better not awaken anything. And and then
Speaker 1: the conversation dot Com talks about slang that people would
Speaker 1: use like family or a club member, or a friend
Speaker 1: of Dorothy's or a friend of Mrs King. There were
Speaker 1: other ways to sort of carefully out yourself to someone else. Um.
Speaker 1: Side note, I did look up the friend of Dorothy
Speaker 1: because I've heard that before, and I thought that it
Speaker 1: was a reference to liking Judy Garland, right. I thought
Speaker 1: that was the initials She's like a gay icon. There
Speaker 1: is not um precise origin of this phrase that's known,
Speaker 1: but one belief people has this that it comes from
Speaker 1: actually a sequel to one of the books of Wizard
Speaker 1: of Oz call The Road to Oz. At one point,
Speaker 1: the book introduces a character called Polychrome who meets Dorothy
Speaker 1: and all her friends and says to Dorothy, quote, you
Speaker 1: have some queer friends, Dorothy, and Dorothy replies the queerness
Speaker 1: doesn't matter so long as they're friends, which is a
Speaker 1: nice quote, and be you can see how that'd be
Speaker 1: like secret code, right and Polychrome right there that like
Speaker 1: a rainbow colors. Yeah. Also, that book did come out
Speaker 1: in nineteen o nine, so it would it would definitely
Speaker 1: match up with our time period here. And gay people
Speaker 1: at the time also co opted the word gay from
Speaker 1: women prostitutes. They were using the word as slang to
Speaker 1: describe women in their profession, and that didn't become synonymous
Speaker 1: with homosexuality until after the Stonewall Riots of nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Maybe the most fascinating lavender language that we found is polari,
Speaker 1: which was a slang used in the UK. Like many
Speaker 1: of these words and codes that were used by the
Speaker 1: gay community, it had its roots and slang used by
Speaker 1: marginalized communities. Right gay was female prostitutes, um, sailors used
Speaker 1: a lot of this slang back in the day and
Speaker 1: then like poor beggars and stuff like that. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of co opted from already marginalized people, which makes
Speaker 1: sense if you feel marginalized by society, kind of like oh,
Speaker 1: that's my bro right here. Um. And once it made
Speaker 1: its way to the UK, it also borrowed from Cockney
Speaker 1: rhyming slang and back slang, which is when you pronounce
Speaker 1: a word as if it's spelled backwards, which kind of
Speaker 1: made me wonder if that's why Missy chose is sim
Speaker 1: for her artist name. It was Missy Backwards and think
Speaker 1: that was this kind of a sly reference to back
Speaker 1: slang or the gay slang, to another way of saying, hey,
Speaker 1: guess what, I'm not straight, Get the deal with it,
Speaker 1: Like all the glasses come down. Pollari was particularly useful
Speaker 1: because to anyone who didn't know it, it just did
Speaker 1: like gibberish, total gibberish. So it concealed not only your sexuality,
Speaker 1: but it also allowed you to talk shit about people,
Speaker 1: which is very important to the gay community, at least
Speaker 1: our friends very importantly able to talk to it. In
Speaker 1: an article on the Conversation dot com by Paul Baker
Speaker 1: called a Brief History of Pollari, he shares a phrase,
Speaker 1: vada the enough strides on the yomi ajax, and that means,
Speaker 1: look at the awful trousers on the man nearby. What
Speaker 1: is that what they were saying about me? They were
Speaker 1: talking about your naught strides. Every time I walk by
Speaker 1: a group of people, I hear vada the enough strides
Speaker 1: on them jacks. They're always saying that only when you're
Speaker 1: wearing cargo shorts. I would never. First of all, well,
Speaker 1: I would occasionally, but only for work when it was
Speaker 1: like useful. Also, isn't it like it's been a long time.
Speaker 1: I don't own any anymore, thank you very much. I
Speaker 1: just want to get that on the record on the air.
Speaker 1: Any pairs of cargo shorts or pants, there's no cargo
Speaker 1: happening here. The slander out there about cargo shorts is incorrect.
Speaker 1: But when I was working on set and I needed
Speaker 1: a lot of pockets, they were very useful. It's true
Speaker 1: they have their purposes. I also love it because you
Speaker 1: kind of can't say it without having a cognit, Like
Speaker 1: enough strays on the omi age act like you really
Speaker 1: want to have an accent to say Now, he goes
Speaker 1: on to say quote. Inserting a Pollari word such as bona,
Speaker 1: which means good, or polone, which means woman, into a
Speaker 1: sentence could act as a coded way of identifying other
Speaker 1: people who might be gay. The language, itself, full of
Speaker 1: camp irony, innuendo, and sarcasm, also helped its speakers to
Speaker 1: form a resilient worldview in the face of arrest, blackmail,
Speaker 1: and physical violence. Now they'd also give themselves names like
Speaker 1: Scotch Flow or Diamond Lil, like drag names. What what's yours?
Speaker 1: What would your ugie Diana rugie? What's my yeah? What
Speaker 1: would be your your cool Pillari name? I don't know, Mr, Mr, Mr,
Speaker 1: Mrs pretty good. I go with like, um, I feel
Speaker 1: like you'd be sweet something, because oh, I'd be like
Speaker 1: I don't know if I like I don't know if
Speaker 1: I want to be Sweetie, Sweet Caroline, Sweet Caroline, I'll
Speaker 1: go with it. One of my least favorite songs. Don't
Speaker 1: write to me about how it's good. I don't want
Speaker 1: to hear it. It's a fucking stupid song and I
Speaker 1: hate it. I don't think anyone's going to feel strongly
Speaker 1: enough to write in defending Neil Diamond, Neil Diamond, Lil,
Speaker 1: Neil Diamond, Lil. All Right. So on LGBT Cultural Heritage
Speaker 1: dot Com they have this embedded video of a short
Speaker 1: film which is entirely in Pollari. It's called Putting on
Speaker 1: the Dish, and honestly it's really worth watching. You've got
Speaker 1: to check it out because it really does sound like
Speaker 1: an alien language. Now, Pollari fell out of favor once
Speaker 1: homosexuality was legalized in the UK in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: but in two thousand three, a group calling themselves the
Speaker 1: Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence translated the Bible into Pollari. Now,
Speaker 1: Paul Baker writes, quote this was not to mock religion,
Speaker 1: but to highlight how religious practices are filtered through different
Speaker 1: cultures and societies, and that despite not always being treated
Speaker 1: well by mainstream religions. There should still be a space
Speaker 1: for gay people to engage with religion. Yeah uh. In seventeen,
Speaker 1: a church actually held a service reading from the Polari
Speaker 1: translated Bible to commemorate LGBT History Month, and the church
Speaker 1: actually ended up apologizing for the service. They said it
Speaker 1: was led by trainees. The higher ups had in seeing
Speaker 1: the word blah blah blah all according to the BBC,
Speaker 1: but it gave us this little gem quote. Instead the
Speaker 1: traditional glory be to the Father and to the Son
Speaker 1: and the Holy Spirit. The prayer offered was fab miss
Speaker 1: b to the amt and to the homey chevy and
Speaker 1: to the fan tab Ylosa fairy, which, honestly, church definitely
Speaker 1: would have engaged me more. I would like to praise
Speaker 1: the Fantabulosa fairy. Paul Baker says that of course this
Speaker 1: reading quote provoked a range of conflicting opinions. Some people
Speaker 1: think it's hilarious, Some are concerned about Church of England
Speaker 1: rules being broken and disrespect for religious tradition, while others
Speaker 1: think that God should be prayed to in any language.
Speaker 1: As someone who has spent twenty years documenting the rise
Speaker 1: and fall of Polari, I find it fascinating that even
Speaker 1: now it is finding new ways to cause controversy. Never
Speaker 1: has a dead language had such an interesting afterlife. That's great.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that this church okayed this and then
Speaker 1: came back and, in a very Christian fashion, threw the
Speaker 1: younger people under the bus. I was like, oh, that
Speaker 1: wasn't us. We didn't approve that their fault. Don't blame me.
Speaker 1: Wasn't it christ who said, Uh, if you do something
Speaker 1: people don't like, turn to your neighbor and blame them
Speaker 1: for it. Throw a thy neighbor under the bus. All right?
Speaker 1: Well that was a bit more of a long fling
Speaker 1: with history. But hey, when it's good, it's good, right.
Speaker 1: You know, we couldn't get enough very interesting. We had to.
Speaker 1: We had to put that information in somewhere. This is
Speaker 1: a good spot for it and that honestly, that's just
Speaker 1: scratching the surface of lavender languages and gay codes. And
Speaker 1: while they are very cool to learn about obviously, also
Speaker 1: it kind of sucks that queer people needed a whole
Speaker 1: fake language to hide themselves behind. Right, but it is
Speaker 1: time to get back to collect and her life and
Speaker 1: her loves. Right after this commercial break, famous b to
Speaker 1: the sponsors in Homi Chavy's name, and welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show, everybody. Alright, So back to Collette here. She
Speaker 1: is the literary editor of Laman now and things are
Speaker 1: getting rocky with Henri. Writing wise, Collette was still doing
Speaker 1: plenty of journalism. She also started writing her book Sherry,
Speaker 1: which she released as a serialized story over a number
Speaker 1: of weeks, very common for writers back then. Makes sense too,
Speaker 1: because you can sell your journal because everybody wants to
Speaker 1: install exactly. It's like TV subscriptions now exactly now. Sherry
Speaker 1: is a novelization of her affair with our favorite department
Speaker 1: store Air August Ariotes talked about in Part two. His
Speaker 1: character is kind of an indolent and spoiled young man
Speaker 1: named Sherry, and he's having an affair with an older
Speaker 1: courtesan named Leah. And about halfway through the serialization, Collette's
Speaker 1: book kind of became a little more like reality when
Speaker 1: she met Henri's son, Bertrand. Bertrand was sixteen years old
Speaker 1: at this time. He's the son of Henri with his
Speaker 1: first wife, Claire Boas, And even though Collette had been
Speaker 1: married to Henri for eight years, she had not met
Speaker 1: his kids, either Bertrand with Claire or the sun he
Speaker 1: Ad with Isabelle de Comminges Um. But in Claire sent
Speaker 1: Bertrand to stay with his dad and Collette as her emissary.
Speaker 1: His mission, whether he chose to accept it or not,
Speaker 1: was to get Collette to let Claire use her old
Speaker 1: married title. Baroness. Did juvenel because Claire and Henri were divorced.
Speaker 1: They're fully divorced, not married, but Claire still used the
Speaker 1: title all the time because she found it useful in
Speaker 1: her career as a political lobbyist. You're if you're you know,
Speaker 1: a noble doors open for you that otherwise would not
Speaker 1: open for you. Right. So she's like, this is good.
Speaker 1: I need to get in with these pourful people. If
Speaker 1: I'm a baroness. They let me come. Let me use
Speaker 1: this title. I get I get better, I get early
Speaker 1: check in at all my hotels. Um, I get a
Speaker 1: you know, a fancy dinner each night, loyalty points right,
Speaker 1: I can go to the front of the line at Disneyland.
Speaker 1: I mean it's pretty nice. Aristocracy, man, Yes, the aristocrats
Speaker 1: had some perks, you could say. But Collette did use
Speaker 1: the title, okay, and she got very embarrassed and super
Speaker 1: piste because she went to check into a hotel and
Speaker 1: she was refused a room and regarded with a lot
Speaker 1: of suspicion as an impostor because only a few days before,
Speaker 1: Claire had checked into the hotel using the same title.
Speaker 1: They're like, no, girl, we know who the baroness did
Speaker 1: juvenel is and it ain't you. She was just here, okay.
Speaker 1: So Colette was like, excuse me, your ex is still
Speaker 1: using your name and she was not. My god, She's like,
Speaker 1: I am supposed to have the early check in, but
Speaker 1: this is my fast past mine. She gets to Disneyland
Speaker 1: and they're like, I'm sorry, I'm you cannot go to
Speaker 1: the front of Splash Mountain because the book says you
Speaker 1: just did. When per customer, so Bertrand went to go
Speaker 1: stay with Collette and try and work this mission out,
Speaker 1: and he was immediately struck with Collette's undeniable presence. She's
Speaker 1: a sexy lady, and she liked Bertrand right away too,
Speaker 1: so much so that she decided she should finally meet Claire.
Speaker 1: Collette said, quote, in the space of twenty minutes, we
Speaker 1: established an old friendship. This is interesting how often Collette
Speaker 1: would be friends with former enemies, because like she became
Speaker 1: friends with Isabelle to comin Jay's like who tried to
Speaker 1: murder her? You know she would she would eventually become
Speaker 1: friends with most people. I think she really was, like
Speaker 1: she was willing to overlook a lot of stuff eventually.
Speaker 1: Well and how you know she just one of those
Speaker 1: people who is always like zep, wretched woman, I cannot
Speaker 1: stand her, and then spend five minutes there. Actually she's
Speaker 1: very nice. I don't know what I was on about
Speaker 1: before I do that sometimes just like this asshole, this
Speaker 1: son of a bitch. I did not want to meet
Speaker 1: this guy, and then to go meet him, and I'm like, stupid,
Speaker 1: likable person, I want to spend more time with. You're
Speaker 1: supposed to suck. Well, even though Collette and Claire were
Speaker 1: totally digging each other, they seem to be good friends.
Speaker 1: Claire was still hesitant when Collette later invited Bertrand to
Speaker 1: spend the summer with her and Henri at rose Ven
Speaker 1: and Claire only gave into this when Andre basically insisted,
Speaker 1: But within a few days, even though Henri was like,
Speaker 1: let my son come with me. We're going to spend
Speaker 1: some time with my new wife. A few days in,
Speaker 1: Henri took off, He left the coast to go back
Speaker 1: to Paris to spend time with his mistress. Instead. He's like,
Speaker 1: never mind, I don't want to spend time with my
Speaker 1: wife and son. I wanted to spend all time with
Speaker 1: my mistress, with whom I don't have a son currently
Speaker 1: hopefully never will. So he left his stepson, Bertrand, and
Speaker 1: the six year old Belle Gazoo with Collette and a
Speaker 1: couple of her fancy friends. And maybe Claire was a
Speaker 1: little nervous because Collette, you know, she still has her reputation.
Speaker 1: She's a sexty lady. She's like kind of wild, she
Speaker 1: talks about crazy stuff. Everybody's like she's licentious, and she
Speaker 1: does her own things. So maybe that was, you know,
Speaker 1: she was kind of like, what's she going to get
Speaker 1: Bertrand into. Now. Collette, you know, very uninterested in her
Speaker 1: own daughter, as we pointed out already for some reason,
Speaker 1: decided to get into mothering Bertrand's instead. So she spent
Speaker 1: her time fattening him up with like rich food, and
Speaker 1: she taught him how to swim, She took him shopping,
Speaker 1: she talked with him, about literature and art, and she
Speaker 1: gave him books to read in louding Sherry her book
Speaker 1: about a young man's affair with a much older woman, Goodness.
Speaker 1: She even inscribed the book to my cherished Bertrand, with
Speaker 1: the Sherry part of cherished like capitalized. What so like?
Speaker 1: He's like, She's like, Bertrand, I have to make you
Speaker 1: big and strong so that you can carry all these
Speaker 1: hints that I'm dropping on you. They are very heavy. Well, finally,
Speaker 1: one night she was done with hinting, I guess, and
Speaker 1: she told him it's time for you to become a man.
Speaker 1: She asked him which of the three women who were
Speaker 1: staying at Rosbon her or one of her two friends
Speaker 1: he preferred to initiate him into the pleasures and mysteries
Speaker 1: of sex. Wo He's like, I guess, not my step mom,
Speaker 1: and picked one of the other two. He did, He
Speaker 1: pinted one of the friends. They went off together, but
Speaker 1: it didn't go well. I don't know what happened. He
Speaker 1: doesn't get into a lot of detail. He just says
Speaker 1: that he emerged from her room miserable and unsatisfied. But
Speaker 1: when he came out the room, what did he see?
Speaker 1: But Collette his stepmother waiting on the landing, and she
Speaker 1: decided to finish the job. Oh my goodness. All right, well,
Speaker 1: excuse me, but speculation station here real quick. Collette told
Speaker 1: her two friends, if he picks you do a bad job,
Speaker 1: don't don't like really just like be very aggressive and nasty,
Speaker 1: and don't don't seduce him. Laugh at him. I want
Speaker 1: him to come out and and look to me for guidance.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's that feels very obvious to me. I'm laying
Speaker 1: it down here. In speculations station is the cold heart truth.
Speaker 1: All right, you know what happens in speculations station. We
Speaker 1: Bertrand wrote later that it took quote all of her skills,
Speaker 1: but she was demanding, voracious expert and rewarding absolutely. Suspicions confirmed.
Speaker 1: She was waiting for this, I'm the one to do this.
Speaker 1: Maybe she was hoping you would choose her and like
Speaker 1: it was too weird for him to do. She's like, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: that's why she gave her friends the heads up. If
Speaker 1: he picks you make it bad, just don't be sexy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: They're all like, oh, Bertrand, this is the part of
Speaker 1: sex where I M stick this feather quill straight into
Speaker 1: your ear the point the end, and it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know how I feel about this sex. They're like,
Speaker 1: that's how it's done. None of my friends ever mentioned this.
Speaker 1: This is the part where I just flick you in
Speaker 1: the forehead ten times in a row, just whatever they
Speaker 1: can do. Yeah, you know, yeah, that would kind of
Speaker 1: be fun to get creative about being bad at sex.
Speaker 1: She's like, Oh, my whole point is to turn him off. Uh,
Speaker 1: write to us and tell us how you would intentionally
Speaker 1: make sex bad, to try and trick someone in thinking
Speaker 1: that sex isn't fun. Yes, yes, yes, please, Well Collette,
Speaker 1: you know she knows what she's doing. She got him
Speaker 1: fully initiated, and by the end of summer he was
Speaker 1: obsessed with her. He was deeply in love, totally infatuated,
Speaker 1: hearts all around. Oh boy. Now. Victoria Best on her
Speaker 1: blog lit Love says that it's easy to call collect
Speaker 1: a fem fatal who overpowered this young, poor boy's sensibilities, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's definitely what it looks like. Gross. But
Speaker 1: Bertrand's friends often said that he liked to make it
Speaker 1: look like he was being pushed around and forced to
Speaker 1: do things when in actuality, he never did anything he
Speaker 1: didn't want to do, so that could be a thing,
Speaker 1: But that also could be his friends saying, oh, he
Speaker 1: loves doing that stuff that we always push him around
Speaker 1: and tell him to do. I know, right, how do
Speaker 1: you know? That's kind of a weird self defensive thing
Speaker 1: to sort of say, yeah, I think it would be
Speaker 1: very strange today to be seven sleeping with a sixteen
Speaker 1: year old and people would be cool with it, like yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely not okay, definitely not good. And I just don't
Speaker 1: trust his friends here necessarily because it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: they got him to jump off a bridge and he's like,
Speaker 1: didn't want to, and they're like, oh, he did. Want
Speaker 1: to know, you don't understand. He always says please no, no, no,
Speaker 1: but he means yes. It's basically what his friends are
Speaker 1: saying here. I mean, yeah, I could. I could kind
Speaker 1: of see it though, Because you could, you could also
Speaker 1: there are people who are like, oh, yeah, do who
Speaker 1: do that? You know, they just want to disclaim all responsibility,
Speaker 1: so they say I don't want it, but they did
Speaker 1: want it, you know. I mean again, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: no is yes or anything like that, but you know,
Speaker 1: they might have had a point to yeah, anyway, don't
Speaker 1: if your forties seven, don't fuss senior down to yeah.
Speaker 1: Victoria Best also says that even though at the time Willie,
Speaker 1: remember Willie collects ex husband, her first husband the worst,
Speaker 1: Willie made fun of her for gaining weight, saying that
Speaker 1: she quote had an ass like the rear of a
Speaker 1: stage coach, which doesn't tempt me to take a ride
Speaker 1: in it, which is very rude, kind of funny, but
Speaker 1: it's but she was still sexy and alluring, even or
Speaker 1: maybe especially too much younger men. I will throw out that,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're researching. When I was researching this
Speaker 1: part of the story, it gets a little gross because
Speaker 1: not just because of the age difference, because at this
Speaker 1: time people are like, but she's so old and dried
Speaker 1: up and fat, you know, and like, how could this
Speaker 1: young man be so attracted to her? And you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people like, but she wasn't that old,
Speaker 1: she's forty seven, like she's in her fifties or senior citizen.
Speaker 1: She was still a very alerting, voluptuous, sexy woman. She
Speaker 1: had very sensual presence about her because she enjoyed sex
Speaker 1: and everything about sex. She already had this reputation of
Speaker 1: being this sexy lady, bi sexual lady. I also will say,
Speaker 1: they keep talking about her being fat, but like she
Speaker 1: weighed up two hundred and eighty pounds, so it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's like a little weird to talk about her
Speaker 1: like she's, you know, a six pound woman or something. Right, Right,
Speaker 1: she wasn't really so overweight that it was really worth
Speaker 1: a comment, right, you know, well, you know, hops amongst
Speaker 1: us wait worthy of a comment, you know, very true,
Speaker 1: extremely true. And Colet herself fell into this trap. She
Speaker 1: she had a very very narrow definition of beauty, so
Speaker 1: she's she herself was like, I'm old and dried up
Speaker 1: and fat, and everyone else around her was kind of
Speaker 1: saying that too. So it's a little gross to go
Speaker 1: through this part because you're especially as a woman, you're going, wow,
Speaker 1: you know, you get a little bit, get past childbearing age,
Speaker 1: and suddenly you're dried up, old, prune right, not worthy
Speaker 1: of any attention. So you know, just just throwing that
Speaker 1: out there to say, plenty of people see why Bertrand
Speaker 1: was interested. He was like, this is a hot, older
Speaker 1: lady who was going to teach me all the tricks.
Speaker 1: But you know, even though he's very attracted to her,
Speaker 1: her motives are a little less easy to see here.
Speaker 1: Like the autumn of the year that she seduced Bertrand,
Speaker 1: she wrote Henri a letter saying, quote, if only you
Speaker 1: knew how much I love you and how much I've
Speaker 1: suffered from the fear of losing you this year. You
Speaker 1: know my desire I have only one. It has your
Speaker 1: face and your form and the term of my life.
Speaker 1: It's just she's writing that at p S. I'm sleeping
Speaker 1: with your son. But don't worry about that. I only
Speaker 1: have eyes for you. I just have I have other
Speaker 1: things for your son. Your son's the closest I could
Speaker 1: get to you right now. Yeah, maybe that's it. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's it. But Unri still stayed away, Like these letters
Speaker 1: weren't bringing him home. So maybe you know, like we said,
Speaker 1: maybe she needed this ego boost of a younger lover.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was just like a way to stick it
Speaker 1: to Unre by sleeping with his hunter. Maybe like you said,
Speaker 1: it's the closest she could get to him was his son.
Speaker 1: Maybe she just needed somebody to hold. You know, I've
Speaker 1: just been lonely and feeling old and undesirable when here
Speaker 1: comes someone who will make her feel good about herself.
Speaker 1: So that could be it. And how much of that too,
Speaker 1: if you're feeling old, if you're someone who's you know,
Speaker 1: her existence is kind of defined by desirability and sexuality
Speaker 1: and stuff, and it sort of makes you feel younger.
Speaker 1: Like I think oftentimes when older people are attracted too
Speaker 1: much younger people, they really just want to feel like
Speaker 1: they're still that age themselves. Sure, absolutely that that makes sense.
Speaker 1: You know, if I date a twenty year old, then
Speaker 1: aren't I kind of still twenty? You know? Well yeah,
Speaker 1: well sure in a way, right, Like you would have
Speaker 1: acquaintances and friends who are younger. Your circle would get
Speaker 1: a lot younger. So then you're you know, like I
Speaker 1: could see it being kind of a feeling of like
Speaker 1: I'm giving myself a second use. And then they go
Speaker 1: up a staircase and you're like, hey, I'll be right there.
Speaker 1: You're like crack crack, crack, crack crack on your knees
Speaker 1: or just in concert. So when Claire came to get
Speaker 1: bertrand take him home at the end of the summer,
Speaker 1: she knew he had been corrupted by his time with Collette.
Speaker 1: She's like, something's different about you. He's got a swagger now,
Speaker 1: but he did not have before. She may be even
Speaker 1: guess that they were having an affair. She didn't know
Speaker 1: exact was going on, but she knew that Coletts maybe
Speaker 1: a bad influence on my son. So for the next
Speaker 1: ten months, Claire would urge Honri to get Bertrand work
Speaker 1: that would take him just as far away as possible
Speaker 1: from Colette. And by Andre was elected to the Senate,
Speaker 1: so he had plenty of opportunities for Bertrand's like, he
Speaker 1: would find him internships and stuff. But the next summer,
Speaker 1: Bertrand would go back to rosven and spend his time
Speaker 1: with Colette, and they would resume their affair. The Guardian,
Speaker 1: and an article titled Femiciele says quote she was acting
Speaker 1: on a principle she would enunciate to a friend, content yourself,
Speaker 1: I urge you with a passing temptation, and satisfy it.
Speaker 1: What more can one be sure of than that which
Speaker 1: one holds in one's arms at the moment one holds
Speaker 1: it in one's arms, Which we had talked already about.
Speaker 1: Colette's kind of like philosophy of life, which is grab
Speaker 1: as much experience as you can, and all you get
Speaker 1: is this one life kind of thing. But also like
Speaker 1: put yourself in the world after a world war which
Speaker 1: had never happened before. All the rules changed, the borders changed,
Speaker 1: everything is different. It must have felt very much like
Speaker 1: the only thing I can believe in and and have
Speaker 1: faith in is what's exactly happening right now, And the
Speaker 1: next moment is not promised to me, and I have
Speaker 1: no idea what it's going to look like right Everything
Speaker 1: could be different tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So I think
Speaker 1: that's sort of almost a phil like a a principle.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were feeling at this time, not
Speaker 1: just Collette, but a lot of people were like, what
Speaker 1: the funk? I have no idea what's happening anymore? Just
Speaker 1: let me grab a tiny bit of pleasure while I can. Also,
Speaker 1: can we talk about the use of the pronoun one
Speaker 1: in some of these old quotes very involved. One is
Speaker 1: never sure what one's one is going to think about
Speaker 1: one's other one, and one must be one sort of
Speaker 1: oneself to wonder what one one what? Which I mean? Today,
Speaker 1: I was trying to like modernize it and I guess
Speaker 1: I think you would just say, you, what more can
Speaker 1: you be sure of than that which you hold in
Speaker 1: your arms at this moment you hold it in your arms,
Speaker 1: which obviously makes more sense to me. But I guess
Speaker 1: if you're Collette, that would sound like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: talking to you general, but like it does. You go
Speaker 1: back and you're like, some of these sentences are so
Speaker 1: involved and they're incredibly difficult. So I get through because
Speaker 1: it's almost like newspaper talk where you're trying to be
Speaker 1: like a bullet flew out of a gun held by
Speaker 1: a guy might have been in the army, Like you're
Speaker 1: trying so hard not to libel somebody that like you.
Speaker 1: Now you're not making any sense. Thanks for the ap
Speaker 1: English language homework. Let me diagram this sentence real quick.
Speaker 1: Get back to you. I gotta pull my shrunken white
Speaker 1: for this. So after all this, Bertrand started to seek
Speaker 1: Collect more openly, going out with her any time he
Speaker 1: was in Paris and even taking a two week trip
Speaker 1: to Algeria with her. Their relationship was still a secret,
Speaker 1: and Collect tried harder than ever to kind of stop
Speaker 1: her own signs of aging. She got both a facelift
Speaker 1: and a perm when they were both brand new procedures
Speaker 1: which some bravery involved. There. I think, to get a
Speaker 1: facelift when no one like bravery or desperation or desperation
Speaker 1: or keen marketing and and and gullibility. I just like
Speaker 1: how fashion worked. You know, if something new, some new
Speaker 1: fad came out, it was really important to be one
Speaker 1: of the first to have it, to try it or
Speaker 1: do it. So that might have been enough. I'll also say, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of people talk about Sherry a lot because
Speaker 1: some people think that it's about Bertrand. Um. But of
Speaker 1: course she had already started writing it before she ever
Speaker 1: met Bertrand, so it's not really about him. But Leiah
Speaker 1: Leah the Cortisan and the story. She's like older and
Speaker 1: she's very um. She's able to take it like she's
Speaker 1: kind of like, I I understand that I'm older. It's fine,
Speaker 1: I can face my aging. There's even a whole passage
Speaker 1: about her looking in the mirror and seeing her wrinkles
Speaker 1: and and and sagging and whatever else she doesn't like
Speaker 1: about herself, and she's like, but it's okay, I'm still
Speaker 1: me and it's all right. And they're like it's funny
Speaker 1: that Kolek could write that and not herself do it,
Speaker 1: Like like she's writing what she wishes she could feel
Speaker 1: feel exactly, and how she wishes she could handle the
Speaker 1: situation well. And I'll say, it always seems to me
Speaker 1: reading this story, like, no, it wasn't about Bertrand because
Speaker 1: she hadn't met him yet when she wrote the story.
Speaker 1: But it was a fantasy that she wanted to live.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be Leah and be comfortable with herself aging,
Speaker 1: and she wanted to meet a young man who would
Speaker 1: fall in love with her. So when she met Bertrand,
Speaker 1: it was more about him fulfilling this fantasy, you know.
Speaker 1: So it almost seems like she was kind of looking
Speaker 1: for the opportunity. And yeah, maybe so he even said
Speaker 1: that Bertrand said she wanted to live what she had written. Now,
Speaker 1: the only thing that I take exception too is that
Speaker 1: she had already lived it with a goose That's who
Speaker 1: she was writing story about, so she had I don't
Speaker 1: know that she maybe she just wanted to do it again,
Speaker 1: that's fine, but but yeah, I think mainly the main
Speaker 1: thing is Collette had a really hard time not feeling
Speaker 1: desirable as a woman in sexy and as she got
Speaker 1: older that got more and more difficult for her. She
Speaker 1: actually also had to undergo a bunch of dental surgery,
Speaker 1: and she complained, quote, why can't one simply have all
Speaker 1: ones teeth pulled and replaced them with green jade? Which
Speaker 1: that's quite a grill. I just, first of all, I
Speaker 1: just feel that because I need a lot of dental work,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, fucking just take them, gave them
Speaker 1: out and give me something else. They're just full of holes,
Speaker 1: Just take them away. Um. But green jade is such
Speaker 1: a strange choice because green is like the color of rot. Oh.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, but teeth it's more like black, right, I guess. Although,
Speaker 1: remember when we did the episode about Murasaki Shikibu, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the Tale of Genshi, we talked about how their
Speaker 1: beauty standards at that time were to charcoal in your
Speaker 1: teeth and make them look black. So maybe green jade
Speaker 1: was like a real beautiful color at that time or something,
Speaker 1: and it was like, just give me that grill. She
Speaker 1: just wanted to flash that she have a full gold
Speaker 1: and diamond girl if she was alive time. But in
Speaker 1: unre revealed that he had secured Bertrand a job in Prague.
Speaker 1: Collett didn't want him to move so far away from her,
Speaker 1: and in the argument that ensued, the truth about their
Speaker 1: relationship came out, and one source it says that Collette
Speaker 1: begged on her knees for Henri to stay with her.
Speaker 1: But as Victoria Best writes, quote, despite being in the
Speaker 1: middle of a heavy affair with a woman to whom
Speaker 1: he had already promised marriage, unreacted like the injured party
Speaker 1: and wanted to divorce. Classic. So he's off sleeping with
Speaker 1: somebody else and had said, Hey, I'll marry you. And
Speaker 1: then he's like, what, you're sleeping with my son? That
Speaker 1: breaks my heart. Now I think I might leave you,
Speaker 1: Like come on, all right, come on now. I have
Speaker 1: questions about that because, um, maybe because she did have
Speaker 1: other affairs, so like did he not know about those
Speaker 1: affairs or was he like, my son's just going too far,
Speaker 1: which I could kind of relate to that, Like he's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't care about the Nunzio, I didn't give a
Speaker 1: funk about that actress, but my son is off limits. Girl, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are too old to be working with him. Also,
Speaker 1: like it's weird to be sleeping with the same person
Speaker 1: as my son. This is He's like, I ain't, I
Speaker 1: ain't Indiana Jones, Oh no, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: sleeping with the same guy as my kid, but the
Speaker 1: same girl as my kid. Come on that she talks
Speaker 1: in her sleep. I'd also love to know this argument
Speaker 1: and how who how it came out that they were
Speaker 1: sleeping together. What would be the point of saying that?
Speaker 1: Were exhausted and she was like, well, keeping me company.
Speaker 1: She must have got real mad and wanted to say
Speaker 1: something hurt it hurtful. Well he's better in bed than
Speaker 1: you or something like that, and he was like, excuse me,
Speaker 1: how would you know? And she's like, guess what turns out?
Speaker 1: But even after helping cause a rift between his father
Speaker 1: and his stepmother, which did make him uncomfortable, Bertrand decided
Speaker 1: to move in with Colette, so he was doubling down
Speaker 1: on this relationship and seeing them together was, according to
Speaker 1: the Guardian article, quote the sport of Paris, which nobody liked. Um,
Speaker 1: they were gossiped about, they were snickered at. Guardian says,
Speaker 1: quote only occasionally to Colette's letters betray the effort. It
Speaker 1: took in the months after her separation from Juvenile to
Speaker 1: conceal her heartbreak and humiliation. Remember, we learned she likes
Speaker 1: to save face, so she would never let people see
Speaker 1: her sweat. But um she often was very pained by
Speaker 1: the amount of scandal that she caused. Nobody likes to
Speaker 1: be the butt of a joke, so she she was
Speaker 1: not happy during that time. When Henri's brother Robert died
Speaker 1: suddenly at forty two, Colette was not welcome at the funeral,
Speaker 1: and that made her really mad. And then she got
Speaker 1: even more mad when she found out that Henri and
Speaker 1: Claire had invited a beautiful young girl to the funeral
Speaker 1: as a provision for Bertrand. So by now, Henri is
Speaker 1: a delegate to the newly formed League of Nations, and
Speaker 1: he's a very successful politician, and thanks to him and Claire,
Speaker 1: Bertrand is neckt even politics as well. He's organizing a
Speaker 1: youth Congress, he's being invited to speak in the United States,
Speaker 1: and he's writing articles. His parents knew that they could
Speaker 1: use all this as leverage to get Bertrand away from
Speaker 1: Collette for good, so they introduced him to young Heiress
Speaker 1: and they set a wedding date for December. On the
Speaker 1: day of their engagement dinner, Bertrand went to see Collette
Speaker 1: and he told her he didn't want to marry this girl.
Speaker 1: So Collett's like, well, then why go, and Bertrand wrote,
Speaker 1: quote all the same, I decided to go, and I
Speaker 1: was leaving the garden went from the window. A piece
Speaker 1: of paper drifted down to me. I love you, it said,
Speaker 1: which Colette had never told me, and I went back
Speaker 1: up to her. That's pretty dark, I mean that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when someone's leaving in you're like, but I love you
Speaker 1: and you never said it before, which was also a manipulation.
Speaker 1: Probably come on now, that's not cool now. Claire persisted, though,
Speaker 1: even though he broke off this one engagement, She's life,
Speaker 1: I'm not done with you. So she sent Bertrand to
Speaker 1: Can for his health quote unquote for his health. That
Speaker 1: was really just to get him away from Collette, and
Speaker 1: she had a new young woman all lined up for
Speaker 1: Bertrand to marry the time. It was Marcel Pratt, the
Speaker 1: daughter of a distinguished dramatist. First of all, only in
Speaker 1: France it does an aristocratic family be like, I will
Speaker 1: have you marry someone of my choosing a dramatist you
Speaker 1: like here, that's like who you want to scare you
Speaker 1: kids away from? Mary? Don't marry a dramatist is theater person? No?
Speaker 1: Run run? What did marry a lawyer? Now? Claire made
Speaker 1: all the travel arrangements. So when Bertrand showed up at
Speaker 1: his hotel and can who was in the room next
Speaker 1: door but Marcel, So she and Bertrand got engaged second
Speaker 1: times a charm Nope, not if Collette had anything over it.
Speaker 1: She also showed up at the hotel with a group
Speaker 1: of friends and she asked Bertrand to have dinner with her. Damn,
Speaker 1: which he did do. Of course he did, of course
Speaker 1: he did. Um He did not bring a date, but
Speaker 1: collected it was Maurice gu Decay, a man who was
Speaker 1: seventeen years younger than her. Maybe she is trying to
Speaker 1: make Bertrand jealous. I can find another one to replace
Speaker 1: you anymore. And at the end of the night, Collette
Speaker 1: asked Bertrand to join her in her room at the hotel,
Speaker 1: and there she's like, are you ready to move back
Speaker 1: in with me? Let's do this for real? You know.
Speaker 1: They had this real profound conversation about their future. He
Speaker 1: said he was quote ready to spend my life with her,
Speaker 1: but by the morning they both agreed it was impossible.
Speaker 1: In the light of day. It was like your forty
Speaker 1: seven and I'm sixteen. I guess at this point he's
Speaker 1: like twenty. But still everyone in our lives is actively
Speaker 1: trying to make sure we don't end up together. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's a good reason for that, okay. And at some
Speaker 1: point Bertrand I'm sure is thinking of like a family
Speaker 1: life for himself, and that's not He's not going to
Speaker 1: have that with Colette. He can't have children with her.
Speaker 1: He can't, you know, like, it's just not reasonable. So
Speaker 1: come on, if we did have a kid together, he'd
Speaker 1: be my son, would be my own step brother. True
Speaker 1: does get a little involved, doesn't it. So anyway, they
Speaker 1: ended up parting ways for good at this point. The
Speaker 1: Guardian article goes on to say, quote Bertrand never received
Speaker 1: the letter Collette wrote him that Marcel Pratt intercepted and destroyed,
Speaker 1: though not before she'd memorized the content. When she admitted
Speaker 1: the theft years later, she could still recite Collette's parting words,
Speaker 1: one would love to know them. Would Marcel destroyed history. Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to know Collette's parting words. They must have
Speaker 1: been pretty amazing for Marcel to memorize them like that.
Speaker 1: Do you think Marcell ever wrote them down somewhere? It
Speaker 1: sounds like something Carmen San Diego would steal hidden message
Speaker 1: from Marcel that she wrote down, right. I love this
Speaker 1: idea of Marcel, like constantly with her ear, like her
Speaker 1: eye out her hotel door, like waiting for a message
Speaker 1: to Collette give, and she's like reading it, like crying,
Speaker 1: weeping about this beautiful poetic words that Colette wrote about Bertrande,
Speaker 1: and then she sets it on fire. I will never
Speaker 1: forget those words. I must destroy what I think is
Speaker 1: so beautiful now Bertrand, as Joel van Valen writes on
Speaker 1: Whistling Shade, went on to write political philosophy, and he
Speaker 1: also interviewed Hitler in the nineteen thirties. Side note, he
Speaker 1: was criticized for being too friendly with him. I guess
Speaker 1: softball questions for Hitler aren't too fondly looked upon. And
Speaker 1: Bertrande is now most famous for his quote A society
Speaker 1: of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.
Speaker 1: And Collette, as Victoria Best rights. Quote had faithfully followed
Speaker 1: in the footsteps of her heroine Leah in that she
Speaker 1: had taken a young, innocent boy and made him into
Speaker 1: a pampered, coseted man, and now he had left her
Speaker 1: from marriage and a bright career, while she was alone
Speaker 1: and alienated from Henri and his family, with only the
Speaker 1: prospect of old age ahead of her. The end of
Speaker 1: this turbulent period in her life left Collette suffering more
Speaker 1: acutely than she had ever done before. The question was
Speaker 1: what would she do now? And that is the question
Speaker 1: for us as well, isn't it. That's right, But we're
Speaker 1: going to save that for part four of our Collette series,
Speaker 1: I think, the final part and final part of our
Speaker 1: Collette until new information comes to light, until we finally
Speaker 1: find that letter from marself. She's got a hidden somewhere
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to scour France. I mean, seriously, though,
Speaker 1: you can't a letter to your boyfriend from his old,
Speaker 1: much older lover and stepmother that you memorized and kept
Speaker 1: memorized for years. It must have been such an amazing
Speaker 1: piece of writing, and I am furious with her for
Speaker 1: getting rid of it. It's out there somewhere we're going
Speaker 1: to pull a full like uncharted for this letter. On
Speaker 1: the back of the U. S Constitution, she wrote it,
Speaker 1: give me to write this down. What was this US?
Speaker 1: You could have that back about that. Also interesting about
Speaker 1: Bertrand being so friendly with Hitler is that his mother, Claire,
Speaker 1: was a Jewish woman. Um, so he was part Jewish. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, early in the thirties, you know, Hitler and
Speaker 1: his Nazi party had done very little and they were
Speaker 1: just a political party at that time, so maybe he
Speaker 1: was friendly quote unquote, and they thought it was like
Speaker 1: in retrospect thought it was too friendly, but at the
Speaker 1: time it was a very normal way to talk to
Speaker 1: that guy. I don't know, but I want to know
Speaker 1: more about Maurice Gutiquet, this poor kid who just got
Speaker 1: brought in as a as a patsy on this date,
Speaker 1: Like what's his life like? Like he's just you know,
Speaker 1: walking on the street one day and this hot older
Speaker 1: woman grabs him, was like, you're my date tonight, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: and then get totally passed off, left behind while she
Speaker 1: invites this guy up to her room. I mean, Taylor,
Speaker 1: as old as time. If you're brought in as the
Speaker 1: jealous date, right, Yeah, I guess so. Well, Tailor is
Speaker 1: old as time. You will meet Maurice again because he
Speaker 1: gets more, he gets more, don't worry big part of
Speaker 1: part four part don't forget Maurice. He's very important. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited and I can't wait for the for
Speaker 1: the final question mark part of the Collette series next Wednesday.
Speaker 1: I hope you all enjoy this episode. Yeah, I hope so.
Speaker 1: I think this is such a crazy part of her life,
Speaker 1: and Collet is just such a complicated, interesting person. There's
Speaker 1: just no one way to feel about her. So I've
Speaker 1: I really am enjoying going through her whole life and
Speaker 1: having such ups and downs. Fascinating. Well, please let us
Speaker 1: know what you thought. You can email us ridic Romance
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com right or we're on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 1: I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm at Oh Great, It's
Speaker 1: Eli and the show is at ridic Romance. So let
Speaker 1: us know your thoughts. Let us know how you would
Speaker 1: make sex uncomfortable for someone who's never had it before,
Speaker 1: if you want to prove to them that it's not fun.
Speaker 1: And while you're at it, drop us a review on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. Yeah, and we'll see all of the next
Speaker 1: episodes and love you bye, so long friends, it's time
Speaker 1: to go. Thanks. So listening to our show tell your
Speaker 1: friends names uncles indes to listen to a show ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Roll n