April 5, 2024 • 19 mins
Holly reads Vinnie Ream's account of when she met Franz Liszt. Then discussion turns to Ream's friendships, her shopping habits, and why she lived in Rome instead of closer to Carrara.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hey and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about Vinnie Reem all
week the Hall Week Listen. She's one of those people.
I have many thoughts that developed while I was working
(00:22):
on this one. I was just gonna do a one parter,
and then I was like, how yeah, just no way.
And I know we included a lot of quotes from
the papers and whatnot, but I really felt like we
had to establish just how vitriolic all the back and
forth was about her, right whoo Yeah. Two, My position
(00:42):
on her may have shifted a little, yeah, because I
came into this episode and the research really ready to
be like this poor girl. People accused her of a
lot of things. She was clearly victimized because she was
a young woman, And yes, I did more research. I
was like, I'm not saying that she was, you know,
(01:05):
the harlet she was painted to be, but she was
definitely managing the situation to her benefit and knew that
these men were obsessed with her well.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And it's one of those.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Things where I think multiple things are true at the
same time, correct, right, correct. So where she really lost
me was the guy telling her, you know, Albert Pike,
being like, I am so in love with you, I
cannot bear the thought of you with another man, and
her going you can be in my wedding that. Yeah,
I was like, this is weird. I also found it
weird that she had sherman walk her down the island
(01:38):
instead of her dad. I was like, this is why though, yeah,
sherman apparently like his response was like, is this okay
with your parents? And I guess they talked it through,
but to me just kind of vibed a little weird
of like are you just doing this for show? Because
that seems like an odd choices. I said that I
(02:02):
would read her description of how she met Franz list. Yes,
I'm very excited for this.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
It's quite charming.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So she described this where she says she's sitting in
quote a chair almost immediately back of the piano at
Liz's right hand. The wonderful magician swept his slender hands
over the keys, fascinating all who heard, and with tremulous vibrations,
touched some tender chords with such a spell that I
was deeply affected. The tears which I could not repress,
(02:30):
rose to my eyes, and being so near and fearful
of making the slightest interruption, I dared not raise my
hand to brush them away. The great artist felt the
spell he was exercising over me. He noticed my emotion,
and playing softly with his left hand, he reached his
right hand over and laid it for an instant, tenderly
(02:51):
on mine. We needed no introduction. We understood each other.
And when he finished playing and all rushed to congratulate
him and thank him, I waited silently by to try
and speak, but he offered me his arm, and as
we promenaded with the rest down the old convents halls,
he said, you need not speak. I understand you, and
you understand me. And during all my stay in Rome,
(03:14):
this great Master was a constant visitor at my studio
and my warm and devoted friend. I love that she
has set up this scenario where like they were never introduced,
and he's just like.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
You are my people. It's very fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, here's another thing that really really jumped out at me. Okay,
as interesting in this we have talked so many times
on the show about the civil war, I would say
we also live in a time right now when our
country is very divided. I don't think that's a controversial statement,
and it is very hard for most people, myself included,
(03:55):
to understand how people of side can be cool and
hang with people from the other side of this, you know,
political ideology split. But reading through Vinnie Reims stuff, I
was really struck by it over and over, and she, like,
for example, her brother Bob we mentioned, stayed behind in
(04:18):
Arkansas when the family moved to Washington, and because he
was in Arkansas when everything started, he fought for the
Confederacy and he was actually missing for a little while,
and she was like petitioning her contacts in Washington to
like figure out if she could get a pass to
cross the line and go try to find him, which
didn't ever work out because she didn't have enough information. Really,
(04:42):
it was kind of like you're just gonna run around
the wilderness of the country yelling his name, like there's
no you don't know where he is, And of course
he pops back up later having surrendered during the war.
But then her association with Pike, who if you don't
know about Albert Pike, I'm making a face, because I
don't even know how to describe him, very controversial, purported
(05:05):
ties to the KKK, very much like a Southern military man,
everything against all of the people that Vinnie Reem seemed
to align with. But yet they did have a very
close relationship and I think an actual romance of some flavor.
He bought a little cottage that he called their Place
(05:28):
or whatever, and like she allegedly it's it stated very
oddly in some of the biographies, where it's like, well,
she would stay there, but she slept in a room upstairs.
Like I'm like, yeah, but this sounds this sounds like,
you know, you're trying to protect her identity or the
integrity of her you know, purity or whatever. And you know,
(05:51):
his letters to her very much suggests that there was
romance between them, and I'm like, but ha, how does
that work with that? Because he was obviously against all
the things you were four, and you supported both Lincoln
and Johnson and you However, she also, this will not
(06:12):
surprise anybody, I'm sure, had problems with the suffragettes, okay,
because there had been write ups in several papers that
were women's rights papers that kind of took the side
of like, what is this kid doings? She seems to
be doing something inappropriate, And so when it came time
(06:34):
and they were like, do you want to sign any
of our petitions, she was like, nope, nope. You treated
me really badly. You don't get my name on your stuff.
So it's weird. She has this life where she walks
in both those worlds and associates with both those worlds
in a way that to me seems very hard to envision,
(06:57):
Like I would have a hard time envisioning that for myself,
but I know people do it. But it was just
one of those things where I was like, oh, we
always think of particularly the Civil War and after as
like we are in two groups and we look at
each other with with leering anger, and that's all we get.
But that doesn't seem to have been what was going
on in a lot of cases. So that was fascinating.
(07:19):
One of the things that also tickled me was all
the stuff she bought in Paris, and okay, because she like,
she just bought a lot of stuff she could not.
I think it's one of those cases where, remember they
were not a wealthy family, and then suddenly she was
very famous and had some pocket money, and like when
(07:39):
they were in Paris, she like bought herself a harp,
Like what are you gonna do with a harp? I mean,
she played, but like it seemed like everywhere they went,
even if they were only staying a few weeks, she
moved in like it was her new home and decorated
and did all the stuff. We talked about her studio
in Rome and how she set it up, like with
full decor and furniture and you know, like a little
(08:01):
a little beautiful gallery and work studio. I also don't
understand why she sh she stayed in Rome, m because
like Carrera is up in Tuscany, there are cities there.
She could have stayed in Florence and been much closer.
I don't I didn't find in any of my reading
(08:23):
it may have been there, and I just didn't ide
it an explainer for why she would choose to live
four hours plus away from the place where her bust
was being replicated in Marble well in probably longer than
four hours right the time.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
My opinions on this are like definitely influenced by having
been to Rome and Tuscany, like recent times and our
very long bus trip between the two.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Very long bus trip.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
But like, I mean, that has no bearing on what
it was like in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Who knows.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, yeah, I'm not clear at all about that. I
also was kind of fascinated by the fact that it
became very apparent and we didn't really break it down,
but I tried to include it in the narrative so
that people could kind of get the workings of it.
How a memorial statue is made. It's not like someone
(09:22):
hands her a hunk of marble and she gets her chisel.
You know, she creates the model that is then recreated
by master chiselers who their whole job is recreating artists
right clay models in marble. So that was very interesting
because some of them, you know, the really snarky commentary
by Mary Todd Lincoln's friend was very like, she doesn't
(09:45):
know what a chisel is, and it's really need to
do exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
That was kind of fascinating.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Too, Okay, Mary Todd Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
One I will say I didn't find I'm sure it's
out there. I never managed to get my eyeballs on it.
Anything about what Mary Todd Lincoln thought of the statue
when it was completed. We know she wasn't in favor
of any ream and she said a lot of nasty
stuff right that whole, like burn this, don't I'm not like,
(10:27):
you know what you're doing is wrong when you're like
burn this letter. But I never saw anything about it.
And now it's possible because her son did go see
the statue and he seemed to like it, that that
was enough for her and she didn't want to get
involved past that.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
But I don't know what she thought.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I have always known that Mary Todd Lincoln is a
mixed bag, but I really was kind of startled at
how kind of petty she could be. Yeah, I didn't
really know much about her at all personally, and Patrick
was reading I think maybe Team of Rivals was reading,
(11:03):
you know, some work about Abraham Lincoln and said something
offhandedly about her, and I was kind of like, well,
you know, a lot of times the historical counts of
women are like particularly vindictive and harsh because ofh blah
blah blah. And then he told me some details about
some stuff and I was like, oh, well, okay, two
(11:24):
things are true at the same time, as we said earlier. Yeah, yeah,
I mean we know, right, Like we talked about her.
She came up briefly in our live show episode we
did on spirit photography, right, yeah, and she came up
in our episodes about mediums at various times. Like we
(11:45):
know that she was like kind of into the occult
and this idea of spiritualism that was sweeping the nature
at the time. She was not an outlier in this regard,
so we knew, like I always knew she was. She
could be perceived as a bit kooky because of that,
but I really did not have a sense of just
how vindictive she could be. Yeah, and like the whole
like I don't know, you like she perfected that well before.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Mariah Carey was like.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, I was sort of like death of a child,
death of a husband, Like it just seems like so
much was happening in her life. But then I will
hear specific, you know, accounts of particular things that happen.
I'm like, whoa, Okay, I don't feel like what I
just said can really mitigate that story. Yeah, some of
it's really venomous. Also, she was notoriously it came up
(12:32):
and I didn't mention it to you. Beforehand, and it
was in a passage that you had to read. Hmm, her, Listen,
we write out stuff and sometimes there are lots of
typos and whatnot. But I know there was a weird
moment in one of them, and I had forgot to
mention to you that I had copied it directly because
her punctuation was fast and loose, like where I would
(12:55):
be writing it, reading it and being like, there shouldn't
be a period here. That completely breaks the concept to
this sentence. What is this fragment that's off on its own,
like just held out by dashes? What is She's pretty
notorious in her letter writing for having kind of a
I will call it a very staccato style of community. Yeah, fascinating, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Have you gotten it? Do you know the Lincoln statue?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Uh? I looked at it because I wanted I did
not know immediately what statue were talking about. And there
is also like a Lincoln Emancipation Memorial statue, and I
wanted to make sure it wasn't that one, because I
did not remember who had sculpted that one or the
story behind it. It is not that one. The Emancipation
(13:48):
statue has like a whole complicated history, but the visual
representation of it is like there's Lincoln and then at
Lincoln's feet a sort of worshipfully adoring looking freed black person,
and like it's, uh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
There is you.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
You bring up a thing that I did not include
in our show because I simply it's it's in the
exact same vein as this. But in write ups about
the unveiling of the Lincoln statue, there were also present
black people at that unveiling, and the way they are
(14:30):
described as reacting is very much in line with this,
Like that really does the whole white saviorism thing. And
I was like, oh, we don't need to put in
a show. Yeah, not yourmane. Yeah. And I also like
I have no idea whether like was the Cherokee nation
involved in the Sequoia statue. I don't know, I would
(14:52):
I would think probably not. Yeah. Yeah, it's all a
little it's all a little KOOKI Again, I mostly came
away with like the Pike story of like, hm, hmm,
I'm obsessed with you cool? Will you wear a suit
and a boot near for my wedding? It's not to you,
(15:13):
Like that's a whole level of I'm curious what your
thoughts are. Do you think she was calculating or do
you think she was like a go with the flow
that was like this is working out for me in
terms of anything in particular.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I think just in.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
General her behavior with men, like obviously she lobbied at
various times. Yeah, but I don't have a good sense.
I don't have a firm stance on whether I think
she was like, yes, I will flirt with these old
dudes to get what I want, or if she was like,
I'm just being super nice. I'm just a super nice
person that's friendly. Like, I don't know, I don't know,
(15:48):
I don't know. I mean, there is part of me
that's like, girl, you know a lot of people writeing
you very aggressively romantic letter. Surely it must have clicked
at some point that you were getting what you wanted
because they thought there was some promise at least of
some romance with you.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I feel like that's a whole tangle. It is a
full tangle, and it's hard, and you don't want to
like get into shaming her. There's also part of me
that's like, Okay, what if that was the case. What
if she was conniving a hack and she was like, listen,
they can fall in love with me.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
That's fine.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I don't need to love them back, but there is
no other way I'm gonna be able to do what
I want to do with my life. Well, and we
also know that, like attractive women, public figures often get
a lot of unwanted attention from men, yes, and then
are accused of having encouraged that unwanted attention by existing.
(16:47):
So like, I'm super reluctant to make any kind of
conclusive Oh yeah, I mean she was interacting with all
of these people in a way that I'm like, it's
not quite the same as that in my mind, you know,
like when apparently I didn't I didn't read all the
letters between them. But apparently when she started dating Hoxy
(17:08):
for example, and people like Pike, Pike in particular obviously
was writing her and she was telling him like no, no,
it's nothing to worry about.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
No, no, no, no, no, it's fine.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
When she was obviously dating this other person, right, I'm like, Okay,
what is the impetus for that, Like you are lying
to him? Is there a way that I can see
that she is doing so that is benevolent and not weasily.
I don't know, unless she just thought he's quite an
elderly man. I don't want to scare him to pieces, don't.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
That's part of why her legacy is so difficult. Boy,
I do think we didn't talk that much about her art. Actually,
I mean, I think she was a perfectly fine artist.
I don't I she is not an artist. You have
seen me fall apart in front of sculptures before. Her
art does not inspire that in me. But I always
(18:01):
do think it's lovely, like no part of me is like,
what is this? So the jury will be out on
Vinnie Ream forever. We don't know anymore really about whether
or not she was the cause of Charles Francis Hall's death,
but that even seems fascinating to me. If that was
(18:23):
the sticking point that motivated Bessel's and he did in
fact kill Charles Francis Hall, that's a weird thing like that.
If that's the case, that speaks to her appeal that
they knew her for a couple of weeks and out
of that he was like, I will kill for her.
That's a lot and kind of does again bring into
focus how much like franz List, people just could not.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Not fall in love with them wild.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, franz List, he just knew we were the same.
I love it anyway. That was Vinny Reem. I feel
like we could do and somebody could do a long,
like twenty seven part series on her and there would
still be stuff left unturned because it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
We hope that if.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
You have time off in the coming days, you do
not have to deal with anything or anyone that is
a lot unless you like that. If you don't have
time off, we still hope you get some rest and
relaxation in the mix, because everybody needs it. We will
be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and
then on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you missed
(19:36):
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio, Hey and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Frye and
I'm Tracy V. Wilson. We talked about Vinnie Reem all
week the Hall Week Listen. She's one of those people.
I have many thoughts that developed while I was working
(00:22):
on this one. I was just gonna do a one parter,
and then I was like, how yeah, just no way.
And I know we included a lot of quotes from
the papers and whatnot, but I really felt like we
had to establish just how vitriolic all the back and
forth was about her, right whoo Yeah. Two, My position
(00:42):
on her may have shifted a little, yeah, because I
came into this episode and the research really ready to
be like this poor girl. People accused her of a
lot of things. She was clearly victimized because she was
a young woman, And yes, I did more research. I
was like, I'm not saying that she was, you know,
(01:05):
the harlet she was painted to be, but she was
definitely managing the situation to her benefit and knew that
these men were obsessed with her well.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
And it's one of those.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Things where I think multiple things are true at the
same time, correct, right, correct. So where she really lost
me was the guy telling her, you know, Albert Pike,
being like, I am so in love with you, I
cannot bear the thought of you with another man, and
her going you can be in my wedding that. Yeah,
I was like, this is weird. I also found it
weird that she had sherman walk her down the island
(01:38):
instead of her dad. I was like, this is why though, yeah,
sherman apparently like his response was like, is this okay
with your parents? And I guess they talked it through,
but to me just kind of vibed a little weird
of like are you just doing this for show? Because
that seems like an odd choices. I said that I
(02:02):
would read her description of how she met Franz list. Yes,
I'm very excited for this.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
It's quite charming.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So she described this where she says she's sitting in
quote a chair almost immediately back of the piano at
Liz's right hand. The wonderful magician swept his slender hands
over the keys, fascinating all who heard, and with tremulous vibrations,
touched some tender chords with such a spell that I
was deeply affected. The tears which I could not repress,
(02:30):
rose to my eyes, and being so near and fearful
of making the slightest interruption, I dared not raise my
hand to brush them away. The great artist felt the
spell he was exercising over me. He noticed my emotion,
and playing softly with his left hand, he reached his
right hand over and laid it for an instant, tenderly
(02:51):
on mine. We needed no introduction. We understood each other.
And when he finished playing and all rushed to congratulate
him and thank him, I waited silently by to try
and speak, but he offered me his arm, and as
we promenaded with the rest down the old convents halls,
he said, you need not speak. I understand you, and
you understand me. And during all my stay in Rome,
(03:14):
this great Master was a constant visitor at my studio
and my warm and devoted friend. I love that she
has set up this scenario where like they were never introduced,
and he's just like.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
You are my people. It's very fascinating. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yeah, here's another thing that really really jumped out at me. Okay,
as interesting in this we have talked so many times
on the show about the civil war, I would say
we also live in a time right now when our
country is very divided. I don't think that's a controversial statement,
and it is very hard for most people, myself included,
(03:55):
to understand how people of side can be cool and
hang with people from the other side of this, you know,
political ideology split. But reading through Vinnie Reims stuff, I
was really struck by it over and over, and she, like,
for example, her brother Bob we mentioned, stayed behind in
(04:18):
Arkansas when the family moved to Washington, and because he
was in Arkansas when everything started, he fought for the
Confederacy and he was actually missing for a little while,
and she was like petitioning her contacts in Washington to
like figure out if she could get a pass to
cross the line and go try to find him, which
didn't ever work out because she didn't have enough information. Really,
(04:42):
it was kind of like you're just gonna run around
the wilderness of the country yelling his name, like there's
no you don't know where he is, And of course
he pops back up later having surrendered during the war.
But then her association with Pike, who if you don't
know about Albert Pike, I'm making a face, because I
don't even know how to describe him, very controversial, purported
(05:05):
ties to the KKK, very much like a Southern military man,
everything against all of the people that Vinnie Reem seemed
to align with. But yet they did have a very
close relationship and I think an actual romance of some flavor.
He bought a little cottage that he called their Place
(05:28):
or whatever, and like she allegedly it's it stated very
oddly in some of the biographies, where it's like, well,
she would stay there, but she slept in a room upstairs.
Like I'm like, yeah, but this sounds this sounds like,
you know, you're trying to protect her identity or the
integrity of her you know, purity or whatever. And you know,
(05:51):
his letters to her very much suggests that there was
romance between them, and I'm like, but ha, how does
that work with that? Because he was obviously against all
the things you were four, and you supported both Lincoln
and Johnson and you However, she also, this will not
(06:12):
surprise anybody, I'm sure, had problems with the suffragettes, okay,
because there had been write ups in several papers that
were women's rights papers that kind of took the side
of like, what is this kid doings? She seems to
be doing something inappropriate, And so when it came time
(06:34):
and they were like, do you want to sign any
of our petitions, she was like, nope, nope. You treated
me really badly. You don't get my name on your stuff.
So it's weird. She has this life where she walks
in both those worlds and associates with both those worlds
in a way that to me seems very hard to envision,
(06:57):
Like I would have a hard time envisioning that for myself,
but I know people do it. But it was just
one of those things where I was like, oh, we
always think of particularly the Civil War and after as
like we are in two groups and we look at
each other with with leering anger, and that's all we get.
But that doesn't seem to have been what was going
on in a lot of cases. So that was fascinating.
(07:19):
One of the things that also tickled me was all
the stuff she bought in Paris, and okay, because she like,
she just bought a lot of stuff she could not.
I think it's one of those cases where, remember they
were not a wealthy family, and then suddenly she was
very famous and had some pocket money, and like when
(07:39):
they were in Paris, she like bought herself a harp,
Like what are you gonna do with a harp? I mean,
she played, but like it seemed like everywhere they went,
even if they were only staying a few weeks, she
moved in like it was her new home and decorated
and did all the stuff. We talked about her studio
in Rome and how she set it up, like with
full decor and furniture and you know, like a little
(08:01):
a little beautiful gallery and work studio. I also don't
understand why she sh she stayed in Rome, m because
like Carrera is up in Tuscany, there are cities there.
She could have stayed in Florence and been much closer.
I don't I didn't find in any of my reading
(08:23):
it may have been there, and I just didn't ide
it an explainer for why she would choose to live
four hours plus away from the place where her bust
was being replicated in Marble well in probably longer than
four hours right the time.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
My opinions on this are like definitely influenced by having
been to Rome and Tuscany, like recent times and our
very long bus trip between the two.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Very long bus trip.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
But like, I mean, that has no bearing on what
it was like in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
Who knows.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Yeah, yeah, I'm not clear at all about that. I
also was kind of fascinated by the fact that it
became very apparent and we didn't really break it down,
but I tried to include it in the narrative so
that people could kind of get the workings of it.
How a memorial statue is made. It's not like someone
(09:22):
hands her a hunk of marble and she gets her chisel.
You know, she creates the model that is then recreated
by master chiselers who their whole job is recreating artists
right clay models in marble. So that was very interesting
because some of them, you know, the really snarky commentary
by Mary Todd Lincoln's friend was very like, she doesn't
(09:45):
know what a chisel is, and it's really need to
do exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
That was kind of fascinating.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Too, Okay, Mary Todd Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
One I will say I didn't find I'm sure it's
out there. I never managed to get my eyeballs on it.
Anything about what Mary Todd Lincoln thought of the statue
when it was completed. We know she wasn't in favor
of any ream and she said a lot of nasty
stuff right that whole, like burn this, don't I'm not like,
(10:27):
you know what you're doing is wrong when you're like
burn this letter. But I never saw anything about it.
And now it's possible because her son did go see
the statue and he seemed to like it, that that
was enough for her and she didn't want to get
involved past that.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
But I don't know what she thought.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
I have always known that Mary Todd Lincoln is a
mixed bag, but I really was kind of startled at
how kind of petty she could be. Yeah, I didn't
really know much about her at all personally, and Patrick
was reading I think maybe Team of Rivals was reading,
(11:03):
you know, some work about Abraham Lincoln and said something
offhandedly about her, and I was kind of like, well,
you know, a lot of times the historical counts of
women are like particularly vindictive and harsh because ofh blah
blah blah. And then he told me some details about
some stuff and I was like, oh, well, okay, two
(11:24):
things are true at the same time, as we said earlier. Yeah, yeah,
I mean we know, right, Like we talked about her.
She came up briefly in our live show episode we
did on spirit photography, right, yeah, and she came up
in our episodes about mediums at various times. Like we
(11:45):
know that she was like kind of into the occult
and this idea of spiritualism that was sweeping the nature
at the time. She was not an outlier in this regard,
so we knew, like I always knew she was. She
could be perceived as a bit kooky because of that,
but I really did not have a sense of just
how vindictive she could be. Yeah, and like the whole
like I don't know, you like she perfected that well before.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Mariah Carey was like.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, I was sort of like death of a child,
death of a husband, Like it just seems like so
much was happening in her life. But then I will
hear specific, you know, accounts of particular things that happen.
I'm like, whoa, Okay, I don't feel like what I
just said can really mitigate that story. Yeah, some of
it's really venomous. Also, she was notoriously it came up
(12:32):
and I didn't mention it to you. Beforehand, and it
was in a passage that you had to read. Hmm, her, Listen,
we write out stuff and sometimes there are lots of
typos and whatnot. But I know there was a weird
moment in one of them, and I had forgot to
mention to you that I had copied it directly because
her punctuation was fast and loose, like where I would
(12:55):
be writing it, reading it and being like, there shouldn't
be a period here. That completely breaks the concept to
this sentence. What is this fragment that's off on its own,
like just held out by dashes? What is She's pretty
notorious in her letter writing for having kind of a
I will call it a very staccato style of community. Yeah, fascinating, fascinating.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Have you gotten it? Do you know the Lincoln statue?
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Uh? I looked at it because I wanted I did
not know immediately what statue were talking about. And there
is also like a Lincoln Emancipation Memorial statue, and I
wanted to make sure it wasn't that one, because I
did not remember who had sculpted that one or the
story behind it. It is not that one. The Emancipation
(13:48):
statue has like a whole complicated history, but the visual
representation of it is like there's Lincoln and then at
Lincoln's feet a sort of worshipfully adoring looking freed black person,
and like it's, uh, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
There is you.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
You bring up a thing that I did not include
in our show because I simply it's it's in the
exact same vein as this. But in write ups about
the unveiling of the Lincoln statue, there were also present
black people at that unveiling, and the way they are
(14:30):
described as reacting is very much in line with this,
Like that really does the whole white saviorism thing. And
I was like, oh, we don't need to put in
a show. Yeah, not yourmane. Yeah. And I also like
I have no idea whether like was the Cherokee nation
involved in the Sequoia statue. I don't know, I would
(14:52):
I would think probably not. Yeah. Yeah, it's all a
little it's all a little KOOKI Again, I mostly came
away with like the Pike story of like, hm, hmm,
I'm obsessed with you cool? Will you wear a suit
and a boot near for my wedding? It's not to you,
(15:13):
Like that's a whole level of I'm curious what your
thoughts are. Do you think she was calculating or do
you think she was like a go with the flow
that was like this is working out for me in
terms of anything in particular.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I think just in.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
General her behavior with men, like obviously she lobbied at
various times. Yeah, but I don't have a good sense.
I don't have a firm stance on whether I think
she was like, yes, I will flirt with these old
dudes to get what I want, or if she was like,
I'm just being super nice. I'm just a super nice
person that's friendly. Like, I don't know, I don't know,
(15:48):
I don't know. I mean, there is part of me
that's like, girl, you know a lot of people writeing
you very aggressively romantic letter. Surely it must have clicked
at some point that you were getting what you wanted
because they thought there was some promise at least of
some romance with you.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I feel like that's a whole tangle. It is a
full tangle, and it's hard, and you don't want to
like get into shaming her. There's also part of me
that's like, Okay, what if that was the case. What
if she was conniving a hack and she was like, listen,
they can fall in love with me.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
That's fine.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I don't need to love them back, but there is
no other way I'm gonna be able to do what
I want to do with my life. Well, and we
also know that, like attractive women, public figures often get
a lot of unwanted attention from men, yes, and then
are accused of having encouraged that unwanted attention by existing.
(16:47):
So like, I'm super reluctant to make any kind of
conclusive Oh yeah, I mean she was interacting with all
of these people in a way that I'm like, it's
not quite the same as that in my mind, you know,
like when apparently I didn't I didn't read all the
letters between them. But apparently when she started dating Hoxy
(17:08):
for example, and people like Pike, Pike in particular obviously
was writing her and she was telling him like no, no,
it's nothing to worry about.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
No, no, no, no, no, it's fine.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
When she was obviously dating this other person, right, I'm like, Okay,
what is the impetus for that, Like you are lying
to him? Is there a way that I can see
that she is doing so that is benevolent and not weasily.
I don't know, unless she just thought he's quite an
elderly man. I don't want to scare him to pieces, don't.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
That's part of why her legacy is so difficult. Boy,
I do think we didn't talk that much about her art. Actually,
I mean, I think she was a perfectly fine artist.
I don't I she is not an artist. You have
seen me fall apart in front of sculptures before. Her
art does not inspire that in me. But I always
(18:01):
do think it's lovely, like no part of me is like,
what is this? So the jury will be out on
Vinnie Ream forever. We don't know anymore really about whether
or not she was the cause of Charles Francis Hall's death,
but that even seems fascinating to me. If that was
(18:23):
the sticking point that motivated Bessel's and he did in
fact kill Charles Francis Hall, that's a weird thing like that.
If that's the case, that speaks to her appeal that
they knew her for a couple of weeks and out
of that he was like, I will kill for her.
That's a lot and kind of does again bring into
focus how much like franz List, people just could not.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Not fall in love with them wild.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, franz List, he just knew we were the same.
I love it anyway. That was Vinny Reem. I feel
like we could do and somebody could do a long,
like twenty seven part series on her and there would
still be stuff left unturned because it's a lot.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
We hope that if.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
You have time off in the coming days, you do
not have to deal with anything or anyone that is
a lot unless you like that. If you don't have
time off, we still hope you get some rest and
relaxation in the mix, because everybody needs it. We will
be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode and
then on Monday with something brand new. Stuff you missed
(19:36):
in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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