June 16, 2016 • 33 mins
In the late 19th century, a painting titled The Roll Call, by a virtually unknown artist, took England by storm. But after that brilliant first effort, the artist all but disappeared. Why? And what does The Roll Call tell us about the fate of those first through the door?
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Saint James Palace in London, down the street from
Buckingham Palace. It's the official residence of the British Monarchy,
built in the fifteen thirties by Henry the Eighth. It's
not open to the public, but you can apply to
go inside, which I did not long ago. It's not
(00:36):
that hard. As a soldier with a machine gun standing
by a little cottage. He tells me to go inside,
and then a man named Desmond Shaw Taylor comes and
gets me. He's the curator of the Royal Art Collection.
Early Middle Aged distinguished, a kind of high end exuberance.
You look at that building now, it's kind of missing
a fib a nice jumble. I came here to see
(01:00):
a painting butt by Queen Victoria nearly one hundred and
fifty years ago. It's called the Roll Call. Inside the
palace there's red everywhere, Royal red, red carpets, red wallpaper.
All the trim is in gold. The rooms are massive
and almost entirely empty except for the art on the walls.
(01:24):
Enormous canvases spanning many centuries everywhere, and in a kind
of hallway not far from the entrance there it is
roll Call eighteen seventy four. The absolute point of the
Roll Call is that it has a single brilliant image idea.
The painting depicts a group of British soldiers in the
(01:46):
Crimean War, which is a war England and France fought
against Russia in the eighteen fifties. In Roll Call, there's
just been a battle and the soldiers are lining up
in the gray light of morning to be reviewed by
the commanding officer. We start talking about a particularly distinctive
figure in the middle of the painting. Desmond has a
(02:07):
flashlight in his hand because it's quite gloomy in the palace.
Of course, palaces are supposed to be gloomy. He shines
the light directly on the man's face. That's a brave
young man who manages to stand up brighton. And this
sort of encounter is suggestive of comradeship, isn't it. Sin
(02:29):
James Palace has dozens of war paintings, Handsome generals on
white chargers, panoramic battle scenes, faceless soldiers in glistening uniforms.
They're almost cartoons. But in Roll Call the men are exhausted, wounded,
defiant but draggled. It's real and they are standing in
(02:49):
a line, but they're not in a straight line, and
they're not anonymous. Yes, so it's got one fantastic idea. Yeah,
my name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to the first
episode of my podcast, Revisionist History. Every week for the
(03:16):
next ten weeks, I'm going to take you back to
examine something that I think has been overlooked or misunderstood.
One week, I'm going to talk about a car crash
just outside of San Diego. Another week, I'm going to
take you back to a secret Pentagon project in Saigon.
The tagline of this show sometimes the past deserves a
second chance, and that really goes to the heart of it.
(03:40):
I think too often we make up our minds about
something that has happened, and then we move on without
pausing to ask, Wait a minute, is that actually what happened?
Do we really understand it? I'm starting with something very simple,
(04:03):
a painting the roll call all but Forgotten. Now, if
you want to see it before you listen to this,
you can pause and go to revisionist history dot com.
But in eighteen seventy four, when this painting became famous,
something extraordinary happened that I think is worth revisiting because
it's an issue that we deal with all the time today,
(04:23):
which is what it means to be the first, the
first outsider to enter a closed world. The art world
in England at that time is controlled by something called
the Royal Academy. It consists of forty artists and being
elected to the Royal Academy is the highest honor any
(04:44):
artist can get. It's like winning an Oscar. Membership makes
your reputation and makes it possible to become very wealthy
as an artist. And every year the Academy puts on
an art exhibition. Thousands of paintings are submitted, they choose
a select few and display them at Burlington House on Piccadilly.
Remember this is before movies and television and recorded music,
(05:07):
painting is it. Hundreds of thousands of people come to
these shows and roll Call gets chosen for the Royal Academy,
and not just chosen, chosen in a way that makes
it a really big deal. First of all, where the
Academy hangs a painting on the wall matters a lot.
If they hang it way up near the ceiling, if
(05:27):
they sky it, that means you're painting is considered second class.
If they hang it at eye level, what's called on
the line, that's fantastic. Roll Call is on the line.
Then there's where in Burlington House they put it. There's
a gallery in the back called the Lecture Room. The
lecture room is known as the black Hole. Being hung
(05:49):
in the black Hole was almost as bad as not
being hung at all. But if they hang a painting
near the front in gallery two, that's incredibly prestigious. So
where was roll Call hung gallery two? Unbelievable? On the
line in Gallery two I was reading about it creates
an extraordinary sensation. Yes, completely in an unusual way, even
(06:15):
for that time. The day the show opens, the crowds
make a bee line for Roll Call. The crowds were
so great that you had to have basically we employ
a warden, but the police want to say, you know,
date touch or yeah, move on. The only contemporary equivalent
I can think of is people camping out in line
for two days to buy Beyonce tickets, or the kind
(06:36):
of frenzy the Beatles faced when they first came to America.
Roll Call is the hit of the Royal Academy show.
After that, Roll Call goes in a Tour of England.
In Newcastle, men walk up and down the sidewalks with
sandwich boards saying simply, the Roll Call is coming. In Liverpool,
twenty thousand people go to see it. In those days,
(06:59):
prominent paintings were put on little playing cards, and two
hundred and fifty thousand cards are sold with an image
of Roll Call. A bidding war breaks out among potential buyers.
Fly Queen Victoria, one of the greatest art collectors of
her day, decides she absolutely has to have it, which
is how it comes to hang in Saint James's Palace.
(07:20):
Desmond Shaw Taylor must have seen Roll Call a thousand times,
but as he shines his flashlight over the artist brushwork,
it's like he's seeing it for the first time. He's
excited about every little detail, even down to the soldier's shoes.
That's pretty fabulous, isn't that. It's always so difficult to
(07:40):
and to paint nothing in particular happening without over doing it.
And if you just get one gray color and just
a little bit of underpenctuingly and just pick out pulls
the shoes, it's very impressive. M I mean, I'm enjoying
looking at this it's a remarkable story, but I've left
(08:02):
out the most remarkable fact of all the artist, an unknown,
more importantly, a woman. At a time when the art
world was overwhelmingly male, British women in the nineteenth century
weren't even allowed to study fine art. It was a
closed world. And suddenly, in the middle of that closed
world there enters a striking young woman named Elizabeth Thompson,
(08:26):
raised in Switzerland by wealthy Bohemian parents, an outsider, and
she breaks down the door. I've been fascinated by the
story of Elizabeth Thompson for years, by roll Call, and
more particularly by what happened to Elizabeth Thompson after the
stunning success of her painting. What fascinates me is how
(08:48):
her story is repeated over and over again. Once you
know about Elizabeth Thompson, you see Elizabeth Thompson's everywhere. I
don't know if you've ever heard of Julia Gillard. She
was the first woman to become Prime Minister of Australia.
(09:09):
She served from twenty ten to twenty thirteen, and she
had an incredibly tumultuous time in office. Near the end
of her tenure, she gave a famous speech on the
floor of the Australian Parliament. Here's the part everyone noticed.
The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold
sexist views and who are malogynists are not appropriate for
(09:30):
high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition
has got a piece of paper and he is writing
out his resignation, because if he wants to know what
misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a
motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a mirac
That's what he needs. When I heard Julia Gillard give
(09:50):
that speech, I thought about Elizabeth Thompson because Gillard and
Thompson were in the same situation. Women dealing with the
consequences are breaking down the door. I also remember Elizabeth
Thompson when I think of Hillary Clinton. An idea that
I think helps explain the phenomenon of Elizabeth Thompson and
(10:12):
Julia Gillard. It's called moral licensing. It's a fairly new
concept in social psychology. It was developed by a number
of the best young psychologists in the field, chief among
them Daniel Ephron, who teaches at the London Business School.
Here's the official definition of moral licensing. Past good deeds
can liberate individuals to engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical,
(10:37):
or otherwise problematic, behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for
fear of feeling or appearing immoral. When we do something good,
in other words, sometimes we then, on occasion give ourselves
permission to do something bad. One of Ephron's first experiments
(10:57):
in moral licensing was in two thousand and nine. He
surveys people who publicly self identify as supporters of Barack
Obama for president, and what he finds is that supporting
up black politician doesn't always signal that you're a racially
open person who is inclined to be progressive in other areas.
It can also have the opposite effect. It can free
(11:20):
you up to go back to your old racist ways
because you've proven to the world what a good person
you are. And that's what he discovers. A significant chunk
of the people who supported Barack Obama were then more likely,
at least in the experiment, to express racially questionable opinions.
I was taken by this finding that people appear to
(11:44):
be able to license themselves based on pretty pultry virtues.
I met Effron in his office in London up near
Regent's Park. I asked him why a little egalitarian behavior
doesn't lead to more egalitarian behavior. Why don't good deeds
just lead to more good deeds? So your question is
about when does evidence that I'm virtuous lead to more
(12:08):
virtuous behavior versus when does evidence of virtue lead to
less virtuous behavior? When does doing good lead to doing bad?
And one is doing good lead to doing more good?
This is the million dollar question in this literature, and
it's been a puzzle. All we know is that human
beings go both ways after a good deed, they sometimes
(12:28):
follow a virtuous trajectory and sometimes they don't. There's what
happens after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in nineteen
forty seven becomes the first ever black professional baseball player.
Within five years there are one hundred and fifty black
ball players in the major leagues. I think that's what
we expect. It fits our romantic notions of progress. The
(12:50):
door opens for one person, and soon it opens for everyone.
But what we have to understand is that a lot
of times the opposite happens. The door opens for one
person and they're the only one to slip in. Those
who open the door then feel free to close it
again for everybody else. A couple of years the Israeli
author Almost Elan wrote a history of the Jews in
(13:12):
Germany called The Pity of It All. It's a fascinating
book for precisely this reason, because what Elan is interested
in is the great paradox of Germany's history with the Jews.
Here we have a country that committed the greatest historical
atrocity against the Jewish people. Yet if you take the
long view as Alan does, you see the time and
(13:34):
time again German culture welcome Jews, or at least welcomed
some Jews. From the seventeenth century onwards, Many German states
had a tradition of what we're called court Jews. Most
Jews were banned from living in major German cities. There
were severe restrictions on what they could do, but simultaneously
there was a group of protected Jews who were allowed
(13:56):
to live and work within the city walls. In the
seventeen thirties, the King of Prussia becomes alarmed by the
number of Jews in Prussia, likening them to locusts bringing
ruin to Christians, so he wishes them from Berlin, but
not all of them. He kicks out one hundred and
forty families, and he keeps one hundred and twenty. That
(14:16):
pattern is repeated over and again in the German speaking world.
In the eighteenth century, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who is Jewish,
was considered one of the most brilliant men in Europe.
He lives in Berlin, and people come from far and
wide to visit him. How does he stay in Berlin?
The King grants him exceptional status. That is to say,
(14:39):
and these are almos Alan's words here, Mendelssohn is the
Unjewish jew. The same happens a hundred years later with
Bertild Auerbach. He's Jewish and he's the most widely read
German novelist of his day. He's called the German Dickens.
This is now at a time of virulent anti Semitism
throughout Germany, but Bertild Auerbach is somehow immune from that prejudice.
(15:04):
Richard Wagner Wagner, the notorious anti Semite, loves our Bach
and calls him a man rooted in German life. One
of the brothers Grimm, thanks Auerbach for curing him of prejudice.
The Germans hate Jews as a rule, but they love Auerbach.
What's going on here? It sounds like a contradiction, it's not.
(15:25):
It's just textbook moral licensing. The Germans love Berthold Auerbach,
and because they think they have demonstrated their open mindedness
by loving this one Jew, they feel free to act
in the most despicable way to other Jews. You opened
the door to one outsider, and that gives you permission
to close the door to others. After seeing roll Call
(15:54):
at Saint James's Palace, I went to the tape and
sat on a little bench outside the Turner Gallery with
Paul Usherwood. Usherwood is an art historian who was written
extensively on Elizabeth Thompson. In fact, I first learned about
Sabeth Thompson because they stumbled across an absolutely brilliant article
by Usherwood in the Woman's Art Journal. It was called
(16:16):
Elizabeth Thompson Butler, a case of tokenism. Usherwood is whispy
and tweedy in the best possible English way. I imagined
that after our chat he would go straight home, spend
an hour in the garden, then go for a brisk
walk across a few soggy fields with the dogs. Ushwood
argues that in making sense of what happened to Elizabeth Thompson,
(16:38):
it's really important to understand the role of the Royal Academy.
They control the art world at this point forty aloof
dictatorial white men. As an institution was just very, very powerful.
I'm much resented by people who weren't very well by it.
(16:59):
Academy members gave their own pictures the best positions on
the walls of the annual exhibition. Meanwhile, they pretty much
ignored everyone else's art, including in eighteen four the Irwin
roll call went up. Yeah, there were six thousands paintings
which didn't make the expressions. There's only one art show
(17:19):
that matters in England, and it's so small that thousands
of artists are stuck on the outside looking in. It
is a revolution brewing. So long comes Elizabeth Thompson, a woman,
an outsider with an absolutely brilliant painting, and the Academy
(17:40):
hangs it on the line in gallery too, and everyone
thinks this is a sign that the Academy is finally
opening its doors to what to the holy Grail membership
in the Royal Academy itself, it seems destined to happen.
One of the most prominent art critics of the day
writes in The Daily Telegraph that roll Call success proves that,
(18:01):
and I'm quoting here, real genius has no insurmountable obstacles
in the English art world. In short order, Thompson is
nominated for election to the Royal Academy. She's one of
the most famous artists in England. She is a huge
public following. Every artist in the country is riveted by
(18:22):
her candidacy. And what happens. She loses, but by just
two votes. It doesn't feel at the end, everyone says,
this is progress. Here we have a young artist, still
in her twenties, and on her first try she comes
within a harsh breath of acceptance into the old boys club.
Everyone thinks that she's going to be a lock for
(18:43):
election the next time round. They look at her and
they say Elizabeth Thompson, pioneer. But then Thompson submits another
painting to the Academy, another brilliant painting called quatrebra a
depiction of the Battle of Waterloo. Well's She's a celebrity
(19:03):
and has fantastic assistance from the animated I mean three
hundred soldiers points operated so she could paint that picture.
This is in eighteen seventy five, the year after roll
Call's triumph. So what happens to Quatra Brad What they
do is they stuff it away in an obscure corner,
says one heart sees. Thompson's new work is hung in
(19:26):
the lecture room at the back the black hole, and
the black hole is where her election to the Royal
Academy also goes. Remember she was within two votes of
getting in, and everybody said she's a lock for the
next time around, but she isn't. There is no next
time around. Instead, the male Academy members have these absurd
internal conversations about how it would work if a woman
(19:49):
ever got elected. What about the etiquette. That's a banquet,
how would that be arranged? Who would bring in? It
was the thing for the male academician to escort a
woman into the banquet. How would that work with a woman?
They fussed about it. They tied themselves in knots at
the thought of a woman entering their club. So the
Academy members pass new regulations to limit the privileges of
(20:12):
any women who might get elected in the future, because
they've proven their bona fides. They hung roll Call on
the line in gallery too. Who can doubt how open
and progressive they are? Now they can go back to
the way they were. In eighteen eighty one, Elizabeth Thompson
paints what might be her most famous painting, Scotland Forever.
(20:35):
It's a thrilling depiction of a charge at the Scots
Grays at Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. Scotland Forever is never
shown at the Royal Academy, and Thompson doesn't even try
again to get elected. She can read the writing on
the wall. In fact, no woman would be elected to
the Royal Academy until nineteen thirty six, more than half
(20:55):
a century later. As for Thompson, she married an army
officer named William Butler. She changed her name. She raised
six children. Her career took a back seat to her husband's.
When he writes his memoirs, he doesn't say a word
about her. His own wife, one of the most famous
artists in England. His Ortimard Fay Forum PITTI five pages,
(21:20):
She's not mentioned the index. He mentions that he was married,
he mentions that he did have children. That's it. And
when she writes her memoirs, she acts as if the
whole incident with her near election to the Royal Academy
never happened. Today people would write an entire book about it.
But she's been defeated and she knows it. Here's all
(21:43):
she says. As it turned out in eighteen seventy nine,
I lost my election by two votes. Only since then
I think the door has been closed. And wisely that's
the part that always gets me. And wisely she's given up.
(22:08):
Remember how I'm mentioned that when I saw a roll call,
the first thing I thought about was Julia Gillard, the
former Prime Minister of Australia. That's because it's the same story.
Gillard's election was a milestone in Australian history, the same
way it would be for any country. Australia had been
an independent nation for more than a century, one hundred
(22:30):
and ten years of uninterrupted male rule, and that came
to an end in twenty ten with this funny whip,
smart tough woman. In former British colonies like Australia, the
representative of the British Crown is called the Governor General,
and the Governor General is a person who swears in
(22:50):
the new Prime minister. When Gilliard stands up to take
the oath of office, it's a doubly incredible moment. What
made it loom large for me that day is our
governor General at that time was the first woman to
ever serve as Governor general. This is Julia Gillard telling
the story. And I could see in her and in
her eyes, you know, this incredible shock or delight that
(23:16):
she was going to be the person to swear in
the first woman prime minister. I, Julia, eileened your life, Celia,
firm and declare that I will well surely said a
Commonwealth of Australia. And you know she subsequently said to me, look,
I didn't think i'd live to see it. I didn't
think i'd live to see the day our nation had
(23:37):
a female prime minister. It's a big deal. And Gillard,
like many at the time, thinks that Australia has undergone
a permanent transformation. And she also thinks that after the
novelty of her election passes, she'll just be Prime Minister Gillard,
the fact of her gender will become unremarkable, the way
the fact of a baseball player's race is now unremarkable.
(24:00):
If you'd asked me then that all would have played
itself out in the first few months. And then I thought,
sort of the political cycle, I'd go back to normal,
and I made that judgment call spectacularly wrong. When was
the first moment did you realized you were wrong? Oh? Look,
I don't think it was a you know, it wasn't
(24:21):
the thud of a penny dropping in my brain. But
it just became clearer and clearer, particularly by the time
we were in the government second year and we were
putting a price on carbon and the campaigning against that
by the opposition and in the community was getting hotter
(24:45):
and shriller. It was in the course of that the
gendered stuff really started to show. Things got ugly, you're
the people would like them. Her opponents would circulate lude
(25:05):
sexual cartoons of her. She would be referred to in
the newspapers as Julia, as if she was a reality
TV star and not the head of state. The media
would constantly refer to the outfit she wore, or how
much cleavage she showed, or the tone of her voice.
The CEO of a major Australian company publicly called her
an unproductive old cow. One restaurant offered on its menu.
(25:30):
Julia Gillard Kentucky fried quail, small breasts, huge thighs in
a big red box. Was there any particular moment or
thing said that that hurts you the most? I mean,
it's obviously not a good thing to look out on
a scene of protesters and see yourself described as a
bitch and a witch and things like that. But for me, actually,
(25:52):
the worst moment in my prime ministership was not in
and of itself agendered remark, but came from a shock jock.
She's talking about the Russia limbab of Australia, a major
radio personality who hosts a fundraiser the Conservative Party, the
other party nut Julie Gillard's and I had recently outlost
(26:15):
my father. My father died while I was Prime minister.
And he said to this audience that my father had
died of shame because he was ashamed of me as
prime minister. I mean that was the worst. Oh wow, yeah, yeah,
that's appalling. It is appalling, It is appalling, and you
know it's you don't expect to have to do that
(26:36):
in your life, and you don't expect that, you know,
someone like my mother who's just a lovely woman and
a great Australian citizen should have to tolerate that being
said about the husband she's just lost. Why do you
think that intelligent, educated members of a progressive country feel
(26:56):
they can get away with such a vile behavior because
they've just elected a woman, They've proven their progressive bona
fides ending one hundred and ten years at patriarchy. When
the female governor General swear as in the female Prime minister,
Australia has a collective lump in its throat. But then
what happens. Moral licensing happens, and of course Gillow can't
(27:23):
fight back, can't she? Until the very end of your
ten years Prime Minister, you keep a pretty stiff upper
lip about this. Yes, I think I did tell me
about that, about your decision of how to handle it.
I mean, some of it's innate, some of it's just me.
And then I also took a deliberate decision that you know,
(27:45):
if you looked like you couldn't take it, if you
looked upset, then that would be used against me personally,
but more importantly against women generally. That there would have
been people muttering to themselves, you know, new women weren't
(28:05):
up for this. You knew they couldn't take it when
they're going got tough. Then, near the end of Gillard's
time in office, a prominent member of her own party,
the man she's chosen to be speaker, is found to
have sent sexist text messages, and incredibly, her critics come
after her. Gillard. They accuse her of condoning sexism because
(28:30):
she's associated with this man. She sits in her office
in disbelief. You know, I don't want to use any
bad language to you, but I did have just going
through my brain for Heaven's sake, and the word I
was thinking wasn't Heaven's but for Heaven's sake. I cannot
(28:53):
believe that after everything I've had to listen to, now
I'm somehow going to walk into a parliament and people
who have used gendered insults against me and now somehow
going to try and give me a lecture on sexism.
Like the injustice of this was just boiling in me.
(29:16):
So that day in Parliament she stands up and gives
her famous misogyny speech. It's addressed to her harshest critic,
the leader of Australia's opposition, a man named Tony Abbott.
Gillard just starts listing all the things Abbott has said
and done to her and other women over the years.
She lets him have it. I was very offended personally
(29:39):
when the Leader of the Opposition as Minister for Health said,
and I quote, abortion is the easy way out. I
was very personally offended by those comments. You said that
in March two thousand and four. I suggest you check
the records. This is live on the floor of Parliament.
If you watch the video, Abbot's sitting right in front
(29:59):
of her. She's dressing him down to his face, and
the longer she goes on, the more he shrivels and shrinks.
I was also very offended on behalf of the women
of Australia when, in the course of this carbon pricing campaign,
the Leader of the Opposition said, when the housewives of
Australia need to do what the housewives of Australia need
(30:23):
to understand as they do the ironing, thank you for
that painting of women's roles in modern Australia. And then,
of course I was offended to by the sexism, by
the misogyny of the Leader of the Opposition cat calling
across this table at me as I sit here as
Prime Minister, if the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking,
(30:47):
make an honest woman of herself, something that would never
have been said to any man sitting in this chair.
I was offended when the leader of the Opposition went
outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to
a sign that said ditch the witch. I was offended
when the leader of the opposition next to a sign
that described me as a man's speech. I was offended
(31:10):
by those things. Misogyny, sex season every day from this
labor of the oppositions, every day in every wife, across
the time the labor. This was twenty twelve, it was
practically yesterday. At her last news conference as Prime Minister,
Gillard says, what I am absolutely confident of is that
(31:31):
it will be easier for the next woman and for
the woman after that and the woman after that. And
I'm proud of that. But forgive me for being a
little less optimistic than she was. The difference between Julia
Gillard and Elizabeth Thompson is that Thompson never had the
chance to give a speech like that on the floor
(31:52):
of Parliament. She went away quietly. Gillard got the chance
to stand up and to be heard. And I suppose
that's progress. But the underlying dynamics these two women faced
are they all that different? A woman gets accepted into
a man's world. She thinks that somehow something has changed,
but nothing has changed. The men pat themselves on the back,
(32:15):
and then they slammed the door shut again. Tony Abbott
the man she eviscerated. He later becomes Prime Minister of Australia.
By the way, here's a partial list of the countries
that have had one and only one female leader. Opened
(32:35):
the door, pat themselves on the back, close it again ready, Brazil, Germany,
Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Latvia, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, France, Canada,
and of course Australia. Makes you wonder about Hillary Clinton,
(32:57):
doesn't it. She's not going to have it easy. You've
been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard,
do us a favor and rate us on iTunes it helps.
You can get more information about this and other episodes
(33:20):
at revisionist history dot com or on your favorite podcast app.
Our show is produced by Mela Bell, Roxanne Scott and
Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is composed
by Luis Guera and Taka Yasuzawa. Flawn Williams is our engineer,
fact checker Michelle Siroca, and the Panoply management team Laura Mayor,
(33:45):
Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Pushkin. Saint James Palace in London, down the street from
Buckingham Palace. It's the official residence of the British Monarchy,
built in the fifteen thirties by Henry the Eighth. It's
not open to the public, but you can apply to
go inside, which I did not long ago. It's not
(00:36):
that hard. As a soldier with a machine gun standing
by a little cottage. He tells me to go inside,
and then a man named Desmond Shaw Taylor comes and
gets me. He's the curator of the Royal Art Collection.
Early Middle Aged distinguished, a kind of high end exuberance.
You look at that building now, it's kind of missing
a fib a nice jumble. I came here to see
(01:00):
a painting butt by Queen Victoria nearly one hundred and
fifty years ago. It's called the Roll Call. Inside the
palace there's red everywhere, Royal red, red carpets, red wallpaper.
All the trim is in gold. The rooms are massive
and almost entirely empty except for the art on the walls.
(01:24):
Enormous canvases spanning many centuries everywhere, and in a kind
of hallway not far from the entrance there it is
roll Call eighteen seventy four. The absolute point of the
Roll Call is that it has a single brilliant image idea.
The painting depicts a group of British soldiers in the
(01:46):
Crimean War, which is a war England and France fought
against Russia in the eighteen fifties. In Roll Call, there's
just been a battle and the soldiers are lining up
in the gray light of morning to be reviewed by
the commanding officer. We start talking about a particularly distinctive
figure in the middle of the painting. Desmond has a
(02:07):
flashlight in his hand because it's quite gloomy in the palace.
Of course, palaces are supposed to be gloomy. He shines
the light directly on the man's face. That's a brave
young man who manages to stand up brighton. And this
sort of encounter is suggestive of comradeship, isn't it. Sin
(02:29):
James Palace has dozens of war paintings, Handsome generals on
white chargers, panoramic battle scenes, faceless soldiers in glistening uniforms.
They're almost cartoons. But in Roll Call the men are exhausted, wounded,
defiant but draggled. It's real and they are standing in
(02:49):
a line, but they're not in a straight line, and
they're not anonymous. Yes, so it's got one fantastic idea. Yeah,
my name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to the first
episode of my podcast, Revisionist History. Every week for the
(03:16):
next ten weeks, I'm going to take you back to
examine something that I think has been overlooked or misunderstood.
One week, I'm going to talk about a car crash
just outside of San Diego. Another week, I'm going to
take you back to a secret Pentagon project in Saigon.
The tagline of this show sometimes the past deserves a
second chance, and that really goes to the heart of it.
(03:40):
I think too often we make up our minds about
something that has happened, and then we move on without
pausing to ask, Wait a minute, is that actually what happened?
Do we really understand it? I'm starting with something very simple,
(04:03):
a painting the roll call all but Forgotten. Now, if
you want to see it before you listen to this,
you can pause and go to revisionist history dot com.
But in eighteen seventy four, when this painting became famous,
something extraordinary happened that I think is worth revisiting because
it's an issue that we deal with all the time today,
(04:23):
which is what it means to be the first, the
first outsider to enter a closed world. The art world
in England at that time is controlled by something called
the Royal Academy. It consists of forty artists and being
elected to the Royal Academy is the highest honor any
(04:44):
artist can get. It's like winning an Oscar. Membership makes
your reputation and makes it possible to become very wealthy
as an artist. And every year the Academy puts on
an art exhibition. Thousands of paintings are submitted, they choose
a select few and display them at Burlington House on Piccadilly.
Remember this is before movies and television and recorded music,
(05:07):
painting is it. Hundreds of thousands of people come to
these shows and roll Call gets chosen for the Royal Academy,
and not just chosen, chosen in a way that makes
it a really big deal. First of all, where the
Academy hangs a painting on the wall matters a lot.
If they hang it way up near the ceiling, if
(05:27):
they sky it, that means you're painting is considered second class.
If they hang it at eye level, what's called on
the line, that's fantastic. Roll Call is on the line.
Then there's where in Burlington House they put it. There's
a gallery in the back called the Lecture Room. The
lecture room is known as the black Hole. Being hung
(05:49):
in the black Hole was almost as bad as not
being hung at all. But if they hang a painting
near the front in gallery two, that's incredibly prestigious. So
where was roll Call hung gallery two? Unbelievable? On the
line in Gallery two I was reading about it creates
an extraordinary sensation. Yes, completely in an unusual way, even
(06:15):
for that time. The day the show opens, the crowds
make a bee line for Roll Call. The crowds were
so great that you had to have basically we employ
a warden, but the police want to say, you know,
date touch or yeah, move on. The only contemporary equivalent
I can think of is people camping out in line
for two days to buy Beyonce tickets, or the kind
(06:36):
of frenzy the Beatles faced when they first came to America.
Roll Call is the hit of the Royal Academy show.
After that, Roll Call goes in a Tour of England.
In Newcastle, men walk up and down the sidewalks with
sandwich boards saying simply, the Roll Call is coming. In Liverpool,
twenty thousand people go to see it. In those days,
(06:59):
prominent paintings were put on little playing cards, and two
hundred and fifty thousand cards are sold with an image
of Roll Call. A bidding war breaks out among potential buyers.
Fly Queen Victoria, one of the greatest art collectors of
her day, decides she absolutely has to have it, which
is how it comes to hang in Saint James's Palace.
(07:20):
Desmond Shaw Taylor must have seen Roll Call a thousand times,
but as he shines his flashlight over the artist brushwork,
it's like he's seeing it for the first time. He's
excited about every little detail, even down to the soldier's shoes.
That's pretty fabulous, isn't that. It's always so difficult to
(07:40):
and to paint nothing in particular happening without over doing it.
And if you just get one gray color and just
a little bit of underpenctuingly and just pick out pulls
the shoes, it's very impressive. M I mean, I'm enjoying
looking at this it's a remarkable story, but I've left
(08:02):
out the most remarkable fact of all the artist, an unknown,
more importantly, a woman. At a time when the art
world was overwhelmingly male, British women in the nineteenth century
weren't even allowed to study fine art. It was a
closed world. And suddenly, in the middle of that closed
world there enters a striking young woman named Elizabeth Thompson,
(08:26):
raised in Switzerland by wealthy Bohemian parents, an outsider, and
she breaks down the door. I've been fascinated by the
story of Elizabeth Thompson for years, by roll Call, and
more particularly by what happened to Elizabeth Thompson after the
stunning success of her painting. What fascinates me is how
(08:48):
her story is repeated over and over again. Once you
know about Elizabeth Thompson, you see Elizabeth Thompson's everywhere. I
don't know if you've ever heard of Julia Gillard. She
was the first woman to become Prime Minister of Australia.
(09:09):
She served from twenty ten to twenty thirteen, and she
had an incredibly tumultuous time in office. Near the end
of her tenure, she gave a famous speech on the
floor of the Australian Parliament. Here's the part everyone noticed.
The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold
sexist views and who are malogynists are not appropriate for
(09:30):
high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition
has got a piece of paper and he is writing
out his resignation, because if he wants to know what
misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn't need a
motion in the House of Representatives. He needs a mirac
That's what he needs. When I heard Julia Gillard give
(09:50):
that speech, I thought about Elizabeth Thompson because Gillard and
Thompson were in the same situation. Women dealing with the
consequences are breaking down the door. I also remember Elizabeth
Thompson when I think of Hillary Clinton. An idea that
I think helps explain the phenomenon of Elizabeth Thompson and
(10:12):
Julia Gillard. It's called moral licensing. It's a fairly new
concept in social psychology. It was developed by a number
of the best young psychologists in the field, chief among
them Daniel Ephron, who teaches at the London Business School.
Here's the official definition of moral licensing. Past good deeds
can liberate individuals to engage in behaviors that are immoral, unethical,
(10:37):
or otherwise problematic, behaviors that they would otherwise avoid for
fear of feeling or appearing immoral. When we do something good,
in other words, sometimes we then, on occasion give ourselves
permission to do something bad. One of Ephron's first experiments
(10:57):
in moral licensing was in two thousand and nine. He
surveys people who publicly self identify as supporters of Barack
Obama for president, and what he finds is that supporting
up black politician doesn't always signal that you're a racially
open person who is inclined to be progressive in other areas.
It can also have the opposite effect. It can free
(11:20):
you up to go back to your old racist ways
because you've proven to the world what a good person
you are. And that's what he discovers. A significant chunk
of the people who supported Barack Obama were then more likely,
at least in the experiment, to express racially questionable opinions.
I was taken by this finding that people appear to
(11:44):
be able to license themselves based on pretty pultry virtues.
I met Effron in his office in London up near
Regent's Park. I asked him why a little egalitarian behavior
doesn't lead to more egalitarian behavior. Why don't good deeds
just lead to more good deeds? So your question is
about when does evidence that I'm virtuous lead to more
(12:08):
virtuous behavior versus when does evidence of virtue lead to
less virtuous behavior? When does doing good lead to doing bad?
And one is doing good lead to doing more good?
This is the million dollar question in this literature, and
it's been a puzzle. All we know is that human
beings go both ways after a good deed, they sometimes
(12:28):
follow a virtuous trajectory and sometimes they don't. There's what
happens after Jackie Robinson broke the color line in nineteen
forty seven becomes the first ever black professional baseball player.
Within five years there are one hundred and fifty black
ball players in the major leagues. I think that's what
we expect. It fits our romantic notions of progress. The
(12:50):
door opens for one person, and soon it opens for everyone.
But what we have to understand is that a lot
of times the opposite happens. The door opens for one
person and they're the only one to slip in. Those
who open the door then feel free to close it
again for everybody else. A couple of years the Israeli
author Almost Elan wrote a history of the Jews in
(13:12):
Germany called The Pity of It All. It's a fascinating
book for precisely this reason, because what Elan is interested
in is the great paradox of Germany's history with the Jews.
Here we have a country that committed the greatest historical
atrocity against the Jewish people. Yet if you take the
long view as Alan does, you see the time and
(13:34):
time again German culture welcome Jews, or at least welcomed
some Jews. From the seventeenth century onwards, Many German states
had a tradition of what we're called court Jews. Most
Jews were banned from living in major German cities. There
were severe restrictions on what they could do, but simultaneously
there was a group of protected Jews who were allowed
(13:56):
to live and work within the city walls. In the
seventeen thirties, the King of Prussia becomes alarmed by the
number of Jews in Prussia, likening them to locusts bringing
ruin to Christians, so he wishes them from Berlin, but
not all of them. He kicks out one hundred and
forty families, and he keeps one hundred and twenty. That
(14:16):
pattern is repeated over and again in the German speaking world.
In the eighteenth century, the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, who is Jewish,
was considered one of the most brilliant men in Europe.
He lives in Berlin, and people come from far and
wide to visit him. How does he stay in Berlin?
The King grants him exceptional status. That is to say,
(14:39):
and these are almos Alan's words here, Mendelssohn is the
Unjewish jew. The same happens a hundred years later with
Bertild Auerbach. He's Jewish and he's the most widely read
German novelist of his day. He's called the German Dickens.
This is now at a time of virulent anti Semitism
throughout Germany, but Bertild Auerbach is somehow immune from that prejudice.
(15:04):
Richard Wagner Wagner, the notorious anti Semite, loves our Bach
and calls him a man rooted in German life. One
of the brothers Grimm, thanks Auerbach for curing him of prejudice.
The Germans hate Jews as a rule, but they love Auerbach.
What's going on here? It sounds like a contradiction, it's not.
(15:25):
It's just textbook moral licensing. The Germans love Berthold Auerbach,
and because they think they have demonstrated their open mindedness
by loving this one Jew, they feel free to act
in the most despicable way to other Jews. You opened
the door to one outsider, and that gives you permission
to close the door to others. After seeing roll Call
(15:54):
at Saint James's Palace, I went to the tape and
sat on a little bench outside the Turner Gallery with
Paul Usherwood. Usherwood is an art historian who was written
extensively on Elizabeth Thompson. In fact, I first learned about
Sabeth Thompson because they stumbled across an absolutely brilliant article
by Usherwood in the Woman's Art Journal. It was called
(16:16):
Elizabeth Thompson Butler, a case of tokenism. Usherwood is whispy
and tweedy in the best possible English way. I imagined
that after our chat he would go straight home, spend
an hour in the garden, then go for a brisk
walk across a few soggy fields with the dogs. Ushwood
argues that in making sense of what happened to Elizabeth Thompson,
(16:38):
it's really important to understand the role of the Royal Academy.
They control the art world at this point forty aloof
dictatorial white men. As an institution was just very, very powerful.
I'm much resented by people who weren't very well by it.
(16:59):
Academy members gave their own pictures the best positions on
the walls of the annual exhibition. Meanwhile, they pretty much
ignored everyone else's art, including in eighteen four the Irwin
roll call went up. Yeah, there were six thousands paintings
which didn't make the expressions. There's only one art show
(17:19):
that matters in England, and it's so small that thousands
of artists are stuck on the outside looking in. It
is a revolution brewing. So long comes Elizabeth Thompson, a woman,
an outsider with an absolutely brilliant painting, and the Academy
(17:40):
hangs it on the line in gallery too, and everyone
thinks this is a sign that the Academy is finally
opening its doors to what to the holy Grail membership
in the Royal Academy itself, it seems destined to happen.
One of the most prominent art critics of the day
writes in The Daily Telegraph that roll Call success proves that,
(18:01):
and I'm quoting here, real genius has no insurmountable obstacles
in the English art world. In short order, Thompson is
nominated for election to the Royal Academy. She's one of
the most famous artists in England. She is a huge
public following. Every artist in the country is riveted by
(18:22):
her candidacy. And what happens. She loses, but by just
two votes. It doesn't feel at the end, everyone says,
this is progress. Here we have a young artist, still
in her twenties, and on her first try she comes
within a harsh breath of acceptance into the old boys club.
Everyone thinks that she's going to be a lock for
(18:43):
election the next time round. They look at her and
they say Elizabeth Thompson, pioneer. But then Thompson submits another
painting to the Academy, another brilliant painting called quatrebra a
depiction of the Battle of Waterloo. Well's She's a celebrity
(19:03):
and has fantastic assistance from the animated I mean three
hundred soldiers points operated so she could paint that picture.
This is in eighteen seventy five, the year after roll
Call's triumph. So what happens to Quatra Brad What they
do is they stuff it away in an obscure corner,
says one heart sees. Thompson's new work is hung in
(19:26):
the lecture room at the back the black hole, and
the black hole is where her election to the Royal
Academy also goes. Remember she was within two votes of
getting in, and everybody said she's a lock for the
next time around, but she isn't. There is no next
time around. Instead, the male Academy members have these absurd
internal conversations about how it would work if a woman
(19:49):
ever got elected. What about the etiquette. That's a banquet,
how would that be arranged? Who would bring in? It
was the thing for the male academician to escort a
woman into the banquet. How would that work with a woman?
They fussed about it. They tied themselves in knots at
the thought of a woman entering their club. So the
Academy members pass new regulations to limit the privileges of
(20:12):
any women who might get elected in the future, because
they've proven their bona fides. They hung roll Call on
the line in gallery too. Who can doubt how open
and progressive they are? Now they can go back to
the way they were. In eighteen eighty one, Elizabeth Thompson
paints what might be her most famous painting, Scotland Forever.
(20:35):
It's a thrilling depiction of a charge at the Scots
Grays at Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. Scotland Forever is never
shown at the Royal Academy, and Thompson doesn't even try
again to get elected. She can read the writing on
the wall. In fact, no woman would be elected to
the Royal Academy until nineteen thirty six, more than half
(20:55):
a century later. As for Thompson, she married an army
officer named William Butler. She changed her name. She raised
six children. Her career took a back seat to her husband's.
When he writes his memoirs, he doesn't say a word
about her. His own wife, one of the most famous
artists in England. His Ortimard Fay Forum PITTI five pages,
(21:20):
She's not mentioned the index. He mentions that he was married,
he mentions that he did have children. That's it. And
when she writes her memoirs, she acts as if the
whole incident with her near election to the Royal Academy
never happened. Today people would write an entire book about it.
But she's been defeated and she knows it. Here's all
(21:43):
she says. As it turned out in eighteen seventy nine,
I lost my election by two votes. Only since then
I think the door has been closed. And wisely that's
the part that always gets me. And wisely she's given up.
(22:08):
Remember how I'm mentioned that when I saw a roll call,
the first thing I thought about was Julia Gillard, the
former Prime Minister of Australia. That's because it's the same story.
Gillard's election was a milestone in Australian history, the same
way it would be for any country. Australia had been
an independent nation for more than a century, one hundred
(22:30):
and ten years of uninterrupted male rule, and that came
to an end in twenty ten with this funny whip,
smart tough woman. In former British colonies like Australia, the
representative of the British Crown is called the Governor General,
and the Governor General is a person who swears in
(22:50):
the new Prime minister. When Gilliard stands up to take
the oath of office, it's a doubly incredible moment. What
made it loom large for me that day is our
governor General at that time was the first woman to
ever serve as Governor general. This is Julia Gillard telling
the story. And I could see in her and in
her eyes, you know, this incredible shock or delight that
(23:16):
she was going to be the person to swear in
the first woman prime minister. I, Julia, eileened your life, Celia,
firm and declare that I will well surely said a
Commonwealth of Australia. And you know she subsequently said to me, look,
I didn't think i'd live to see it. I didn't
think i'd live to see the day our nation had
(23:37):
a female prime minister. It's a big deal. And Gillard,
like many at the time, thinks that Australia has undergone
a permanent transformation. And she also thinks that after the
novelty of her election passes, she'll just be Prime Minister Gillard,
the fact of her gender will become unremarkable, the way
the fact of a baseball player's race is now unremarkable.
(24:00):
If you'd asked me then that all would have played
itself out in the first few months. And then I thought,
sort of the political cycle, I'd go back to normal,
and I made that judgment call spectacularly wrong. When was
the first moment did you realized you were wrong? Oh? Look,
I don't think it was a you know, it wasn't
(24:21):
the thud of a penny dropping in my brain. But
it just became clearer and clearer, particularly by the time
we were in the government second year and we were
putting a price on carbon and the campaigning against that
by the opposition and in the community was getting hotter
(24:45):
and shriller. It was in the course of that the
gendered stuff really started to show. Things got ugly, you're
the people would like them. Her opponents would circulate lude
(25:05):
sexual cartoons of her. She would be referred to in
the newspapers as Julia, as if she was a reality
TV star and not the head of state. The media
would constantly refer to the outfit she wore, or how
much cleavage she showed, or the tone of her voice.
The CEO of a major Australian company publicly called her
an unproductive old cow. One restaurant offered on its menu.
(25:30):
Julia Gillard Kentucky fried quail, small breasts, huge thighs in
a big red box. Was there any particular moment or
thing said that that hurts you the most? I mean,
it's obviously not a good thing to look out on
a scene of protesters and see yourself described as a
bitch and a witch and things like that. But for me, actually,
(25:52):
the worst moment in my prime ministership was not in
and of itself agendered remark, but came from a shock jock.
She's talking about the Russia limbab of Australia, a major
radio personality who hosts a fundraiser the Conservative Party, the
other party nut Julie Gillard's and I had recently outlost
(26:15):
my father. My father died while I was Prime minister.
And he said to this audience that my father had
died of shame because he was ashamed of me as
prime minister. I mean that was the worst. Oh wow, yeah, yeah,
that's appalling. It is appalling, It is appalling, and you
know it's you don't expect to have to do that
(26:36):
in your life, and you don't expect that, you know,
someone like my mother who's just a lovely woman and
a great Australian citizen should have to tolerate that being
said about the husband she's just lost. Why do you
think that intelligent, educated members of a progressive country feel
(26:56):
they can get away with such a vile behavior because
they've just elected a woman, They've proven their progressive bona
fides ending one hundred and ten years at patriarchy. When
the female governor General swear as in the female Prime minister,
Australia has a collective lump in its throat. But then
what happens. Moral licensing happens, and of course Gillow can't
(27:23):
fight back, can't she? Until the very end of your
ten years Prime Minister, you keep a pretty stiff upper
lip about this. Yes, I think I did tell me
about that, about your decision of how to handle it.
I mean, some of it's innate, some of it's just me.
And then I also took a deliberate decision that you know,
(27:45):
if you looked like you couldn't take it, if you
looked upset, then that would be used against me personally,
but more importantly against women generally. That there would have
been people muttering to themselves, you know, new women weren't
(28:05):
up for this. You knew they couldn't take it when
they're going got tough. Then, near the end of Gillard's
time in office, a prominent member of her own party,
the man she's chosen to be speaker, is found to
have sent sexist text messages, and incredibly, her critics come
after her. Gillard. They accuse her of condoning sexism because
(28:30):
she's associated with this man. She sits in her office
in disbelief. You know, I don't want to use any
bad language to you, but I did have just going
through my brain for Heaven's sake, and the word I
was thinking wasn't Heaven's but for Heaven's sake. I cannot
(28:53):
believe that after everything I've had to listen to, now
I'm somehow going to walk into a parliament and people
who have used gendered insults against me and now somehow
going to try and give me a lecture on sexism.
Like the injustice of this was just boiling in me.
(29:16):
So that day in Parliament she stands up and gives
her famous misogyny speech. It's addressed to her harshest critic,
the leader of Australia's opposition, a man named Tony Abbott.
Gillard just starts listing all the things Abbott has said
and done to her and other women over the years.
She lets him have it. I was very offended personally
(29:39):
when the Leader of the Opposition as Minister for Health said,
and I quote, abortion is the easy way out. I
was very personally offended by those comments. You said that
in March two thousand and four. I suggest you check
the records. This is live on the floor of Parliament.
If you watch the video, Abbot's sitting right in front
(29:59):
of her. She's dressing him down to his face, and
the longer she goes on, the more he shrivels and shrinks.
I was also very offended on behalf of the women
of Australia when, in the course of this carbon pricing campaign,
the Leader of the Opposition said, when the housewives of
Australia need to do what the housewives of Australia need
(30:23):
to understand as they do the ironing, thank you for
that painting of women's roles in modern Australia. And then,
of course I was offended to by the sexism, by
the misogyny of the Leader of the Opposition cat calling
across this table at me as I sit here as
Prime Minister, if the Prime Minister wants to, politically speaking,
(30:47):
make an honest woman of herself, something that would never
have been said to any man sitting in this chair.
I was offended when the leader of the Opposition went
outside in the front of Parliament and stood next to
a sign that said ditch the witch. I was offended
when the leader of the opposition next to a sign
that described me as a man's speech. I was offended
(31:10):
by those things. Misogyny, sex season every day from this
labor of the oppositions, every day in every wife, across
the time the labor. This was twenty twelve, it was
practically yesterday. At her last news conference as Prime Minister,
Gillard says, what I am absolutely confident of is that
(31:31):
it will be easier for the next woman and for
the woman after that and the woman after that. And
I'm proud of that. But forgive me for being a
little less optimistic than she was. The difference between Julia
Gillard and Elizabeth Thompson is that Thompson never had the
chance to give a speech like that on the floor
(31:52):
of Parliament. She went away quietly. Gillard got the chance
to stand up and to be heard. And I suppose
that's progress. But the underlying dynamics these two women faced
are they all that different? A woman gets accepted into
a man's world. She thinks that somehow something has changed,
but nothing has changed. The men pat themselves on the back,
(32:15):
and then they slammed the door shut again. Tony Abbott
the man she eviscerated. He later becomes Prime Minister of Australia.
By the way, here's a partial list of the countries
that have had one and only one female leader. Opened
(32:35):
the door, pat themselves on the back, close it again ready, Brazil, Germany,
Costa Rica, Croatia, Nicaragua, Latvia, Panama, Bolivia, Ecuador, Pakistan, Poland, Turkey, France, Canada,
and of course Australia. Makes you wonder about Hillary Clinton,
(32:57):
doesn't it. She's not going to have it easy. You've
been listening to Revisionist History. If you like what you've heard,
do us a favor and rate us on iTunes it helps.
You can get more information about this and other episodes
(33:20):
at revisionist history dot com or on your favorite podcast app.
Our show is produced by Mela Bell, Roxanne Scott and
Jacob Smith. Our editor is Julia Barton. Music is composed
by Luis Guera and Taka Yasuzawa. Flawn Williams is our engineer,
fact checker Michelle Siroca, and the Panoply management team Laura Mayor,
(33:45):
Andy Bowers and Jacob Weisberg. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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