Behind the Scenes Minis: Much Charles, Many Dogs

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, A production of iHeartRadio, Hello, and Happy Friday.

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Speaker 2: I'm Tracy V.

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Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.

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Speaker 2: This week, we finished off our three part episode on Charles Sumner, the previous two parts happening last week, and we just saved most of our behind the scenes on Charles Sumner for today rather than trying to have two different Charles Sumner behind the scenes is and keeping track of what was said.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we probably would have said a lot of repetitive stuff if we tried to do it across.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it would have been a little weird. So what I will say about Morocco. One of the things that happened, well, I was working on this before we left for Morocco. I when we left for Morocco had a word count in my notes document that was essentially a two part episode already, so I was like, I'm going to have to work on this. And yet on my Kindle I downloaded two different books about Charles Sumner to read on the Morocco trip. One of them I did not read at all. It went back to the library unopened. The other was Zachertimus's book Charles Sumner Conscious of a Nation Again. I already had a two part episodes worth of writing when I read this book, and I did not start reading it until the last day of the Morocco trip, and I was reading it on my phone and just like highlighting sentences that were like little details that I didn't know already to potentially add into the episode.

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Speaker 1: Later.

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Speaker 2: As I was working on the episode, though, there was a moment where I was like, this is going to be four parts, and we've only we've never had like a four part episode on one person, right, we.

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Speaker 1: Had sort of a four partner.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, way, we had a sort of four interconnected episodes that were all about China or under Chairman Mao, Right, And those had been to some extent researched and written in tandem, but to some extent research and written separately. And it was just like I kept working on one thing and being like, Oh, there's this other thing that's related to this that also needs more time. With Charles Sumner, it was just a lot of it was just he did so much, and he was involved in so much, and he wrote so much. And part of the reason it was not it did not turn into a four part episode instead of three. Is that I felt like I did not have the fullest understanding of everything about Grant wanting to annex what is now the Dominican Republic, and that would have been one of the things that could have pushed it into a four part episode, and I was I was out of time. I needed to finish writing the episode and send it to you so that we could record it, so that there will be a podcast coming out on the Monday after we record this. Otherwise we would have just not had one. But that's that's just so much that he was involved with, and so much of it was ahead of his time. So many of the things he was arguing were things that would be re argued again during the civil rights movement. Some of it is stuff that is being re argued again now. And he was definitely not a perfect person. If he, you know, in my ideal world, he would have also spoken out on women's rights and the rights of indigenous people, and the right the rights of other, you know, non white people, in addition to the previously enslaved and other people of African descent. At the same time, though Charles Sumner was right, he was right about so much stuff, and so much of the criticism he got at the time was kind of like, Wow, that guy, he just wants to much when what he wanted was the abolition of slavery and equal rights for black people. Something that was in the outline at one point that I wound up taking out because of the whole I'm trying to keep this to three parts thing was how in the early twentieth century, historians writing about the Civil War and writing about him got really dismissive of him. They this was, you know, a period of history and historiography that was really informed by the whole Lost Cause mythology of the Civil War, which we have covered as a whole episode on the show before. And so people talked about Charles Sumner like, wow, that guy really forced the United States toward a Civil war by being so uncompromising about slavery. If he had just moved to the middle and tried to make nice with the Southern people, maybe things would have gone differently. And I'm like, no, how about we don't do that. How about Charles thunder was correct?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean particularly, here's my thing. I had two things that really jumped out to me in this series. One is very silly but the one that is germane to this. That letter that Brooks wrote is the chilling wording of a psychopath in my book, right, being so proud that he caned this person almost to death. Yeah, and that's the person we're supposed to be like cool with and like yeah, work with them hard pass. I didn't know. I don't know. Yeah, all of that rhetoric around that and the weird news articles praising it are just like they make me physically ill. It goes back to the thing we talked about in the behind the scenes when we were talking about ballooning, and I said humans are always just a breath away from violence, right, and that it's so upsetting to me. Yeah, after the fact, nobody's like, ooh, that kind of went too far. I mean some people were, obviously, but the supporters of Brooks were all like, right on, you really almost killed him. That was great, Like what is wrong with your brain and heart at that point? Like, I don't understand. It's very upsetting to me. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: This is one of the reasons why there have been multiple times over the last several years that I have been like, wow, wish that old episode on the caning of Charles Sumner was more than twelve minutes long, because like it feels really resonant with things that are happening right now, Like when Paul Pelosi got attacked with a hammer and there were people celebrating it and making fun of him, Like that kind of reminds me of how people talked about Charles Sumner having been beaten almost to death on the Senate floor. Various examples of like people just spouting absolutely abhorrent rhetoric, like absolutely abhorrent pro slavery rhetoric, and other people acting like that is normal, right, like just sort of minimizing it and being like, oh, yeah, Like the Southerners, they're really attached to slavery. We've said in episodes before, including in this one, that like the northern economy was deeply interconnected with that. It was not like at this point leading up to the Civil War, the South was where slavery was actively happening, but like the North was complicit in it in a lot of ways, if not actively involved in some ways. But like a lot of the way that people talked about the institution and talked about the people who were enslave was just horrifying. Yeah, then talked about by people who were sort of seen as moderate at the time as like, yeah, but we really have to make sure that those people have equal power to the Free States in Congress, right, we can't not have equal power between them. So that is how we wound up with a three part episode with that, because that's twelve minute one just like could not really be brought out easily as a Saturday classic when I was like, man, this feels like an echo of Charles Sumner being beaten almost to death.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been more writing recently, of course about his relationships with Longfellow and how and one theme that kind of came up that I did not put in the episode because I just don't know if I agree with it. And if I had personally read all of his surviving personal documentation, I might feel differently, But I like, I don't have access to all of that, and it's not reasonable for me to read in a person's entire lifetime of like personal letters and correspondents and stuff to write a history podcast Like That's just not how it works. But there are people who characterized him as confused about his own feelings for other men. It is absolutely true that like the identity of gay or queer as it exists today was not a thing in the mid nineteenth century, right. There were people who were living together as couples. There were people who, like we have talked about many people on the show who were examples. There have always been people who's like the definition that we read who's to sex or gender or sexuality like doesn't coincide with what is expected by society. That has always been the case.

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Speaker 1: But this like.

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Speaker 2: Identity and this sense that a person's sexual orientation expresses something intrinsic about themselves, like that was not really part of the public consciousness when he was living. All that is true, and so there's some interpretation that's like people who sort of conclude, like I think he was a gay man who was confused because he did not have the language to understand his own feelings. And part of me sees that argument, and part of me also is, like, this man was extraordinarily well read. He knew six different languages proficiently to fluently. He read extensively through like Latin and Greek literature and literature and other languages, and so it is hard for me to believe that a person who has that in enormous breadth of historical and literary knowledge to have no way to sort of look at their own feelings and say, I have feelings for this person. Like there's just so much, so much that he could have been exposed to in the worlds of history and literature that could have given him a little bit of language, and so there's just this sort of Oh, I think he was just confused, and I'm like, maybe, but maybe also there have always been people who were living outside of these binaries and structures, right, there were other examples from literature and history who he could have also had He wasn't in a vacuum.

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Speaker 1: Does this make sense? It does well. Moreover to me, it doesn't. Even your case doesn't even need to be made, because even the examples that we shared in the course of this, this is a man who was very in touch with his feelings, you know what I mean. Like, I don't think it was a mystery to him that he loved these men. They may not have had the language to say, oh, I'm gay. He was like distraught that they were going to go into their married like heateronormative life and leave him behind. I don't think he was confused at all, he knew exactly how he felt about other men, Like I compare it, for example, to somebody I always like love to talk about this topic. But would you compare it to like the way Bram Stoker wrote about other men, and like his letters to Walt Whitman that are very romantic and almost strangely raw about like himself and his feelings. But he seemed to not make the connection that, oh, I'm I'm having an attraction to this person. Yeah, And also when you then read his ouvre of work and you're like, wow, women really are scary, Like, I don't think he understand that that was what was going on, Whereas I do feel like Charles Sumner one percent knew he was deeply in love and devoted to these people and he was grieving the loss of that relationship. I don't think it sounded right like he didn't get it at all. Yeah. Yeah, used language that's different than we would today.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, it is absolutely possible, and it happened. It happens for a person not to have a word for something about themselves, and when they encounter that word for the first time to be like, oh, that's me actually, and so I can see how something like that would have applied to Charles Sumner, right, But I just I found descriptions of him that sort of were just like, yeah, I think he was just confused, And I'm like, I'm I don't think confusion doesn't feel like the right word there. I even though, you know, even though he was not a perfect person in any way, I love him. I did not I'd expect to be ride or die for Charles Summer. But that is where I wound up over the course of working on this, And yeah, if I had had more time, we might have wound up with our first four parter on a single subject.

00:14:13
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean he's extremely admirable. As you said, like, he's not a perfect person. Nobody is. Yeah, we know that intrinsically after years of working on this show. Yeah, there are a lot of great people who had problematic views on various things. Yeah, but he sure did put himself on the line for people a lot of the time, like literally physically on the line for them. Yeah. Yeah, in ways that he did not have to and that none of his colleagues were doing. He gets points for that. Yeah. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: His telling voters about the three things to look for we're backbone, backbone and backbone. Yeah, I have some representatives right now that I'm just like, you want backbone. Yeah, you keep putting on blue sky that you're fighting for us with everything you have. What does that mean? What are you doing right? Specifically right?

00:15:08
Speaker 1: Do you want to know the other thing before you get to any sort of summation? Oh? Sure, that made me. This is so rebellious nineteen eighties teenager. Yeah. The whole thing with his parents of like, well, do you have to get a job sooner rather than later because you got to support the family. I know that's historically a norm. It makes me crazy every time I hear it. I'm like the I mean still, the whole idea of people having kids and then burdening them with the responsibility of caring for the family makes me bananas.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so much.

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Speaker 1: Again, I know that's a cultural norm in a lot of places, but my whole thing is like, what is that the only reason you had your kid? Like, I don't Yeah it again, I'm a very rebellion I was always a rebellious kid who was like I very much played the I didn't ask to be born card a lot. Oh sure, but like, I just that attitude always seems so cruel to me. Yeah, because it's like, welcome to the world. Here's the anvil that we put around your neck.

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Speaker 2: Like I don't know, Yeah, yeah, I understand. So I'm under the impression that, like their parents, his parents were like very strict and not particularly demonstrative people. But it was a time when it was the norm to have big families and fewer really effective ways to prevent pregnancy. It's like there's multiple layers of stuff going on there, and the fact that he was the oldest put him in the position of like having that expectation of also caring for younger siblings. And he also made it clear that that he was like, no, I want to I want to go to the fancy school. I want to, Like, this is what I want, and I'm going to study Latin in secret, right to convince you to let me do it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, this is where I'm like, dude, I get you. Get you. Yeah. I was like, dude, I get you.

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Speaker 2: When he was just like I'm gonna I'm gonna make big lists of.

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Speaker 1: Facts, Well, it reminded me. I I know, I've told the story before on the show of How I used to write little pamphlets and leave them around the house in the hopes of educating my family. Yeah, seriously, I was not a not a cool seven year old. I was mean. It was very judgy, but it reminded me of that. I was like, I get you, I get you. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: We also have talked many, many times about not wanting to try to diagnose people with things like it is not possible to diagnose people with things based on their written correspondence and stuff like just he is here to talk at. But I did see some speculation about him possibly being like neurodivergent in some way, which possibly possibly so who knows really, but anyway, I love him. If you live in the Boston area, I learned when I sat into my group chat that this is who I was working on a podcast on. He is not the person the Sumner Tunnel was named for. That was a different Sumner. Just in case you're curious.

00:18:38
Speaker 1: We talked about Cash Coolidge this week. Yeah, this one was a little bit tricky because there is some scholarly work around his UVRA, but not as much as I would like. But then when you start kind of digging into newspapers, he gets mentioned, so much that it's easy to pull stuff. He was a busy bee in New York in the eighteen nineties. Yeah, he was involved in all the things, and people literally seem to love him. So he seems like he must have been a fun guy to hang out with, even before he started painting. Dogs playing poker. Yeah, I love dogs. Playing poker has been referenced so much in pop culture.

00:19:21
Speaker 2: Ah Ton, ah Ton.

00:19:25
Speaker 1: Everything, The Simpsons, Cheese.

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Speaker 2: The Simpsons was the first thing that I thought.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if you watched Cheers when you were growing up, but I think Sam had a collection of yeah cash Coolidge pieces or he was really into it.

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Speaker 2: I've more watched it in syndication, Like I watched it some when I was growing up, but it has uh when it has been either in syndication or on streaming services, I've watched an amount of it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I love those paintings. It's a little bit funny to me. We included talk about it in here because it does come up a lot, so I didn't want to act like that was not part of the zeitgeisty discussion about it the whole. Like, people love his work because it's a man's world and I'm like, that never even occurred to me no growing up or looking at any of these pieces of art. I always just thought they were hilarious and fun and I never was like, right, because they're also very masculine. That never crossed my mind for a second, because puppies. Yeah, I was sort of surprised when I came across and then saw it in multiple examinations of his work. The fact that he modeled some of the dogs. I don't Caravausio figure. That was very funny to me. And then I was never need I need an image of the card sharps immediately and I was like, oh, yeah, he did model some of those dogs. Yeah, I don't know why that's so funny to me. Yeah, I'm obviously familiar with the dog playing poker, and I had just never really seen the appeal of it. They existed, and I was like, Okay, it's dogs and they're playing poker. And I've been candid about the fact that I have always been more of a cat person than a dog person, and I don't know if that's related to the fact that I like, my response to them has always just been kind of like, huh, it's dogs and they're playing poker. Yeah, I love, I love, I love, but I also I love kitch which is like I always crack up when I think about how much I love kitchy things, because do you remember in the unbearable likeness of being, when Sabina says to Thomas, in the kingdom of kitch, you would be a monster. And it's like a compliment to him that he is, you know, intellectual and highbrow and he is not in any way interested in like trashy things. And I'm like, well, I guess in the kingdom of high brow intellectualism, I would be the monster. I'm like, yeah, give me dogs, play poker all day long, give me all the weird kitchy art. I just think it's fun. And I also think it's an interesting I mean one. We've talked so much on the show about my feelings about art and how art should be democratized, and this idea of only fine art should count as art is right messed up. Yes, love all the masters, YoY. You've seen me cry in front of any Dutch Golden Age painting we encounter in our travels. But there is also an interesting place not just to say like this is or is not like high quality in terms of realism or it's you know, proportions or whatever, like actual technique, but it also says something about the world that it was created in. There is something to be gleaned from the fact that in the early nineteen hundreds there was a company that was like, you know, it's gonna sell a kajillion copies calendars with these dogs play in poker. Clearly, the appeal of that in that moment, right speaks to what that moment was like to live in, and that to me is the interesting part. And they did, I mean they were right. Those things sold like crazy. Yeah, that's why they then were like, well, let's put them on plates and on socks and prints and everything else because people love it. Yeah. And the fact that people need to embrace something silly sometimes that is humorous probably reflects like the fact that they maybe didn't always have hilarity and frivolity in their day to day life and they just want one damn picture to hang on their wall that made them smile every day. Yeah, bring on the kitchen baby.

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Speaker 2: If they were Louis Waynecats playing poker, I would have been incredibly into it.

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Speaker 1: Your species is Tracy. I guess so I love a big goofy dog. I do love that he very clearly had breed preferences, right. I do not see a lot of little dogs in these paintings. Once in a while you'll see one pop up in like a background of a big scene, but for the most part, they are all the bigger dog breeds. Yeah, like cobby body dogs. It's kind of funny. I feel like if he were watching the Westminster Dog Show, he would have clearly very big interest in certain groups and not others. Yeah. Yeah, I'd be like, you keep your toy group away from me, is what he would say. I wouldn't say that I want all the groups, but I love it.

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Speaker 2: What I love, speaking of dog shows, is watching the dogs that do so terribly at agility trials. That is my favorite dogs.

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Speaker 1: Like when they're just ill behaved and they won't pay attention to cues.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're just like or I mean, my favorites are the dogs that do seem to be trying but don't quite understand what needs to be happening right now, and they'll get confused and turn around and go backwards, or they will run part way over the little teeter totter.

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Speaker 1: And then go back or uh. I find it all very delightful. I know you want something, I'm going to try a number of things and hope one of them is the right one. Yeah. Yeah, they're very They delight me. I love when they use that opportunity to showcase like shelter dogs that maybe don't have amazing agility training, but they're very seat and sweet. Yeah. Great, anything that gets more animals adopted is a good move in my book, because we have plenty of them. Yeah, if you want a dog out there, I guarantee there's a perfect one at a shelter that is exactly the right fit for you and your family. So please adopt puppies, adopt them. I would love to adopt dogs, but I travel too much and it would make chaos, yeah for them, and they would probably be very stressed.

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Speaker 2: My cats are stressed, and they are you know, a different level of care needed. We have a pet sitter who comes when we travel, and they're spoiled, so the petsitter comes twice a day. But still we get home and they are very needy and it's clear that they are upset that we have been gone. Yeah, I mean We're very lucky because our pet sitter is our close friend that we trade pet sitting with, so like she has been involved in our cat's lives from the gate, like the day they come home, she will come over and meet them and spend time with them, and you know, they all know her very well. And like she was sending.

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Speaker 1: Us pictures of while we were in her roco the cats on her lap every night, some of which do not normally sit on our laps, and there was a little bit of like, what do you mean, Marva said in her lap, a minor jealousy. She also has a very great way with cats. But even so, I don't think there is traumatized, but they do get like one of our cats has been a barnacle on me since we got home, where she's like, do not do that again, please, thank you. Right.

00:27:01
Speaker 2: Our pet sitter, toward the end of the Morocco trip, sent pictures of one of our cats on the dining room table, where she is not supposed to be. She gets up there, she knows she's not allowed up there because if she hears us stand up in the other room, we will hear her jump down off the table. Right, But the you know pet sitter doesn't know necessarily what all the rules are the house of the house are. She took a couple of pictures of Onyx on the table, and after we got back, Onyx was like, I'll show you. I will get on the table while you are looking at me. How's that baby still not allowed of there? Kitty cat babies?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but I do love a pupper. Oh they're fun. Doggies are fun. Maybe one day, when my life calms down and I stop doing things, I can have a pup. But at this point I also don't want to like jack up the cat's life either, so many short So in the meantime, I just donate a lot to shelters because I want those dogs to have toys and beds and yummy food and all the things they need. Yeah, and you know, maybe we should be donating prints of dogs playing poker so that the dogs will think, Hey, I could do other things with my time. I could monetize my adorableness and play poker and win money. I doubt that would really work out, but it's fun to think about. If you are headed into your weekend, I hope that you get to think about doing fun things, whether that is with your pets or without. If you do not have time off, I hope you still get to spend time with pets if you love them, or with other people that make you happy and feel content, or anything that makes you feel joy, whether that is kitchy or high brow. Whatever you love is great. Just engage with it and make your heart happy. We will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode, and then on Monday with something brand new.

00:29:04
Speaker 2: Stuff you missed 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.