Behind the Scenes Minis: Purple and Cock Robin

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello and Happy Friday. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh. This week we talked about William Perkin and the discovery of Mauve and really all of his other contributions to side. Yeah. I'm so glad you picked this one because I know it's one that people have asked us to talk about before, and also something that has sort of come up in passing on other episodes. But such an interesting story, and I did not realize how young he was when that happened a baby. That was one of the things that I wanted to mention that I said we would talk about at the end of that episode. That's very very interesting to me because I feel like he is kind of an outlier to the trope of the person who becomes wildly successful when they're still very young. Because when you're young and your sensibilities are not fully matured yet, it's very easy for a lot of success to lead to a lot of bad behavior. Um and like self indulgence and just you know, kind of an overinflated sense of self. But Perkin, in all of the writing that people have done about him seems to have stayed surprisingly idealistic throughout all of that, like setting up a business will break a person, and yet he really seemed to still be like, it's still about the science, which is probably afforded him by the fact that his brother was handling like the nuts and bolts of yucky business affairs, while he was like, I'm gonna go to the lab and make a new color goodbye. Um, which is not to make him sound like he was like dippy or flippy, but just like he could focus on the science and not on the less pleasant parts of running a business. Um. And it's interesting that part that we mentioned about them making a magenta and then pulling that color stood out to me in one of the papers that I was reading about them, because they seemed really upset by the fact that their process could potentially have caused people to get sick, and like that doesn't seem necessarily in line with a lot of industrialism of the day. Um. However, the source for that was a write up about it that his brother did, so I don't know as much about his brother, and perhaps his brother just wanted to make them look at or perhaps his brother was legitimately that troubled by it. I mean, they did stop producing it pretty quickly. So it seems to uphold that idea that maybe they were kind of idealists in general as a family, um, which again probably comes from the fact that they had a very privileged upbringing, you know what I mean, Like, there's a way in which you can be very idealists when you have not had to struggle, which they didn't. And thankfully, even though they took that big risk financially with their dad, it all paid off and then some That to me is just very very fascinating. I also think, I mean, he, like I said, he wasn't dealing with the business side of things, and he got out at a young enough age that I think he sits in this lucky space historically, where like we can't ascribe all of the bad things that have come out of manufacturing plants to him because he wasn't in it anymore. And I think probably that would have been very a very happy thing on his part. He seemed like he really did would not have wanted any part of that, um. But it's pretty cool. I think about all of the things I use every single day that are connected or rooted in something that he worked on from like the sweetener I put in my coffee to the color on my head, and I'm like, thank you, William Perkin. I will say this, I really want um us to maybe have T shirts that say Cold Tar Color Jubilee on them, because I just think, what enough phrase is good? What a name it's That's not a thing that I would necessarily think I would have any interest in. But if I knew that it was, you know, all about fascinating colors and dyes being invented, that would be a different thing. Also, would you ever think all of those words would go together. I didn't think they all went together when they were coming out of my mouth on the show the Cold Tar Color Jubilee. Uh yeah that one' We had a request from someone years ago for this specific story and I don't remember who that was, so my apologies on that one. But we have gotten it, I think from a few other people as well, and it's it's been on my list and kind of jockeying around the positions at various times. And I actually was working on another subject for this week and then discovered there was a better source for that than I had already had and I had to like mail away for a book to come to me. So I was like, I'm jumping horses. I'm jumping horses. But I had our aready done enough pre limb on this one and had some papers kind of ready to go to read. So that helps make it make it happen this week instead and made him jump to the top of the list. Yeah. And also, you know who doesn't want to talk about purple all day every day? I do. Yeah. I mean, my entire living room is purple and black, like clearly, it's a color I enjoy. And again, as you just said, you wear it on your head every day, every day of your life, every day I haven't been. I mean, I like to tell people purple is my natural color just because every once in a while, every hundredth person gets really confused like they believe it. But reminds me, I'm not going to say who this was, but it reminds me of the time that we were in a green room and a person far more famous than you, and I asked if she could touch her hair. Yeah, I think after you had said that the purple was your natural color. Well, no, as I recall what had happened was she asked we were dressed in historical clothing for a strange event. She asked if that's how I always dress and I jokingly said like, yeah, this is just Tuesday outfit. And she said do you wear the wig every time? And you said that's her real hair, and then she said can I touch it? He's like, that's fine. I don't generally advocate asking if you can touch people's hair, but in this case was it was charming and funny. Yeah, anybody can touch my my hair if they want. I won't mind. I will also often get into long discussions with people about how I achieved my hair color. I think I have said it on stage at live shows before, when people have as during you and a yeah, happy to do it anytime. Brian often comes around the corner at like the supermarket and finds me talking to like a parent and a teenager because their team agent wants it, but they're scared to ask me, and the parent will just stomp up and go, how do you get your hair so purple? My child wants to know, and I'll be like, here's how I'll write it all down. Purple hairnut for shy people is what I'm saying. No, No, alright, we have wandered far afield at this point. This week on the show, we talked about mother Goose rhymes again, and in particular, we talked about who Killed cock Robin, a poem I have had a morbid fascination with since my very early childhood because I had a story book that, in my memory had two stories in it. But I could that could be totally wrong. I mean, this is a book that my mom read to me when I was very small, and I don't remember what else was in the book, because what I do remember is we would get to the end of the story that my mom read to me all the time, and then the next story in it was who Killed cock Robin? And my mom would be like, no, we're not reading that. Uh. And I'm not sure whether it was because Mom did not want to read the thing about the sparrow getting shot and somebody catching its blood and all of that, or whether she thought that I would have been traumatized by, which I might have been. I was very sensitive about small animals, But either way it became this like huge taboo source of fascination and like my very small maybe three or four year old nine, and I thought about like asking my parents what book was that? And I did not I did not do it, and also did not want anybody to like go rummaging around boxes of old stuff in their house trying to figure out the answer. Uh. But yeah, cock Robin, just let's have a murder poem for very small children. You know you got you gotta learn. Um. I know you do not like the animal heads on the human bodies that are illustrated in that by Henry Lewis Stevens. Yeah. See, that's what I have been fascinated with since I was a kid. So some of them are fine with me, Like owl with his spade and trowel. That's pretty, that's fine. Uh. And some of the like birds with human bodies are okay. But the very first illustration in it is like sparrow with no shirt on and weirdly ripped torso and a tiny bird head. I love, I love I love all this stuff. I love it. I love the bug people. Yeah, the fish with his dish and he has like the a on also bothered me. Caaculate. See here's the thing these I have long looked at this book and been like, which one of these will I eventually get tattooed on my body. Okay, it was very funny when you were like, yeah, I love all the Beatles, yum. Near the end, there's a picture that I actually think is quite beautiful. That's Who's sing Who'll sing a song? And it's the Thrush and the Thrush is singing that I think is really genuinely beautiful and it doesn't freak me out at all. But then right after that is the lark being the clerk, and it's like if somebody put a lark's head John Ebony's or Scrooge body. I love his crooked, little bad posture and his skinny legs. I love the feathers that mimic the shape of his legs. But going in a different direction, I love the background of the ladybird with her children pulling on her dress. I love at illustrations so much. Yeah, the bul just looks kind of like a menatur, Yes, very much. So. This is a ridiculous conversation to be having in our audio medium of a podcast. But this whole book is online at Project Gutenberg, and you can see the whole thing for yourself if you go to Guttenberg dot org and just put the words cock Robin in the search bar, and you can also treat yourself to this either wonderful land of animal whimsy or horror. For my part of it, here's the thing I learned when you sent your outline over and I looked at it because there's a phrase that I use all the time but never knew its origin, and that is namby pamby. Okay, yeah, yeah, I use it all the time. I don't want to hear your namby pamby excuses for blobby bluop, like I always associate it with um unnecessary fluff namby pam Yeah. And I don't know offhand if like that term comes from the name of that satire or if that satire was named for the term, but either way, that term has been around for a while. Yeah, I had no idea. I just thought that was more of a modern sort of silly nonsensical expression used for the needs which I just mentioned. Yeah, it's the whole thing. Yeah. Maybe I'm planning to hopefully go see my parents for Thanksgiving and in everybody vaccinated taking lots of precautions kind of way, and maybe if that happens, as I hope it will which will know by the time this episode comes out, I think, because I think this is coming out after your Thanksgiving, you'll go digging. Maybe I will. I will dig through boxes of old stuff and see if I can find the book and remember what it was that I love to be read by my mom so much that I always was disappointed when we got to the end and she would not continue to have this, you know, heart pierced elected blood murder story. Love it. I still like my theory that it's about animal vamporism. Yeah, that's a whole different thing. Um. Yeah, I love I love those Stephen's illustrations so much. It did not come up, And I don't know if you found it in any of your research. When we're talking about Ladybird, Ladybird, about ladybugs, which is what I grew up calling them being good luck, and if that ties into any of the interpretations they're viewed as being lucky in a lot of Europe and North America. Um. And I did read a thing that suggested that this idea of luck was tied to the association with the Virgin Mary and being sort of blessed. But then I couldn't I couldn't find a connection with that in the poem. I mean not necessarily that the people that came up with interpretations for that poem and found an actual connection either. Uh. That thing from the BBC article, just as it comes across to me is like, well, there's fire and people got burned at the stake, So clearly that's what that's about. Like, that's the most I mean, it's obvious there's a kid. It's the most tenuous of all of them, unless there is some kind of like progression that somebody did figure out that was not documented anywhere that I found. So yeah, I'm sure at some point we will do some more mother Goose rhymes. I don't know if it will be the very next six Impossible episodes, because while we did get a lot of people who were like, these are so fun, please do more, I'm sure there were other people who were like, but what if you didn't though? But what if you did something else? You know, maybe we'll have some other six Impossible episodes next time around. But either way, since it's Friday, everybody, have a great weekend. Whatever is on your plates. If you want to send us an email or history podcast that I hurt right o dot com and if you have not subscribed to the show, it is in the I heart Radio app and really anywhere else that you want to get any podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.