Robert-Houdin, The Father of Modern Magic, Part 1

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. So Tracy. The name Robert Rudin came up on the show recently. It was on our classic episode that we ran about Harry Houdini. Yep, because he's sometimes just called Udin. That's wrong, and we'll talk about it in a minute. But because he was the magician that Houdini named himself after and then debunked, that's kind of part of why he showed up in that episode, but also that's part of the lore of kind of magic culture. Um. As a note though here Robert Uda is his last name, both words together. His first name was not Robert. Robert had been his last name at birth, but then he hyphenated when he got married. And we're going to talk about all of that and a lot more so much more that this became a two part uh, and that's even paring down an awful lot of his story, because there's a lot written about him. This is interesting because Robert UDA's story is actually kind of tricky to pin down. He wrote an autobiography his Memoirs, which is probably ghost written confidence dom plaz De digit in the late eighteen sixties after he retired from his stage career. But that was definitely a book that was written to be more of an entertainment than an accurate history, and some parts of it are probably entirely fabricated. We'll talk about some of those. Almost forty years after that, Houdini wrote a book called The Unmasking of Robert U Dam, in which he goes point by points through his Once Heroes book to show what was not factual. He also is basically saying, hey, this guy didn't invent all the stuff he claimed he invented, and we'll talk about some of those in in specifics. However, Houdini's work in The Unmasking doesn't really dissect the early part of Robert U Dan's life. Houdini wrote of it quote because of his supreme egotism, his obvious desire to make his autobiography picturesque and interesting rather than historically correct, and his utter indifference to dates, exact names of places, theaters, books, etcetera, it is extremely hard to present logical and consistent statements regarding his life. Other biographers, though particularly Christian Fashnaire, who amassed the largest private collection of Robert U dance artifacts and research materials during his lifetime. Uh he and others have worked to verify, clarify, and correct the original account, though, and so that is where we're going to begin, at the beginning. He was born Jean Ujeanne Robert in blew Off, France, which is a Loire River valley town about a hundred and eighty kilometers south southwest of Paris, and it was, as Roberto Dan noted in his writing, where King Louis the twelfth was born. Robert Dan's mother was Marie Catherine guille who died when Jean Nujanne was still a small child. His father, rosbero Bert, was watchmaker. Both Roberto Dan and Houdini report the date of his birth as December six, eighteen o five, but that actually seems to be incorrect based on documentation. He was born the day after that, December seven. Fetchner's biography of Robert Udan makes the case in footnotes that he would have known his birthday. It's clearly marked in all the documents, but it seems like the family always celebrated it on December six, due to a quote misinterpretation of the Revolutionary calendar. So for a little bit of clarity there. In seventeen the French Republican calendar had been introduced to replace the Gregorian calendar, and it's stripped out religious days. That seems fine, but then it also completely reorganized the year with different month names. It switched over to a ten day week. There was this whole base ten approach to defining the year. You can see where that would be confusing, and I actually want to do an episode on it because the logic of that decision was pretty entertaining and how it played out was pretty entertaining. Yeah. I knew, I knew there had been a different calendar during that time, but I did not realize how different it was. Right, It wasn't just renaming existing months. Those months didn't exist anymore. So eighteen o five, the year Jean Ugen was born, was the last full year that that had been used. His father's profession was something he was interested in from an early age. He talks about playing with his father's tools from the time he was tiny, because, as he wrote, quote, those implements were my toys and delight I learned how to use them as other children learned to walk and talk. We mentioned that jehan Ugen's mother died when he was still young, but that death was brought about by another family tragedy, which was the death of jeann Eugene's brother, who, like their father, was named Prosper, and that after the death of two year old Prosper, Mary Catherine's health declined sharply. She died in eighteen o nine, when Jean Jujanne was four years old. Initially after Marie Catherine's death, the remaining children, Jean Jujeanne and a sister named Marie Selene, were cared for by a relative so that their father, Prosper, could continue to manage his business. In eighteen ten, Prosper remarried to Marguerite Rosalie Mettive, but just as the Robert home was stabilizing again, Jean Ugeenne became quite ill. We don't know the specific nature of this illness he had when he was a child, but it kept him confined at home for several years, starting when he was just five years old, and it was during this confinement that a neighbor who often visited started teaching him sleight of hand. Prospera envisioned and educated life for his son, and so, according to Roberto Dan's account, sent him away to school in or Lean at the age of eleven. This is another inaccuracy. He was actually thirteen at the time. The time that he spent confined at home didn't seem to have a negative effect on his ability to integrate into a boarding school. He was a good student. He won a number of awards and history Latin and Greek. He also made traps for mice, and once he had caught them, he built little machines that they would run through mouse power, including a small water pump. Although he did well in school, Roberto Dan wrote that the happiest day of his life was the day that he left. Once again, that date's unclear, and we can't really be sure whether he received a diploma or not. Yeah, there's no survive documentation if he did. After his schooling was complete, Jean Jujean returned home to Blois and also spent time at his grandfather's cottage in the countryside nearby. He described this time in which he had no obligations as a quote earthly paradise, and it was while idly walking around town one day in October of eighty three that he happened upon a public performance. This was a cup and ball show done by a traveling performer, and Robert Udan described this performer as quote a tall fellow with a quick eye, a sunburnt face, long and crispy hair, and he stemmed his fist in his side while he held his head impudently high. His costume, though rather loud, was still cleanly and announced a man who probably had some hay in his boots. Jean Jeanne was so enthralled that when it finished and the performer offered to sell him a pamphlet describing his secrets, he gladly bought it. But this really only contained the dialogue that the performer had used in the show and some very purposefully vague notes about the trick that he was doing. There was no real explanation of how the trick was done. So just in case you don't know what the cup and ball trick is, it's an act where performer moves three cups and three balls around the varying stacks, basically making it up here as though the balls are passing through the cups. So not quite if you were thinking of the one where there's one ball and cups and like there's just the one ball and you're trying to keep a it's a little more complex than that. Yeah, it's not the one that's like the precursor to three card Monty, right, Like it's like a thing where matter appears to have been warped away. Yes, so this is a trick that people still do today. You can easily find how to videos nowadays on how to do it online. Yeah, you can learn magic online, which I love. Um. According to Roberto Damn, the ver Jean he saw that day used nutmegs and goblets, and it went like this quote. During a long series of tricks, the nutmegs, at first invisible, appeared at the finger ends of the conjurer. Then they passed through the cups under the table into a spectator's pockets, and finally emerged to the general delight from the nose of a young looker on. But of course Robert did not have the benefit of the Internet to figure this one out, so he was really disappointed at having spent money on this booklet to learn nothing. He tried to hunt down the conjurer, who he calls Dr garlos Bach in his memoir, but though he tracked him to a nearby inn, the innkeeper told him the performer had vanished, incidentally not paying his bill. Clearly, Jean Eugene was fascinated with sleight of hand and other tricks early on, but his career path did not lead him there initially. And we're going to talk about all of that after a sponsor break. From an early age, Jean Jean had wanted to be a watchmaker like his father, and to also make other clockwork mechanisms, but his father, prosper was not actually supportive of this idea. He had envisioned that his children would have greater socio economic status than he did, so he wanted his surviving son to be a lawyer. According to Robert Rod, his father told him, quote, consider it would be unreasonable to bury the ten years schooling for which I made such heavy sacrifices in my shop. Remember too, that after thirty five years hard work, I have been hardly able to save sufficient provision for my old age. Then pray, change your resolution and give up your mania for making a parcel of filings. So for a while, Roberto Don worked in an unpaid apprenticeship as a clerk for an otary, he copied legal papers. There By all accounts, he had just extraordinarily beautiful handwriting. So while this work was shortly tedious, he was very very good at it and also hated it. Yeah, there are examples you can find of some of these documents that he copied in various biographies of him. And he does have handwriting so beautiful. It looks like art like it's legible, but also very caligraphic, and it's very very pretty. But if you don't like it doesn't matter. One day, his father had received a snuff box which had been brought into his shop for repair. This box sounds incredible, according to Roberto, it had a clockwork scene that was embedded in the lid. And this was a hunting scene that featured a rabbit running pursued by a hunter and his dog. And when we say that it's not still, it's literally a clockwork that's moving. The tiny clockwork hunter could show there his rifle and fire it. The object reportedly made a popping sound at this point in the scene, and then the rabbit would run away, followed by the dog. This all sounds really mind blowing and complex, and John jen said that he surreptitiously drew a detailed diagram of all of this snuff box lids workings. He did not dare work on that actual box himself, but he had the idea that he could make a copy of it. So he got up early every morning and worked secretly in his father's shop before he went to work. It took a year, but he completed his replica and when he assembled all the pieces, it worked. And when he showed this to his father, thinking ha ha, I will win him over, he will say, yes, of course you can be a watchmaker. This is your passion, and Prosper was impressed, but then he told him quote, you had better take no pride in your skill, for it may injure your prospects. He moved next to a sal read position in a lawyer's office, basically as an office boy who ran errands and kept the offices tidy. This job was an over a a bit north of blah and for the first time Jean Yugen had money and free time. He also had access to the firm's library. He used that library to expand his knowledge, particularly in the area of the natural sciences. He was trying to reconcile himself to a future as a notary, but he also could not stifle his impulses to work on creating these little machines. Before long, he had redesigned the canary cage that his boss kept in the waiting room to entertain waiting clients, so that the birds activated mechanisms that let them access food and baths and better purchase with treats. Led to a serious discussion with his boss that did not end the way you might expect. The notary offered to speak to Prospero, there on behalf of Gean Eugena, to make the case that really, the younger Robert was not going to be happy and fulfilled in any job unless it took advantage of his inventive love of the mechanical world. This actually worked. Prospery, who had been so opposed, was becoming a watchmaker, Finally acquiesced. At this point, prosper had sold his business to one of Jean Eugene's older cousins, Jean Martin Robert, who became his mentor and watchmaking. The two men would be in business together for the next four and a half decades, although not in watchmaking, no, some of it was in watchmaking, but not all of it. Because cousin Robert encouraged Jean Yugin to study watchmaking seriously. The younger Robert ordered a copy of treat do Laxerie the watch Trade from the local bookseller, and according to Robert D's memoirs, this was a significant development for him in his career. Has When he received that parcel and took it home and opened it up, it was not what he ordered. Instead of the manual of the watchmaker's industry that he was expecting, he got a two volume set of Amusement de sience that's scientific amusements. And when he opened this incorrect book he was completely absorbed and began reading it without even meaning to. He attributed his finding of his life's calling to this accidental switch by the bookseller. A good point to remind listeners that his memoirs were intended to be entertaining above all else. There are a few different points where he says, and that was the most important moment of my life. But this was he basically got a book that was teaching him how to make small mechanical things even more intricate than he had already been working on. But again we can't be entirely sure if any of Roberto Dance stories of this nature are entirely true. Regardless, starting in the late eighteen twenties, he became fascinated with magic. Unlike his encounter with Dr girls Buck, which left him with no information, these books opened up a whole world of information to him, and he just devoured it. But though he had read the whole thing in a matter of days, he was still left without anybody to show him how tricks really needed to work in the real world. To make up for the lack of a mentor, he did things like take juggling lessons. He practiced tricks based on the drawings in the book. Robertodan used the lack of a mentor to just bolster the idea that he came up with much of his stage act on his own out of thin air. But among his effects found after his death were four notebooks written by a man notated only as Monsieur David, who was himself an amateur magician. These notebooks were filled with notes and comments on the acts of many magicians that Msieur David had seen performed. Yes, so while he's like no, I had to like basically try to act it out based on pictures and books, and I taught myself everything. He in fact, had lots of information about how magic was performed. But throughout all of this discovery of magic, for jean Usen, he was still an apprentice to his cousin in the watch shop. He later wrote of learning simple tricks during his early career in watchworks quote, although my time was fully occupied here, I managed to continue my pocket practice, and I daily noticed with joy the progress I was making. Thanks to my constant exercises. I had learned how to make any object I held in my hand disappear with the greatest ease. And as for the principles of card tricks, they were only child's play to me, and I could produce some delightful illusions. I confessed to feeling a degree of pride in my humble power of amusing my friends, and I neglected no occasion of displaying it. In the spring of eight he was declared graduate did from his apprenticeship. At that point he started a tour of France to work in the best watchmakers shops all around the country to further refine his skills. That wasn't an unusual practice at the time, and during his travels, he claimed that he once had food poisoning so bad that it caused him delirium. He said that he ordered a coach to take him back to Blois, but then jumped out in a moment of frenzy from this fever that he had and he fell to the ground unconscious. When he woke up, there was a stranger taking care of him and that was the moment that changed his life. It was another one of those, according to Roberto that was how he met his magic mentor, a man who went by the stage named Turini, who was really Edmund Degreezy, the son of Count Degreezy. Turini or Edmond is a very romantic figure in Roberto Dan's writing, with a dramatic and sad backstory, and this traveling magician nursed Jean Ujan back to health and taught him conjuring tricks, and before the two men parted ways, Jean Jugen even stepped in for Tarini when he was injured in an accident and could not perform, as a way of paying him back for the kindness that he had shown in caring for him. Dramatic, it's all very romantic. Um Incidentally, there isn't really any hard evidence found to indicate the degrees E or his stage persona Turini were real. He very well might have been, But Robert daz writing is also influential enough that Tarini often appears in lists of historical magicians, and much of what we know in air quotes about him comes from these accounts. After his time abroad studying watchmaking and magic, Jean Eugene Robert returned to Blois, where his aging grandfather was near death. When the old man died, he left his grandson a considerable amount of money, enough that he could really kick around doing whatever he wanted for a while. But Roberto Dan's late in life account of this time suggests that he was still getting a lot of pressure from his father to settle down, find a wife, and become a watchmaker. He related that he was often called to defend his bachelorhood, and one evening, when he was doing so at a social event, something surprising happened. It was the moment that changed his life again yet another um he wrote, quote, Now, it happened that among the persons listening to this description of the blessings of celibacy was a young lady of seventeen, who inclined a serious ear to my arguments against marriage. It was the first time I had met her, so I could not describe any other reason for her fixed attention than her desire to detect the word. A man is always delighted to find an attentive listener, more especially when it is a pretty young girl. Ns I thought it my bound and duty to make some polite remarks to her. During the course of the evening, A conversation ensued and became so interesting that we had a great deal still to say to each other when the hour came for separation. And I believe the regret at parting was not felt by myself alone. The simple event was, however, the cause of my marriage with Mademoiselle Uda, and this marriage took me to Paris. That marriage, incidentally, I like how he rushes through the whole thing, and it's just like And then we were married, like it happened at the end of the night. Um. That marriage actually took place in July of eighteen thirty uh, and things were not quite as speedy as that account makes it seem. Robert moved to Paris before they were married, and he negotiated the marriage contract with his bride's father. Cecile actually didn't know the wedding was being arranged until that deal was struck incomplete. This all sounds very magical, uh maybe romantic, definitely accidental, but there are too many ties to Jean Ujanne's life and blah for it to have really been a surprise for one. The young woman who became his wife, Josepha Cecilia Glantina, was also from Blois. She was the cousin of Jean Jeanne's stepmother, Marguerite Rosalie met Vi. Historians think this meeting probably took place in the home of the architect Pino me Devi, who was Marguerite Rosalie's brother. Just so happened that Joseph Cecil's father was a watchmaker. Let's believed this is why Roberto Dan chose to hyphenate his name. He worked in his father in law's shop and joined the family business, so he made their name his name. Yeah, it does seem a little too perfect the way all of this clicks together, that his family wasn't like, Hey, Cecile should be at this party because she might be a really good match for showing you ship it seems pretty obvious that some sort of maneuvering of that nature must have had And we will talk about how roberto dance life changed once he had moved to Paris and settled into married life. But before we do that, we'll have a word from the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class. Going marriage was not the only thing for Jegan in Paris. There were also conjurors performing all the time. He was able to go to a new show every night when he wished. He also made the acquaintance of professional magicians in Paris, and he also had exposure to many clockwork automeda. Have you been listening to the show for a long time, you may remember episode on Historical Robots that featured a lot of automoda. We've also run that as a classic, and that particular entertainment of automoda was very much in vogue in Paris at this time. There are two particular men who Roberto Den came to know while traveling through the side streets of the Paris magic scene. One of those was a man known as Perugal. His full name was Alexandra Francois Rougel, and while he was listed in the city directory as a tin smith, he actually sold magicians props out of his shop at five Richlieu. Roberto Den had found a magic shop, but Rugel's works were not like small entertainments. He did offer some small scale props for sleight of hand tricks, but he also built and sold much larger automata for bigger spectacles. Rujol is said to have had a catalog of a hundred and thirty two different tricks for sale. The shop was also a social nexus for magicians, and it was there that Roberto Dan met a lot of other conjurors. He also wrote a book ROCDI recreation de Physique and mus The Recreations of Physical Amusements that document that how a lot of these large scale automata worked. It's an important work in the history of conjuring, and it gave later practitioners vital information about the mechanical aspects of this art. The other important figure who came into Roberto Dan's life in Paris was Christine Emmanuel Comte, a Swiss born magician who was also the son of a watchmaker. It seems like everybody's dad made watches for a living. Monsieur Compte had performed for Louis the eighteenth and the eighteen teens, and was granted the title of the King's Conjurer for so amusing the monarch. King Louis Philippe granted him the honors Chevalier de Lejon. Done during his reign. Compt is often credited with establishing ventriloquism as part of conjuring acts, although this was more about throwing his voice around a theater than what you might think of e ventriloquis being using puppets or dolls. He also is sometimes credit at it with being the first performer to pull a rabbit out of a hat, though other magicians sometimes get that credit. Comped was someone whose work in creating fantastical stage acts was something that robertod And admired, of course, but he seemed almost more entranced by the Compt as a businessman. He wrote of him quote Compt was also an object of interesting study to me, both as manager and as artist. As manager, Compt could have challenged the most skillful to a comparison, and he was a famous hand at bringing grist to his mill. The little schemes of manager employees to attract the public and increase. His receipts are tolerably well known, but comped for a long time did not require to have recourse to them, as his room was always crowded. He also wrote about the various ways that Comped bolstered income. When theater attendants waned, he offered various kinds of discounted tickets and group rates, and then offered additional things for sale to make up the gap. And he added a small cafe at the side of the theater. Patrons paid for a cup of coffee or a cordial, and then the waiter would admit them to the theater through a door that enabled them to pass by the line, skip to the front, be the first at the box office. It's pretty ingenious. Um, I would do that. Dine in our cafe, get a cocktail, and then you first. That sounds great to me. Um. There were things that Robert Udas saw in Coombs shows that he actually thought could be plussed up, or ways that they might be staged differently for added spectacle. He certainly was not thinking seriously at this point of taking to the stage himself, and with pretty good reason. For one, he just didn't have the experience to try to compete in the Paris Magic scene, and for another no one competed with the King's conjuror not at his own style of act. They were other amusements vying for the money of entertainment seekers, like the Phantasmagoria. But even though there were some other conjurers playing here and there, compt ruled supreme at this point. But the combination of inspiration from watching Compta's act and business, seeing the automatons and other props and rusual shop, and his own ingenuity led Roberto down to start making mechanical show pieces of his own. He still wasn't performing any tricks on stage, though, but he did sell his mechanisms to other performers. He also repaired other people's automata out of the watch shop, and brushed up against one that we talked about in that earlier Five Historical Robots episode. In eighteen forty four, he he repaired von Kinstone's famous pooping robot duck. We can't get away from that duck. Uh. The early eighteen forties were actually pretty rough for Roberto dem In October of eighteen forty three, his wife Cecile died. She had been through a lengthy illness. We don't know specifically what it was. She had given birth to seven children over the course of their thirteen year marriage, but four of those children had died. Their surviving children, Emil, Marie, Rosalie, and Prosperoujean had to be cared for. While Emil, the eldest, stayed with Jean Eugene, the younger two children went to Blois to stay with their grandfather. But then, just five months after Cecile died in February of eighteen forty four, Marie Rosalie and Jean Eugene's father, prosper Robert, both died on the same day. At this point, Robert ro Dan had his two sons to care for, and he didn't really know how, so he remarried. The young woman was Marguerite Francoise or Lamp Braconnier, who went by O Lamp. She was twenty eight, and, according to Roberto Dan's correspondence with a friend, she had not initially wanted to get married. She had resolved that she would say single and live with her mother. She was also reluctant to take on jan Jan's two children, but eventually she acquiesced that two of them got married on August eighteen forty four in Paris. It was not long after his second wedding that Roberto Dem met another figure. It has come up on the show many times, Phineas Taylor Barnum. Barnum was in Paris for the eighteen forty four Exposition, an event at which Roberto Dam was an exhibitor. The watchmaker showed off many of the automata he had made, but one in particular was the Star. This was a piece called the Writing and Drawing Automaton. You'll also see it as the Writing and Drawing Man. Sometimes it's describe. It gets called different things in different historical accounts. And it was, as the name indicates, a human shaped figure that could write and draw when prompted. But more than that, it answered questions posed to it, and it would answer those questions by drawing or writing out the answer. And that automaton really enchanted the most illustrious visitor to the expo, not Barnum, but we'll be coming back to him. The visitor in question here was King Louis Philippe. For the King, the automaton answered the question of how many people lived in Paris? It wrote nine thousand nine hundred sixty four, although the king was hoping it would have predictively known the number that had just been tabulated by a new census that was not published yet. The automaton also finished poems, and it did so for Louis Philippe. It also wrote poetry, and it drew a crown. Robertodan won a silver medal, and the King himself presented it to him with the words you enriched me I honor you etched on there. When the expo finished, Roberto Don sold the Writing and Drawing Man two p. T. Barnum. This actually is a situation that later led Houdini to believe that Roberto Dn was some sort of fraud. Houdini notes in his book The Unmasking of Roberto Dan that Roberto Din only ever showed the writing Automaton at the Expo, and nothing quite like it ever appeared in any of the shows he would later perform. Hudini wrote, quote, this question naturally arises. If Roberto Den built the original Writing and Drawing figure, why could he not make a duplicate and include it in his program. Surely it was one of the most remarkable of the automata, which he claims as the creations of his brain and hands. Biographer Christian Fashnair theorized that Barnum, who purchased the device for use in his shows, most likely called for the inclusion of an exclusivity clause in the purchase agreement, i e. If Roberto Din had made copies of that same figure, Barnum's would not have been as effective as an audience draw. There's also a really interesting account written by Barnum about the expo and Roberto Den's mechanical wonder. He wrote, quote, I paid a round price for this most ingenious little figure, which was an automaton writer and artist. It sat on a small table, pencil in hand, and if asked, for instance, for an emblem of fidelity, it would instantly draw the picture of a handsome dog. If love was wanted, a cupid was exquisitely penciled. The automaton would also answer many questions in writing. During my visit, Huda was giving evening legend of main performances, and by his pressing invitation I frequently was present. He took great pains to to introduce me to other inventors and exhibitors of moving figures, which I liberally purchased, making them prominent features in the attractions of the American Museum. This account is really really interesting, specifically because it offers a glimpse at Robertud's personality that is rather counter to the way he was portrayed by Houdini later on. Houdini's books that we've mentioned, The Unmasking of Roberto Da includes this description of his one time hero quote stripped of his self woven veil of romance, Roberto Dan stood forth in the uncompromising light of cold historical facts, a mere pretender, a man who waxed great on the brainwork of others, a mechanician who had boldly filtered the inventions of the master craftsman among his predecessors. Hudini really makes the case that Roberto Dan took credit for the works of others and was really entirely self serving. But then when you look at Barnum's account, it sounds like he had certainly enough generosity of spirit to make sure other people who worked in his field, so people that were theoretically his competitors at market also had the chance to be seen by Barnum and to sell their inventions to him. This really jumped out of me, because it just illustrates how differently two people can perceive the same person, and how their own biases may color that perception, and then how that gets relaid through the ages to us who are trying to learn about these people. And that's where we will leave this one, because after that eighty four exposition, a lot changed for Robert Dan and just a very short period of time. Dun dun da. And since we're talking about art and fun things, I'm going to read an art themed listener mail that sounds great. This is from our listener Tara, who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy, I love your podcast and I listen all the time. My name is Tara bar and I'm an artist based in the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria, Virginia. The Torpedo Factory was built in nineteen nineteen and served as a munitions plant through the end of World War Two. After it was decommissioned, it sat vacant as an issore until the mid seventies, when a group of artists petitioned the city to convert it into art studios. Today, it is a three story building taking up half a city block on the Potomac River Waterfront in Old Town, Alexandria. Over two hundred artists work and exhibit here. In addition to art studios, there are also art classrooms, printmaking workshops, galleries and archaeology museum, and an art supply store. The Torpedo Factory is open to the public seven days a week, and all our studios are open to the public, so visitors can come see us making our art any time. I'm including some pictures to entice you to visit the next time you're in the Washington, d C. Area. Your podcast keeps me company during many long hours of painting. Many of my pieces relate to or are directly inspired by your episodes. I wanted to send you some art gifts, but I know you don't have a physical mailing address right now, so I'm linking to some images below so you can at least look at some art. Expect some art goodies in the mail if you ever share your new mailing address in the future. Unfortunately, I don't have any cute Kinty pictures to share because my husband is allergic to cats and we cannot have one attaching a painting of a cat instead. Thank you for all you do and keep up the good work. Uh. Tara. Here's the thing, Terra is amazing uh and I normally wouldn't. We don't usually give people's first and last names out of respect for their privacy, but since she uses her name public facing as an artist, I did. I will also tell you that in looking at her art, I bought a painting this morning. So Tara, thank you for alerting me to your work, because I think that's gonna be a Christmas present for my husband. UM. Also, go check this out. I just did a quick Google search for Torpedo Factory Art Center and there are a lot of amazing artists. They are doing really amazing work. I did not know this place existed, and now it's top of my list should I be in d C in the future because it looks really cool and it's it's like a magical wonderland if you're into art. It's like a lot of great artists doing really cool art and you could learn there if you wanted, and you can watch them make our and you can buy art supplies. This is a theme park of art basic why so, UM, definitely go check that out if you're interested. It's very very cool. Um. Tara, thank you so much for sending me this and I love your work and I really like that kittie painting. That might have been what I was looking for when I went today and ended up buying something completely different. Um. If you would like to write to us and share the art you're making or whatever it is that's on your mind, you can do so at History Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. 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