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