Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And in our
Speaker 1: Lily Langtry episode, we considered following up with a podcast
Speaker 1: on Oscar Wilde, and the response was overwhelmingly in favor
Speaker 1: of this, And it's probably because wild is a really
Speaker 1: inspired dramatist, and he's a talented poet and essayist. He's
Speaker 1: one of the best loved Irish writers, which is pretty
Speaker 1: tough company, i'd say. But he's also a really amazing man,
Speaker 1: and I think that's the main reason people are so
Speaker 1: interested in hearing about him. He's this bizarre dresser, he's
Speaker 1: a public wit. He's a famously brilliant conversationalist, which is
Speaker 1: something that's a little bit harder to talk about, of
Speaker 1: course than his works. But one indicator of that is
Speaker 1: that Churchill chose him as the person he would most
Speaker 1: like to talk with in the afterlife. He's also famous,
Speaker 1: of course for his tragic downfall. A libel suit that
Speaker 1: turned against him cost him two years in prison and
Speaker 1: ruined his name and reputation for decades after his death,
Speaker 1: and Since June is Pride month in the United States,
Speaker 1: it seemed like the perfect time to discuss a man
Speaker 1: who was so famously persecuted because of his sexuality. So
Speaker 1: we will start at the beginning, as we always do.
Speaker 1: Oscar fingal Oh Flaherty Will's Wilde was born in Dublin.
Speaker 1: I don't have overtames, I know clearly neither of us do.
Speaker 1: He was born in eighteen fifty four and his family
Speaker 1: was of Dutch origin, and they were descended from an artist,
Speaker 1: appropriately enough, but the family had been in Ireland since
Speaker 1: the late seventeenth century, and since then they had mostly
Speaker 1: either worked in land management or worked as doctors. His father,
Speaker 1: Sir William Wilde, was a renowned ear and eye doctor
Speaker 1: and even invented a surgery for cataracts. He operated on
Speaker 1: the King of Sweden, and his mother was Lady wild
Speaker 1: Jane Francesca l g who was an Irish nationalist and
Speaker 1: wrote poems and articles under the name Speranza. I think
Speaker 1: I want that to be my nom de plume if
Speaker 1: I ever take one on. Oscar is the second son,
Speaker 1: and his birth is followed by that of a sister
Speaker 1: named Zola, and she dies as a young girl, and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty tragic event in his early years, switching
Speaker 1: to a happier aspect of his childhood. Wild is a
Speaker 1: dedicated scholar from the very start. He may have later
Speaker 1: kept a library that mingled philosophers with the silly books
Speaker 1: and French pornographic writings that we might think of, but
Speaker 1: to forget his classical scholarly training was a mistake. And
Speaker 1: a fact that Sarah and I liked a lot was
Speaker 1: that he would tear off the top corner of pages
Speaker 1: in his books and eat it while he was reading.
Speaker 1: So a different kind of consumer. And how much paper
Speaker 1: did this man eat? I mean, he was a very
Speaker 1: avid reader. One of Sarah's friends lent her an Oscar
Speaker 1: wild book and told her to be very careful with it,
Speaker 1: and she retorted that Oscar Wilde ate his own books,
Speaker 1: so he didn't really know what to say back to them.
Speaker 1: So Wild earns a scholarship to Trinity College, Devlin, which
Speaker 1: we've talked about before because it's where the books kept,
Speaker 1: and from there he goes to Magdalen College, Oxford, and
Speaker 1: he wins prizes in English and classics, and also really
Speaker 1: comes to love the philosophies of John Ruskin and Walter Pater,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, what English class doesn't start with
Speaker 1: some essay on Peter. It seems they all do requisite reading,
Speaker 1: for sure, but he takes Peter's teaching to love art
Speaker 1: for art's sake a step further, and as his son
Speaker 1: Vivian later describes, that, he set out to idealize beauty
Speaker 1: for beauty's sake. So I think that's what we can
Speaker 1: think of as Wild's philosophy in his writing. His dorm
Speaker 1: room was also a little different from mine. He decorated
Speaker 1: it with blue China and Prince by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Speaker 1: and Edward Burne Jones, which again big change from all
Speaker 1: the mc shure I remember seeing in My friends. And
Speaker 1: he was also an estete, believing that beauty is the
Speaker 1: ideal that we should all strive for. Yeah, tying back
Speaker 1: into that motto that we mentioned a second ago, But
Speaker 1: we're going to skip ahead now to London in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine. Wild has just arrived in the city and
Speaker 1: he's going to be a writer and an editor, and
Speaker 1: he's going to do it in style because he dresses
Speaker 1: really flamboyantly, which is something that might be lost on
Speaker 1: modern people. You might just think it's old fashioned, funny clothes,
Speaker 1: but people did not dress in black silk stockings. That
Speaker 1: was not your typical attire in this period. And people
Speaker 1: weren't wearing fur lined coats and knee breeches. That was
Speaker 1: an Oscar Wild exclusive. And this and his work and
Speaker 1: his larger than life personality got him satirized in the
Speaker 1: periodical Punch, and Gilbert and Sullivan added him to the routine,
Speaker 1: basing their character Bunthorne on him. And he didn't mind
Speaker 1: being linked to the ascetic movement. He published poems in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one with his own money to help enhance
Speaker 1: this connection. Yeah, he didn't even mind if it was
Speaker 1: a mocking connection. In some cases. He has a pretty
Speaker 1: good sense of humor himself. He writes a play Vera
Speaker 1: shortly after this, which essentially uh is just putting it
Speaker 1: in a nice way. It's no importance of being earnest
Speaker 1: and it only runs in New York City for one week,
Speaker 1: not at all in London. But by eighteen eighty two
Speaker 1: he's on a lecture tour in the United States and Canada.
Speaker 1: And this is really how he builds up his fame.
Speaker 1: When he arrives in New York, he famously declares that
Speaker 1: he has nothing to declare but his genius, which is
Speaker 1: going to go down in history books for sure. Um
Speaker 1: and then he makes a name for himself touring, giving lectures,
Speaker 1: having conversations with people, and becoming famous from when coming
Speaker 1: back from It a star. He got to work in
Speaker 1: Paris on his next play, The Duchess of Padua, and
Speaker 1: he's writing it. It's a commissioned work for the actress
Speaker 1: Mary Anderson, but she turns it down and doesn't like it,
Speaker 1: which of course isn't good for business. So he picks
Speaker 1: up the lecture tour circuit again, this time in England,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't last long. By eight four, he's settled
Speaker 1: down in London to marry Constance Lloyd, and despite his
Speaker 1: later trial and Constance is distancing of her family from
Speaker 1: her husband, she changes her and her son's last names.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't see their marriage as a sham, Vivian wrote
Speaker 1: about it. Oscar was romantically in love with his beautiful
Speaker 1: young wife, and for some years he was ideally happy,
Speaker 1: and they have two sons together, Vivian, as we mentioned
Speaker 1: in eighty six and a year before that, Cyril and
Speaker 1: Oscar works a day job of sorts and versus, a
Speaker 1: reviewer for the Paul Malgazette and then as an editor
Speaker 1: for Women's World until eighteen eighty nine. But another important
Speaker 1: point to make here is that marriage marks a pretty
Speaker 1: big shift in his working style, and he had mostly
Speaker 1: written poetry before it, and after he turns almost exclusively
Speaker 1: to prose. And we have a quote from biographer Boris
Speaker 1: Brazil noting that he began his literary career as a
Speaker 1: composer of sonorous and pleasing verses, in which, however, as
Speaker 1: he himself admitted, there was more rhyme than reason. Yet
Speaker 1: as he grew older he seemed to have lost all
Speaker 1: taste for poetry. And I also think it's important to
Speaker 1: note that his only major major poem written after his
Speaker 1: marriage is The Ballad of Reading Jail, written after his imprisonment,
Speaker 1: and his major literary years where he's known so much
Speaker 1: for his literary brilliance, is a pretty short span. It's
Speaker 1: from eighteen eighty eight to eighteen ninety four. His first
Speaker 1: major piece is The Happy Prince in eighteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: That's a collection of fairy tales, but very poetical despite
Speaker 1: being prose there for kids and adults, and Sarah and
Speaker 1: I would like a copy. And there are more stories
Speaker 1: in Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and other Stories, and later
Speaker 1: A House of Pomegranates and the Sphinx. But also in
Speaker 1: one he has his first novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray,
Speaker 1: which first appeared in Lippincott's magazine and was condemned by reviewers,
Speaker 1: and the idea for the novel was actually based in fact,
Speaker 1: he had gotten it a few years before when he
Speaker 1: visited the studio of the painter Basil Ward, and Ward
Speaker 1: was painting this really lovely young man, and after the
Speaker 1: sitter left, the two agreed that it was too bad
Speaker 1: that this man's beauty would eventually fade and die, and
Speaker 1: they wish that the painting itself could age and the
Speaker 1: man could remain forever young. And Wild obviously thinks that
Speaker 1: sounds like the makings of a great story. And he
Speaker 1: also collects some of his philosophical essays eventually into Intentions.
Speaker 1: So this is a really really productive span of a
Speaker 1: few years here for Wild. Of course, he's also writing
Speaker 1: drama like Lady Windermere's Fan, which he described as one
Speaker 1: of those modern drawing room plays with pink lampshades. It's
Speaker 1: the epitome of a well built play, although Katie admitted
Speaker 1: she was not as it's not one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: But he was called for after its debut performance and
Speaker 1: gave a bit too smug of a speech. Speaking to
Speaker 1: the actors, he said, I congratulate you on the great
Speaker 1: success of your performance, which persuades me that you think
Speaker 1: almost as highly of the play as I do, so
Speaker 1: not terribly modest there. He then heads off to Paris
Speaker 1: to write Salome in French and Sarah Bernhardt, one of
Speaker 1: the greatest actresses of her day, wants to star in it,
Speaker 1: and she sends it into rehearsals, but the play is
Speaker 1: stopped by the censor because no Biblical characters are allowed
Speaker 1: on the English stage, and Wild is really upset by this,
Speaker 1: really annoyed, and even considers renouncing his citizenship and moving
Speaker 1: to France, which he probably should have. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: unfortunate that he doesn't, but he continues writing these funny
Speaker 1: plays that are great hits in England. In eighteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: he puts out a Woman of No importance, and this
Speaker 1: time when the audience cries for author on the stage,
Speaker 1: he's a little a little cooler with his speech. By
Speaker 1: January eight, he hits the big time when an ideal
Speaker 1: Husband debuts and is attended by the Prince of Wales
Speaker 1: and Royalty does not come to a play on opening night,
Speaker 1: so it's a big deal. I guess they're waiting to
Speaker 1: find out if it's good before they bother. His last
Speaker 1: play was the best of All, The Importance of Being Earnest,
Speaker 1: which debuted February fourteen to eight. But that's also when
Speaker 1: his troubles come to Adad and the root of all
Speaker 1: this trouble dates back to the start of this big
Speaker 1: literary success actually in when he met the twenty two
Speaker 1: year old poet Lord Alfred Douglas, who was known as Bozy,
Speaker 1: which was originally derived from his mother's nickname Boise. And
Speaker 1: they meet at a tea party and they become really
Speaker 1: good friends. They dined together, they stay at each other's houses,
Speaker 1: they traveled together, and the first issue with this relationship
Speaker 1: comes up when Douglas gives one of his friends an
Speaker 1: old suit and the friend discovers letters in the pocket
Speaker 1: and their letters always check your pocket, Yeah, don't leave
Speaker 1: your incriminating letters behind. So Wild is blackmailed because these
Speaker 1: are rather incriminating letters, and this still isn't too big
Speaker 1: of a problem though. The big issue comes later when
Speaker 1: Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensbury, who absolutely hates the
Speaker 1: friendship between these two men and may have been a
Speaker 1: little mentally unhinged himself, goes after Wild, and aside from
Speaker 1: his involvement in this whole affair, he's best known for
Speaker 1: the Queensbury Rules of amateur boxing, so perhaps not a
Speaker 1: great man to get and a tangle with guy to
Speaker 1: have trouble with for sure. So as we mentioned, he
Speaker 1: didn't like this friendship, but he feels a little bit
Speaker 1: better about it after he meets Wild, who managed to
Speaker 1: woo him over a long lunch. But in right, when
Speaker 1: Wild's fame is reaching its heights, he's angry again with
Speaker 1: the whole thing and demands his son stop seeing him.
Speaker 1: He says, your intimacy with this man Wild must either
Speaker 1: cease or I will disown you and stop all money supplies.
Speaker 1: I am not going to try to analyze this intimacy,
Speaker 1: and I make no charge. But to my mind, to
Speaker 1: pose as a thing is as bad as to be it,
Speaker 1: and Douglas replies, rather witheringly, what a funny little man
Speaker 1: you are in a telegram too. You can just imagine
Speaker 1: how is Boluste father must have taken that. So Queensbury
Speaker 1: starts to get pretty menace thing after this, and he
Speaker 1: threatens hotel managers and restaurant managers who may be entertaining
Speaker 1: the man harboring the men. And he shows up at
Speaker 1: the house of Oscar Wilde with a prize fighter, and
Speaker 1: Oscar tells him, I do not know what the Queensbury
Speaker 1: rules are, but the Oscar wild rule is to shoot
Speaker 1: on site, which is a very menacing warning from this
Speaker 1: poet who his motto is beauty for Beauty's sake. And then,
Speaker 1: in at the opening night of the Importance of Being Earnest,
Speaker 1: Queensbury attempts to disrupt the show, so wild orders additional
Speaker 1: protection around the theater and Queensbury's left outside for the
Speaker 1: course of the performance. But the final blow is when
Speaker 1: he leaves a card at the club that wild and
Speaker 1: his wife belonged to that says to Oscar Wilde, posing
Speaker 1: as a psalmbed might and I'm not saying that incorrectly.
Speaker 1: He spelled it incorrectly, and Wild was grossly offended. He wrote,
Speaker 1: I don't see anything now but a criminal prosecution. My
Speaker 1: whole life seems ruined by this man. I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do. Yeah, he's worried that his reputation is
Speaker 1: going to be affected. He's at the pinnacle of his
Speaker 1: fame right now, and Douglas, who really hates his father,
Speaker 1: urges Wild to sue Forliabel, and a lot of his
Speaker 1: friends think this is a terrible idea. They tell him
Speaker 1: that he'll have no hope winning it, and that he
Speaker 1: should just get out of the country, move to France,
Speaker 1: where it's more tolerant, and continue his writing career. But
Speaker 1: he decides to go ahead with the suit and engages
Speaker 1: Edward Clark to prosecute, and swears to him that there's
Speaker 1: no basis to this libel. So that brings us to
Speaker 1: our trial. April third. Wild is incredibly confident with his suit.
Speaker 1: He testifies that I said to him, how dare you
Speaker 1: say such things as you do about your son and me?
Speaker 1: And he also faces off Queensbury's key piece of evidence,
Speaker 1: a letter from Wild to Douglas. Clark urges the people
Speaker 1: to remember that Wild as a poet, and that they
Speaker 1: should take this letter as the expression of true poetic
Speaker 1: feeling and nothing more than that. So while this letter
Speaker 1: may seem really out there to you regular people, this
Speaker 1: is a normal stuff for a poet exactly. And Wild
Speaker 1: is really confident, as he said a second ago, he's
Speaker 1: sure that his fame and his popularity are going to
Speaker 1: carry this. And this even extends to his cross examination
Speaker 1: by Edward Carson, who's representing Queensbury, and Wild's responses make
Speaker 1: for really really good reading. They're witty, they're sharp. Sometimes
Speaker 1: they contradict each other, so maybe it's not the best
Speaker 1: best stuff to be saying on the stand, but it
Speaker 1: does make for an inner tran read. The first part
Speaker 1: of the questioning focused on his literary works, which Wild
Speaker 1: defended against charges of immorality. He said, there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as an immoral word. Books are well written or
Speaker 1: badly written. That his cocky responses started to die down
Speaker 1: when Carson asks about his relationships his presence to young men.
Speaker 1: They're low intellectual capacity and perhaps unsuitability of some of
Speaker 1: his friends. But while tried to play up his love
Speaker 1: of youth, which was something he valued in his friends
Speaker 1: above education or social standing. Yeah, so he tries to
Speaker 1: make like he's an equal opportunity friend here and he
Speaker 1: just loves youth. And things get really serious when Carson
Speaker 1: announces that he'll be introducing a witness who had a
Speaker 1: sexual relationship with Wild, and this is very dangerous territory
Speaker 1: and Clark knows it. And that's because in eighteen nine,
Speaker 1: the Criminal Law Amendment Act had passed which made it
Speaker 1: illegal to commit gross indecency, which was essentially criminalizing homosexuality.
Speaker 1: So it meant that this libel suit could become a
Speaker 1: criminal one with Oscar Wild going to jail. So wild
Speaker 1: counsel advised him to drop the suit and no jury
Speaker 1: will convict Queensbury. It's just time to let all of
Speaker 1: this go. But by the next afternoon, Queensbury's representation has
Speaker 1: pushed the case ahead into criminal territory and the inspector
Speaker 1: delivers the arrest warrant to Magistrate John Bridges, who adjourns
Speaker 1: the court for a short period, which may have been
Speaker 1: his way of trying to let Wild escape, you know,
Speaker 1: heading out on the train to Europe, but he doesn't.
Speaker 1: And his name comes off of the importance of being earnest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: off of the playbills off the marquee, uh, and he
Speaker 1: just feels like his life is absolutely crumbling, that this
Speaker 1: the suit that he felt so confident about, has completely
Speaker 1: backfired on him. And on April, his first criminal trial
Speaker 1: begins and Wild is accused of gross indecencies and conspira
Speaker 1: see to commit gross indecencies. Um, he's not prosecuted for sodomy,
Speaker 1: but mail witnesses come to court and testify against him.
Speaker 1: And when he himself appears, he's very different from how
Speaker 1: he was in the earlier trial. He's quiet and respectful, yeah,
Speaker 1: respectfully denying everything. And in Clark's closing statement, he echoes
Speaker 1: most modern thoughts and says, clear from this fearful imputation
Speaker 1: one of our most renowned and accomplished men of letters
Speaker 1: of today. And in clearing him, clear society from a
Speaker 1: stain which we interpreted as meaning that this shouldn't even
Speaker 1: be a crime. It shouldn't even be in court, and
Speaker 1: they shouldn't even be having to respond to it. Well,
Speaker 1: and how embarrassing to to put one of your biggest,
Speaker 1: most famous citizens on trial for something like this. So
Speaker 1: the jury can't reach a verdict, although they quit him
Speaker 1: on one charge and he's released on bail before the
Speaker 1: second trial begins, and you would think people would let
Speaker 1: it be at this point that that would be the
Speaker 1: end of it, and even Carson is urging people to
Speaker 1: lighten up, but the Liberal government of England wants a conviction.
Speaker 1: One theory is that there were political motives for pursuing
Speaker 1: wild with this great intensity, and it's likely that the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister, Archibald Primrose, who was the Earl of Roseberry,
Speaker 1: had had an affair with the brother of Douglas, a
Speaker 1: man named Francis, and Francis is likely to have killed himself,
Speaker 1: and it's not long after he did so that his father,
Speaker 1: Queensberry started going after Oscar Wilde so intensely starts this
Speaker 1: manic attack on him, hoping to quote save his other son.
Speaker 1: And it's possible that if Rosebery didn't go after wild
Speaker 1: and didn't try to to see his prosecution through to
Speaker 1: a conviction, that his own case, in his own crime,
Speaker 1: may have been at supposed by Queensberry. According to Douglas Linder,
Speaker 1: Roseberry had insomnia and depression during the trial, but it
Speaker 1: disappeared afterward, which perhaps gives a little more credence to
Speaker 1: that theory, but this time the prosecution is led by
Speaker 1: Solicitor General Frank Lockwood, and While describes Lockwood's treatment of
Speaker 1: him as an appalling denunciation of me, like something out
Speaker 1: of Tacitus, like a passage in Dante, like one of
Speaker 1: Savonarola's indictments of the popes of Realm, which we all
Speaker 1: know what that's like. So the jury finds Wild guilty
Speaker 1: on all counts but one, and he sentenced to two
Speaker 1: years of hard labor. Most of this is served at
Speaker 1: reading jail and his sons. This is a really sad
Speaker 1: aspect of the story. His sons are sent to Switzerland
Speaker 1: and they never see their father again. Their last name
Speaker 1: is changed them. The wife of Oscar Wild is really
Speaker 1: doing all she can to help shore up their reputation
Speaker 1: for the future, but they're still actual discriminated against as
Speaker 1: adults because of who their father was. And while he's
Speaker 1: in jail, Wild right stuprofundus a letter to Douglas, and
Speaker 1: when Douglas receives it, he destroys it after the first
Speaker 1: few pages. And Sarah, you read some of that. It's
Speaker 1: pretty brutal, and I think Douglas thought that it was
Speaker 1: the only copy and he could just get this really
Speaker 1: detailed account of their relationship and of all of the
Speaker 1: things that went wrong, just erased from history. And it's
Speaker 1: not just a regretful letter because the friendship resulted in
Speaker 1: while being in jail. After all, he's writing this from prison,
Speaker 1: But it's regretful because he feels like Douglas cost him
Speaker 1: his art, and he's ashamed of how much money they spent,
Speaker 1: and he accuses Douglas of loving his life, loving his uh,
Speaker 1: all the glamorous sides of celebrity writer. Yeah, the play
Speaker 1: premiers and the parties and the fame, but not having
Speaker 1: any respect for the quiet labor that actually went into
Speaker 1: all his writing, the daily drudgery of sitting down and
Speaker 1: actually getting it on paper. Wild had also sent this
Speaker 1: manuscript to his publisher, Robert Ross, intending to revise it later,
Speaker 1: and parts of it were published in nineteen oh five.
Speaker 1: Wild and Douglas reunited for a time after prison, but
Speaker 1: after Wild's death, Douglas tried to get the manuscript from Ross,
Speaker 1: but he instead presented it to the British Museum and
Speaker 1: embargoed its contents for sixty years. So imagine when this
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen sixty it was made quite a
Speaker 1: big deal. Um So wild is bankrupt when he comes
Speaker 1: out of jail and he goes to France to try
Speaker 1: to kick start his writing career again. But the only
Speaker 1: thing he really produces is the ballot of writing jail,
Speaker 1: and he writes letters to editors in concern about prison
Speaker 1: conditions though, so he's he's still out there, he's just
Speaker 1: not producing it anywhere near the same frequency he was
Speaker 1: before his trial. Oscar Wilde died of acute meningitis from
Speaker 1: the ear infection November thirtie in Paris, and on his
Speaker 1: deathbed he was received into the Catholic Church, which he
Speaker 1: had long been interested in along with mysticism, and he's
Speaker 1: buried at Parla Chaise in Paris. And interestingly, on the
Speaker 1: same trip, I saw the memorial to him at Reading
Speaker 1: and his tomb in Paris, and it's a pretty crazy contrast.
Speaker 1: The Paris memorial is this huge winged figure and it
Speaker 1: is covered with lipstick kisses. There's a little sign discouraging
Speaker 1: people to go kiss Oscar Wilde's tomb, but clearly most
Speaker 1: people are not following that. It's surrounded by flowers. He's
Speaker 1: definitely got a lot of very devoted fans still, and
Speaker 1: at least don't wear that indelible lipstick if you feel
Speaker 1: like you have to pick a nice shade too. Eventually
Speaker 1: it turns into a grief something that Wild would like.
Speaker 1: He was very concerned with beauty um And we'd like
Speaker 1: to end on a note that's a little less sad.
Speaker 1: Sarah found a pretty cool article in the New York Times.
Speaker 1: But though about Wild and copyright law. Yeah, weirdly enough,
Speaker 1: you know the famous photo of him where he's wearing
Speaker 1: that fur lined coat in the knee breeches and the
Speaker 1: silk stockings. It was taken by a celebrity photographer named
Speaker 1: Napoleon Seroni, and it did play a very important role
Speaker 1: in copyright law in the United States. And that's because
Speaker 1: the photo had been reproduced as part of this New
Speaker 1: York Department stores advertising campaign after he got so famous
Speaker 1: on his American tour, and Seroni sued and eventually the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruled that his photo should fall under constitutional
Speaker 1: copyright protection, and the ruling is still cited today and
Speaker 1: disputes over copyright laws right the Borough Giles Lithographic Company
Speaker 1: for since Sereni, there's a little known Oscar wild fact
Speaker 1: for you and speaking of things of beauty that brings
Speaker 1: us to listen our mail. Our beautiful objects for today
Speaker 1: are two bookmarks that we received from listener Mary and Austin,
Speaker 1: who is five days shy of turning thirteen, so I
Speaker 1: guess she's thirteen by now. Happy birthday, Mary, and she
Speaker 1: wrote suggesting we do a little bit of history on Texas,
Speaker 1: specifically the Battle of the Alamo and a few other things.
Speaker 1: You've been suggested Texas might be right for a series,
Speaker 1: so let us know what you think. Yeah, I really
Speaker 1: like the part in the back where she wrote Texas
Speaker 1: loves you. So I'm just gonna go around today saying
Speaker 1: that we're big in Texas. If you would like to
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