Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Quick note, this is part
Speaker 1: two of a two part series, so if you have
Speaker 1: not listened to part one on the Life and Times
Speaker 1: of Louis Wayne, please pause and come back to see
Speaker 1: us in part two. We'll give you a second. That
Speaker 1: was a second welcome back high. I'm bad. We are
Speaker 1: working in podcast time, which is basically an infinity. We
Speaker 1: were just talking about how we have lost all sense
Speaker 1: of time and space as pertains to how many of
Speaker 1: these episodes we've done, quarantine, how many of these episodes
Speaker 1: we've done in general, and that was all because of
Speaker 1: our amazing special guests today. Uh and on our previous episode,
Speaker 1: Gabe Luizier research associate here not only in spirit but
Speaker 1: in the virtual flesh. That sounds like some David Cronenberg
Speaker 1: stuff right there. I'm no all, by the way, and
Speaker 1: your Gabe, I am Gabe, Yeah, and I'm thrilled to
Speaker 1: be back talking Lewis Wayne. I think we're all in
Speaker 1: the right headspace for the next part of this story
Speaker 1: and where it's going to go, because it does get
Speaker 1: a little strange from here. Yeah. You know, one thing earlier,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about this episode, as we were doing
Speaker 1: some research and we're getting ready to go on air, uh,
Speaker 1: super producer Casey pegrom was, I would say, dare say
Speaker 1: super enthusiastic about the the art the Casey, what's the
Speaker 1: French word the OUVOI? Yes, of the uber Yes, the
Speaker 1: body of work. Uh. And so we all are, I
Speaker 1: would say, in an appropriate headspace. So uh. Previously in
Speaker 1: part one we talked about the origin and and the
Speaker 1: growth of Wayne Lewis Wayne and his career. But you
Speaker 1: may have noticed there were a couple of threads sinking
Speaker 1: in there, a couple of maybe discordant notes to this
Speaker 1: artistic symphony. And when we left, we left Mr Wayne. Uh,
Speaker 1: he was known as this uh the last word in
Speaker 1: drawing fanciful drawings of felines and these cats, these depictions,
Speaker 1: they became more and more action packed, they became more
Speaker 1: and more surreal, absurd isst. And now we're at a
Speaker 1: point Wayne's life where people are making an assumption that
Speaker 1: seems weird but feels very logical for them at the time,
Speaker 1: where they're like, look, he draws so many cats he
Speaker 1: loves them so much. He's not just an artist, right,
Speaker 1: He's got to be like a cat expert, a cat spert. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think people just kind of looked at his body
Speaker 1: of work and we're like, oh, this guy knows cats.
Speaker 1: Yeah he must, he must know everything about him. And
Speaker 1: so he was actually elected president of the National Cat
Speaker 1: Club in eight nine, um, and from there he went
Speaker 1: on to host It's It's annual Cat Show in London. Uh.
Speaker 1: He served as president for five years, but you know,
Speaker 1: he was on the committee for for much longer than that,
Speaker 1: and all of this, you know, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: he really didn't know anything about cats. I mean, he
Speaker 1: had a couple of his own, and he was obviously
Speaker 1: a fan. But even if you look at his artwork,
Speaker 1: he uh, he did not really keep in mind their anatomy.
Speaker 1: He wasn't really hemmed in by, you know, the logistics
Speaker 1: of actual cats. He's sort of had them do whatever
Speaker 1: he wanted, and he had some pretty outlandish ideas about them,
Speaker 1: you know, what they were capable of. He uh, he
Speaker 1: actually had some some strange theories about striped tabby cats.
Speaker 1: In particular, he thought there was something going on with
Speaker 1: their bodies. In terms of magnetism. He once wrote on
Speaker 1: the subject quote, strangely enough, I once had the impression
Speaker 1: that a cat's tendency was to travel north and to
Speaker 1: face north, as a magnet does, and that this tendency
Speaker 1: had some intimate association with the electrical strength of its fur.
Speaker 1: That is a reach right there, my friend. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: little bit right. And yeah, but you know, people kind
Speaker 1: of took it at face value. This guy knows cats,
Speaker 1: let's put him in charge of the cat club. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it just kind of went from there quick aside, Gabe,
Speaker 1: sorry to cut you off. Does that mean in theory,
Speaker 1: based on this theory of Waynes, that you could use
Speaker 1: a cat like as a compass to find true north,
Speaker 1: just like hold it out like a divine rod and
Speaker 1: see where it takes you. I do believe it does. Yes.
Speaker 1: And also, according to uh to Wayne, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to keep a cot away, all you had to do
Speaker 1: was sprinkle some orange peels around. Um. According to him,
Speaker 1: cats detested the smell of oranges and would just steer
Speaker 1: clear if you If you laid a continuous line of
Speaker 1: peel across your garden wall, the cat would not cross it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so he's like, he's like the predecessor of Charlie
Speaker 1: Day and it's always sunny in Philadelphia with his cat theories. Okay,
Speaker 1: there you have it. Uh FX, we've mentioned our our
Speaker 1: requisite quota of one always funny reference per per season.
Speaker 1: Do you think he was just making this stuff up
Speaker 1: because they were casting him as a cat expert that
Speaker 1: he felt like he needed to weigh in on some
Speaker 1: stuff that no one else would be able to know
Speaker 1: or verify. Yeah, I mean, you know, people kept asking,
Speaker 1: so he gave him good answers, I guess, or at
Speaker 1: least entertaining ones. Um, and nobody really questioned it because
Speaker 1: he kind of had become this beloved public figure. His
Speaker 1: work was everywhere. It was on those you know, thousands
Speaker 1: of postcards that I mentioned, but you know they were
Speaker 1: also selling posters of his art. Um. He was appearing
Speaker 1: in and illustrated children's books, um, on billboards advertising te
Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzles. The guy was everywhere, you know, way more
Speaker 1: of fame for you know, a cat artist at the
Speaker 1: time than you know anybody else had. And the other
Speaker 1: thing that really, you know, took off for his career
Speaker 1: was he started publishing these annual magazines, and so this
Speaker 1: would be you know a collection of his illustrations along
Speaker 1: with short stories and essays from him as well as
Speaker 1: other you know, writers of the era, and it kind
Speaker 1: of just became a public fixture. Everybody. Wayne's art was everywhere,
Speaker 1: and and they were also you know, it's strange because
Speaker 1: we have the benefit of retrospect, right, we can we
Speaker 1: can look back at some of his statements and say, hey,
Speaker 1: this might have been uh, you know, not maybe red flag,
Speaker 1: but maybe a yellow card. You know, as far as
Speaker 1: the state of his mind where he would say those things,
Speaker 1: you know, like you pointed out noll And and like
Speaker 1: you contextualized Gabe, he would say stuff on record to
Speaker 1: papers and publications of note that uh sounded extraordinary, and
Speaker 1: it sounded like it sounded like something maybe you would
Speaker 1: say if you had a tim and eric sense of humor.
Speaker 1: But he was, as we found, very serious, like he
Speaker 1: believed this stuff he's and still people ate it up.
Speaker 1: They loved this eccentric cat expert, uh, this you know,
Speaker 1: this master of all things feline. Uh. And they went
Speaker 1: to him for this advice. And people love these annuals
Speaker 1: and they had essays right from people of note Uh,
Speaker 1: he is blowing up. Eventually he leaves and he crosses
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and he comes here to the US. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. He got a job working for the Hearst
Speaker 1: newspapers in uh in New York's any and he stayed
Speaker 1: there doing comic strips for three years actually, and um,
Speaker 1: he actually only came back to London because his mother
Speaker 1: passed away, and uh yeah, he again had to kind
Speaker 1: of fill that role of breadwinner for for his sisters.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, though, man, because the guy was absurdly talented
Speaker 1: in an extreme way. He you know, was a lefty,
Speaker 1: but he could use both hands for for drawing, and
Speaker 1: he could perform tricks like he could like right backwards
Speaker 1: like right mirror images. Um. And he also could pump
Speaker 1: out as many as a hundred and fifty cat drawings
Speaker 1: in a single hour. You know, understandably wouldn't be like
Speaker 1: the super high detail ones that you would see like
Speaker 1: in some of these high profile publications. But he wasn't
Speaker 1: just limited to one particular medium, as you're gonna see
Speaker 1: as his career progresses. He would do crayon or watercolor,
Speaker 1: oil paints, pen and ink. I mean, he was absolutely
Speaker 1: kind of a renaissance man of cat painting. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's like, that's a crazy point. He even his
Speaker 1: his musical uh, creative drive never fully left him either.
Speaker 1: He even wrote an opera. He you know, was the
Speaker 1: king of the Emperor of postcards. Uh for a while.
Speaker 1: Um Wallace Stevens should have written something about that. But
Speaker 1: this is that's besides the point. I just like the
Speaker 1: Emperor of ice creams. But but uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: see that his career is blossoming. But the guy was
Speaker 1: so talented and so driven that he would have probably
Speaker 1: there's an argument we could make that he would have
Speaker 1: probably been this prolific had he not been selling stuff right,
Speaker 1: and and there were so many sets of things out there,
Speaker 1: millions and millions of sets, and later observers or an
Speaker 1: analysts and critics uh say that he invented different iconic postcards.
Speaker 1: I think they specifically point out the striped cat, sp
Speaker 1: the cat, the cats you know, caught in the midst
Speaker 1: of sport. Uh. And let's see, he didn't just crank
Speaker 1: out sketches. He also did like full on paintings, and
Speaker 1: the paintings were copied. It reminds me a little bit
Speaker 1: of a cooler Thomas Kincaid. You guys remember Thomas Kincaid, right,
Speaker 1: the artist, Yeah, definitely the painter of light. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: know with Thomas Kincaid, you know that that guy's paintings
Speaker 1: have been copied more and more often right there everywhere.
Speaker 1: But Kincaid actually doesn't make most of those. Now he's
Speaker 1: sort of a brand name. But from what I understand,
Speaker 1: Wayne was always making the original works, correct, He was
Speaker 1: just making tons and tons of them. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, you know, he was handling the sale of
Speaker 1: those all on his own. He never had an agent
Speaker 1: or anybody to kind of negotiate fees for him with publishers.
Speaker 1: And you know, as a result all to that, you
Speaker 1: know the fact that he was just kind of this shy,
Speaker 1: kind of soft spoken businessman, kind of on his own
Speaker 1: drawing cats, which, like you said, he probably would have
Speaker 1: been doing anyway, even if he hadn't been being paid
Speaker 1: for this when he was selling his work. He really
Speaker 1: kind of um didn't stand up for himself, didn't negotiate fees. Uh.
Speaker 1: He actually never even retained the copyright to the work
Speaker 1: that he was selling, so once it was out there,
Speaker 1: people were free to kind of reuse this as they wished,
Speaker 1: and and they did. He kind of became really overexposed
Speaker 1: because of it. His artwork was just being reproduced for
Speaker 1: magazines that you know, he wasn't being paid for. I
Speaker 1: was going to ask about that, because even in those days,
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea of intellectual property was certainly not
Speaker 1: as iron clad as it is today. And honestly, yes,
Speaker 1: he absolutely had a style. But anyone can draw cats
Speaker 1: doing cute stuff, can't they. Yeah, well, not like Louis
Speaker 1: Wayne could, but fair but what what what I guess
Speaker 1: what I'm getting at is like this could have I
Speaker 1: am agen lead to copycats and uh but you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if he didn't own you know, he
Speaker 1: had no trademark behind his brand, that would make it
Speaker 1: even easier to do this. But again, his thing really
Speaker 1: is just kind of cats, maybe wearing pants, doing kind
Speaker 1: of humany things, and that became maybe eventually more the
Speaker 1: recognizable thing than him as a name or as like,
Speaker 1: you know, the person behind it. I'm just spitballing here,
Speaker 1: I'm asking you game, No, that that sounds right. I
Speaker 1: would imagine there were definitely copycat artists, and people probably
Speaker 1: looked at it and thought, oh, that's a Lewis Wayne,
Speaker 1: you know at it again? Yeah, I mean, how would
Speaker 1: you like, how could you put a patent on a
Speaker 1: concept like that that's so open to interpretation? And this
Speaker 1: the problem is that Wayne's lack of maybe business sense
Speaker 1: or financial acumen didn't stop at copyrights for style, Like
Speaker 1: you could say, maybe he's a little too trusting. I'm
Speaker 1: sure many of us listening today know how awkward, uh
Speaker 1: and and um irritated, sometimes painful negotiating anything can be. Uh.
Speaker 1: So he probably wanted to get back to what he
Speaker 1: actually liked, which was drawing these cats, making these paintings.
Speaker 1: But we see that, like a couple of different times,
Speaker 1: he tried to branch out into investments of sorts. And
Speaker 1: just like Mark Twain, who was also a terrible, terrible investor, Uh,
Speaker 1: he didn't have much luck. I think when his mother
Speaker 1: passed he had put some He put a lot of
Speaker 1: money into an unsuccessful patent for a lamp or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he he patented a
Speaker 1: few inventions, nothing really ever came of them. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like with the opera. The opera has been
Speaker 1: lost to time and uh kind of the patents as well.
Speaker 1: There's uh documentation of him talking about this, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he evidently dumped a lot of money into the development
Speaker 1: of it, but it never really went anywhere. He basically,
Speaker 1: you know, he had fame from his work, but he
Speaker 1: did not have fortune. And uh, yeah, like you said,
Speaker 1: that comes down to his his lack of business sense.
Speaker 1: He would basically give this stuff away. He would even
Speaker 1: take commissions from well to do families, you know, people
Speaker 1: who had the money to pay for this, but he
Speaker 1: just didn't ask for any money and it never came up.
Speaker 1: So he would do a lot of work just for free.
Speaker 1: And then again he is as you guys said, he
Speaker 1: is saturated, oversaturated the whimsical cat drawing market, which he
Speaker 1: created to be fair. Uh and more and more people
Speaker 1: were saying, well, I've got I've got your annuals. You know,
Speaker 1: I've got plenty of postcards. Don't get me wrong, I
Speaker 1: love them, but I can only have so many pictures
Speaker 1: of fanciful cats. And then World War two is on
Speaker 1: the horizon, you know this nineteen oh seven. Uh, his
Speaker 1: he meets this sort of cavalcade of terrible personal events.
Speaker 1: His mother passes way as you mentioned, one of his
Speaker 1: sisters passes away after having spent uh several years institutionalized
Speaker 1: in an asylum, and then his other sister passes away
Speaker 1: like his first sister passes away institutionalized nineteen. Another sister
Speaker 1: passes away in nineteen fifteen during an epidemic of the flu.
Speaker 1: And we want to be sensitive about this, but his
Speaker 1: own mental state appears to to start declining around this time. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, we we know now that things like schizophrenia
Speaker 1: are passed down, you know, through generations. Um, and it
Speaker 1: would appear and and it's interesting too when you look
Speaker 1: at the progression of his work, they get more and
Speaker 1: more kind of I mean psychedelic is the word really,
Speaker 1: but uh, it does paint a picture of a deteriorating
Speaker 1: mental state, let's put it that way. Uh And and
Speaker 1: I don't I don't mean that to say that's you know,
Speaker 1: psychedelic style always points to that, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he started off much more formal, and then as his
Speaker 1: work progressed, it got way more just kind of out there,
Speaker 1: and like you could really see it as kind of
Speaker 1: a visual representation of what was happening to him, Um, psychologically,
Speaker 1: I would That's just my opinion yeah. I mean there's
Speaker 1: you know, it's tough to talk about this stuff and
Speaker 1: say for shirt and you know, with any kind of certainty,
Speaker 1: but it seems to me like, yeah, this condition was
Speaker 1: something that was kind of you know, latent within him
Speaker 1: for his whole life, and probably was masked to a
Speaker 1: fair degree by just kind of his reputation for being
Speaker 1: so eccentric and you know, such a strange guy. People's
Speaker 1: maybe overlooked some of those telltale signs. But uh, I
Speaker 1: ultimately I think yeah, it was it was after he
Speaker 1: had to return home after his mother's death and kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, take on all those domestic responsibilities again, especially
Speaker 1: at a time when his career was kind of in
Speaker 1: a decline. The money wasn't coming in, and meanwhile, you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can hear the sounds of World War
Speaker 1: One like constantly right across the channel. I think he
Speaker 1: was under a lot of pressure and it it finally
Speaker 1: got the better of him. The thing that kind of
Speaker 1: really made his friends and family suspicious was he started
Speaker 1: kind of soliciting their help for this non existent cat
Speaker 1: show that he claimed to be organizing, and talking about this, uh,
Speaker 1: the scheme he had to breed spotted cats. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, the details of it, but it was enough
Speaker 1: to kind of alarm the people close to him, and
Speaker 1: things just kind of gotten more sinister from there. He started, uh,
Speaker 1: believing that his surviving sisters were actually the ones responsible
Speaker 1: for his other sister's death. He thought they were stealing
Speaker 1: money from him, hiding his possessions. Um. And he also
Speaker 1: kind of towards the end of this period started um
Speaker 1: claiming the groups of spirits were projecting electrical currents so
Speaker 1: that he would become full of electricity, and you know,
Speaker 1: to hide from that, he kind of shut himself in
Speaker 1: his room and was writing all of these theories out.
Speaker 1: He began moving furniture around endlessly, just kind of rearranging
Speaker 1: it um And I guess that was in his mind,
Speaker 1: you know, he thought that doing that would keep his
Speaker 1: sisters from taking the furniture and selling it out from
Speaker 1: under him. And unfortunately, these tendencies eventually turned violent. Uh.
Speaker 1: He started to attack his sisters and they just kind
Speaker 1: of had to call the doctor one day, and on
Speaker 1: June six, ninety four, Louis Wayne was certified insane. At
Speaker 1: the time, that was you know, the wording they used
Speaker 1: and Uh, he was admitted to the Pauper's Ward of
Speaker 1: the Springfield uh mental Hospital. Let's just remember too that
Speaker 1: this was not a good time for mental health. There
Speaker 1: was stigma surrounding it, the treatment of folks going through
Speaker 1: these situations where barbaric, to say the least um and
Speaker 1: and you know, as evidenced by the notion of a
Speaker 1: Popper's wing of a quote unquote insane asylum. Right, no, exactly,
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, there were you know, kind of upstanding
Speaker 1: institutions at the time, you know, sanatoriums, but this was
Speaker 1: not one of those. Yeah, at the at this point
Speaker 1: he was broke. So yeah, he went to the Pauper's
Speaker 1: Wing and probably didn't get the best of treatment. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: he was not there long. He was there about a
Speaker 1: year before somebody actually kind of stumbled upon him there,
Speaker 1: you know, the great Lewis Wayne and uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: a pretty great story. Um it's actually this bookseller, a publicist,
Speaker 1: and I had never heard of this, but he was
Speaker 1: a Fabian, which is actually like a kind of a
Speaker 1: socialist reform group. Yeah there's there's still around now, there's
Speaker 1: still around now, the Fabian Society. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they've
Speaker 1: actually been. One of their more recent fights is to
Speaker 1: get the British press to stop using the word chav
Speaker 1: as often because it has seen as stereotyping and derogatory
Speaker 1: towards the working class. I was just reading about the
Speaker 1: Fabian Society. But yeah, they're they're fighting the good fight,
Speaker 1: and they took up this it took up this flag.
Speaker 1: I want to step back just a couple of couple
Speaker 1: of points. Noly, you took the words out of my
Speaker 1: mouth for the asylum, and thank you for doing so.
Speaker 1: There's some fantastic books about the horrors that went on
Speaker 1: there that'd be glad to recommend if anybody wants to
Speaker 1: reach out online. Uh and the uh, the stuff about
Speaker 1: electricity that you mentioned, Gabe, I would say you can
Speaker 1: see some of that reflected in how he's drawing these cats.
Speaker 1: So just want to make sure that we established those
Speaker 1: two points, and don't don't forget those with the Fabian Society.
Speaker 1: I believe you're intured do seeing a a a savior
Speaker 1: of Wayne and that's uh, that's Dan Ryder, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, Dan Ryder. He he was touring the
Speaker 1: hospital where Wayne was committed and he kind of just
Speaker 1: stumbled across him. He says he wrote that he wrote
Speaker 1: this down later in his memoirs. He said, I was
Speaker 1: on a committee that had to visit asylums. During one
Speaker 1: of those visits, I was passing up and down a
Speaker 1: corridor when I noticed a quiet little man drawing cats.
Speaker 1: Can we do? Uh? You you want to do a
Speaker 1: re enactment? Uh? Gave? How about you? How about you
Speaker 1: be the narrator? Noel? Do you want to be Dan
Speaker 1: Ryder or do you want to be Wayne? I could
Speaker 1: be I'll be writer. Okay, okay, yeah, of course, okay,
Speaker 1: take it away, all right? Good lord man, you draw
Speaker 1: like Louis Wayne. Hey, I'm Wayne, replied the patient. You're not,
Speaker 1: you know, I exclaimed, But I am, said the artist,
Speaker 1: and he was. I think that was worth it? Was
Speaker 1: that worth it? And this this blue writer's mind because
Speaker 1: at first he didn't fully believe it, but then he
Speaker 1: kind of became an advocate for getting him the hell
Speaker 1: out of this situation. Yeah, he actually spearheaded this public campaign. Um,
Speaker 1: he got noted writers of the time, He got H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells on board. Um. H. G. Wells actually had a
Speaker 1: great quote that he said on radio. He said, Lewis
Speaker 1: made the cat his own. He invented a cat style,
Speaker 1: a cat's society, a whole cat world. British cats that
Speaker 1: do not look and live like Lewis cats are ashamed
Speaker 1: of themselves. Do you think that this would have predated T. S.
Speaker 1: Eliot's you know, stories about cats and all of those poems,
Speaker 1: and do you think that was influenced by this? Sure
Speaker 1: seems like it to me. I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: that's a great observation. Uh. T. S. Eliott, you know,
Speaker 1: despite what he wanted everyone to believe, was not himself British,
Speaker 1: it was just an anglophile. That guy was born in Missouri.
Speaker 1: Uh he wrote Old Possums Book of Practical Cats in
Speaker 1: ninety nine. So the timeline definitely matches up. I think
Speaker 1: that's a really good catch. Um. I just also want
Speaker 1: to point out that there's pretty solid evidence H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells plagiarized the heck out of stuff, but he did
Speaker 1: not plagiarize that quotation that is verified, that was from
Speaker 1: the heart. That was from the heart. So so this
Speaker 1: this feels like maybe you know, we're we're in a
Speaker 1: better place hopefully right, We've got we've kind of followed
Speaker 1: a Joseph Campbell esque heroes journey. Uh, we've we've gone
Speaker 1: to the dark night of the soul. He's been rescued
Speaker 1: by a fan and everybody else thought he was dead.
Speaker 1: He gets moved to a better psychiatric hospital at first,
Speaker 1: right yeah, And I have to throw in there that
Speaker 1: even the Prime Minister of the time got on board
Speaker 1: this effort to kind of rescue Wayne. He was, you know,
Speaker 1: such a cultural figure at the time. The Prime Minister
Speaker 1: actually went on the air and said, Louis Wayne was
Speaker 1: on all of our walls fifteen to twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Probably no artist has given a greater number of young
Speaker 1: people pleasure than he has, and that really did strike
Speaker 1: a chord with the with the public. The this appeal
Speaker 1: raised twenty three hundred pounds, which of course quite quite
Speaker 1: a bit more today. I think it's somewhere around you know,
Speaker 1: over a hundred thousand dollars for sure, And uh yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's you know, the effort worked. He got transferred
Speaker 1: to a better facility, Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital in London, and
Speaker 1: then five years after that he was transferred again. And
Speaker 1: where did he end up. He ended up at Knapsberry Hospital,
Speaker 1: which apparently had you know, this was a much better
Speaker 1: fit for him. There were a lot of gardens, a
Speaker 1: lot of outdoor space and cats and a lot of cats. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. The garden provided you know access, so he
Speaker 1: had some feline visitors. Uh, you know, he started drawing again,
Speaker 1: and um, I think it's strange to say, but in
Speaker 1: the end, it really was kind of an upgrade for him.
Speaker 1: Like he was free from these you know, the domestic
Speaker 1: responsibilities we talked about, from his creditors and debtors, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and trying to just kind of be the
Speaker 1: breadwinner for his family, and he really just kind of
Speaker 1: got to let go and do what he loved, which,
Speaker 1: as we know, was draw cats. And so there's there's
Speaker 1: this beautiful yet bitter sweet note here because you know,
Speaker 1: a guy who never really cared, uh to a mass
Speaker 1: of fortune, who just loved his own art, is able
Speaker 1: to as you said, as you said, Gabe, he's able
Speaker 1: to reach a kind of peace, and he lives this
Speaker 1: way drawing, drawing art that he loves until he passes.
Speaker 1: He passes from this mortal plane on July four, nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine, and on the way, his art is still evolving.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's becoming increasingly Um, what would you say, abstract?
Speaker 1: Do we want to talk about this? We should definitely
Speaker 1: talk about this. Yeah. Um that he isn't making work anymore,
Speaker 1: you know, for publication, he's not trying to sell anything.
Speaker 1: There's no you know, requests or deadlines or anything like that.
Speaker 1: He's really free to kind of flex his creative muscles
Speaker 1: and go where he wants with this, and and he
Speaker 1: takes it to all kinds of different places. Um. One
Speaker 1: in particular, the more on the more psychedelic end of things,
Speaker 1: he starts doing what's kind of referred to now as
Speaker 1: wallpaper cats. And that's because these are really elaborate patterns,
Speaker 1: a lot of symmetrical, colorful patterns, almost like fractal kind
Speaker 1: of looking in a way. Yeah, Yeah, similar to stuff
Speaker 1: you'd find on wallpapers or Turkish rugs. And you know,
Speaker 1: so it all kind of comes back. A lot of
Speaker 1: of art historians are kind of, you know, suggesting that
Speaker 1: a lot of the influence was, yeah, memories of the
Speaker 1: patterns that his mother worked on in his youth wall papers,
Speaker 1: you know, that that had been in their house, and
Speaker 1: that he was kind of just all channeling that into
Speaker 1: his art and mixing in cats too, and yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a case that's been made over the
Speaker 1: years that you can kind of trace the deterioration of
Speaker 1: his mind. Uh, you know, in the progression of this
Speaker 1: art um the way things do get more abstract and
Speaker 1: the cats kind of you know, become these sort of
Speaker 1: cosmic I mean, it really is trippy stuff if you
Speaker 1: look at it. But it's incredible and it's you know,
Speaker 1: there is sort of a silver lining in this that
Speaker 1: he you know, obviously was was rescued from that Popper's
Speaker 1: ward and was quite beloved at Napsbury, where he spent
Speaker 1: the last years of his life and where his art
Speaker 1: began to progress into those kind of fractal psychedelic tapestries, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just to jump in real quick, Yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: loved him there. He would he would even decorate the
Speaker 1: words um where he where he stayed. Every every Christmas
Speaker 1: he would do a big new design for the walls,
Speaker 1: and of course it was always cats. It's strange because
Speaker 1: when he passes away and I think, maybe not to
Speaker 1: read your minds, guys, but I think maybe that's something
Speaker 1: you might have been going toward as well. No, uh,
Speaker 1: when he passes away, he is so beloved that people
Speaker 1: organize for a posthumous showing of his work, and people
Speaker 1: are celebrating him, their memorializing him. However, his death, everybody
Speaker 1: who heard that, who heard that date knows what's coming up.
Speaker 1: His death on occurred on July four nine. He died
Speaker 1: in the UK. That's that's the same time that Britain
Speaker 1: enters World War two, and so for for a while,
Speaker 1: he you know, understandably is fading out of the headlines
Speaker 1: while monsters like Adolph Hitler are taking up more and
Speaker 1: more space in the broadsheet. So, yeah, after he passed away,
Speaker 1: there was you know, there's been a couple reinventions or
Speaker 1: kind of you know, reinvigorations of interest in Wayne over
Speaker 1: the years, and one of them started when a guy
Speaker 1: named Dr Walter McClay found eight of Wayne's works from
Speaker 1: his kind of asylum years at a junk shop. And
Speaker 1: this is something that would eventually become known as the
Speaker 1: Famous series, and you know, it's it's again it's held
Speaker 1: up as kind of you can see the deterioration of
Speaker 1: his mind through the way that he depicted cats in
Speaker 1: this series of eight different paintings and you know, the
Speaker 1: first two are fairly realistic. They've been described as disney
Speaker 1: Ish affairs, so you know, big round cutesie features a
Speaker 1: lot of fluff. The third cat in the series is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, recognizable as a cat, but we get some
Speaker 1: of that kind of radiating outlines that we that we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, you know, the electricity or the ether
Speaker 1: and the air um. And then the five draw things
Speaker 1: after that are really kind of uh, I don't know
Speaker 1: how you would describe them, but there are more and
Speaker 1: more abstract as you go along. The cat kind of
Speaker 1: blurs out of focus um, and instead you get kind
Speaker 1: of just these colorful shapes and fractals, you know, like
Speaker 1: kind of like you're looking at a cat's face through
Speaker 1: a kaleidoscope. It's interesting too, because McClay was actually a
Speaker 1: psychiatrist um who just happened to be you know, a
Speaker 1: fan of like, you know, digging around junk shops for
Speaker 1: art and you know, collecting art. I just think it's
Speaker 1: really interesting that it happened to be someone who would
Speaker 1: have been familiar with this kind of diagnosis of mental
Speaker 1: illness that ended up kind of you know, finding this
Speaker 1: stuff and being able to kind of you know, apply
Speaker 1: that level of understanding to maybe what he was seeing
Speaker 1: in that progression. You know, yeah, definitely, And and others
Speaker 1: in his field really kind of ran with this and
Speaker 1: took that famous series you know as um kind of
Speaker 1: a case study in you know, the deterioration of the
Speaker 1: mind when faced with something like skitz a frenya, and
Speaker 1: that went on for decades. It was accepted. That's actually
Speaker 1: the first place that I came across Lewis Wayne's work.
Speaker 1: I think it was a Time magazine special or something
Speaker 1: from the seventies or eighties, this series they put out
Speaker 1: on the Mind, and inside that was this famous series
Speaker 1: and it was you know, in the chapter about mental illness.
Speaker 1: But there's more to the story there. And you know,
Speaker 1: whether or not this is actually grounded in any kind
Speaker 1: of legitimate science, yes, yeah, and uh gave you had
Speaker 1: delved into a couple of different books here. This is
Speaker 1: one of the things we set up when we said
Speaker 1: we want to be sensitive about this, because it's it's
Speaker 1: so devilishly easy to hear something or see something and
Speaker 1: you just say, oh, that makes sense, like I see
Speaker 1: a progression. So clearly this is what the experts say.
Speaker 1: It is, But you're right. Upon revisiting some of this work.
Speaker 1: There's one writer we should bring into the reappraisal here.
Speaker 1: His name is Rodney Dale. Uh. He had purchased a
Speaker 1: Wayne illustration from he was living in Cambridge and he
Speaker 1: and he was lucky enough to get an original illustration
Speaker 1: of Wayne's. And he said, you know, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: I want to learn more about this guy. And I've
Speaker 1: got to investigate this, so I want more information about him. Uh,
Speaker 1: and this is sort of the mid late sixties. Uh.
Speaker 1: He eventually learns as much as he can, and he
Speaker 1: finds a cash of artwork that's been stashed somewhere and
Speaker 1: forgotten under a bed, and then he publishes the book
Speaker 1: Lewis Wayne, The Man Who Drew Cats. But it starts
Speaker 1: challenging mcclay's earlier conclusions because you know, the timeline doesn't
Speaker 1: really match up, Like there's there's no chronological there's no
Speaker 1: like chain of command, for lack of a better phrase,
Speaker 1: a out where and how these were made? They we
Speaker 1: just have eight that seemed to illustrate something. But we
Speaker 1: don't know the gap between the paintings, you know, between
Speaker 1: like painting three or painting for etcetera. So it it draw,
Speaker 1: it pokes some holes in that in mcclay's theory. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting because I honestly I feel kind of like
Speaker 1: a heel because I looked at it in the same way,
Speaker 1: just just from you know, an observational Obviously I'm not
Speaker 1: you know, a school in psych psychology or psychiatry, but
Speaker 1: that is how I interpreted as well. So really interesting.
Speaker 1: We know that psychology, uh and psychiatry were evolving fields,
Speaker 1: and especially when we talk about the way um mentally
Speaker 1: ill individuals were treated in those you know, horrific asylum
Speaker 1: conditions in uh in Wayne's early days, um when he
Speaker 1: was committed. Uh, these things evolved and they continue to evolve,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what we're seeing here in this
Speaker 1: reinterpretation of this stuff in the sixties. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, eventually what came to light was that, you know,
Speaker 1: the connections that McClay made between these paintings were really
Speaker 1: just of his own invention. Uh. He just you know,
Speaker 1: he stumbled across these eight images and placed them in
Speaker 1: an order that made sense to him and kind of
Speaker 1: fit the narrative that maybe he already had arrived at
Speaker 1: you know, the conclusion, and yeah, there's just no evidence
Speaker 1: that you know, these eight images follow a timeline, you know,
Speaker 1: that progression of his disease that you know, the one
Speaker 1: that's more realistic was made you know before the last
Speaker 1: one in the series that's really abstract. There's nothing to
Speaker 1: support that. And in fact, if you look at the
Speaker 1: work from those asylum years, yeah, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: those wallpaper cats and you know, fractals and really psychedelic stuff,
Speaker 1: but there's also things that harkened back to his earlier
Speaker 1: work where it's just kind of you know, these tableaus
Speaker 1: of cats playing croquet or shooting pool, tug of war,
Speaker 1: a lot of activities that he would have been taking
Speaker 1: part in himself at that kind of nicer, higher end asylum. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the conclu lucians that McClay we're drawing just
Speaker 1: don't really pass the smell test all too often. The
Speaker 1: truth with UH with surprisingly convenient science. You know, he
Speaker 1: doesn't automatically make it schizophrenia, right, it could have been something,
Speaker 1: but he could have just been continually evolving as an artist.
Speaker 1: There's also this idea that they had to have been
Speaker 1: UH done in progression because they were all the same size,
Speaker 1: But that really was just a product of the fact
Speaker 1: that he was getting his art supplies from the hospital
Speaker 1: and they had standardized you know, paper and art supplies
Speaker 1: and crafting stuff that they would give him. So if
Speaker 1: that's why they were all the same size. And there's
Speaker 1: there's one other interesting thing here. Now, now we're entering
Speaker 1: a bit of the realm of speculation, but we're not
Speaker 1: gonna do your dirty the way that McClay did. And uh,
Speaker 1: and can make a conclusion. You have a little speculation here.
Speaker 1: If there was, if there was a man to issue
Speaker 1: that he was grappling with, it does not necessarily mean
Speaker 1: that mental issue was schizophrenia. One thing that was really
Speaker 1: fascinating to me about this is good this Maybe uh,
Speaker 1: maybe we can file this is under anti cat propaganda,
Speaker 1: but this will be interesting to every cat lover out there. Uh.
Speaker 1: There have been some unsubstantiated guesses that perhaps Wayne was
Speaker 1: affected with something called toxoplasmosis gandhi. Toxoplasmosis gandhi. Uh. If
Speaker 1: if it did, if he did have schizophrenia, if he
Speaker 1: did have a mental issue, it could have been caused
Speaker 1: by his love of cats. It's possible, if not probable,
Speaker 1: it's possible. Uh, this this parasite moves from feline host
Speaker 1: to humans. Most people don't have any symptoms. It usually
Speaker 1: causes like a mild you feel like you kind of
Speaker 1: have the fluid. You get better, but it can cause
Speaker 1: some severe symptoms in a certain part of the pop relation.
Speaker 1: Some people can have their mental functions in pair. A
Speaker 1: fact that made me think of our own La Bush
Speaker 1: Close associated superproducer Casey Pegram is that toxoplasmosis is very
Speaker 1: common in some parts of the world. About fifty of
Speaker 1: the adult population of France is infected as we record today.
Speaker 1: I'm probably oversimplifying this, but isn't that also the thing
Speaker 1: that kind of makes you a little more into cats? Yes,
Speaker 1: I think you're right, those worms in your brain. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting, you know, to kind of theorize about
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, the connection with cats. They definitely
Speaker 1: pop up, you know often through his life. There's there's
Speaker 1: a few good anecdotes I've come across. Uh. One was that,
Speaker 1: you know, despite what happened to him later in life
Speaker 1: health wise, he was actually in pretty good health for
Speaker 1: most of his life and and never really had to
Speaker 1: go to the hospital. Except on one occasion, um in En,
Speaker 1: he actually fell off of a bus on Bond Street
Speaker 1: and spent the next two weeks in the hospital, and
Speaker 1: this was reported on he was still kind of a
Speaker 1: public figure at the time, and the legend was that
Speaker 1: he had fallen off because the bus was swerving to
Speaker 1: avoid a cat. Wait a minute, so just just to clarify,
Speaker 1: when you say falling off of a bus, do you
Speaker 1: mean like out the door or like was he like
Speaker 1: bus surfing or something? How does one fall off of
Speaker 1: a bus? I'm picturing it's a double decker bus because
Speaker 1: he's in he's in London. I don't know the timeline
Speaker 1: of that exactly if those were around, but that makes
Speaker 1: the most sense to me. So I'm gonna go with that.
Speaker 1: Checks out. So he's gonna you know, he's hanging off
Speaker 1: the way that the cool kids ride those double decker busses, right,
Speaker 1: He's hanging off the rail maybe wave into cats. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is fascinating because we've we've done a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff in in this episode. We have we've busted a
Speaker 1: little bit of a myth. And you know, Noel, don't
Speaker 1: feel bad because when I when I saw those things,
Speaker 1: I made the same assumptions. I don't think we're wrong
Speaker 1: to make those assumptions about the progression of quote unquote
Speaker 1: mental illness there because they came from a psychiatrist, right
Speaker 1: from a learned professional who should have done their due
Speaker 1: diligence and established that. So it's not it's not entirely
Speaker 1: on us for falling for it. But we've busted that myth.
Speaker 1: We've learned a lot about this guy's life and and
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I'm grateful to him. I
Speaker 1: am grateful to Lewis Wayne. Absolutely. I think you know
Speaker 1: you're saying that that's that really hits the nail on
Speaker 1: the head in that memorial exhibition that with that posthumus
Speaker 1: won shortly after he died, and and before you know,
Speaker 1: World War two kicked off. In earnest Uh there was
Speaker 1: the art critic at the Times of London. He kind
Speaker 1: of wrote what sort of works as Wayne's epitaph? He said,
Speaker 1: and it's very simple, but quote as a man who
Speaker 1: gave simple pleasure to thousands, Mr Wayne deserves to be remembered,
Speaker 1: and you know, for a long time he wasn't. But
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, one reason I really wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about. You know, this topic was especially now,
Speaker 1: you know, at this time with everybody kind of hunkered
Speaker 1: down and finding you know, little joys throughout the day
Speaker 1: wherever you can um it. Kinda yeah, it makes me
Speaker 1: really kind of re evaluate the importance of of people
Speaker 1: like that who just give you small little pleasures, little
Speaker 1: you know, smiles through you know, a silly cat picture
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh, that really keeps you going. And I
Speaker 1: gotta say, I am a huge fan of people that
Speaker 1: just pick a thing and run with it, and that
Speaker 1: is absolutely what this gentleman did. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous historians, Uh, this is the life and times of
Speaker 1: Lewis Wayne, the man who is uh more or less
Speaker 1: directly responsible for all of those top notch cat memes
Speaker 1: that have brightened your day in the past and will
Speaker 1: continue hopefully to do so in the future. Thanks as
Speaker 1: always too. Gay Gabe, I I feel like you're in
Speaker 1: a we could just be on a first name basis now. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is so weird, Like it's so weird to have this.
Speaker 1: Uh Okay, I'll call I'll say the R word for
Speaker 1: us to have this relationship with you and have this
Speaker 1: first this to be the first time we've talked and
Speaker 1: been able to see each other's faces before, it's only
Speaker 1: been on the phone. How was it for you? Gave?
Speaker 1: Make an assessment? I mean, this was fantastic. You guys
Speaker 1: let me come on and just you know, ramble on
Speaker 1: about one of my favorite artists. Um, yeah, it's been
Speaker 1: oblast I definitely feel like you know, this is a
Speaker 1: milestone in our relationship. And uh, I hope we can
Speaker 1: continue from here. I'd love to come back some time
Speaker 1: and talk about something else weird. Oh, I think we're
Speaker 1: absolutely going to hold you to that offer because I
Speaker 1: think we both had a fantastic time as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh that that depends on our our last and
Speaker 1: deciding vote. Check it in with you, Casey, what what?
Speaker 1: What's what's the verdict? The verdict is, I believe you've
Speaker 1: Gave needs to come back talk to us about more
Speaker 1: cool stuff. I'm in Casey on the case rendering judgment.
Speaker 1: I love it. I really liked that verdict. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the I retract my earlier statements about this being a
Speaker 1: kangaroo court. So, oh, Gave, you're stumbling into some some
Speaker 1: weird long standing I don't know even know if they're
Speaker 1: in jokes now they're they're just how we hang out.
Speaker 1: But yes, thank you so much. Um. Perhaps at some
Speaker 1: time you may even meet Jonathan Strickland, a k a.
Speaker 1: The quizter Reluctant thanks to him, Thanks to Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: who composed this slapping track. You here at the beginning
Speaker 1: of every show always huge, thanks to super producer Casey Pegram,
Speaker 1: Christopher hasiotis here in spirit Eves Jeff Coats check out
Speaker 1: every cool thing that she's doing on the podcast network.
Speaker 1: And thanks to you, Ben, this was a fun This
Speaker 1: was quite a rop. I really enjoyed myself today, a
Speaker 1: rump of whimsy. Indeed, Yes, thanks so much to you
Speaker 1: know and as always, most importantly, thanks to you ridiculous historians.
Speaker 1: Let us know more strange stories of artists you would
Speaker 1: like us to explore in the future. You can find
Speaker 1: us all over the internet, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Still working
Speaker 1: on that Pinterest page, but maybe we'll maybe we'll invest
Speaker 1: in my Space. I don't know. It's a long weekend
Speaker 1: coming up, but we we can't wait to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can also find us as individuals if the spirit
Speaker 1: so moves you. I am at Ben Bowling on Instagram
Speaker 1: and at ben Bowling hs W on Twitter. You can
Speaker 1: find me exclusively on Instagram where I am at how
Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown uh and please please join our Facebook
Speaker 1: group Ridiculous Historians, where you can interact with your fellow
Speaker 1: listeners and and us so because we pop in there
Speaker 1: from time to time as well. You can also send
Speaker 1: us an email at ridiculous at iHeart radio dot com
Speaker 1: and I think that covers it. We'll see you next time, folks.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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