Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio, Happy Friday, Everybody. I'm Holly Fry
Speaker 1: and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And this week we talked
Speaker 1: about Amy Levy, who somehow escaped both of our knowledge
Speaker 1: until this. Yeah, so you the first version of the
Speaker 1: episode outline that you sent to me was one that
Speaker 1: wasn't finished yet, so it didn't have the introductory uh
Speaker 1: text in it. Um so unlike normal, where if I
Speaker 1: don't if I'm not already familiar with a person, that
Speaker 1: little introduction clues me in, I had no clue in
Speaker 1: And so I started reading it, like, who is this person?
Speaker 1: Their name does not ring a bell at all? I
Speaker 1: had don't think I have ever heard of them? Reading
Speaker 1: reading reading Vernon Lee. I researched and wrote the podcast
Speaker 1: episode on Violet Haagett, also known as Vernon Lee, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, even having done that, I don't
Speaker 1: think this name rings a bell. So I stopped what
Speaker 1: I was doing and I went back through my Vernon
Speaker 1: Lee stuff and the only mention of her in the
Speaker 1: entirety of that research is in the footnotes of one biography,
Speaker 1: and only one of those footnotes has any substance to it,
Speaker 1: like the other ones are most like this letter was
Speaker 1: from Amy Levy and that's all that. It's like, it's
Speaker 1: just clarifying who wrote a letter and the like the
Speaker 1: one substantive note just kind of sums up that my
Speaker 1: read on on her relationship. How however, there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of relationships, but like it really read to me from
Speaker 1: having researched Vernon Lee and then having read what you
Speaker 1: prepared on Amy Levy, that it seems like Amy was
Speaker 1: in love with her and that probably wasn't reciprocated, and
Speaker 1: that just seems like what shines through. Um how each
Speaker 1: of them is discussed in work about the other one,
Speaker 1: yes for sure, and in that um uh, the main
Speaker 1: biography that I referenced in that episode, there is also
Speaker 1: mention of at least one other person kind of in
Speaker 1: that social circle who similarly had some sort of crush
Speaker 1: on Vernon Lee, and Vernon Lee was in at that
Speaker 1: point of fairly long term relationship, although not everyone knew
Speaker 1: about it, Like it seems like Amy Levy didn't clue
Speaker 1: in that that was the case. Um. But it's it's again,
Speaker 1: these are guesses based on what we know about her
Speaker 1: and them, and at a time when people probably weren't
Speaker 1: being entirely like Cavalier and open about discussing such things.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of guesswork. But it seems like
Speaker 1: this would come up periodically for Vernon Lee, where somebody
Speaker 1: would be like, but I've in love with you, and
Speaker 1: she'd be like, nope, but without saying because I'm already
Speaker 1: in love with this person. So it's all very fascinating. Um,
Speaker 1: I really really do quite. I mean, I feel so
Speaker 1: fortunate that again my friend Bernadette introduced me to this
Speaker 1: subject because, um, I really have enjoyed reading Amy Levi's work.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's extraordinarily good. Um. You can also find
Speaker 1: online there are um basically free audio I think it's
Speaker 1: audio box that does the audio books of her novels,
Speaker 1: so they're easy. There's easy to get access to them,
Speaker 1: which is really nice if somebody's curious. But um, and
Speaker 1: they are. They're very very um. I mean, she was
Speaker 1: clearly very talented and it is I mean, the thing
Speaker 1: that really made me go WHOA was the first one
Speaker 1: of the first things I stumbled across was that Oscar
Speaker 1: wild piece, And I'm like to watch or to read
Speaker 1: him being so you know, just heaping praise on on anybody,
Speaker 1: and you know, particularly another writer. I was like, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: wait really um, And then what's interesting is that going
Speaker 1: through newspaper accounts, she's everywhere. There was no lack of
Speaker 1: Amy Levy information in newspapers, and so she was very
Speaker 1: popular and very well known. And then somehow just drifts
Speaker 1: off of the mentions early on. You and I talked
Speaker 1: about that some while we were while we were discussing
Speaker 1: my whole total surprise at the sudden appearance of Vernon
Speaker 1: Lee in the episode, uh, how it seemed like people
Speaker 1: like just didn't quite know how to process her death
Speaker 1: and how to talk about her afterward, aside from that
Speaker 1: round of speculation about what her reasoning might have been, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is always I mean, that is problematic in so
Speaker 1: many ways to begin with, right, Like, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out why someone decides to end their life when you
Speaker 1: don't is literally just guesswork, which becomes really really dangerous.
Speaker 1: And I think you know, in Clementina Black's letter, she
Speaker 1: makes the very strong case that I think people don't
Speaker 1: always think about it like this would actually be painful
Speaker 1: for that person to know that people were making up
Speaker 1: these kinds of theories about them that could hurt their family. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I was really really glad that I stumbled
Speaker 1: across that particular article in a paper or that letter
Speaker 1: that had been published. Yeah. It's a it's a hard one,
Speaker 1: but also so good. And I really her verse is beautiful. Um.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it a great deal. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I feel very foolish because I focused a lot on
Speaker 1: writers from that time and place in college, and yet
Speaker 1: nary a word that I can recall ever uttered about
Speaker 1: her tracy. We talked about some practical jokes and pranks
Speaker 1: this week we did. I have so many thoughts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really thought the spaghetti tree one was a lot
Speaker 1: more recent than it really was somehow, Like I knew
Speaker 1: the basic lore of the spaghetti tree thing, and that
Speaker 1: it had been a newscast, and that there were some
Speaker 1: folks that believed the whole thing. But I really thought
Speaker 1: that was like a nine nineties newscast, not a nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties newscast. No. Yeah, I mean I think because it
Speaker 1: does come up a bit. I mean, that's more than
Speaker 1: sixty years old at this point. I don't know, if
Speaker 1: you have the thing that I have, where like time
Speaker 1: is real rubbery, where I'm like the year two thousand
Speaker 1: that was like three years ago, right, So it happens
Speaker 1: to me a lot um So that may be part
Speaker 1: of what contributes to it. But it has been talked
Speaker 1: about three years, so I could see where you would
Speaker 1: think that was more recent. I will say, Um, regarding Carberry,
Speaker 1: you know, his story is only eight years away, less
Speaker 1: than eight years really from its hundredth anniversary. So I
Speaker 1: wonder if the people at Brown who keep that myth
Speaker 1: alive will do something spectacular for it. That'd be cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, what's really really interesting about his story is
Speaker 1: that he does show up in a lot of perfectly
Speaker 1: respectable places in print, in journals, in books, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: like I even saw I think it was a t
Speaker 1: w A ad where like the customer endorsement was by
Speaker 1: Josiah Carberry about what a great service it was, which
Speaker 1: I mean, it is very clear that like there are
Speaker 1: people who are alums who keep that story alive in
Speaker 1: other ways throughout There is also a second version of
Speaker 1: it that we didn't get into it that popped up
Speaker 1: at Wesleyan, which happened around the time that the professor
Speaker 1: that started it transferred to that school, So clearly this
Speaker 1: was his brain child, and like has has populated throughout
Speaker 1: North America at least in a variety of ways. And
Speaker 1: I do love that there are people that love the
Speaker 1: story so much that they will try to wedge his
Speaker 1: name into places it maybe doesn't belong. Um. For the
Speaker 1: most part, it always seems like harmless fun. It never
Speaker 1: seems like they're trying to really undermine anybody. Um, let
Speaker 1: me talk about Theodore. Yeah. So um, when you told
Speaker 1: me what you were working on for this episode, I
Speaker 1: was like, ah, yeah, I've had the Berner Street hoax
Speaker 1: on my on my list for a long time. But
Speaker 1: every kind of every time I kind of looked at it,
Speaker 1: I was like, not quite enough there, And then we
Speaker 1: had a conversation about it. M hm. And I probably
Speaker 1: could do, as I said, an entire episode on Theodore Hook,
Speaker 1: but that would become a depressing episode of like a
Speaker 1: privileged person gets away with doing lots of crappy things
Speaker 1: and people celebrate him as a wit. Yeah, including sticking
Speaker 1: his friends with the bill. I didn't like that. No,
Speaker 1: he did something like that all the time, and the
Speaker 1: thing was like, listen, when I was younger, I was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a practical joker. I was that
Speaker 1: kid that got in trouble for doing things like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, at one of our pre graduation sort of
Speaker 1: solemn programs, I wore pig slippers under my gown and
Speaker 1: it made the principle real mad um, you know, I
Speaker 1: would do stuff like that. So there was part of me,
Speaker 1: particularly when they talked about his dad sending him to
Speaker 1: Oxford to try to get him on a real career
Speaker 1: path and him making jokes during the entrance questions, I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I completely identify with this person. And
Speaker 1: then as it unfurls and he becomes more and more
Speaker 1: of a pain in the neck to people and thinks
Speaker 1: it's surely hilarious, I was like, I identify with him
Speaker 1: less and less. Yeah, yeah, I I I do think
Speaker 1: it's a great disservice that we have no idea what
Speaker 1: happened with that poor woman after all of that madness
Speaker 1: at her house that she didn't ask for and had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with. I mean, I I really do
Speaker 1: as as people listen, I wonder if anybody did what
Speaker 1: I did, And I hope some people did, because it
Speaker 1: is very sobering to think about, Like what if tomorrow
Speaker 1: morning you woke up at five am with someone at
Speaker 1: your house insisting you had ordered a service and you
Speaker 1: finally convinced them that you did not, and then ten
Speaker 1: more people just like them with the same service show
Speaker 1: up insisting the same thing, and then that happens for
Speaker 1: the next thirteen hours. Yeah, I don't I couldn't handle it.
Speaker 1: I would have a breakdown at around our three which
Speaker 1: completely fall apart. Well, and it's like today there are
Speaker 1: there are connotations that weren't so much a thing when
Speaker 1: it actually happened, like people who've had to deal with
Speaker 1: identity theft, or we had a whole big problem uh
Speaker 1: some time ago, um the you know before before our
Speaker 1: job was only doing podcasts stuff, we had two different
Speaker 1: freelancers who had the same name, and a person incorrectly
Speaker 1: merged there two things and the accounts payable system into
Speaker 1: one thing, and the the existence of two people with
Speaker 1: the same name like caused such a huge problem. Like
Speaker 1: those kinds of things were not quite as present in
Speaker 1: the same way as when this prank happened. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there were people with the same name in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century and it caused lots problems, but like not in
Speaker 1: the way that a computer can propagate that problem to
Speaker 1: every possible place, right, Um, yeah, yeah, it seems like
Speaker 1: it would have been. And when you consider right all
Speaker 1: of them, the police presence that was required to deal
Speaker 1: with it. You know, we talked about it all the time,
Speaker 1: like X happened in a bun to. Police had to
Speaker 1: go do that, which meant they weren't doing all the
Speaker 1: other normal things they're supposed to do. Like there's literally
Speaker 1: such a domino effect in every direction. And that one
Speaker 1: article we quoted talked about it like those are doctors
Speaker 1: who were like not only giving up the hours to
Speaker 1: go see this person, but that meant they also couldn't
Speaker 1: get out of the street to go do their other
Speaker 1: visits to other patients that probably legitimately needed them. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, similar things like that. And when you think
Speaker 1: about a tradesperson in eighteen ten, they probably didn't have
Speaker 1: a lot of like wiggle room in their day in
Speaker 1: terms of like the amount of money they needed to
Speaker 1: make in the amount of appointments they needed to hit
Speaker 1: and if they could not get out after they had
Speaker 1: already wasted X amount of time. Yeah, it's it's not
Speaker 1: a very thoughtful thing to do to a whole lot
Speaker 1: of people. Yeah, well, I I feel like we might
Speaker 1: get emails from people who talk about protests blocking traffic,
Speaker 1: but there's a huge difference between protesting a serious social
Speaker 1: or political issue and causing a problem just to cause
Speaker 1: a problem to yes, yes, um, yeah, anyway, I sound
Speaker 1: like the crabbiest crab of crabtown when it comes to pranks.
Speaker 1: But stuff like that is too well, yeah, I just um,
Speaker 1: tell me about spaghetti trees, but please don't block off
Speaker 1: hundreds of people's days. Yeah. Well, and there are enough
Speaker 1: pranks that seem really mean spirited to me that I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is not fun. And especially when people try to
Speaker 1: prank other people in the workplace, and it's like you're
Speaker 1: compelled to be there at work. It's not like you
Speaker 1: could just be like, oh, I'm checking out for the
Speaker 1: whole You might be able to if you have a
Speaker 1: really lenient boss. But like when people do mean pranks
Speaker 1: on their coworkers, don't do that. No, No, I think
Speaker 1: the meanest prank I ever did, and I couldn't even
Speaker 1: like keep it going for more than seconds was and
Speaker 1: I was in college and I was working with one
Speaker 1: of my professors on like my senior project, which was
Speaker 1: a play, and I UM. I had given her a
Speaker 1: card from me that said, like, guess who's pregnant? And
Speaker 1: she panicked and I couldn't even like by the time
Speaker 1: she had opened the card, I was like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: it's not real, Like I couldn't. Yeah. I did basically
Speaker 1: that same prank one time when I was in my
Speaker 1: early my early twenties, and I just I did not
Speaker 1: have my act together. My whole life was just like
Speaker 1: full of drama all the time. And I had this
Speaker 1: one particular friend that I talked to about all of
Speaker 1: these you know, this perpetual dramatic chaos that was my life. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it was similar, like less than a minute passed
Speaker 1: before I was like, no, I'm not actually can't. I
Speaker 1: can't do it now. Yeah, I don't like to cause
Speaker 1: anybody stress or fear the I am a bigger fan
Speaker 1: of surprises than prank's right, where like I UM during
Speaker 1: that magical brief gap where it seemed like we might
Speaker 1: be seeing the curb of the pandemic and people started traveling,
Speaker 1: we went to Chicago to see my best friend, and
Speaker 1: we brought one of our other best friends who she's
Speaker 1: also close friends with, but she didn't know she was coming.
Speaker 1: And like, I remember hugging my best friend after I
Speaker 1: had gotten on the plane in the baggage claim area
Speaker 1: and I literally just said, look over my right shoulder.
Speaker 1: And that was like a super fun surprise that I
Speaker 1: guess you could categorize as a prank, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: really Like But that is about as far as I
Speaker 1: want to go anymore in terms of surprising, even good
Speaker 1: surprises can be dangerous, ye, unexpectedly stressful for people sometimes. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have learned, although it had to be told to
Speaker 1: me explicitly, that my husband does not like surprises. Uh.
Speaker 1: It took me a while, which stinks because I am
Speaker 1: really good at surprising people, but um yeah he he
Speaker 1: literally at one point was like for his forty birthday,
Speaker 1: I kind of went all out with surprise after surprise
Speaker 1: after surprise, and like we were traveling and people would
Speaker 1: show up, and at one point he just turned to
Speaker 1: me and said, I'm really glad to see them, but
Speaker 1: you have to tell me if anything else is happening,
Speaker 1: because I can't take it anymore, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have a list of things I need to inform
Speaker 1: you about. So, um, take into account how the surprised
Speaker 1: person would feel. Uh, and certainly trivially so if you
Speaker 1: are going to try to do a practical joker prank,
Speaker 1: because yeah, they're not for everybody. Uh yeah, just everybody
Speaker 1: be nice to each other. It seems so simple. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for hanging out with us this week.
Speaker 1: We hope you have a wonderful weekend ahead. Uh. And
Speaker 1: if you have time off, that it is RESTful and delightful,
Speaker 1: and that you have only good surprises and they're at
Speaker 1: whatever level you are comfortable with. If you do not
Speaker 1: have time off, we hope that whatever is going on
Speaker 1: in your life goes smoothly and that everybody is kind
Speaker 1: to you. We will be right back here tomorrow with
Speaker 1: a classic episod out, and then we'll see you again
Speaker 1: on Monday with new stuff. Stuff you missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more
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