Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I have
Speaker 1: had Louie Wayne on my list for an episode for
Speaker 1: a while. He was a commercial illustrator and popular artist
Speaker 1: who's most well known for his many depictions of cats.
Speaker 1: We've had some listener requests for an episode on him
Speaker 1: as well, and most recently on Twitter, listener Theodor asked
Speaker 1: if we had done one. Uh, we had not, but
Speaker 1: that bumped him up to the top of the list.
Speaker 1: Louie Wayne's art was extremely popular in the late nineteenth
Speaker 1: and early twentieth centuries, especially in the UK, and some
Speaker 1: of his later work also became an inspiration for the
Speaker 1: psychedelic movement of the nineteen sixties. Sometimes that later work
Speaker 1: is also interpreted as documenting the progression of his mental illness,
Speaker 1: although there are some problems with that interpretation that we
Speaker 1: will be talking about and the language of the time.
Speaker 1: Louis Wayne was declared insane in ninety four, and he
Speaker 1: spent the last fifteen years of his life living in
Speaker 1: asylums and psychiatric hospitals. But while he was there, he
Speaker 1: continued to create artwork that whole time. Louis William Wayne
Speaker 1: was born on August fifth, eighteen sixty in Clarkenwell, London.
Speaker 1: His father, William, was an embroiderer and textile trader who
Speaker 1: had been disowned by his family after converting to Catholicism.
Speaker 1: Louis mother, Julie Feliciebeau, was the daughter of French immigrants
Speaker 1: to the UK, and she usually went by Felicia Marie
Speaker 1: among English speakers. She also worked in textiles, designing things
Speaker 1: like embroideries, carpets and altar cloths for the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: Louis was their oldest child, named after his maternal grandfather,
Speaker 1: and he had five younger sisters, Caroline, Josephie, Marie Claire,
Speaker 1: and Julie also known as Phelisi. Louis was born with
Speaker 1: a cleft lip, and that's something that was probably treated
Speaker 1: with surgery while he was still a baby. As an adult,
Speaker 1: he grew a mustache to conceal it. When he was
Speaker 1: very young, a doctor advised his parents to have him
Speaker 1: taught at home rather than sending him to school, although
Speaker 1: they never told him specifically why that was. He was
Speaker 1: frequently sick though. He had a serious case of scarlet fever,
Speaker 1: among other things, and he also described having particularly vivid
Speaker 1: dreams and nightmares that could be really troubling to him.
Speaker 1: When Louie was ten, his parents decided that he was
Speaker 1: ready to go to school, but he really didn't like it.
Speaker 1: He was bright and curious, with a particular interest in
Speaker 1: electricity and magnetism, and he loved going to scientific lectures
Speaker 1: at the Royal Polytechnic Institution which later became the University
Speaker 1: of Westminster, but when it came to his actual class work,
Speaker 1: it just didn't hold his interest. He was also shy,
Speaker 1: and his classmates found him to be a little odd,
Speaker 1: so he struggled to connect to his peers and he
Speaker 1: sometimes got into fights. For most of his youth, he
Speaker 1: regularly skipped school and went to wander the countryside around London,
Speaker 1: immersing himself in observations of nature. When Louis was thirteen,
Speaker 1: he was enrolled at Joseph's Academy in Kennington, which had
Speaker 1: started out as a village south of London and is
Speaker 1: considered part of London today. He continued to skip school,
Speaker 1: but he also started developing some new interests, including chemistry, boxing,
Speaker 1: art and music. For a while, he wanted to write
Speaker 1: an opera, and he thought that he might make a
Speaker 1: career in music. He gradually started focusing most of his
Speaker 1: time on music and art, and eventually decided to become
Speaker 1: an artist. He enrolled at West London School of Art
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven and studied there for four years.
Speaker 1: On October eighty William Wayne died, leaving louis Is the
Speaker 1: primary breadwinner for his mother and sisters. He tried his
Speaker 1: hand at teaching, becoming an assistant master at his art school,
Speaker 1: but that only lasted for a year. He was just
Speaker 1: so shy that he had a hard time effectively instructing
Speaker 1: his students. At the end of eighteen eighty one, Wayne
Speaker 1: published his first piece of artwork, which was a picture
Speaker 1: of bullfinches on a laurel bush that was in illustrated,
Speaker 1: sporting and dramatic news. At this point, most newspapers and
Speaker 1: magazines that wanted to include some kind of visual imagery
Speaker 1: were relying mostly on illustrations. Although various types of photography
Speaker 1: had been invented, a cost effective method to rapidly print
Speaker 1: photos onto paper had not. There were, however, more commercially
Speaker 1: available methods to print illustrations. Publications that printed a lot
Speaker 1: of illustrations usually worked with multiple illustrators, some of them
Speaker 1: on staff and some of them freelance, and Louie Wayne
Speaker 1: was particularly suited for this kind of work. Number One,
Speaker 1: he could draw images that were accurate and visually appealing,
Speaker 1: and he could do that really quickly. He was also
Speaker 1: good at some of the subjects that newspapers and readers
Speaker 1: really wanted, like drawing all of the winning animals at
Speaker 1: livestock and agricultural fairs, or detailed illustrations of people's country homes.
Speaker 1: Soon Wayne had a staff position at Illustrated, Sporting, and
Speaker 1: Dramatic news, and he supplemented his income by doing portraits
Speaker 1: of people's dogs. When Louie was twenty three, he started
Speaker 1: a relationship with Emily Marie Richardson, who was ten years
Speaker 1: older than he was. She was living and working at
Speaker 1: the Wayne family home as a governess and tutor to
Speaker 1: Louie's youngest sisters. His family really did not approve of
Speaker 1: this relationship at all, both because of the difference in
Speaker 1: their ages and because of her position in their how
Speaker 1: hold and in society. Louie and Emily got married in
Speaker 1: spite of those objections on January four at St Mary's Chapel, Hampstead.
Speaker 1: No one from either of their families attended the wedding.
Speaker 1: Their witnesses were Matilda Humphreyson and louis longtime friend, artist
Speaker 1: and illustrator Herbert Railton. We mentioned earlier that Louis had
Speaker 1: a hard time making friends at school, but while he
Speaker 1: was still thought of as eccentric and maybe a little odd,
Speaker 1: he did have more friends in his adulthood. After getting
Speaker 1: married Emily, Louie and their pet bird lived in a
Speaker 1: little house in Hampstead, and soon they also got a
Speaker 1: black and white kitten named Peter. It's not totally clear
Speaker 1: where Peter came from. He eventually became part of the
Speaker 1: sort of lore surrounding Louis Wayne and his love of cats,
Speaker 1: and multiple people took credit for giving him to the couple.
Speaker 1: Regardless of how Peter came into their lives, though he
Speaker 1: was deeply beloved, it seems just as likely Peter just
Speaker 1: wandered up Yes, one of the many Peter could claim
Speaker 1: credit for giving Peter. Yes. Sadly, though not long after
Speaker 1: their marriage, Emily was diagnosed with breast cancer, and soon
Speaker 1: she was spending most of her time in bed with
Speaker 1: Peter and Louie for company. Sometimes, Louis is characterized as
Speaker 1: abandoning everything else so that he could spend time with
Speaker 1: his dying wife, but he was still trying to earn
Speaker 1: enough money to support them both, and he did much
Speaker 1: of this by traveling to agricultural shows, fishing competitions, and
Speaker 1: other events by train, and drawing as many illustrations as
Speaker 1: he could as quickly as he could, some of them
Speaker 1: while on the train traveling back home. Emily's sister also
Speaker 1: came to help take care of her, although she and
Speaker 1: Louie did not always get along when he wasn't working, though,
Speaker 1: Louie really did spend as much time as he could
Speaker 1: with Emily and Peter, including teaching Peter tricks and drawing
Speaker 1: pictures of him, all to just try to entertain his wife,
Speaker 1: and Emily really loved these pictures. Louie had started working
Speaker 1: for the Illustrated London News, and Emily encouraged him to
Speaker 1: show the pictures to his editor, Sir William Ingram. Louie
Speaker 1: was reluctant at first. Cats didn't have the kind of
Speaker 1: popular appeal that they do in a lot of places today.
Speaker 1: There were certainly people in the UK who kept cats
Speaker 1: as pets or even bred them, but as one example,
Speaker 1: the first Crystal Palace Show, which was the first cat
Speaker 1: show in the country, had taken place only about fifteen
Speaker 1: years earlier, and to a lot of people, cats were
Speaker 1: somewhere between an unwanted nuisance and a necessary but dirty
Speaker 1: way to control rats and mice. Wayne later said of
Speaker 1: this quote. When I first started sketching and painting cats,
Speaker 1: they were viewed as detested creatures, looked upon as pests
Speaker 1: by hunters. Anyone who was interested in the cat movement
Speaker 1: was seen to be a feminine. Wayne did finally show
Speaker 1: Ingram his pictures of Peter, though, and it turns out
Speaker 1: Ingram really liked them. Louis Wayne published his first cat
Speaker 1: picture in the Illustrated London News in eight four. This
Speaker 1: was a full page spread of fourteen pictures called Our
Speaker 1: Cats a Domestic History. These were realistically drawn cats doing
Speaker 1: real life cat things like getting into a sewing basket,
Speaker 1: scratching themselves under the chin with a back paw, drinking
Speaker 1: from a saucer, and catching a mouse. The panels formed
Speaker 1: a loose narrative with the captions at the bottom, describing
Speaker 1: a cat who was patterned after Peter. He was forgotten
Speaker 1: at home while the family goes to the seaside and
Speaker 1: then gets into so much mischief that she's no longer
Speaker 1: fit to be shown at the Crystal Palace Cat Show.
Speaker 1: In the mid eighteen eighties, Louis Wayne's work as an
Speaker 1: illustrator included pictures of lots of different animals, architectural drawings,
Speaker 1: some work as a commercial artist on product packaging, and
Speaker 1: increasingly cats. In eighty six, he was commissioned to illustrate
Speaker 1: a children's book called Madam Tabby's Establishment. He created seven
Speaker 1: full page illustrations featuring lots and lots of cats, as
Speaker 1: well as the book's protagonist, a little girl named Diana.
Speaker 1: In the book, the King of Cats had belonged to
Speaker 1: Diana's grandmother, which meant that Diana was allowed to join
Speaker 1: Cat Society and go to Madam Tabby's, basically a finishing
Speaker 1: school for cats. After this, Wayne asked William Ingram if
Speaker 1: he could do a cat illustration for Christmas for the
Speaker 1: Illustrated London News. Ingram agreed, and the result was a
Speaker 1: Kitten's Christmas Party, which took him eleven days to complete.
Speaker 1: Like Our Cats and Domestic History, this was a set
Speaker 1: of pictures that formed a narrative, this time over eleven panels,
Speaker 1: and in those panels were about a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: total cats. They're not wearing human clothes, but some of
Speaker 1: them are doing human activities, including washing the dishes, playing
Speaker 1: in a musical ensemble, and sleeping in a bed the
Speaker 1: way children often do in picture books, so on their backs,
Speaker 1: with heads on pillows and front paws tucked over the
Speaker 1: top of a folded down bedspread. Eventually, Wayne's cat illustrations
Speaker 1: would become a Christmas time staple. In the Book of
Speaker 1: the Cat, published in three Francis Simpson wrote, quote, a
Speaker 1: Christmas without one of Louie's clever catty pictures would be
Speaker 1: like Christmas pudding without currents. Sadly, Louie's wife, Emily died
Speaker 1: on January second, seven, not long after A Kitten's Christmas
Speaker 1: Party was published, and just a couple of days after
Speaker 1: their third wedding anniversary. Louis, of course was heartbroken. He
Speaker 1: and Peter moved into a new home where Louie kept
Speaker 1: on drawing cats, and we'll talk about a shift in
Speaker 1: Louise cat art and where it went from there after.
Speaker 1: We pause for a sponsor break. In eighteen ninety, Louie
Speaker 1: Wayne's Christmas illustration for the Illustrated London News included something
Speaker 1: that people came to see as really emblematic of his work.
Speaker 1: The cats weren't just doing human activities like washing dishes.
Speaker 1: They were also highly anthropomorphized and dressed in human clothes.
Speaker 1: He did keep creating more realistic depictions of cats, as
Speaker 1: well as cats in various human like scenarios who were
Speaker 1: not wearing clothes, but cats in Victorian and Eduardian attire
Speaker 1: became a big part of his work. He later described
Speaker 1: his process as sometimes involving drawing the people he saw
Speaker 1: around him, but drawing them as cats. Louis Wayne's fame
Speaker 1: and popularity grew over the next few years, and so
Speaker 1: did the number of cats in his household. Most of
Speaker 1: the time he had more than one, and by some
Speaker 1: counts the number was sometimes as high as seventeen. Some
Speaker 1: of these were cats that people give to him as gifts,
Speaker 1: knowing how much he loved them, but other times it
Speaker 1: was more like someone had found astray and just assumed
Speaker 1: he would be okay with taking it in. But Peter
Speaker 1: was really at the heart of a lot of his
Speaker 1: work and was the model for a lot of his pictures.
Speaker 1: After Emily died, Peter was Louie's closest companion until his
Speaker 1: death in March. By then, Louis Wayne had become a
Speaker 1: household name, and in addition to publishing so many pictures
Speaker 1: of cats, he was also writing a lot about cats
Speaker 1: and their care based on his own experience and intuition.
Speaker 1: Some of this more or less holds up, Like he
Speaker 1: said that cats hated orange peels and could be kept
Speaker 1: away from the garden by burying orange peels near the plants.
Speaker 1: He also recommended keeping some grass on hand for a cat,
Speaker 1: even if it was just a little bit of grass
Speaker 1: growing in a pot. Those are things you still here today. Sure,
Speaker 1: my cats hate the smell of citrus and will turn
Speaker 1: and run if I hold out appeals. Weren't that? I
Speaker 1: think I could produce multiple behavior books that say, if
Speaker 1: you have tomcats lingering outside your house marking your doors,
Speaker 1: just rub a little orange peel around the doorframe. Works
Speaker 1: like a charm. But some of his cat advice was
Speaker 1: downright Cockamami Wayne didn't just think that having a pet
Speaker 1: cat was good for a person's spirit. He claimed that
Speaker 1: people who kept cats were physically immune to various minor illnesses.
Speaker 1: At some points he described cats as having weak minds,
Speaker 1: although he always said that Peter was extremely intelligent. When
Speaker 1: asked how cats who wandered far from home could find
Speaker 1: their way back if their minds were so weak, he
Speaker 1: said it was because their bodies had an electrical polarity
Speaker 1: that told them which way was north. Because he was
Speaker 1: such a tireless promoter of cats, and because he at
Speaker 1: least theoretically had a lot of expertise about them and
Speaker 1: their care, Louis Wayne was made president of the National
Speaker 1: Cat Club in I feel like we might get emails
Speaker 1: from people that point out various animals that do use
Speaker 1: some kind of electrical or polarity too. That was not
Speaker 1: what he was describing. It was really like this cat
Speaker 1: is a literal electrical compass. That did not really add up. However,
Speaker 1: Louis Wayne's cat pictures and writing about cats were published
Speaker 1: all over the place and collected into books. He illustrated
Speaker 1: children's books, some of which he also wrote, and he
Speaker 1: kept working for various illustrated newspapers and magazines, but he
Speaker 1: was not able to turn all of this fame and
Speaker 1: prolific output into a reliable income. He didn't copyright his images,
Speaker 1: so people just reprinted them if they wanted to. That
Speaker 1: was something that became a bigger and bigger problem as
Speaker 1: his career went on and there more and more of
Speaker 1: his work already out there. When he sold illustrations to publications,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time he just sold them out right.
Speaker 1: He didn't retain his rights to the original image or
Speaker 1: negotiate for any kind of royalties or licensing fees for
Speaker 1: later use of the artwork. He also just didn't charge
Speaker 1: a lot for it. It came easily to him, and
Speaker 1: he loved doing these pictures, so it just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to have occurred to him that he should ask for
Speaker 1: more money. And there were definitely publishers who absolutely took
Speaker 1: advantage of him for this. They recognized that they had
Speaker 1: access to this illustrator whose output was prolific and whose
Speaker 1: work was really cheap and really popular. Yeah, Louis seems
Speaker 1: to have reconciled with his mother and sisters and he
Speaker 1: moved in with them in a house owned by William
Speaker 1: Ingrin in Westgate On c in Kent. He made ends meet,
Speaker 1: but just barely, by selling art, often using artwork to
Speaker 1: barter for things like the rent and even basic necessities.
Speaker 1: Since they didn't have a lot of money, their lives
Speaker 1: were fairly quiet, and his sisters never really had any suitors.
Speaker 1: But Louis also tended to buy luxuries that they didn't
Speaker 1: necessarily need and couldn't really afford, like at one point
Speaker 1: he had a telephone installed, and he also had notepaper
Speaker 1: printed that had their telephone number up at the top.
Speaker 1: This might not sound all that frivolous, but for context,
Speaker 1: in there were only nine thousand telephone subscribers in all
Speaker 1: of London, which had a population of well over four
Speaker 1: million people. Two years later that was up to a
Speaker 1: whopping seventeen thousand, three hundred seventy one subscribers. They did
Speaker 1: not really need a phone, there was almost nobody to call.
Speaker 1: He's just handing out his phone number, magical notepads, two cats,
Speaker 1: uh and the family did have some other struggles as well.
Speaker 1: Louie sister Marie had been experiencing delusions, including a persistent
Speaker 1: belief that she had Hanson's disease. Also known his leprosy,
Speaker 1: and that meant that she refused to let people get
Speaker 1: near her. In nineteen o one, she was declared insane
Speaker 1: and admitted to a hospital where she was diagnosed with
Speaker 1: primary dementia. Some sources have concluded that this was really schizophrenia.
Speaker 1: The first Louis Wayne Annual came out in nineteen o one.
Speaker 1: This was a book collecting written work by Louis Wayne
Speaker 1: and by other people, some of them friends of his,
Speaker 1: along with lots of his illustrations. A new annual came
Speaker 1: out nearly every year until nineteen fifteen, with the last
Speaker 1: one published a few years after that. Louie's creative output
Speaker 1: was particularly prolific. At the start of the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: he was producing as many as six hundred works of
Speaker 1: art per year, some of them depicting multiple cats or
Speaker 1: other animals. He worked with as many as seventy five
Speaker 1: publishers over the course of his life, and he worked
Speaker 1: in multiple media, including pen and ink, oil, watercolor, guash,
Speaker 1: Venetian red chalk, silver point, pencil, and crayon. His biggest
Speaker 1: publishing year for children's books was nineteen o three, and
Speaker 1: that year he published eleven different books. Over the years.
Speaker 1: He also did some political cartoons. His political views could
Speaker 1: be as eccentric as some of his opinions on things
Speaker 1: like cats and electricity, and when he wrote about political
Speaker 1: subjects he could be kind of discursive and rambly. Had
Speaker 1: a hard time reading these and sort of distilling down
Speaker 1: what his general point was. Generally, though he was a
Speaker 1: capitalist and a Royalist, he believed in the idea of
Speaker 1: free trade. He was also generally supportive of the colonialism
Speaker 1: of the British Empire, but also frustrated by the unjust
Speaker 1: treatment of the poor, the sick, and immigrants. He also
Speaker 1: published letters to the editor of various publications, often about
Speaker 1: things that in annoyed him in some way. As one example,
Speaker 1: children during the Christmas season caroling door to door or
Speaker 1: soliciting subscriptions, which he described as a begging errand he
Speaker 1: had kind of a complicated train of thought on this,
Speaker 1: simultaneously pointing out the conditions of poverty and deprivation that
Speaker 1: led to children needing to beg or sing for money,
Speaker 1: but also passing judgment on the people who were experiencing
Speaker 1: that kind of poverty. So Wayne's sometimes scornful descriptions of
Speaker 1: people who are living in poverty are particularly jarring considering
Speaker 1: his own life. In the first decade of the nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: he faced legal action over non payment of debts, although
Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of details on what this
Speaker 1: case involved. In nine seven, when he was forty seven,
Speaker 1: he went to the United States, and that may have
Speaker 1: been at least partially motivated by wanting to get away
Speaker 1: from both his financial situation and possible lawsuits for it.
Speaker 1: He also might have thought that he could make more
Speaker 1: money in the United States, where the market wasn't already
Speaker 1: just flooded with copies of his work. Initially, this was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a four month trip, but he wound
Speaker 1: up staying for three years. In the US, Wayne worked
Speaker 1: for her newspapers, and he did a lot of events
Speaker 1: and other work with organizations dedicated to cats, including American
Speaker 1: Cat Fancy. He reportedly decided to invest in a new
Speaker 1: type of oil lamp, one that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: remarkably efficient, but which did not pan out. This may
Speaker 1: have really happened, but he also still didn't have much money,
Speaker 1: so if he lost it all, he was going from
Speaker 1: a little money to even less money. It wasn't as
Speaker 1: though he was going from having a fortune to having nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes sources make it sound like he had a big
Speaker 1: break and he blew it, but it that's a little
Speaker 1: exaggerated for what really happened. Louis Wayne left the US
Speaker 1: and after getting word that his mother was dying, and
Speaker 1: after he left, he faced some criticism in American newspapers.
Speaker 1: Most of this was related to criticisms he had made
Speaker 1: of the United States, like pointing out the contradiction of
Speaker 1: Americans praising the effort of millionaires to fund things like
Speaker 1: hospitals and institutes while also condemning the idea of everyone
Speaker 1: paying their fair share in taxes to fund these kinds
Speaker 1: of efforts more equitably for everyone, or pointing out the
Speaker 1: way a lot of immigrants were shut out of job opportunities,
Speaker 1: enforced into poverty, but then disparaged for being poor at
Speaker 1: the same time. Though, some of the things that reporters
Speaker 1: harped on when they were criticizing him were really taken
Speaker 1: out of context or flatly untrue. Sadly, Louis Wayne's mother
Speaker 1: died before he got back to the UK. His sister
Speaker 1: Marie also died a few years later, on March third, nineteen.
Speaker 1: She had never left the asylum after she had been institutionalized.
Speaker 1: In nine fourteen, Wayne produced a set of ceramics known
Speaker 1: as the Futurist Cats, which also included a pig and
Speaker 1: a bulldog. These were brightly colored ceramic figures. They're kind
Speaker 1: of abstract, so sometimes they're called the Cubist Cats. They
Speaker 1: clearly were inspired by the Cubist movement. Wayne registered nine
Speaker 1: designs for these, and about twenty designs were actually made.
Speaker 1: They were produced by Maximmanuel and Company, and possibly We're
Speaker 1: also commissioned by that firm. There is another bit of
Speaker 1: lore about the Futurist Cats, which is that Wayne put
Speaker 1: all his money into making them, only to lose it
Speaker 1: all when the ship that they were being transported on
Speaker 1: was sunk by a German torpedo. This is pretty hard
Speaker 1: to substantiate, though. While some of the cats were made
Speaker 1: in Austria or Czechoslovakia, others were made in the UK,
Speaker 1: so it's unlikely that the entire stock would have been
Speaker 1: all on one ship. There's no record of what ship
Speaker 1: may have gone down with them aboard, whether it was
Speaker 1: a ship from continental Europe to the UK, or perhaps
Speaker 1: a ship headed to the United States. On October seventh
Speaker 1: of nineteen fourteen, Louis Wayne fell while trying to board
Speaker 1: a bus and he was knocked unconscious. He sustained a
Speaker 1: concussion and had to be hospitalized, and after this doctors
Speaker 1: advised him to rest for six months. Eventually, this event,
Speaker 1: like so many other things in his life, was also mythologized.
Speaker 1: The story became that he had fallen because the bus
Speaker 1: driver swerves to avoid a cat. Wayne had always been
Speaker 1: an anxious, cautious, and shy person, and during World War
Speaker 1: One he became even more so. His work had been
Speaker 1: enormously popular for decades, but the war made it harder
Speaker 1: for him to find work, both because of lack of
Speaker 1: money to pay for things like illustrators and shortages of paper.
Speaker 1: In seventeen, the Wayne family moved from Westgate on Sea
Speaker 1: to Kilburn, and that same year his oldest sister, Caroline
Speaker 1: died at the age of fifty three from influenza that
Speaker 1: had progressed into pneumonia. Louise sister Felicie, got a job
Speaker 1: in office to try to help the family make ends meet.
Speaker 1: Both Felicie and Claire were doing artwork of their own,
Speaker 1: but they really focused on supporting their brother's career rather
Speaker 1: than trying to sell their own work. In nine seventeen,
Speaker 1: Louis was also commissioned to work on some cartoons, and
Speaker 1: unfortunately the vast majority of those have been lost. I'm
Speaker 1: deeply curious about what they may have been. Like The Dream,
Speaker 1: The last Louis Wayne Annual, came out in nine. In
Speaker 1: the nine twenties also marked a major shift in Wayne's life.
Speaker 1: Developments in cameras, halftone printing and photographic plate making, and
Speaker 1: methods to transmit photos over telegraph wires had made it
Speaker 1: much easier and less expensive to print photographs in newspapers
Speaker 1: and magazines, so publishers increasingly relied on photographers, not illustrators.
Speaker 1: Wayne had more in more trouble finding paying work, and
Speaker 1: since the UK market was already flooded with his illustrations,
Speaker 1: none of them protected by copyright, it was harder for
Speaker 1: him to sell new pictures. His behavior also started to
Speaker 1: become more erratic. He talked about being plagued by spirits
Speaker 1: that were somehow electrical. His colleagues at Cat Fancy became
Speaker 1: alarmed when he started talking about a big cat show
Speaker 1: they were organizing, but that show didn't actually exist. At home,
Speaker 1: he started compulsively rearranging the furniture, sometimes in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. He also became really paranoid and started
Speaker 1: to accuse his sisters of stealing from him. His behavior
Speaker 1: toward them was increasingly hostile, and at different points his
Speaker 1: sisters described him grabbing and shoving them. He also wrote
Speaker 1: letters to his friends that described his sisters in really
Speaker 1: belligerent and abusive terms. By n four, louise sisters didn't
Speaker 1: feel safe with him at home, and they contacted a doctor.
Speaker 1: Although it had really been in the previous couple of
Speaker 1: years that Louis's behavior had become more alarming, his sisters
Speaker 1: told the doctor he had started behaving strangely after that
Speaker 1: fall from the bus a decade before. It is possible
Speaker 1: that his behavior did change after that accident, but describing
Speaker 1: a physical injury as the start of someone's mental illness
Speaker 1: was also really really common at this point. It's sort
Speaker 1: of alleviated a little bit of the stigma that was
Speaker 1: associated with mental illness. Louis was declared insane and taken
Speaker 1: to Springfield Hospital and Tuting, where he was admitted to
Speaker 1: the pauper's ward. We're going to talk about his life
Speaker 1: in hospitals. After we paused for a sponsor break. Various
Speaker 1: historians and biographers contradict one another regarding Louie Wayne's diagnosis.
Speaker 1: I read a lot of resources for this, and some
Speaker 1: of them said directly opposite things. Some say that he
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with schizophrenia or with an illness that would
Speaker 1: be called schizophrenia by today's terms. Others definitively say that
Speaker 1: he was never formally diagnosed with schizophrenia. I don't know
Speaker 1: which of these is correct either way. Though schizophrenia was
Speaker 1: known as an illness at this point, German psychiatrist Emil
Speaker 1: Crapelin had first described it as dementia pray Cox in
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century, and Swiss psychiatrist you Can Boiler
Speaker 1: had refined that description and coined the term schizophrenia in
Speaker 1: nineteen o eight. After Louis was hospitalized, Claire and Felicie
Speaker 1: started trying to support themselves by offering drawing lessons. They
Speaker 1: also visited Louie every week along with their sister Josephine,
Speaker 1: bringing him art, supplies and treats when they could afford it.
Speaker 1: While they were there, they would look at what he
Speaker 1: had drawn since their last visit and they'd take whatever
Speaker 1: seemed likely to sell to help support them all. About
Speaker 1: a year after Wayne was admitted to the hospital, journalist
Speaker 1: and bookseller Dan Ryder was touring the asylum and recognized
Speaker 1: him by his drawing and started telling other people that
Speaker 1: Louie Wayne was in a pauper's ward, and that sparked
Speaker 1: a huge effort to raise money so that he could
Speaker 1: be moved to a better hospital and to try to
Speaker 1: financially support his sisters. Initially, the goal for this effort
Speaker 1: was to raise a thousand pounds. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: organizers of this effort was Ada Elizabeth Chesterton, writing under
Speaker 1: the name Mrs Cecil Chesterton, in an appeal for funds,
Speaker 1: she wrote, quote, Louis Wayne is in a pauper lunatic asylum.
Speaker 1: This must come as a shock to the many thousands
Speaker 1: who have loved and admired his work for years. Louis
Speaker 1: Wayne's cats decorated our hoardings, adorned the cover's of our magazines,
Speaker 1: and were familiarly loved by every child and the majority
Speaker 1: of grown ups. No Christmas calendar was complete without this artist.
Speaker 1: No annual was issued that did not contain one of
Speaker 1: his vivid sketches, and yet at the age of sixty five,
Speaker 1: he is so bereft of means that in his affliction
Speaker 1: he is compelled to accept the hospitality of a state institution.
Speaker 1: Only about two hundred seventy five pounds had been raised
Speaker 1: when Prime Minister Ramsay McDonald stepped in and arranged for
Speaker 1: Wayne to be transferred to beth Lem Royal Hospital on August.
Speaker 1: Some sources say that this was the work of Prime
Speaker 1: Minister Stanley Baldwin. McDonald and Baldwin alternately served as Prime
Speaker 1: Minister from nineteen twenty three to nineteen thirty seven, so
Speaker 1: it's likely that each of them were involved in different points.
Speaker 1: Three days after Wayne was transferred, H. G. Wells broadcast
Speaker 1: a personal message via radio, saying of Louie Wayne quote,
Speaker 1: he has made the cat his own. He invented a
Speaker 1: cat's style, a cat society, a whole cat world. English
Speaker 1: cats that do not look and live like Louie Wayne.
Speaker 1: Cats are ashamed of themselves. The Daily Graphic hosted a
Speaker 1: Louis Wayne drawing competition. The magazine Animals turned its September
Speaker 1: issue into a Louis Wayne fundraiser. After raising fift hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: The Louis Wayne Fund raised its goal to three thousand.
Speaker 1: Louis surviving sisters, who were now in their late fifties
Speaker 1: to late sixties, seemed to have felt conflicted about all
Speaker 1: of this. The three of them were trying to support
Speaker 1: themselves while also keeping their home mostly as it had
Speaker 1: been while Louie was living there. They thought it would
Speaker 1: really break his heart if they moved or if they
Speaker 1: started selling off their possessions. So they were glad that
Speaker 1: their brother was in a nicer hospital and that they
Speaker 1: were also getting some financial help, but they were not
Speaker 1: consulted about any of this. They felt like they were
Speaker 1: alternately patronized and ignored by various fundraisers. It's also not
Speaker 1: clear what happens to all of the money that was raised.
Speaker 1: Although a lot of it did go to support Louis
Speaker 1: and his sisters, almost four hundred pounds of it seemed
Speaker 1: to have just apparently vanished. Yeah, I imagine this is
Speaker 1: pre a lot of laws regarding how you can handle
Speaker 1: charity and fundraiser events, which would now make that a
Speaker 1: little bit more difficult to just vanish big chunks of it.
Speaker 1: Bethlam Hospital was also known as Bedlam a term associated
Speaker 1: with chaos and confusion, and like many psychiatric hospitals, Bethlam
Speaker 1: had a reputation for horrific conditions for centuries. That was
Speaker 1: something that was exacerbated by a policy of allowing the
Speaker 1: general public to basically come in and gawk, under the
Speaker 1: idea that seeing mentally ill people in this kind of
Speaker 1: situation would offer some kind moral instruction and act as
Speaker 1: a cautionary tale. But in the nineteenth century the hospital
Speaker 1: had faced hearings and investigations and it had moved to
Speaker 1: what was known as the moral model of care that
Speaker 1: was focused on humane treatment of patients, moral instruction, rest routine,
Speaker 1: and light work. Obviously, this did not solve all issues
Speaker 1: involved with psychiatric care, but it was a big step
Speaker 1: forward from what had been before. Louis Wayne was given
Speaker 1: a private room and supplied with art materials, and he
Speaker 1: continued to make new art. He seems to have become
Speaker 1: a lot less agitated. He was no longer violent, although
Speaker 1: people still thought he was delusional. He talked about things
Speaker 1: like feeling like he was filled with electricity and believing
Speaker 1: that he could use that electricity to heal people by
Speaker 1: laying on of hands. In October and November of nine,
Speaker 1: a fundraising exhibition of Louie's work was held at twenty
Speaker 1: one Gallery in London, and it included new work that
Speaker 1: he had done while living at Bethleem. The exhibition, catalog
Speaker 1: called Souvenir of Louis Wayne's work, sold thousands of copies
Speaker 1: and went into four printings. One Christmas, Louis and other
Speaker 1: patients were invited to decorate the hospital and he painted
Speaker 1: the surface of a mirror with a picture of one
Speaker 1: cat giving another a Christmas pudding. This painted mirror became
Speaker 1: part of the hospital's annual Christmas decor. Wayne also started
Speaker 1: producing artwork that some sources have interpreted as being reflective
Speaker 1: of his mental illness. In addition to drawing cats, he
Speaker 1: drew vibrantly colored and very detailed landscapes. Sometimes their color
Speaker 1: palette is a little bit strange, it's almost hyper real,
Speaker 1: and it can be a little bit jarring in the
Speaker 1: juxtaposition of colors. Sometimes this is interpreted as a decline
Speaker 1: in his artistic ability, but Louis was also working with
Speaker 1: whatever art materials other people gave him. It wasn't as
Speaker 1: he had picked these things out for himself. He also
Speaker 1: was not allowed to have a sharpener. Also, while his
Speaker 1: sisters were still selling what could be sold, it's possible
Speaker 1: that he no longer felt as much pressure to produce
Speaker 1: salable work. In addition to money from the Louis Wayne Fund,
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister had arranged for his sisters to receive
Speaker 1: a small pension, so he just may have felt like
Speaker 1: he had more creative room to play. This is also
Speaker 1: when some of Wayne's cat pictures started to become more abstract.
Speaker 1: There were cats whose faces were surrounded by layers and
Speaker 1: layers of colorful, somewhat zig zaggy, almost electrical lines, or
Speaker 1: pictures of highly kaleidoscopic cats whose features are embellished with detailed,
Speaker 1: repeating geometric shapes, or cats with these spaces that are
Speaker 1: perfectly symmetrical and just made up a very colorful, repetitive,
Speaker 1: almost fractal like details. These are the ones that became
Speaker 1: an influence for psychedelic art of the nineteen sixties. They
Speaker 1: also really resemble computer generated representations of fractals, although those
Speaker 1: did not exist until the nineteen seventies. These more abstract
Speaker 1: pictures became associated with Louis Wayne's mental illness and with
Speaker 1: schizophrenia specifically, not long after his death, psychologist Walter McClay
Speaker 1: found several of his pictures at a junk shop in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine. McClay arranged them in an order that
Speaker 1: suggested a progression from a wide eyed, fluffy cat on
Speaker 1: a repeating geometric background, to a less realistic cat surrounded
Speaker 1: by concentric, jagged lines, to a symmetrical, kaleidoscope like pattern
Speaker 1: of colors that barely suggests the features of a cat.
Speaker 1: He interpreted this as illustrating the progression of schizophrenia. It
Speaker 1: makes sense that McLay would make this connection. The year before,
Speaker 1: he and his colleague Eric Gutman had given a group
Speaker 1: of artists the hallucinogenic drug mescaline, which was believed to
Speaker 1: induce a mental state similar to schizophrenia, and then they
Speaker 1: had told them to record their experiences on mescalin as artwork.
Speaker 1: Some of what these artists produced had some traits in
Speaker 1: common with Louie Wayne's kaleidoscope cats, like repeating elements and
Speaker 1: bright colors that didn't quite go together in geometric shapes.
Speaker 1: There are some problems with this interpretation, though. For one,
Speaker 1: none of the pictures are dated, so we have no
Speaker 1: idea whether Louie Wayne created them in the order that
Speaker 1: McClay arranged them too. As he was doing these drawings,
Speaker 1: he was also still doing illustrations that were more like
Speaker 1: what he had done before entering the hospital. Sometimes he's
Speaker 1: characterized as exclusively drawing progressively more abstract cats, but that
Speaker 1: is not what happened. In May of nineteen thirty, Louis
Speaker 1: Wayne was moved to Napsbury Hospital, near St. Alban's Bethlehem
Speaker 1: Hospital also moved locations in nineteen thirty. Some accounts say
Speaker 1: that wayne move was because the hospital was relocating, but
Speaker 1: others describe it as just following an assessment of how
Speaker 1: he was doing. It's also possible that that assessment was
Speaker 1: part of the decision making process into where patients should
Speaker 1: go after the hospital moved. Knapsbury was in a wooded
Speaker 1: area with a courtyard and a garden, and lots of cats.
Speaker 1: In that aspect, it seems like it would have been
Speaker 1: a good fit for Louis Wayne, but he was also
Speaker 1: getting older, which seems to have been affecting both his
Speaker 1: physical health and his cognitive abilities. He sometimes would lose
Speaker 1: track of who he was talking to or become so
Speaker 1: tired in the middle of a conversation that he could
Speaker 1: not continue. He also broke his collarbone in a fall
Speaker 1: after being tripped by another patient. He was still creating, though.
Speaker 1: Another exhibition of his work was held in ninety one
Speaker 1: as a fundraiser for his sisters. By this point, Josephine
Speaker 1: had developed severe arthritis and could no longer make the trip,
Speaker 1: but Claire and Felice still that did him regularly, and
Speaker 1: they still gathered up whatever art was able to be sold.
Speaker 1: Wayne painted Christmas decorations onto mirrors at Napsbury Hospital as well,
Speaker 1: some of which have been preserved. He published his last
Speaker 1: book in nineteen thirty four. In nineteen thirty six, he
Speaker 1: had a stroke that affected his speech and caused weakness
Speaker 1: on his right side, but he was still able to
Speaker 1: draw afterward. The last exhibition of his artwork to take
Speaker 1: place during his lifetime was in June of nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: seven at Clarendon House, London. Louie's sister, Josephine, died on
Speaker 1: January fourteenth, nineteen thirty nine. Because of her own health,
Speaker 1: he hadn't seen her in years, and his surviving sisters
Speaker 1: decided it would be best not to tell him that
Speaker 1: she had died, although he did ask why she had
Speaker 1: stopped writing to him. Louis Wayne died at Napsbury Hospital
Speaker 1: on July four, ninety nine, at the age of seventy eight,
Speaker 1: and was buried at St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery alongside his
Speaker 1: father and two of his sisters. During his lifetime, he
Speaker 1: had illustrated more than two hundred books, many of which
Speaker 1: he also wrote. There were also postcards of his work
Speaker 1: printed all over Europe and North America, and thousands of
Speaker 1: individual works of art. One article published just after his
Speaker 1: death said of him, quote, Louis Wayne's cats were once
Speaker 1: as familiar in British households, particularly as Mickey Mouse and
Speaker 1: Donald Duck are today. Frank Bernard, editor of Punch magazine,
Speaker 1: called Louis Wayne the ho garth of cat life, and
Speaker 1: also said of him, quote, his reasoning is so original,
Speaker 1: so imaginative, and so reverent, you say to yourself, here
Speaker 1: is a man who thinks his own thoughts, a man
Speaker 1: who is determined to live every moment of his life
Speaker 1: so that he and others may be the wiser and
Speaker 1: better for it. A Louis Wayne memorial exhibition was held
Speaker 1: in September of ninety nine, in part to benefit his
Speaker 1: two surviving sisters. Bellis died in ninety and Lair died
Speaker 1: in An exhibition of his work was held at the
Speaker 1: Victoria and Albert Museum in nineteen seventy two. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three, a biopic called The Electrical Life of Louis
Speaker 1: Wayne came out in one starring Benedict Cumber Batches Louis
Speaker 1: and Claire Foy as Emily. An exhibition of his work
Speaker 1: was also held at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind
Speaker 1: from December of one to April of two, and that
Speaker 1: was called Animal Therapy The Cats of Louis Wayne. There
Speaker 1: has been some speculation in more recent years about whether
Speaker 1: or not Louis Wayne had schizophrenia, even if he had
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with it, A lot has changed in the
Speaker 1: nearly a century since that would have happened. Of course,
Speaker 1: it is not possible to accurately diagnose a person who
Speaker 1: is not here to examine, but various medical historians, psychiatrists,
Speaker 1: and biographers have noted that schizophrenia cam effect a person's
Speaker 1: motor skills, including their fine motor skills. But Wayne's later
Speaker 1: work is still extremely detailed and precise. Also most of
Speaker 1: the time. Schizophrenia developed by early adulthood, and while Wayne
Speaker 1: was described as anxious and eccentric and depressed much of
Speaker 1: his life, the symptoms that led his sisters to seek
Speaker 1: psychiatric treatment for him seemed to have started when he
Speaker 1: was in his late fifties or early sixties. In two
Speaker 1: thousand two, psychiatrist Michael Fitzgerald published a letter in the
Speaker 1: Irish Journal of Psychiatric Medicine that offered a different interpretation,
Speaker 1: which was that Louis Wayne had Asperger's syndrome, or, to
Speaker 1: use the more modern terminology, that he was autistic. Fitzgerald
Speaker 1: noted traits like Wayne's social isolation, unusual tone of voice,
Speaker 1: and preservation of sameness. The term Asperger's syndrome was coined
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty one, based on a ninety four treatise
Speaker 1: by Hans Asperger. The term autism was coined in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, so that was in use while Louis
Speaker 1: Wayne was alive, but at first it was used to
Speaker 1: describe a childhood form of schizophrenia. It's meaning did not
Speaker 1: start to shift toward the way that it is used
Speaker 1: today until the nineteen forties, after Louis Wayne's death, so
Speaker 1: neither of these terms would have been around while he
Speaker 1: was in the hospital. Other possibilities are a lot more speculative.
Speaker 1: For example, people have pointed out similarities between Louis Wayne's
Speaker 1: kaleidoscopic cats and the artwork of Canadian scientists and Adams,
Speaker 1: who created brightly colored visual depictions of Ravel's Bolero after
Speaker 1: developing a degenerative neurological disorder. Yeah, regardless of any of that,
Speaker 1: why do I love these pictures kitties? Do you love
Speaker 1: some listener mail too? I do? I have listener mail
Speaker 1: from Kristen. Initially, at the beginning of email, Kristen talked
Speaker 1: about um E. Pauline Johnson's poems featured in a series
Speaker 1: of piano lesson books, so it was like a name
Speaker 1: that uh that Kristen recognized immediately. This is a series
Speaker 1: of books that's been around for many decades, and if
Speaker 1: you find the older ones their favor and favors piano adventures,
Speaker 1: older ones are a little dated and insensitive. U. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: Kristen went on to say, I also am a big
Speaker 1: fan of L. M. Montgomery and although the Inn of
Speaker 1: green Gables books are wonderful, it's the Emily series that
Speaker 1: I adore so much that I named my oldest daughter Emily.
Speaker 1: I finally put together that Montgomery grew up in Canada
Speaker 1: at the same time that Johnson was publishing her poetry
Speaker 1: and making a living through her writing. I would imagine
Speaker 1: she was a great inspiration to the young author, as
Speaker 1: the closing poem that you read is very similar in
Speaker 1: style and subject. Now truell beauty too much of Montgomery's
Speaker 1: writing The main theme of the Emily books as a
Speaker 1: young Canadian woman striving to make her career through publishing
Speaker 1: her writing, and then to realize that the E initial
Speaker 1: in Johnson's name actually stands for Emily. What a fun
Speaker 1: connection to make. Mind blown. Kristen then said no pets here,
Speaker 1: only allergies with a little sad face emoji. Thanks for
Speaker 1: your great work, Kristen. Thanks for this email, Kristen, I
Speaker 1: had meant to say, and I don't think that I
Speaker 1: did that. When I was doing research into the Pauline
Speaker 1: Johnson episode, one of the things I found was a
Speaker 1: controversy that had happened in schools in very recent years
Speaker 1: when a school performed a song that was based on
Speaker 1: Pauline Johnson poem and there were concerns about whether it
Speaker 1: was racially or ethnically and sensitive, and that reminded me
Speaker 1: of the start of this email that was about like
Speaker 1: the dated, slash and sensitive piano lesson books um drawn from,
Speaker 1: among other things, Pauline Johnson's work, And aside from that,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to put it out there again that
Speaker 1: that LM. Montgomery is on my list for an episode sometime,
Speaker 1: but I super just want to have an excuse to
Speaker 1: take a vacation to Prince Edward Island and that general
Speaker 1: region of Canada first, because it feels very close to
Speaker 1: me living in Boston. It's not. Actually it's kind of far,
Speaker 1: but it's closer than it it would be from Atlanta,
Speaker 1: much closer than if I were still living in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: So um, so, thank you so much Christen for this email.
Speaker 1: If you would like to send us a note about
Speaker 1: this or any other podcast, we're at History podcast that
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