Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
Speaker 1: and I'm Holly Fry. We talked about Collette all this week.
Speaker 1: We sure did, Yes, I am ninety nine sure that
Speaker 1: when we were in Paris and I took a little
Speaker 1: trip off of our official planned things to go to
Speaker 1: Parlashes that I went to her grave. I cannot find
Speaker 1: photographic evidence of this, and uh, in my pictures, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure I did that, though I do have a
Speaker 1: picture of There's a map as you enter that shows
Speaker 1: you where various notable people are buried, and I definitely
Speaker 1: have a picture showing me on the map where Collette's
Speaker 1: burial was, so that I have. I had a cat
Speaker 1: named after her. Yeah, was your cat a mess? No?
Speaker 1: Well sort of. This is a little bit sad, but
Speaker 1: you may remember because this cat passed when I was
Speaker 1: when we were working together, we had not had her
Speaker 1: for very long, and we didn't know that when we
Speaker 1: adopted her. She was quite sick, so we didn't have
Speaker 1: her for a very long time. But she was very
Speaker 1: beautiful and kind of a hilarious drama queen, So it
Speaker 1: seemed sort of perfect for her. Yeah, I remember when
Speaker 1: that happened, but I had forgotten what her name was. Yeah. One.
Speaker 1: There are various things that came up in research that
Speaker 1: did not make their way into the episode, which always happens.
Speaker 1: One of the things that particularly stuck out to me, though,
Speaker 1: was that Um when she was writing Sari, which a
Speaker 1: lot of people mistakenly believe was about like inspired by
Speaker 1: Bert Trauma, which no, she wrote SERI before they ever met,
Speaker 1: or at least had had at least written a bunch
Speaker 1: of it instarted publishing it serious serially before they ever met.
Speaker 1: But her husband and his father I read Juvenil. He
Speaker 1: was not a fan of that book, and so as
Speaker 1: I was, I was like, was he psychic? Did he
Speaker 1: have a premonition, or did he otherwise think this book
Speaker 1: suggested things about his wife that he found troubling. I
Speaker 1: sure found that. I don't even like using the word
Speaker 1: relationship for weird. Like clearly at the time, that's how
Speaker 1: everybody was describing it, and they saw it as a relationship,
Speaker 1: but it was it was gross. Um. A lot of
Speaker 1: stuff she said about it was gross her. It's it's
Speaker 1: way more obvious from accounts at the time that a
Speaker 1: lot of people found a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: um we lead did in their relationship to be really gross.
Speaker 1: Um So it's like aspects of that I think have
Speaker 1: have a lot of the same connotations then as now.
Speaker 1: But I think Collette and Bertran has like a slightly
Speaker 1: different nuance today than it did at the time. That
Speaker 1: just makes it particularly upsetting. Yes, and I do wonder
Speaker 1: if some of a Ree's issue with it had more
Speaker 1: to do with like, while it was I don't want,
Speaker 1: I don't even know if accept it is the right word,
Speaker 1: more common for older men to date much younger women
Speaker 1: or even girls, the flip was not always the case,
Speaker 1: and I wonder if that was part of why he
Speaker 1: had issue with it. But then it also is it
Speaker 1: almost seems like she manipulated that fact and the idea
Speaker 1: that she would not ever be seen as predatory in
Speaker 1: that whole relationship, because it's not as though he aimed
Speaker 1: to her and was like ardently like I am in
Speaker 1: love with you, as inappropriate as that would still be
Speaker 1: by today's standards. Those sorts of relationships have certainly played
Speaker 1: out where a younger man pursues an older woman, it
Speaker 1: seems like she very much was driving the bus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was at least very heavily steering the bus. Um.
Speaker 1: And there are accounts that make him that to sort
Speaker 1: of describe him as more actively involved in pursuing her
Speaker 1: at the beginning, or at least feeling captivated by her
Speaker 1: in some ways. But like, yeah, it's still it's still gross,
Speaker 1: it's very grass um. Also, the all of the part
Speaker 1: about how it really does seem like both she and
Speaker 1: Maurice we're almost oblivious to what was happening. And I mean,
Speaker 1: surely they were not the only people who were almost
Speaker 1: oblivious to what was happening in France and in Paris
Speaker 1: during the uh the Nazi occupation, but we have talked
Speaker 1: about so many other people on the show who were
Speaker 1: more like, we have got to get out, and we
Speaker 1: have got to get out now, um. And it was
Speaker 1: incredibly late in the game when they started being like,
Speaker 1: we might need to get out of here. Well. And
Speaker 1: I think this kind of ties back to that quote
Speaker 1: we included at the end from Maurice where he said
Speaker 1: that for thirty years, you know, he lived in a
Speaker 1: fairyland with her, And I think that's it's not entirely
Speaker 1: uncommon to read about people in certain social strata or
Speaker 1: even artistic social strata, to just kind of feel themselves
Speaker 1: outside of any of the realities that other people go through,
Speaker 1: which is pretty obvious, you know, considering that she didn't
Speaker 1: really engage with any of the politics of her life
Speaker 1: ever now, But yes, it does even incredibly foolish in retrospect.
Speaker 1: And also like, why are why are you publishing in
Speaker 1: these papers that are actively harmful to the person your
Speaker 1: husband is, Like why so many things that have gotten
Speaker 1: into that to some degree, or like even if we're charitable,
Speaker 1: this was bad Like and I think I said pretty
Speaker 1: much that, but like, we don't actually know if we
Speaker 1: need to be charitable. We have we know so little
Speaker 1: about her personal thoughts, about her decision making process. Um,
Speaker 1: so it's like being charitable is extending her a whole
Speaker 1: lot of benefit of the doubt, right, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a great deal of grace for someone we don't Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't really know, um if Maurice left his
Speaker 1: own perspective on what it was like to be living
Speaker 1: in Paris during that time, and like being made to
Speaker 1: wear a yellow star, we don't really know. I don't
Speaker 1: Maybe this has written somewhere, but I didn't find it,
Speaker 1: Like I we don't know if Collett's characterization of him
Speaker 1: seeming almost unbothered by that, like if that was right
Speaker 1: or not, or if that was also kind of flippant
Speaker 1: and oblivious. Man, I just have such complicated feelings about her. Yes, uh,
Speaker 1: I mean when I was doing the research, I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna become a mome and start like publishing stories
Speaker 1: yourself so you can get away from your awful husband
Speaker 1: who's being really exploited, your your create weight. You're gonna
Speaker 1: do what what are you doing? I'm sorry? What can
Speaker 1: I just tell you? Reading and like talking about the
Speaker 1: constant ebb and flow of people's various romantic partners in
Speaker 1: and out of Woodlock, who is jealous of whom it's
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, this is exhausting. I'm too. Um. I
Speaker 1: watched the the recent biopic starring Cure Nightley for fun
Speaker 1: really as I was working on this um and a
Speaker 1: couple of things just stuck out to be one. It
Speaker 1: just it was constantly funny to me that it is
Speaker 1: a movie about France, about someone who was a national
Speaker 1: icon in France. Um, everybody has a British accent right,
Speaker 1: like it would it would have been incredibly weird if
Speaker 1: everybody had a French accent. Also, but the fact that
Speaker 1: it just in so many ways um felt almost like
Speaker 1: a British period piece, which it definitely was not, like
Speaker 1: that just kind of tickled me. Um So as I
Speaker 1: was watching it, and I was sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: knowing at that point, having researched her whole entire life,
Speaker 1: knowing that the uh, the movie was not gonna at
Speaker 1: all cover the whole entire life. I as I was
Speaker 1: watching it, I was like, I'm pretty sure this movie
Speaker 1: is gonna stop before we get to the part where
Speaker 1: there was this love triangle between Missy and August and Collette,
Speaker 1: and also Collette started sleeping with her married boss, like
Speaker 1: and I was just like, this is such a gigantic
Speaker 1: tangle and feels like so much work to me. Also,
Speaker 1: that movie, While I enjoyed watching that movie, it definitely
Speaker 1: makes it's very sanitized in terms of the ending. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of movies like this, there's a series of
Speaker 1: title cards at the end, kind of like suggesting what
Speaker 1: happens after the action of the movie is over, and
Speaker 1: it almost reads like Collette and Missy lived happily ever
Speaker 1: after for many more years, and that is a hud,
Speaker 1: not what happened. Yeah, exhausting. I think it came up
Speaker 1: in our Your Song episode. But you mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: when she started wearing trousers that that was still illegal.
Speaker 1: It was illegal until the twenty teens in France. Technically
Speaker 1: on the books. Just I always find that all areas.
Speaker 1: Obviously no one was pursuing that law and like holding
Speaker 1: anyone accountable, but it didn't get revoked until the twenty teens,
Speaker 1: which I find hilarious. It was one of those things
Speaker 1: where the law was more used to harass people whose
Speaker 1: whose behavior was being seen as a problem in some
Speaker 1: other way. Yes, so someone like Missy who had some
Speaker 1: question marks around things like gender and sexuality, there might
Speaker 1: actually be not as many questions. There are question marks
Speaker 1: in my mind, just because like I don't have that
Speaker 1: much information about missing each but like definitely things like
Speaker 1: those laws about trousers were being used to harass people.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, I mean that laws from the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: But I just as a funny factoid, I think it's
Speaker 1: fascinating that it was still there. Lurkin, if you have
Speaker 1: traveled to Paris to the two thousand's until the I
Speaker 1: can't remember it was that it finally came off the books.
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, very recently, you were also in violation
Speaker 1: of the law if you were a woman wearing pants. Right. Ah.
Speaker 1: My only other comment is ridiculous. Okay, Maurice just barely
Speaker 1: didn't live long enough to see Star Wars. That's all that.
Speaker 1: Oh that's great. Like, Oh, Maurice, if you had hung
Speaker 1: on four more months, she would have had your mind blown. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm similarly, I have not read either of Maurice's memoirs.
Speaker 1: I am curious. He fascinates me a little bit. Um.
Speaker 1: It really does seem like his their relationship seems like
Speaker 1: it was really good for Collette. She in terms of like,
Speaker 1: is your life going to be a continual factory of
Speaker 1: chaos and drama? Like, seems like not so much anymore
Speaker 1: once she and Maurice got together. Um. And the things
Speaker 1: that I have read about the like the way he
Speaker 1: talked about her seemed really loving and devoted. Um. And
Speaker 1: so maybe at some point I will dig up copies
Speaker 1: of translations of those memoirs um. Apparently the one about
Speaker 1: his becoming a father at age seventy one is really touching. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think if you think about his level of just
Speaker 1: absolute adoration and devotion to her, it might inform a
Speaker 1: little bit of like why she would think he had
Speaker 1: no problem wearing a yellow star one of the Nazis,
Speaker 1: because I'm sure he would not have told her he
Speaker 1: was troubled. He never wanted to trouble her in any way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes sense, and only take care of her. I
Speaker 1: could see him being like, no, it's fine. It probably
Speaker 1: wasn't how could it be, but to her, oh, he's fine,
Speaker 1: he said he was fine. Yeah. Well, and the same
Speaker 1: about his being in that internment camp, because the tonament
Speaker 1: camp made it sound definitely very unpleasant. He probably was
Speaker 1: kushioning that also and to protect especially considering like the
Speaker 1: complex nature of her using her influence to secure his
Speaker 1: release and that having been done through channels that were
Speaker 1: not cool. Um. I think that probably also dampened his
Speaker 1: willingness to say anything negative about any of it, right,
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to I don't want to make waves,
Speaker 1: I don't want to call attention. I'm not rocking any boats.
Speaker 1: I'm stirring zero snakes, Like just everything's fine, honey, everything
Speaker 1: is fine. I'm good, I'm with you. Maurice becomes the
Speaker 1: really interesting one in this story. Yeah, yeah, I'm very
Speaker 1: I'm interested at some point, probably too, to learn more
Speaker 1: about him. Um. I also will confess that I I
Speaker 1: sent you the quotes that he said about her, Yes,
Speaker 1: because of course it makes me weepy deep eye. I
Speaker 1: found them very touching. The first one that we read
Speaker 1: that was like, and then her work became more subtled.
Speaker 1: I was like, that almost comes out as a little
Speaker 1: patronizing to me, but I still was very touched by it.
Speaker 1: Oh see, it doesn't to me because I know exactly
Speaker 1: what that experience is, to be a wild animal and
Speaker 1: then find your person and then suddenly you feel much
Speaker 1: more serene. Yeah, I feel at all patronizing and like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's an accurate description of what can happen if you
Speaker 1: eat the right person. Well, happy Early Valentine's Day, everybody
Speaker 1: who mixed bag a mixed bag. Maybe that's what we
Speaker 1: should have titled these episodes. We can have custom conversation
Speaker 1: hearts printed that just say mixed bag and it'll be perfect,
Speaker 1: perfect whatever is happening on your weekend. I hope it's good.
Speaker 1: If it's not good, I hope you're able to take
Speaker 1: a moment, maybe get something that's a little treat in
Speaker 1: some way, maybe have just a minute to yourself. We'll
Speaker 1: be back tomorrow Saturday Classic. We'll be back next with
Speaker 1: brand new episodes, and you can subscribe to the show
Speaker 1: on the I heart Radio app or wherever you like
Speaker 1: to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.