Amy Levy

Levy was recognized as an extraordinary literary talent of the 1880s. But after her tragic early death, she receded into the background of history. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. So recently
I was on a road trip with my beloved friend Bernadette,
and she mentioned that she had been reading the novels

(00:22):
of a Victorian Jewish woman writer and really enjoying them,
and my interest was piqued. Bernie is herself a writer.
She's a very smart woman. She's someone I've known for
a long time, and I generally trust her taste. She
has often introduced me to media that I might not
otherwise have found. And so I looked this person up.
And then when I looked Amy Levy up, and I

(00:44):
have heard scholars pronounced her name both Levy and Levy.
We'll go with Levy, but just know that there's some
question mark there. But when I looked her up and
discovered that she was well known in Britain's literary circles
in the Victorian era, including having the admiral ration of
Lord Byron, I was a little wowed. And I was like,
how had I missed her? My English major focused a

(01:06):
lot on English Victorian literature, yet no Amy Levy. It
turns out a lot of people missed her and for
a very long time, and the exact why is a
little bit difficult to pin down. I think part of
it is that her life was very short and it
ended tragically, and some of her work was controversial, and

(01:27):
she kind of has an intersectionality that I think a
lot of people have had trouble wrapping their brains around.
But she was recognized as an extraordinary talent, specifically of
the eighteen eighties. So we're going to talk about her today,
and as a heads up, we need to let you
know there is a brief discussion of suicide late in
this episode. Amy Levy was born on November tenth, eighteen

(01:50):
sixty one, in the Lambeth section of London, to Louis
Levy and Isabelle Levin Levy. Louis Levy was a stockbroker,
and the Levies were Jewish, but they seem to have
been fairly casual in their religion. Their gentile nanny sometimes
took the children with her to Christian church services. The
family didn't seem to rigorously observe religious dietary laws, and

(02:12):
some members of the family also celebrated Christmas, but there's
evidence that the family attended synagogue and that the children
may have had Hebrew lessons. Amy was the second child,
after a sister named Katie, who she was very close to.
Louis and Isabelle had five more children after Amy. They
were Alfred, Willie, ned Ella, and Donald. And from a

(02:35):
young age, literature was a deep love of Amy's and
that was one that she and her sister Katie shared,
and these two sisters, perhaps with contributions from their other siblings,
wrote and produced their own homemade and a handwritten literary
magazine for a number of years called the Poplar Club Journal,
and some of the works in the surviving examples of

(02:55):
the journal were signed by the authors, but many were not.
So the the most part, it's a little unclear which
of the Levy children wrote which pieces, which included poems, plays,
short stories, and even some art and illustration, and it
seems like at least in some cases, Amy Levy wrote,
even at this young age, in multiple voices under multiple

(03:16):
noms to plume. It contains also brief critiques of the
included works, and one issue featured a notice that if
a member of the club did not contribute, they would
be fined us. I find all of this absolutely delightful.
Over the years, these family magazines continued. They seemed like
they may have have expanded to include the work of

(03:38):
friends as well, but they also shifted in tone and
quality as the children aged, and the magazine was given
different names at different points in time. As a teenager
of fifteen, Amy was enrolled at Brighton High School for Girls,
which had its foundations in the women's rights movement. Brighton
also offered primary school education for boys, and Amy's brothers,

(03:59):
Alfred and Really, attended with her. Amy corresponded with her
family regularly during this time because it was a school
far from home, and her letters offer a glimpse in
a very close family and at her enjoyment of boarding school.
In a brief note to her father, she writes, quote,
dear Papa, I have time before tea to write you
a few lines so that you may not think I

(04:20):
have forgotten you. I wish you would come down with
Mama to see us. It is so very nice here.
You would like to see St. Peter's old church. It
is so curious and antique, But hints of depression also appear,
which is something that echoes throughout her life. In one
letter during this time, she mentions to her mother, quote,
I have quite recovered from the blues, which was horrid

(04:43):
of me to mention. But it's in her letters to
her sister Katie that Amy is really unrestrained, and she
shares her innermost thoughts with her sister. One aspect of
these letters between sisters is what appears to be Amy
Levy's casual mention of her romantic feelings for women. She mentions,
in particular the school's headmistress, Ms. Creek, and refers to

(05:05):
herself as the woman's quote wormy adorer, saying that she
quote bagged a divine passion, inspiring whenever I think of it,
Embraced today at the sanctum door. She continues this discussion
of her crush, writing quote, I am more in love
with her than ever, isn't it grim? I don't believe
it will go for ages, and I can never care

(05:27):
for anyone or anything else while it lasts. I make
such different future pictures to what I used to. You
married maternal with a tendency to laugh at the Plain
High school mistress sister who grinds and lodges with chums
and adores without return. These writings and others from her
time at Brighton offer an image of a young woman

(05:47):
who's really full of wit and opinions and creativity. In
some she writes documents of imagined scenarios, sort of like forgeries,
but she's not actually passing them off to anyone, such
as letters between two people, neither of which are herself.
She also was writing verse at this time, including a
poem which was titled run to Death, and she wrote

(06:07):
that when she was only fifteen. As this title suggests,
run to Death is a grim story, all the more
so for having been written by a teenager. It's subtitled
a true Incident of pre Revolutionary French History, and features
a hunting party of nobles who discover a surprising prey
in the forest. When they look out at what's in

(06:28):
the brush, they find that they're gazing quote at a
something which is crawling with slow step from tree to tree.
Is it some shadow phantom? Ghastly? No? A woman and child,
swarthy woman with the gypsy written clear upon her face,
gazing around her with wide eyes, dark and shadow fringed

(06:49):
and wild, with the cowed suspicious glances of a persecuted race.
Then they all, with unasked question in each other's faces, peer,
for a common thought has struck them one their lips,
dare scarcely say to Lord Gaston, cries impatient, Why regret
the stately dear when such sport as Yonder offers quick

(07:12):
unleashed the dogs away. The last lines of this poem
described the huntsman having finished their cruel chase and killed
the mother and her child, writing in silent shame back
to the manor house, where they then tell the ladies
there what a quote famous hunt they have had that day,
without mention of what they'd actually done. This poem wasn't

(07:34):
published until three years after it was written, when Victoria
magazine picked it up. Amy continued to be a very
productive writer as a teenager. When she was seventeen, she
wrote a letter that was published in the Jewish Chronicle
titled Jewish Women and Women's Rights. In it, themes that
would continue into her professional career are apparent, as she

(07:54):
advocated for professional opportunities for women. Coming up, we're going
to talk about. The poem became one of Levy's most
famous works, even though it was written when she was
still a teenager. But before we get into that, we
will pause for a sponsor break. Amy wrote a poem

(08:19):
while she was still a student at Brighton, right around
the time that Run to Death came out, and this
one conveyed the frustration of Victorian women by relaying the
story of socrates marriage from the perspective of his wife,
zan Tippi. Her name is also the title of the poem,
and in this particular work, which was written as a
dramatic monologue, Xantippi reflects on her life from her deathbed,

(08:42):
and particularly mourns the promise of her youth, when she
was so enthralled with intellectual pursuits, only to have that
part of herself unwelcomed in the marriage. She wrote, yet
maiden's mark. I would not that he thought I blame
my Lord departed, for he meant no evil. So I
take it to his wife. Twas only that the high philosopher,

(09:04):
pregnant with noble theories and great thoughts, deigned not to
stoop to touch so slight a thing as the fine
fabric of a woman's brain, so subtle as a passionate
woman's soul. I think if he had stooped a little
and cared I might have risen nearer to his height,
and not Lane shattered, neither fit for use as goodly
household vessel, nor for that far finer thing which I

(09:27):
had hoped to be. But like run to death, zan
Tippi was not immediately published. The monologue was finished in
eighteen seventy nine, not long before the eighteen year old
Levy enrolled at Newnham College, a women's college at Cambridge University.
This made her the first Jewish woman to attend Newnham
and the second Jewish woman to attend Cambridge. It seems,

(09:50):
based on some of her writing while she was there,
that while she was feeling really elated it once seemed
like a career opening up for her, she may not
have exact really enjoyed her time at Cambridge, or at
least the people who she encountered there. She wrote a
verse play during this time, titled Reading that's set in
sort of a fictionalized Cambridge and features characters named Professor

(10:14):
Ego and Bob Bumptious, who seemed flum mixed by the
women around them. But the men are not the only
targets of her satire. She also has characters named Cornelia
Connex and Janet Garend who ached to be intellectuals, and
while everyone gets a dose of Levy sharp though comedic critique,
it is ultimately men who get the harshest words for

(10:35):
their quote, shallow sentiment, and their treatment of women. Her story,
Leopold Lineager a study, features a main character really grappling
with his Jewish identity, anti Semitism, and self loathing, and
includes this line about his personal revelation quote. What stuns
Leopold into despair is the recognition that one cannot stop

(10:57):
being a Jew, that self transfer, nation, self reinvention is impossible.
Another piece of writing from this time expresses frustration being
a woman who was also a novelty at the university.
Titled Lolly a Cambridge Sketch, The story is told through
two characters. Lolly a daughter of a professor and wrote

(11:18):
to a student, and together these two represent two very
different modes of womanhood. Lolly is a traditional young woman
and Rhota a scholar. Neither of them gets what they want.
Lolly wants a marriage and love, but the object of
her affection chooses Rhoda, and choosing to marry Rhoda has
to give up her studies and access to intellectual fulfillment.

(11:42):
Neither of these writings were published, and a lot of
her writing during her years at Newnham similarly went unpublished.
Much of it was discovered years and years and years later,
written in notebooks, probably never intended for reviewer publication. A
lot of her work, both published and unpublish, is from
this time in her life reflects an artist kind of

(12:03):
working through issues of identity and the ways in which
choices to go down a certain direction in life mean
that other options become unavailable. Similar to those themes in
Lally at Cambridge Sketch, she sometimes wrote from the point
of view of male protagonists, characters which, like Leopold, are
usually filled with self loathing. In one Levy's first book,

(12:24):
Zantippi and Other Verse, was published, and so at nineteen
she was suddenly a well reviewed poet, lauded for her
deft and nimble use of words. She also decided to
leave school that year rather than complete her final year
at Noonham. The reason for this decision is not known.
Biographer Linda Hunt Beckman notes that a surviving fragment of

(12:47):
a letter from earlier in the year mentions that Amy's
recovering from something. It's not clear what, but it may
have been some sort of breakdown or an intense depressive episode.
That letter, though, indicates a plan to return to school
for the summer term, and that's something that she did.
In eight one. The women of Newnham College had also

(13:08):
just been granted the chance to take the exams that
were used to qualify students for a bachelor's degree at Cambridge.
While this was a huge step forward, it also meant
that attendees of Newnham had to take courses that were
prescribed by the school, including ones that Amy was likely
not very interested in. Levy wrote a news article about

(13:31):
this transition and mentioned specifically the quote mathematical classes organized
for unhappy people whose souls are yearning for Plato or mill.
But she also released a book of poetry that had
been very well received, so it's possible that she felt
it was just time for her career as a writer
to start in earnest. Yeah, apparently prior to that they

(13:53):
could have kind of an unstructured, take what you want
approach to their course load. And then when it was like, wait,
I have required courses now, I could see hopping out
at that point, But like I said, we don't know,
but after Cambridge, Levy traveled around Europe, visiting Switzerland and
Germany in particular, several times maintaining a home base of

(14:14):
sorts in London with her parents. She did this for
four years after leaving college, but she was still continuing
her education in her own way, taking courses or lessons
in various cities as opportunities and her interest intersected. She
found work teaching German schoolboys English, but that job was
really over before it started. Her mother forbade it as improper.

(14:37):
She was, however, intent on making her own way financially,
and it seems like there may have been a drop
in the family's fortunes that magnified that desire. Throughout this time,
she wrote to her family regularly, sharing her various experiences
with them, often with the same biting which she used
in her satirical writing. She was back home in London

(14:58):
for most of eighteen eighty three, and although she lived
with her parents during her time there, she was living
an independent life. Most likely because of financial strain. Louis
and Isabelle Levy moved from their home at Sussex Place,
Regent's Park to Ulster Place, Regent's Park and then soon
thereafter to a house in Bloomsbury. While this evidenced a

(15:20):
downgrade in their lifestyle, it also put their residence in
close proximity to the British Museum. Even before the family
had moved so close to it, Amy was a frequent
visitor at the British Museum's reading room and its lunch
room for women. She met a variety of women who
were tied to various progressive movements and social reforms, including

(15:42):
the daughter of Karl Marx who was named Eleanor. Although
she became friends with these women, it doesn't appear that
she was ever drawn into their political efforts. Levy wrote
about the reading room and an essay for Atlanta several
years after this period of her life. That was in
eighty nine, and it was titled Readers at the British Museum.

(16:03):
Levy was also part of an intellectual social club in London,
and members of her family sometimes attended the meetings where
all manner of topics were discussed. The Levy sometimes even
hosted the group in their own home, so it seems
like she had a fairly stable system of friends and
family at this point. She continued her impressive writing pace
after zen Tippie's positive reception, and in eighteen eighty three

(16:26):
she published Between Two Stools. In eighteen eighty four, there
was Socratics in the Strand. Her melancholic work A Minor
Poet and Other Verse was also published in eighteen eighty four.
The contents of this book are really morose in tone.
A lot of them were written while she was visiting Dresden,
and zen Tippi is reprinted in this volume. In eighteen

(16:48):
eighty six, Levy lived abroad for the winter in Florence,
specifically where she traveled with one of her closest friends,
feminist writer Clementina Black. Black wrote in letters during this
time that Amy was getting well, which suggests she was
once again in the midst of a decline in either
her mental or physical health, or both. While in Florence,

(17:08):
Amy worked as a correspondent for the Jewish Chronicle, covering
Jewish life in Italy. In this position, which is usually
discussed as a job that her father had used his
connections to get for her, she wrote articles that were
largely about Jewish identity from a cultural rather than religious standpoint,
and this seems to have been as much an exploration

(17:29):
of her own Jewish identity, as it was the identity
of Italy's Jewish communities. One of the things that she
felt tethered her to the Jewish community was a shared
sense of humor, something she wrote about in an essay
titled Jewish Humor for The Jewish Chronicle. While in Florence,
Levy met Vernon Lee, also known as Violet Paget. We

(17:49):
have an episode on her that as of when we're
recording this, I'm planning to use as a Saturday Classic,
but that's also some weeks from now, so if something
happens Bump Bump, I'll see. Paget had started going by
the name Vernon Lee as a team at that point,
using a man's name and her writings in order to

(18:10):
be taken more seriously. And there has been some speculation
that maybe Lee and Amy Levy were in a relationship.
While Vernon Lee resisted the label of lesbian in her
life despite relationships with women, the nature of the relationship
between Levy and Lee or Paget, which is what Levy
called her, is not entirely certain. There was clearly a

(18:33):
very deep emotional attachment on Levy's part. She wrote love
poems titled to Vernon Lee and New Love, New Life,
and she sent them to Paget, as well as correspondence
that obviously conveys a very intense affection. She addresses all
of her letters to my dear miss Paget and calls
her quote an electric battery to me, suggesting that being

(18:55):
with Paget is where her best creative energy comes from.
When Leavy, after her return to London, wrote that she
couldn't make it back to Florence as planned due to
circumstances of others, most likely a family matter, as her
brother Alfred was ill and passed around this time, Paget
sent her a bouquet of flowers, which she then wrote
about she was so touched by it. New Love, New

(19:17):
Life is a relatively short poem, so we'll read the
whole thing to give a sense of the verse that
Amy was sending to Violet Paget. One she who so
long has lain stone stiff with folded wings within my
heart Again the brown bird wakes and sings, brown nightingale,
whose strain is heard by day by night. She sings

(19:39):
of joy and pain, of sorrow and delight. Two tis true,
and other days have I unbarred the door. He knows
the walks and ways. Love has been here before, Love
blessed and love accursed was here in days long past.
This time is not the first, but this time is

(19:59):
the last. To Vernon Lee is similarly intimate. Although it's ending,
Stanza suggests that perhaps Levy's feelings were unrequited, and that
she knew that, or that she hoped that Paget would
reassure her of some sort of reciprocation, writing quote, A
snowy blackthorn flowered beyond my reach. You broke a branch
and gave it to me. There I found for you

(20:21):
a scarlet blossom rare thereby ran on of art and life,
our speech, and of the gifts the gods had given
each hope. Unto you and unto me despair. Regardless of
whether Vernon Lee and Amy Levy were romantically connected, their
friendship was pivotal to Levy because she, in turn became

(20:43):
acquainted with a new group of creative intellectuals, though there
were some that she had known before becoming friends with
Violet Paget, and perhaps because of this new social set,
the mid to late eighteen eighties were incredibly prolific for Levy,
she wrote all lot. She wrote essays like Women in

(21:03):
club Life and the Poetry of Christina Rosetti, and short stories,
including at Prato and the recent Telepathic Occurrence at the
British Museum. That last title served as a way to
critique the many men who frequented the British Museum reading room,
and we're openly hostile about women being there. And that

(21:25):
male character is so engrossed in his work that he
fails to witness an astonishing appearance of a specter near
the card catalog, which is just right there in plain view.
I sort of love that whole setup so much. Um.
Up to this point, Amy Levy had not published any novels,
although she had worked on at least one that she

(21:46):
eventually abandoned. But her work as a novelist was significant
and ultimately difficult in a variety of ways. And we're
going to talk about that after we hear from the
sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.

(22:07):
Though Levi's Poems and Tippy remains probably her most well
known work, two novels written during this period of her
life largely define her legacy. The first was titled Romance
of a Shop and it is about women choosing unexpected
life paths. Specifically, it tells the story of four sisters
whose father dies, and the story opens just after the father, Mr. Lorimer,

(22:29):
has passed and the four sisters, Fanny, Gertrude, Lucy and
Phyllis are figuring out how they will survive as they
have been left with nothing. The sisters decided to open
a photography studio as a means to take care of
themselves financially, and the plot involves a number of steps
along the path to success for them, including taking post

(22:50):
mortem photographs and photographing works of art. But the story
is really about the lives of the women involved, the
choices they make, and their relationship with the men that
they love. This was well reviewed and it established Levy
as a novelist. After the publication of Romance of a Shop,
Levy visited Florence once again, and she wrote during this

(23:12):
time about a personal melancholy, a heartache over a breakup,
which is considered to have likely been the writer Dorothy Blomfield,
who was another member of Vernon Lee's circle. In January
eight nine, Levy's novel Reuben Sacks was published. This book
quickly became a problem in its reception. The plot revolves

(23:32):
around the titular character that's a lawyer who experienced a
nervous collapse, went away to recuperate, and then returns to
London as the book opens. Although he falls in love
with his cousin Judith, he ultimately rejects her in favor
of a more lucrative match. Judith makes a socially smart
match after losing Reuben, and the novel examines themes of

(23:56):
love and expectation, of Jewish families working to fit into
English society, and of a woman's place and her barriers
to fulfillment. Jewish critics really felt that Levy's work of
prose was a harsh criticism of Jewish life and that
it was riddled with stereotypes. Gentile readers seemed to feel
that it validated every negative stereotype about Jews and saw

(24:18):
it as a sort of expose a from within the community,
and others seemed to just wonder why Amy Levy was
so unkind to the Jewish community. A review in The
Guardian from January eight nine questioned whether Levy's characterization of
Jewish culture wasn't too harsh, opening with quote Jewish writers

(24:38):
cannot be charged with blind partiality to their race. We
have lately had some very pungent description of Jewish foibles,
and here is another picture which gentiles may be permitted
to hope is too cruel for truthfulness, too highly colored
to be just. After all, many of the failings which
miss Levy attributes to her people are common to a

(25:01):
rich and vulgar middle class, who have a certain jealousy
of the class above them because they admire it and
despair of reaching it. Yeah. Yeah, this is kind of
one of those everybody's kind of a jerk in some way.
It's not this shouldn't be about Jewish people. Um. Another
review that was in the Morning Post read quote, there
are a few things more disappointing than to feel as

(25:24):
with the smallest critical faculty, one must that the author
of Reuben Sachs has just missed producing a really clever work.
Ms Levy breaks comparatively new ground in this book, the
personages of which are almost without exception, taken from the
Jewish community in London, which, by the way, can scarcely
be flattered by the rather two somber glasses through which

(25:46):
she elects to view it. Levy's novel was a response
to George Eliot's eighteen seventies six novel Daniel Deronda, which
she felt had romanticized Jews in a deeply unrealistic way.
So she had set out to write a novel which
showed that Jews, like all other humans, are complex, with
both strong and weak points of character. But few readers,

(26:10):
at least initially received it that way, and many Jewish
publications were frank in their assessment that, regardless of what
she intended, her work had the potential to be damaging
to their culture within the larger field of London. When
Ruben Sacks came out, Levy was in Paris. She soon
returned to her parents home in London a few days

(26:30):
after the first bad reviews came out, and it may
seem as though she was hiding out, But while she
may have sought some comfort in the family home, she
was also working on another novel titled Miss Meredith, which
she completed in just six weeks. Ms Meredith was not
so ambitious as Ruben Sacks, and it was written to
appeal to a wider audience. It tells the story of

(26:50):
a young english woman named Elsie Meredith, who moves to
Italy for a governess job, and there is a fairly
predictable romance plot with the family's adult son. Le v
had a lot of social engagements in eighteen eighty nine.
She visited with her siblings and their children regularly, and
she met up with Vernon Lee Ruben Sacks was controversial initially,

(27:11):
but it also made her famous and she made a
lot of new, high profile friends. The short story Cohen
of Trinity came out in May of eighteen eighty nine,
and it kind of reads as a reflection of the
turmoil in Levy's own professional life with the fallout from
Reuben Sacks. It is told from the point of view
of a gentile narrator, describing the character Cohen in very

(27:34):
stereotypical and anti Semitic terms. In this exaggerated lens, Levy
offers an insight into the impossibility of representing Jewish life
and culture. Here, the narrator is doing what she was
accused of doing in Reuben Sacks, and the contrast is obvious.
She also includes the character of Leopold Lineager from her
early work as an example of an anglicized Jew who

(27:57):
finds Cohen as alien. As the gentile Rader does like Levy,
Cohen in this story has written a book that made
him famous, but that is deeply misunderstood. Levy also assembled
another book of poetry in eighty nine that was A
London Plane, Tree and Other Verse. It was dedicated to
her friend Clementina Black. Three of the poems were definitely

(28:20):
written in April and May of that year, as reflected
in her calendar, but it's unclear when she wrote the
other poems. These works reflect a writer who feels somewhat lost,
perhaps and definitely exhausted. The poem End of Day ends
with the lines, oh, sweeter far than strain and stress
is the slow creeping weariness, and better far than thought.

(28:44):
I find the drowsy blankness of the mind more than
all joys of soul or sense. Is this divine indifference,
where grief a shadow grows to be, and peace a possibility.
On September nine, Levy died by suicide. Her cause of
death was recorded as asphyxia from the inhalation of carbonic

(29:06):
oxide gas from the burning of charcoal. She had seen
her sister, Katie and Katie's family just a few days
before her death, and then it spent the next several
days alone before ending her life. Her body was cremated
and interred at Balls Pond Cemetery, a London plane tree
and other verse. Although it was completed had not yet
been published when she died, it was released shortly after that.

(29:30):
It's sometimes tempting to point to the negative reviews of
Ruben Sacks as the catalyst for this tragedy, but really,
like anyone, Levy was dealing with a lot more than that.
She had struggled with her personal life, harboring a belief
that she was unattractive and couldn't find a lasting, fulfilling relationship.
She also had hearing loss and that had progressed, and

(29:52):
of course she had depression throughout her life. That's come
up several times during the episode. Yeah. One of the
most telling pieces of writing about Amy Levy from her
contemporaries is a sort of memorial obituary penned by Oscar
Wilde for Women's World volume three, which wild edited and
which Amy had written for. He wrote very honestly of

(30:13):
her work that he felt might be lacking, but also
praised her deeply, writing especially glowing words about her fiction.
Quote MS. Levies two novels, The Romance of a Shop
and Reuben Sacks were both published last year. The first
is a bright and clever story full of sparkling touches.
The second is a novel that probably no other writer

(30:33):
could have produced. Its directness, it's uncompromising truth, its depth
of feeling, and above all its absence of any single
superfluous word, make it in some sort a classic. Like
all her best work, it is sad, but the sadness
is by no means morbid. The strong undertone of moral
earnestness never preached, gives the stability and force to the

(30:56):
vivid portraiture, and prevents the satiric touches from the generating
into mere malice. Truly, the book is an achievement to write.
Thus at six and twenty is given to very few,
and from the few thus endowed, their readers may safely
hope for yet greater things later on. But later on
has not come for the writer of Reuben Sachs, and

(31:17):
the world must forego the full fruition of her power.
The loss is the world's, but perhaps not hers. She
was never robust, not often actually ill, but seldom well
enough to feel life a joy instead of a burden,
And her work was not poured out lightly, but drawn
drop by drop from the very depth of her own feeling.

(31:37):
We may say of it that it was, in truth
her life's blood. In the weeks following Levy's death, there
was speculation about what had led her to take her
own life that circulated in the press. A lot of
theories were repeated as facts, and finally, her friend Clementine A.
Black stept in to try to set the records straight.
She wrote to the athena Um quote, will you spare

(31:59):
me a few lines? In order to do justice both
to the dead and the living. I have lately learned
that various reports, some exaggerated and some holly untrue, have
been made in various papers concerning the late miss Amy Levy,
and are being largely copied by the provincial press. I
was a close friend of miss Levy for many years,

(32:20):
and my testimony is out of personal knowledge. It is
not true that she never left her father's house otherwise
than on visits to friends or holiday journeys, nor that
she suffered from failing eyesight, nor from the loss of
her sense of humor, nor that she devoted herself to
work in the East End. She did suffer for several
years from slight deafness and from fits of extreme depression,

(32:44):
the result not of unhappy circumstances or of unkind treatment, but,
as those believe who know her best, her lack of
physical robustness and the exhaustion produced by strenuous rain work
most emphatically. It is not true that her family or
her personal friends among the Jewish community treated her coldly

(33:05):
on account of the publication of Ruben Sacks, and thus
indirectly hastened her death. Her parents were justly proud of her.
I cannot imagine anything which would have caused more pain
and indignation to Miss Levy than the circulation of such reports,
and it is in her name that I make this
protest against them. After Levy's death, her family and in

(33:28):
particular her sisters, tried to ensure that her work would
not be forgotten. As late as nineteen thirty two, her
sister Katie reached out to publisher McMillan to see if
there was any interest in Amy's unpublished work. So for
a long time her work faded from view, but in
the late nineteen nineties her papers were auctioned and became
publicly available. Soon after and that really started a new

(33:50):
wave of interest in her work. I'm so glad that
I had this random conversation with my friend Bernadette which
led to this episode. Yeah, I've got things to tack
about on that front and behind menes. Yes, um listen
is a little bit of a downer since she was
We didn't mention it specifically, but she was not quite
twenty eight when she died, so very young. Um and

(34:12):
so I thought I would do two pretty light listener
males that are very to me, funny and sweet. One
is from our listener Mickey, and it is from our
episode about the Exorcism case which inspired The Exorcist, and
he said, let me start out by saying, love your show.
I wanted to share my first experience with the movie

(34:32):
The Exorcist. At the time the movie came out, I
was nine years old. My parents wanted to go to
a drive in movie double feature to see The Exorcist
and could not find a babysitter, so they took me along.
They let me watch the first feature, The Abominable Dr Phebes,
but did not want me to see The Exorcist, so
they made me lay down in the back seat. I
can tell you from personal experience that the sound of

(34:54):
the Exorcist is absolutely terrifying. Thank you for such an
entertaining and informative podcast. UM. I believe it because that movie,
I said in the episode, some of the best sound
design ever, and it is terrifying. So um, but it
will stick with Mickey forever, I'm sure. Our other email

(35:16):
UM is from our listener Steve and writes, Hi, Holly
and Tracy, I really enjoy your show and it keeps
me company on my drive to and from work. I
often bring home interesting tidbits from the show to chat
about during dinner. One of my favorite websites has daily
posts that bring forward eclectic mixes of art, science, and
exceptional photography. November one, it posted a video created by

(35:37):
someone who took out the Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park
and replaced it with a large black cat. It made
me laugh, and I hope it does the same for you,
and he sends the link. I have seen it. My
husband and I watched it about one hundred times, marveling
at how good it was for just a spoofy video,
and laughing and laughing and laughing because it's really quite
good and Uh. Steve mentions if you're worried about hyper lengths,

(35:58):
don't worry about it, but um and that he has
no affiliation with them, but small joys is what life
is all about. And I couldn't agree more. And then
the real reason I wanted to read this he attest
a photo of Jackson, our devon rex. He is a
cuddler who loves to play with paperballs and hair elastics.
Keep safe, Steve, I, UM, I love a Devon rex.

(36:19):
I'm not a breed obsessive person, but if if I am,
that's the breed of cat that I love. Um. All
the Rexis are cute, but there's nothing like a devon
and they are usually very cuddly and very hilarious. So
thank you both to Mickey and Steve for writing us
those funny emails. I am still gazing at this cat

(36:40):
and his little broken whiskers, which I adore. Uh. If
you would like to write to us, you can do
so at History Podcast at i heeart radio dot com.
You can also find us as Missed in History Everywhere
on social media. If you would like to subscribe to
the show and you haven't done that yet, we've made
it super easy You can do that on the IHR
radio app or any where you listen to your favorite podcasts.

(37:07):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of
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