October 2, 2023 • 32 mins
In the space of a decade, Ann Radcliffe married, started writing, and had an incredibly successful career as an author. But after her 1797 novel, she retired, much to the confusion of her readers.
Research:
- Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Ann Radcliffe". Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Jul. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ann-Radcliffe-English-author
- Radcliffe, Ann. “The Romance of the Forest, interspersed with some pieces of poetry.” London. 1824. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64701/pg64701-images.html
- Radcliffe, Ann. “Gaston de Blondeville: Or The Court of Henry III. Keeping Festival in Ardenne, a Romance. St. Alban's Abbey, a Metrical Tale: with Some Poetical Pieces, Volume 1.” H. Colburn. 1826. Accessed online: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=vi03AAAAIAAJ&rdid=book-vi03AAAAIAAJ&rdot=1
- Radcliffe, Ann. “A Journey Made in the Summer of 1794, Through Holland and the Western Frontier of Germany, With a Return Down the Rhine: To Which Are Added Observations During a Tour to the Lakes of Lancashire, Westmoreland and Cumberland, in Two Volumes.” G.G. and Robinson. London. 1795. Accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/62795/pg62795-images.html
- Facer, Ruth. “Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823).” Chawton House Library. 2012. http://www.chawtonhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ann-Radcliffe.pdf
- Dugdale, John. “Happy 250th, Ann Radcliffe.” The Guardian. Oct. 31, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/oct/31/ann-radcliffe-gothic-pioneer-snubbed-horace-walpole-the-castle-of-oronto-250-years-celebrations#:~:text=Another%20250th%20anniversary%2C%20of%20Ann,sent%20up%20in%20Northanger%20Abbey.
- Flood, Allison. “Gothic fiction pioneer Ann Radcliffe may have been inspired by mother-in-law.” The Guardian. Jan. 30, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/30/ann-radcliffe-gothic-fiction-mother-in-law
- McIntyre, Clara Frances. “Anne Radcliffe in Relation to her Time.” Yale University Press. 1920. Accessed online: https://archive.org/details/annradcliffeinre00mcinuoft/page/n3/mode/2up
- “Mr. Radcliffe … “ Sunday Dispatch/ London. October 30, 1825. https://www.newspapers.com/image/813446539/?terms=%22Ann%20Radcliffe%22&match=1
- McKillop, Alan D. “Mrs. Radcliffe on the Supernatural in Poetry.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 31, no. 3, 1932, pp. 352–59. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27703650
- Clarke, N. (2005). Anna Seward: Swan, Duckling or Goose?. In: Batchelor, J., Kaplan, C. (eds) British Women’s Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230595972_3
- Norton, Rictor. “Mistress of Udolpho.” Leicester University Press. 1999.
- Thomas, Donald. “Queen of Terrors.” The Guardian. July 10, 1964. https://www.newspapers.com/image/259612656/?terms=%22Ann%20Radcliffe%22&match=1
- Townshend, D., & Wright, A. (2014). Gothic and Romantic engagements The critical reception of Ann Radcliffe, 1789–1850. In D. Townshend & A. Wright (Eds.), Ann Radcliffe, Romanticism and the Gothic(pp. 3-32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139507448.003
- Schwertfeger, S. 'No spoilers, please': the crux of illustrating the explained Gothic without explaining the mystery. Palgrave Commun3, 16 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-017-0018-z
- Scott, Sir Walter. “The Lives of the Novelists.” London. 1906. Accessed online: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=DXPPAAAAMAAJ&rdid=book-DXPPAAAAMAAJ&rdot=1
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy ve Wilson. Tracy Ann Radcliffe has
been on my list for a long time, I know,
(00:22):
particularly for an October subject. So hooray, we're into the
best season. Because she is considered the sort of the
queen of the Gothic novel, Thomas de Quincy called her
the Great Enchantress. She's been cited as an inspiration and
influence for the likes of Mary Shelley and even Ed
Grellan Poe. She was seriously famous in her lifetime, but
(00:42):
she preferred a quiet life out of the spotlight, and
she doesn't get as much attention as some other authors
that kind of fall in that space of spooky or
eerie fiction. But as I dug into her story, it
also became apparent that it was a little bit tricky
because there are a lot of places you look that
will we don't know anything about her. That's not true,
(01:06):
but there have only been a few modern biographies of
her that really dig into the details of her life,
and it's actually a pretty interesting life, particularly because her
reclusive nature led a lot of people to speculate wildly
about the details of her life, and sometimes all of
that really upset her. So today not only are we
(01:29):
covering her, but I feel like she's one of those
people that's probably due for a two parter. This whole week,
it's Anne Radcliffe Week. In today's episode, we're going to
talk about her early life and her marriage, and her
years actively publishing her work because it's a pretty short timeframe.
Next time, we're going to talk about her retirement and
her death and the ways that historians and biographers are
(01:52):
still piecing together details about her. So. Anne Ward was
born July ninth, seventeen sixty five or in the Holborn
district of London, England. Later in her life she would
cite a book that was published the same year she
was born as one of her main influences. That was
Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. Her family was relatively comfortable financially.
(02:17):
Her father was a haberdasher named William Ward. She was
named after her mother, Anne Oates. Oates was connected to
King George the Second through her uncle William Sheesldon, who
was a king's physician. Ann's mother was also connected to
a number of other high society people through the family,
although the Wards lived a lot more modestly than most
(02:37):
of those other connections. When Anne was still young, sometime
before the end of seventeen seventy two, the family moved
from London to Bath. There, William Ward managed a china
shop that featured Wedgwood, and the Wedgwood Company had an
ownership interest in the shop. We don't really know a
whole lot about Ann's childhood or early a day adulthood.
(03:01):
We do know that she was well read. She was
said to have been so smart and charming that members
of the family who were higher up the social letter
than her parents often invited her to spend time with them.
So she probably met quite a few interesting people at
a young age, although we'll talk about the fact that
she was perhaps charming to people she could open up with,
(03:21):
but she was overall very, very shy. This charm and
delight was particularly the case when she stayed at her uncle,
mister Bentley's house, and this actually ties back to the
Wedgwood involvement in her father's career, because her uncle Bentley
worked with Wedgwood. Biographer Richter Norton makes the case that
Anne may have actually never returned to her parents' home
(03:44):
and may have actually stayed with her uncle long term.
We know that her uncle had an assortment of interesting
friends who may have made an impression on young Anne
and influenced her later work, including separatist theologian Joseph Priestley,
who was featured in our recent episode on carbonation. As
for Anne herself, she's been described as short in stature
(04:05):
and very, very pretty. Her personality was marked by shyness
from the beginning, and that would continue to be the
case for her whole life. She's said to have not
even been comfortable being called an author or talking about
her work publicly. One thing that may have heavily influenced
that work is the degree of formality that she was
exposed to as a guest in the homes of relatives
(04:28):
and family friends who are a lot older. She's almost
always described as really struggling in social situations. She was
a bookish child. She read a lot, and it seems
like a lot of her knowledge of the world came
from her reading rather than formal instruction. In seventeen eighty seven,
Anne married William Radcliffe in Bath. The couple lived in
(04:50):
London after the wedding. William had initially intended to be
a lawyer, and he had studied at Oxford, but he
became a journalist when he became editor of The Gazetteer
and then part owner of the paper, The English Chronicle,
at which point he also assumed editorial duties for that.
As his work kept him away from home, Anne began
to use her time alone to write, and is said
(05:12):
to have read her work of the day to William
each evening. From the start, she wrote things that elicited
the reader's fear. In a biographical memoir written after her passing,
it was said that quote so far was she from
being subjected to her own terrors, that she often laughingly
presented to mister Radcliffe chapters which he could not read
(05:33):
without shuddering. Anne and William did not have children, and
they seem to have been very much in love. Two
years after Anne and William got married, she published her
first novel, which she did anonymously. That book was The
Castles of Athlen and Dunbane. It was really not a
critical success, but it does have a lot of the
characteristics that would become hallmarks of her work. It opens
(05:57):
with two warring Scottish claims associated with the castles that
are named in the title, and there's a woman who
has been widowed by the ongoing conflict and takes her
revenge and then retreats to a quiet life to raise
her two children. The book then picks up years later
when the kids are young adults, and it follows their
(06:17):
exploits which intertwine with the stories of the two clans.
There are a lot of story points that would seem
pretty tropy now, like the child believed to be dead
but actually alive who's reunited with their family as an adult,
and star crossed lovers from enemy families, the discovery of
long term captives within castles, complicated lines of title and
(06:42):
twists of inheritance, and a happy ending. There are also
a lot of flashes of lightning and decaying structures, things
that really evoke a mood of spookiness in their descriptions
and set the scene for this Gothic romance. It also
features one of the things that came to be read
clear signature style of suspense and terror, so some suggesting
(07:04):
that something bad is about to happen, only to have
it be a benign or beneficial thing. For example, in
this first book, The Angenue, Mary is pursued in the woods,
and there's a passage that reads, quote the clattering of
hoofs advanced in the breeze. Her heart misgave her, and
she quickened her pace. Her fears were soon justified. She
looked back and beheld three horsemen, armed and disguised, advancing
(07:27):
with speed of pursuit. Almost fainting, she flew on the
wings of terror. All her efforts were in vain. The
villains came up, one seized her horse, the others fell
upon her. Two attendants, so Mary faints at this point.
There's also a lot of fainting in these books. She
faints at this point, and she was vaguely aware that
she was being carried through the woods. But then when
(07:48):
she regains consciousness, she realized that the people who had
seized her were in fact friends. Another key part of
her writing from the very beginning was detailed descriptions of
lance and settings that created a really ominous or spooky mood.
An observation of the landscape is often part of the
character's psychological development. In a paper written for the Schottenhouse
(08:13):
Library in twenty twelve. Writer Ruth Facer noted, quote Landscape
is always more than a backdrop to her novels. It
is a device through which we come to know her
characters and through which Radcliffe outlines her theories of the
sublime and the picturesque. Anne considered this first novel and
all of her books to be romances. Her second book,
(08:36):
also published anonymously, came out just a year after her first.
This one was titled a Sicilian Romance, and it once
again features a woman from whom choices or property have
been taken away. In this case, the heroine is a
woman named Julia, whose marriage has been arranged by her father,
the Marquis of Mazzini. He is not a sympathetic character
(08:57):
at all, and the reader follows Julia's search for her
lost mother and her love of a man who is
not her fiance as the plot unfolds, and it echoes
a lot of the same ideas as her first novel,
and those ideas that further developed her writing. It also
was not especially well received. For example, a big issue
(09:18):
was that Anne had never visited Scotland, which figured in
her first book, or Italy, which figured in her second,
So her descriptions and details about these places, which were
often just wrong, drew a lot of criticism. Coming up,
we'll talk about Radcliffe's third novel, but first we will
pause for a sponsor break. Anne's third novel was The
(09:48):
Romance of the Forest. The plot of this book, which
is set in France, involves a young woman, Adeline, with
a mysterious past, who ends up in the care of
a couple on the run from their debt. If these
are starting to sound like they all have really complicated,
multi layered plots, that is correct. One of the main
through lines of the book is an examination of morality
and hedonism and what it means to be a refined person.
(10:11):
The villain of the book, for example, the Marquis de
Monte pontificates with the following ideology quote, nature uncontaminated by
false refinement, everywhere acts alike in the great occurrences of life.
It is the first proof of a superior mind to
liberate itself from prejudices of country or of education. There
are people of minds so weak as to shrink from
(10:34):
the acts they have been accustomed to hold wrong. However advantageous,
they never suffer themselves to be guided by circumstances, but
fix for life upon a certain standard from which they
will on no account depart. Self preservation is the great
law of nature. When a reptile hurts us, or an
animal of prey threatens us, we think no further, but
(10:56):
endeavor to annihilate it. When my life, or what may
be essential to my life, requires the sacrifice of another,
or even if some passion wholly unconquerable requires it, I
should be a madman to hesitate. Radcliffe had never been
to France either, so for her descriptions of these settings,
she used paintings by Salvador Rosa and Claude Lorraine as reference.
(11:19):
This really seems to have helped stave off some of
the critique of her earlier work that hadn't been maybe
as accurate. The Romance of the Forest was a huge hit. Initially,
it had been published anonymously, like Radcliffe's first two books,
but when it came time for the second printing, Anne's
name was included as the author. Radcliffe's first three novels
(11:41):
have in common a young character who might be kind
of a self insert for Anne herself. They also have
a sense of being very proper and shy, but also,
they all get happy finales to their stories. Yeah, we're
not doing a ton of literary analysis in these two episodes.
I can certainly throw you to people in the reference
(12:02):
list to a ton of it, but it's worth noting
that she is she does seem to be like making
herself part of the stories. She followed up those first
three with Mysteries of Udolpho, which was released in seventeen
ninety four, and it's very similar in theme and plot
to her previous work. Once again, it features a young
woman protagonist, this time Emily Saint Aubert, who is orphaned
(12:25):
and deals with mistreatment for the people around her. This
particular book involves what is a seemingly haunted castle. That's
the Udolpho of the title. So the word seemingly when
we talk about that Hana castle, is very important here
because this book is really where she comes to full
force with another characteristic of her writing. Her work in
(12:47):
the supernatural and terror is grounded in reality, meaning that
things will seem as though they are haunted or perhaps
not even of this realm, but they always end up
with a rational explanation. Anne is often credited with creating
the style technique that's called supernatural explained for example, in
the Mysteries of Udolpho, the character of Emily is walking
(13:09):
through this very frightening castle which has a great many
pieces of art, and she experiences something that terrifies her.
After she gives in to the temptation to look at
exactly the thing she is so afraid of. That's a
very large frame that's covered with a black veil. Radcliffe
writes of this moment before the veil is lifted, quote,
(13:32):
as she passed through the chambers that led to this,
she found herself somewhat agitated. Its connection with the late
lady of the castle and the conversation of Annette, together
with the circumstance of the veil, throwing a mystery over
the subject that excited a faint degree of terror. But
a terror of this nature, as it occupies and expands
(13:54):
the mind and elevates it to a high expectation, is
purely sublime. Leads us by a kind of fascination to
seek even the object from which we appear to shrink.
So when Emily lifts this veil, she sees so much
more than she anticipated. It is not an artwork at all.
(14:15):
The frame is actually an opening to another room. But
guess what, we the reader do not know what she sees.
Emily falls to the floor she faints. This scene takes
place a little over a third of the way through
the book, and it is not until the end of
the book, as all of the plot lines are resolving,
that we learn what she beheld. This is how it's written.
(14:37):
Of quote. It may be remembered that in a chamber
of Udolpho hung a black veil, whose singular situation had
excited Emily's curiosity, and which afterwards disclosed an object that
had overwhelmed her with horror, for onlifting it, there appeared,
instead of the picture she expected, within a recess of
the wall, a human figure of ghastly paleness, stretched at
(14:59):
it ti length, and dressed in the habiliments of the grave.
What added to the horror of the spectacle was that
the face appeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which
were visible on the features and hands. On such an object,
it will be readily believed that no person could endure
to look twice. Emily, it may be recollected, had after
(15:21):
the first glance, let the veil drop, and her terror
had prevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of
such suffering as she had then experienced. Had she dared
to look again, her delusion and her fears would have
vanished together, and she would have perceived that the figure
before her was not human but formed of wax. So
(15:41):
this character of Emily had spent the whole book believing
that Signor Montoni, who lived in the castle, had murdered
his wife and then concealed her body in this recessed area.
The reason that the odd wax figurine is actually what's
there has its own odd story woven into the text quote.
(16:03):
The history of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example.
In the records of that fierce severity which Monkish superstition
has sometimes inflicted on mankind, a member of the House
of Udolpho, having committed some offense against the prerogative of
the Church, had been condemned to the penance of contemplating
(16:24):
during certain hours of the day a waxen image made
to resemble a human body in the state to which
it is reduced after death. This penance, serving as a
memento of the condition which he must himself arrive, had
been designed to reprove the pride of the Marquis of Udolpho,
which had formerly so much exasperated that of the Romish Church.
(16:49):
And he had not only superstitiously observed this penance himself,
which he had believed was to obtain a pardon for
all his sins, but had made it a condition and
his will that his descendants should preserve the image on
pain of forfeiting to the Church a certain part of
his domain, so they also might profit by the humiliating
(17:12):
moral it conveyed. The figure therefore had been suffered to
retain its station in the wall of the chamber, but
his descendants excused themselves from observing the penance to which
he had been enjoined. So, I mean, this is maybe
a weird thing to do, but it's not supernatural. Yeah,
(17:33):
we keep a wax figure in the adjoining wall to
remind us that death is coming. Yeah, but we keep
it covered up because we didn't actually get that penance
to have to go look at it. Yeah, the church,
the Church made us do it. This also brings up
that a lot of ants writing is considered to be
critical of the Roman Catholic Church. This is kind of
(17:55):
one of them. Just FYI. This book was very popular.
Radcliffe ultimately sold the copyright for it for five hundred pounds.
That was an immense sum for a writer at the time.
For comparison, other novelists that I read about were frequently
getting ten pounds for the rights to their books. So
(18:15):
this number was so outrageous for many people to consider
that bets were being placed by people that were connected
to publishing. As to whether it had been reported correctly
or not, Sir Walter Scott later wrote of the publication
of this book, quote, it often happens that a writer's
previous reputation proves the greatest enemy, which, in a second
(18:36):
attempt upon public favor he has to encounter. Exaggerated expectations
are excited and circulated, and criticism, which had been seduced
into former approbation by the pleasure of surprise, now stands
awakened and alert to pounce upon every failing missus. Radcliffe's popularity, however,
(18:57):
stood the test and was heightened rather than diminished by
the mysteries of Udolpho. It had become apparent that while
most Gothic fiction and romance was considered to have a
specific audience, that being women, that Anne's work had gained
a wider appeal. In his biography of Radcliffe, historian Richter
Norton notes that often fiction was purchased by ladies of
(19:19):
a certain station, and then those books would be passed
down to women on their staff to read, and thus
Anne gained this devoted following. But in a biography written
in eighteen twenty six, there is mention of the headmaster
of the Winchester School, doctor Joseph Wharton, telling Anne's publisher,
that he had stumbled across the book and had read
it in an evening because he simply couldn't put it down.
(19:41):
So part of the reason her copyright was so valuable
and worth so much money was that her work was
crossing through a lot of the usual audience boundaries that
fiction and particuarly romantic fiction was partitioned by. There is
also a unique lack of change in Anne's lifestyle as
she gained fame. She easily could have started to move
within high society circles as a celebrity, but she really didn't.
(20:06):
In a likely overdramatized assessment of the situation, one biographer wrote, quote,
the very thought of appearing in person as the author
of her romances, shocked the delicacy of her mind to
the publication of her work. She was constrained by the
force of her own genius, but nothing could tempt her
to publish herself or to sink for a moment the
(20:27):
gentlewoman in the novelist. She felt also a distaste to
the increasing familiarity of modern manners to which she had
been unaccustomed in her youth, and though remarkable, free and
cheerful with her relatives and intimate friends, she preferred the
more formal politeness of the old school among strangers. So
(20:48):
that's taken from a biography that was written shortly after
her death, probably informed by consultation with her husband. But
it's worth noting that for a thing not written by
Anne herself, it makes all lot of declarative statements about
her feelings. Yeah, we'll talk more about that biography. We're
about to get to Anne's one and only time traveling abroad,
(21:13):
and before we get into that, we will hear from
the sponsors that keep the show going. In seventeen ninety four,
at the age of thirty, and left England for the
first time in her life. Even though she had written
(21:34):
all of her stories in foreign locales. She had never
traveled abroad herself, but that year she went to Holland
in Germany. In seventeen ninety five, a book about her
adventures was published, titled A Journey Made in the Summer
of seventeen ninety four through Holland and the Western frontier
of Germany, with a return down the Rhine, to which
(21:54):
are added observations during a tour to the lakes of Lancashire,
Westmoreland and Cumberland in two volumes. The opening of the
book is not about the traveling at all, but about
her husband, William quote the author begs leave to observe
an explanation of the use made of the plural term
in the following pages, that her journey having been performed
(22:16):
in the company of her nearest relative and friend, the
account of it has been written so much from their
mutual observation that there would be a deception in permitting
the books to appear without some acknowledgment which may distinguish
it from works entirely her own. The title page would
therefore have contained the joint names of her husband and
(22:37):
herself if this mode of appearing before the public. Besides
being thought by that relative a greater acknowledgment than was due.
His share of the work had not seemed liable to
the imputation of a design to attract attention by extraordinary novelty.
It is, however, necessary to her own satisfaction, that some
(22:58):
notice should be taken of this. Assis stints, sort of sweet.
My publisher doesn't want me to put my husband's name
on the book, but he totally helped you guys. It's
really really sweet. In seventeen ninety seven, Radcliffe released the
last work of fiction to be published in her lifetime.
That was a book called The Italian. There is a
posthumous book that we will talk about a little bit later.
(23:21):
The tall, thin monk in the book, named Scadoni, is
a representation of the Inquisition. He is the villain of
the piece. The hero is a man named Vivaldi who
intends to marry a woman his family does not approve of. Scadoni,
and Vivaldi's mother planned to kidnap Vivaldi and lock him
away to keep him from his love Elena. Like her
(23:43):
previous book, anseld the copyright for The Italian, this time
for eight hundred pounds. Sir Walter Scott wrote of this effort, quote,
here too, the author had, with much judgment, taken such
a difference, that, while employing her own particular talent and
painting in the style of which she may be considered
the inventor, she cannot be charged with repeating or copying herself.
(24:06):
She selected the new and powerful machinery afforded her by
the Popish religion, which established in its paramount superiority, and
thereby had at her disposal merks, spies, dungeons, the mute
obedience of the bigot, the dark and dominating spirit of
the crafty priest, all the thunders of the Vatican, and
(24:27):
all the terrors of the Inquisition. He also leveled criticism
at the work, writing quote, on reconsidering the narrative, we
indeed discover that many of the incidents are imperfectly explained,
and that we can distinguish points upon which the authoress
had doubtless intended to lay the foundation of something which
(24:47):
she afterwards forgot or omitted. Though she largely stopped writing
fiction after the release of The Italian Radcliffe continued to
write throughout her life, turning largely to poetry. She had
been so successful as a writer that it seemed surprising
to her audience that she just stopped publishing. But Anne
(25:08):
did that thing that so many of us talk about
and never actually get to do. She made enough money
to live comfortably, and then she also inherited a little
bit of money, and then she used her time to
travel around Britain with her husband and their dog Chance.
She loved music, She attended the opera regularly. She just
lived what sounds like a pretty great life of retirement.
(25:31):
But there are many angles and theories about why she
stopped publishing, both during her time and in more modern
looks at her life. We will talk about those and
a distressing event that came to her attention after she
had retired. Next time done, Dun Dunn. I have a
(25:51):
very fun email that also comes with a personal story afterwards.
Because the email is great and it reminded me of
something and then I couldn't stop laughing. This is from
our listener, Kate and the absolutely Gorgeous Coco. Kate writes, Hi,
Holly and Tracy, I'm catching up on episodes and just
listen to the one on Sunscreen. My family spends lots
(26:13):
of time outdoors and we all love upf clothing as
added protection when we inevitably forget to reapply our sunscreen.
Animals included. My horse, Coco is a Pinto with very
sensitive pink skin under all her white hair. I thought
you might get a giggle from these photos of her
decked out in her upf sheet and mass to protect
from sunburn and flies with her mule buddies Molly and Clover.
(26:36):
The muzzle over Coco's nose is to limit the amount
of grass she can eat, as she also has a
tendency to get a bit chunky. Altogether, it looks like
she's ready for a spacewalk or something. On another subject,
I meant to write about ages ago milkweed. I love
gardening and supporting pollinators, but urged caution. With spreading milk
weed seeds around, it's often fatal to horses. As little
(26:58):
as zero points zero zero five percent body weight consumption
considered a toxic dose. Horses eat about two percent of
their bodyweight a day. For reference, we battle many toxic
plants in our pastures, milkweed and other podcast subject whilst
snakeroot among them. Thanks for all the entertaining and informative
episodes they make Farm chores much more enjoyable. Katie and Coco. Okay,
(27:18):
Coco's the cutest thing on the planet. I saw this email,
I was so excited. I love it. I did not
know that about milkweed at all, so I'm super glad.
She included that you may recall when we talked about butterflies,
we had suggested that milkweed will help with their habitats.
So if you do plant milkweed, be careful and try
to keep it places where a horse would not be.
(27:40):
Ours is in a like a big garden tub in
the on the deck, so I don't think a horse
would get up there. If it did, there are other
problems going on. But this is why this made me
laugh so hard. And it's a personal story that has
nothing to do with this show, but it's so funny
that I felt like I should share it. So we
used to have a we have talked about on the
(28:00):
show many times, mister Burns, who was a Devin Rex,
which means he has short, curly hair and he has
he had coat break on his tummy, so his tummy
was pretty much just his bald skin. And I also
used to write trying to think of the most careful
way I can ward all of this so no one
(28:22):
gets mad at me. I used to write sewing blogs
for a big company like Little how To's, and one
of the ones that I wrote was a little T
shirt you could make for a cat, because I had
made a T shirt for mister Burns which was very
cute and he loved it. And I got so much
(28:44):
hate mail from that blog because people told me I
was abusing my cat and it cracked me up because
I eventually had to post on like that company's social media,
mister Burns gets sunburns on his tell me he actually
needs to wear some club right, But everyone thought I
was a horrible animal abuser. So listen. The internet is
(29:10):
full of people who want to tell you what to
do and be mad at you. But what I want
to tell you what to do is keep loving Cocos
a cute yeah, ever, very cute. And I'm so thankful
that you know she has a great life and is
being incredibly well caredful obviously, so Cocoa, you sweet baby.
And you know some animals get sunburns. They I don't
(29:32):
think people think about that very often, Like we think
animals are natural creatures that live in nature. They have
all their stuff sorted out by evolution. No, not necessarily.
There are animals that can get sunburns and all kinds
of stuff. I had the cat that I grew up with,
who was an outdoor cat, which is not something I
(29:52):
would do now, got a sunburn on her nose and
U It was actually pretty scary because we didn't really
know what was happening at first. It was like she
kept re irritating it. So yeah, yeah, mister burns indoor only.
But he would lie on his back. He really loved
(30:13):
to be hot, and he would lie on his back
with his legs splayed out, with his tummy exposed and
the sun the sun in front of what was in
our old apartment, a sliding glass door that did not
really have like a UV coating on it, And he
got sunburn once, and I was like, okay, we got
to address this problem. There are lots of breeds of
(30:33):
cats that have low coat or our hairless often have
to deal with sun protection. So stephoy ie. If you
see an animal in clothes, it doesn't necessarily mean that
their person is abusing them. It's also just fine. In general.
I wish we as a society would like pull back
on this practice that I feel like has has really
(30:55):
spread through social media of always making the least like,
the least generous, most critical interpretation of every conceivable thing. Yes,
I would like it if we as a society did
not do that anymore and instead maybe extended people that
would not even the benefit of the doubt, like you
(31:17):
just don't even need to go scream at that stranger
on the internet about that shirt that they made. How
will they not know? And that I know better than
everyone if I don't yell at them online. Anyway, this
turned into a PSA you may not have been expecting
at the end of Anne Radcliffe, but here we are.
If you would like to write to us, maybe tell
me I abused mister Burns by putting a T shirt
(31:39):
on him. Listen, that thing was black, it had pink stars.
He felt very pretty. You could do that as at
History podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also find
us on social media as missed in History, and if
you have not subscribed to this show yet, we encourage
you to do that. You can do that on the
iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(32:02):
Stuff you missed in History class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy ve Wilson. Tracy Ann Radcliffe has
been on my list for a long time, I know,
(00:22):
particularly for an October subject. So hooray, we're into the
best season. Because she is considered the sort of the
queen of the Gothic novel, Thomas de Quincy called her
the Great Enchantress. She's been cited as an inspiration and
influence for the likes of Mary Shelley and even Ed
Grellan Poe. She was seriously famous in her lifetime, but
(00:42):
she preferred a quiet life out of the spotlight, and
she doesn't get as much attention as some other authors
that kind of fall in that space of spooky or
eerie fiction. But as I dug into her story, it
also became apparent that it was a little bit tricky
because there are a lot of places you look that
will we don't know anything about her. That's not true,
(01:06):
but there have only been a few modern biographies of
her that really dig into the details of her life,
and it's actually a pretty interesting life, particularly because her
reclusive nature led a lot of people to speculate wildly
about the details of her life, and sometimes all of
that really upset her. So today not only are we
(01:29):
covering her, but I feel like she's one of those
people that's probably due for a two parter. This whole week,
it's Anne Radcliffe Week. In today's episode, we're going to
talk about her early life and her marriage, and her
years actively publishing her work because it's a pretty short timeframe.
Next time, we're going to talk about her retirement and
her death and the ways that historians and biographers are
(01:52):
still piecing together details about her. So. Anne Ward was
born July ninth, seventeen sixty five or in the Holborn
district of London, England. Later in her life she would
cite a book that was published the same year she
was born as one of her main influences. That was
Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. Her family was relatively comfortable financially.
(02:17):
Her father was a haberdasher named William Ward. She was
named after her mother, Anne Oates. Oates was connected to
King George the Second through her uncle William Sheesldon, who
was a king's physician. Ann's mother was also connected to
a number of other high society people through the family,
although the Wards lived a lot more modestly than most
(02:37):
of those other connections. When Anne was still young, sometime
before the end of seventeen seventy two, the family moved
from London to Bath. There, William Ward managed a china
shop that featured Wedgwood, and the Wedgwood Company had an
ownership interest in the shop. We don't really know a
whole lot about Ann's childhood or early a day adulthood.
(03:01):
We do know that she was well read. She was
said to have been so smart and charming that members
of the family who were higher up the social letter
than her parents often invited her to spend time with them.
So she probably met quite a few interesting people at
a young age, although we'll talk about the fact that
she was perhaps charming to people she could open up with,
(03:21):
but she was overall very, very shy. This charm and
delight was particularly the case when she stayed at her uncle,
mister Bentley's house, and this actually ties back to the
Wedgwood involvement in her father's career, because her uncle Bentley
worked with Wedgwood. Biographer Richter Norton makes the case that
Anne may have actually never returned to her parents' home
(03:44):
and may have actually stayed with her uncle long term.
We know that her uncle had an assortment of interesting
friends who may have made an impression on young Anne
and influenced her later work, including separatist theologian Joseph Priestley,
who was featured in our recent episode on carbonation. As
for Anne herself, she's been described as short in stature
(04:05):
and very, very pretty. Her personality was marked by shyness
from the beginning, and that would continue to be the
case for her whole life. She's said to have not
even been comfortable being called an author or talking about
her work publicly. One thing that may have heavily influenced
that work is the degree of formality that she was
exposed to as a guest in the homes of relatives
(04:28):
and family friends who are a lot older. She's almost
always described as really struggling in social situations. She was
a bookish child. She read a lot, and it seems
like a lot of her knowledge of the world came
from her reading rather than formal instruction. In seventeen eighty seven,
Anne married William Radcliffe in Bath. The couple lived in
(04:50):
London after the wedding. William had initially intended to be
a lawyer, and he had studied at Oxford, but he
became a journalist when he became editor of The Gazetteer
and then part owner of the paper, The English Chronicle,
at which point he also assumed editorial duties for that.
As his work kept him away from home, Anne began
to use her time alone to write, and is said
(05:12):
to have read her work of the day to William
each evening. From the start, she wrote things that elicited
the reader's fear. In a biographical memoir written after her passing,
it was said that quote so far was she from
being subjected to her own terrors, that she often laughingly
presented to mister Radcliffe chapters which he could not read
(05:33):
without shuddering. Anne and William did not have children, and
they seem to have been very much in love. Two
years after Anne and William got married, she published her
first novel, which she did anonymously. That book was The
Castles of Athlen and Dunbane. It was really not a
critical success, but it does have a lot of the
characteristics that would become hallmarks of her work. It opens
(05:57):
with two warring Scottish claims associated with the castles that
are named in the title, and there's a woman who
has been widowed by the ongoing conflict and takes her
revenge and then retreats to a quiet life to raise
her two children. The book then picks up years later
when the kids are young adults, and it follows their
(06:17):
exploits which intertwine with the stories of the two clans.
There are a lot of story points that would seem
pretty tropy now, like the child believed to be dead
but actually alive who's reunited with their family as an adult,
and star crossed lovers from enemy families, the discovery of
long term captives within castles, complicated lines of title and
(06:42):
twists of inheritance, and a happy ending. There are also
a lot of flashes of lightning and decaying structures, things
that really evoke a mood of spookiness in their descriptions
and set the scene for this Gothic romance. It also
features one of the things that came to be read
clear signature style of suspense and terror, so some suggesting
(07:04):
that something bad is about to happen, only to have
it be a benign or beneficial thing. For example, in
this first book, The Angenue, Mary is pursued in the woods,
and there's a passage that reads, quote the clattering of
hoofs advanced in the breeze. Her heart misgave her, and
she quickened her pace. Her fears were soon justified. She
looked back and beheld three horsemen, armed and disguised, advancing
(07:27):
with speed of pursuit. Almost fainting, she flew on the
wings of terror. All her efforts were in vain. The
villains came up, one seized her horse, the others fell
upon her. Two attendants, so Mary faints at this point.
There's also a lot of fainting in these books. She
faints at this point, and she was vaguely aware that
she was being carried through the woods. But then when
(07:48):
she regains consciousness, she realized that the people who had
seized her were in fact friends. Another key part of
her writing from the very beginning was detailed descriptions of
lance and settings that created a really ominous or spooky mood.
An observation of the landscape is often part of the
character's psychological development. In a paper written for the Schottenhouse
(08:13):
Library in twenty twelve. Writer Ruth Facer noted, quote Landscape
is always more than a backdrop to her novels. It
is a device through which we come to know her
characters and through which Radcliffe outlines her theories of the
sublime and the picturesque. Anne considered this first novel and
all of her books to be romances. Her second book,
(08:36):
also published anonymously, came out just a year after her first.
This one was titled a Sicilian Romance, and it once
again features a woman from whom choices or property have
been taken away. In this case, the heroine is a
woman named Julia, whose marriage has been arranged by her father,
the Marquis of Mazzini. He is not a sympathetic character
(08:57):
at all, and the reader follows Julia's search for her
lost mother and her love of a man who is
not her fiance as the plot unfolds, and it echoes
a lot of the same ideas as her first novel,
and those ideas that further developed her writing. It also
was not especially well received. For example, a big issue
(09:18):
was that Anne had never visited Scotland, which figured in
her first book, or Italy, which figured in her second,
So her descriptions and details about these places, which were
often just wrong, drew a lot of criticism. Coming up,
we'll talk about Radcliffe's third novel, but first we will
pause for a sponsor break. Anne's third novel was The
(09:48):
Romance of the Forest. The plot of this book, which
is set in France, involves a young woman, Adeline, with
a mysterious past, who ends up in the care of
a couple on the run from their debt. If these
are starting to sound like they all have really complicated,
multi layered plots, that is correct. One of the main
through lines of the book is an examination of morality
and hedonism and what it means to be a refined person.
(10:11):
The villain of the book, for example, the Marquis de
Monte pontificates with the following ideology quote, nature uncontaminated by
false refinement, everywhere acts alike in the great occurrences of life.
It is the first proof of a superior mind to
liberate itself from prejudices of country or of education. There
are people of minds so weak as to shrink from
(10:34):
the acts they have been accustomed to hold wrong. However advantageous,
they never suffer themselves to be guided by circumstances, but
fix for life upon a certain standard from which they
will on no account depart. Self preservation is the great
law of nature. When a reptile hurts us, or an
animal of prey threatens us, we think no further, but
(10:56):
endeavor to annihilate it. When my life, or what may
be essential to my life, requires the sacrifice of another,
or even if some passion wholly unconquerable requires it, I
should be a madman to hesitate. Radcliffe had never been
to France either, so for her descriptions of these settings,
she used paintings by Salvador Rosa and Claude Lorraine as reference.
(11:19):
This really seems to have helped stave off some of
the critique of her earlier work that hadn't been maybe
as accurate. The Romance of the Forest was a huge hit. Initially,
it had been published anonymously, like Radcliffe's first two books,
but when it came time for the second printing, Anne's
name was included as the author. Radcliffe's first three novels
(11:41):
have in common a young character who might be kind
of a self insert for Anne herself. They also have
a sense of being very proper and shy, but also,
they all get happy finales to their stories. Yeah, we're
not doing a ton of literary analysis in these two episodes.
I can certainly throw you to people in the reference
(12:02):
list to a ton of it, but it's worth noting
that she is she does seem to be like making
herself part of the stories. She followed up those first
three with Mysteries of Udolpho, which was released in seventeen
ninety four, and it's very similar in theme and plot
to her previous work. Once again, it features a young
woman protagonist, this time Emily Saint Aubert, who is orphaned
(12:25):
and deals with mistreatment for the people around her. This
particular book involves what is a seemingly haunted castle. That's
the Udolpho of the title. So the word seemingly when
we talk about that Hana castle, is very important here
because this book is really where she comes to full
force with another characteristic of her writing. Her work in
(12:47):
the supernatural and terror is grounded in reality, meaning that
things will seem as though they are haunted or perhaps
not even of this realm, but they always end up
with a rational explanation. Anne is often credited with creating
the style technique that's called supernatural explained for example, in
the Mysteries of Udolpho, the character of Emily is walking
(13:09):
through this very frightening castle which has a great many
pieces of art, and she experiences something that terrifies her.
After she gives in to the temptation to look at
exactly the thing she is so afraid of. That's a
very large frame that's covered with a black veil. Radcliffe
writes of this moment before the veil is lifted, quote,
(13:32):
as she passed through the chambers that led to this,
she found herself somewhat agitated. Its connection with the late
lady of the castle and the conversation of Annette, together
with the circumstance of the veil, throwing a mystery over
the subject that excited a faint degree of terror. But
a terror of this nature, as it occupies and expands
(13:54):
the mind and elevates it to a high expectation, is
purely sublime. Leads us by a kind of fascination to
seek even the object from which we appear to shrink.
So when Emily lifts this veil, she sees so much
more than she anticipated. It is not an artwork at all.
(14:15):
The frame is actually an opening to another room. But
guess what, we the reader do not know what she sees.
Emily falls to the floor she faints. This scene takes
place a little over a third of the way through
the book, and it is not until the end of
the book, as all of the plot lines are resolving,
that we learn what she beheld. This is how it's written.
(14:37):
Of quote. It may be remembered that in a chamber
of Udolpho hung a black veil, whose singular situation had
excited Emily's curiosity, and which afterwards disclosed an object that
had overwhelmed her with horror, for onlifting it, there appeared,
instead of the picture she expected, within a recess of
the wall, a human figure of ghastly paleness, stretched at
(14:59):
it ti length, and dressed in the habiliments of the grave.
What added to the horror of the spectacle was that
the face appeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which
were visible on the features and hands. On such an object,
it will be readily believed that no person could endure
to look twice. Emily, it may be recollected, had after
(15:21):
the first glance, let the veil drop, and her terror
had prevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of
such suffering as she had then experienced. Had she dared
to look again, her delusion and her fears would have
vanished together, and she would have perceived that the figure
before her was not human but formed of wax. So
(15:41):
this character of Emily had spent the whole book believing
that Signor Montoni, who lived in the castle, had murdered
his wife and then concealed her body in this recessed area.
The reason that the odd wax figurine is actually what's
there has its own odd story woven into the text quote.
(16:03):
The history of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example.
In the records of that fierce severity which Monkish superstition
has sometimes inflicted on mankind, a member of the House
of Udolpho, having committed some offense against the prerogative of
the Church, had been condemned to the penance of contemplating
(16:24):
during certain hours of the day a waxen image made
to resemble a human body in the state to which
it is reduced after death. This penance, serving as a
memento of the condition which he must himself arrive, had
been designed to reprove the pride of the Marquis of Udolpho,
which had formerly so much exasperated that of the Romish Church.
(16:49):
And he had not only superstitiously observed this penance himself,
which he had believed was to obtain a pardon for
all his sins, but had made it a condition and
his will that his descendants should preserve the image on
pain of forfeiting to the Church a certain part of
his domain, so they also might profit by the humiliating
(17:12):
moral it conveyed. The figure therefore had been suffered to
retain its station in the wall of the chamber, but
his descendants excused themselves from observing the penance to which
he had been enjoined. So, I mean, this is maybe
a weird thing to do, but it's not supernatural. Yeah,
(17:33):
we keep a wax figure in the adjoining wall to
remind us that death is coming. Yeah, but we keep
it covered up because we didn't actually get that penance
to have to go look at it. Yeah, the church,
the Church made us do it. This also brings up
that a lot of ants writing is considered to be
critical of the Roman Catholic Church. This is kind of
(17:55):
one of them. Just FYI. This book was very popular.
Radcliffe ultimately sold the copyright for it for five hundred pounds.
That was an immense sum for a writer at the time.
For comparison, other novelists that I read about were frequently
getting ten pounds for the rights to their books. So
(18:15):
this number was so outrageous for many people to consider
that bets were being placed by people that were connected
to publishing. As to whether it had been reported correctly
or not, Sir Walter Scott later wrote of the publication
of this book, quote, it often happens that a writer's
previous reputation proves the greatest enemy, which, in a second
(18:36):
attempt upon public favor he has to encounter. Exaggerated expectations
are excited and circulated, and criticism, which had been seduced
into former approbation by the pleasure of surprise, now stands
awakened and alert to pounce upon every failing missus. Radcliffe's popularity, however,
(18:57):
stood the test and was heightened rather than diminished by
the mysteries of Udolpho. It had become apparent that while
most Gothic fiction and romance was considered to have a
specific audience, that being women, that Anne's work had gained
a wider appeal. In his biography of Radcliffe, historian Richter
Norton notes that often fiction was purchased by ladies of
(19:19):
a certain station, and then those books would be passed
down to women on their staff to read, and thus
Anne gained this devoted following. But in a biography written
in eighteen twenty six, there is mention of the headmaster
of the Winchester School, doctor Joseph Wharton, telling Anne's publisher,
that he had stumbled across the book and had read
it in an evening because he simply couldn't put it down.
(19:41):
So part of the reason her copyright was so valuable
and worth so much money was that her work was
crossing through a lot of the usual audience boundaries that
fiction and particuarly romantic fiction was partitioned by. There is
also a unique lack of change in Anne's lifestyle as
she gained fame. She easily could have started to move
within high society circles as a celebrity, but she really didn't.
(20:06):
In a likely overdramatized assessment of the situation, one biographer wrote, quote,
the very thought of appearing in person as the author
of her romances, shocked the delicacy of her mind to
the publication of her work. She was constrained by the
force of her own genius, but nothing could tempt her
to publish herself or to sink for a moment the
(20:27):
gentlewoman in the novelist. She felt also a distaste to
the increasing familiarity of modern manners to which she had
been unaccustomed in her youth, and though remarkable, free and
cheerful with her relatives and intimate friends, she preferred the
more formal politeness of the old school among strangers. So
(20:48):
that's taken from a biography that was written shortly after
her death, probably informed by consultation with her husband. But
it's worth noting that for a thing not written by
Anne herself, it makes all lot of declarative statements about
her feelings. Yeah, we'll talk more about that biography. We're
about to get to Anne's one and only time traveling abroad,
(21:13):
and before we get into that, we will hear from
the sponsors that keep the show going. In seventeen ninety four,
at the age of thirty, and left England for the
first time in her life. Even though she had written
(21:34):
all of her stories in foreign locales. She had never
traveled abroad herself, but that year she went to Holland
in Germany. In seventeen ninety five, a book about her
adventures was published, titled A Journey Made in the Summer
of seventeen ninety four through Holland and the Western frontier
of Germany, with a return down the Rhine, to which
(21:54):
are added observations during a tour to the lakes of Lancashire,
Westmoreland and Cumberland in two volumes. The opening of the
book is not about the traveling at all, but about
her husband, William quote the author begs leave to observe
an explanation of the use made of the plural term
in the following pages, that her journey having been performed
(22:16):
in the company of her nearest relative and friend, the
account of it has been written so much from their
mutual observation that there would be a deception in permitting
the books to appear without some acknowledgment which may distinguish
it from works entirely her own. The title page would
therefore have contained the joint names of her husband and
(22:37):
herself if this mode of appearing before the public. Besides
being thought by that relative a greater acknowledgment than was due.
His share of the work had not seemed liable to
the imputation of a design to attract attention by extraordinary novelty.
It is, however, necessary to her own satisfaction, that some
(22:58):
notice should be taken of this. Assis stints, sort of sweet.
My publisher doesn't want me to put my husband's name
on the book, but he totally helped you guys. It's
really really sweet. In seventeen ninety seven, Radcliffe released the
last work of fiction to be published in her lifetime.
That was a book called The Italian. There is a
posthumous book that we will talk about a little bit later.
(23:21):
The tall, thin monk in the book, named Scadoni, is
a representation of the Inquisition. He is the villain of
the piece. The hero is a man named Vivaldi who
intends to marry a woman his family does not approve of. Scadoni,
and Vivaldi's mother planned to kidnap Vivaldi and lock him
away to keep him from his love Elena. Like her
(23:43):
previous book, anseld the copyright for The Italian, this time
for eight hundred pounds. Sir Walter Scott wrote of this effort, quote,
here too, the author had, with much judgment, taken such
a difference, that, while employing her own particular talent and
painting in the style of which she may be considered
the inventor, she cannot be charged with repeating or copying herself.
(24:06):
She selected the new and powerful machinery afforded her by
the Popish religion, which established in its paramount superiority, and
thereby had at her disposal merks, spies, dungeons, the mute
obedience of the bigot, the dark and dominating spirit of
the crafty priest, all the thunders of the Vatican, and
(24:27):
all the terrors of the Inquisition. He also leveled criticism
at the work, writing quote, on reconsidering the narrative, we
indeed discover that many of the incidents are imperfectly explained,
and that we can distinguish points upon which the authoress
had doubtless intended to lay the foundation of something which
(24:47):
she afterwards forgot or omitted. Though she largely stopped writing
fiction after the release of The Italian Radcliffe continued to
write throughout her life, turning largely to poetry. She had
been so successful as a writer that it seemed surprising
to her audience that she just stopped publishing. But Anne
(25:08):
did that thing that so many of us talk about
and never actually get to do. She made enough money
to live comfortably, and then she also inherited a little
bit of money, and then she used her time to
travel around Britain with her husband and their dog Chance.
She loved music, She attended the opera regularly. She just
lived what sounds like a pretty great life of retirement.
(25:31):
But there are many angles and theories about why she
stopped publishing, both during her time and in more modern
looks at her life. We will talk about those and
a distressing event that came to her attention after she
had retired. Next time done, Dun Dunn. I have a
(25:51):
very fun email that also comes with a personal story afterwards.
Because the email is great and it reminded me of
something and then I couldn't stop laughing. This is from
our listener, Kate and the absolutely Gorgeous Coco. Kate writes, Hi,
Holly and Tracy, I'm catching up on episodes and just
listen to the one on Sunscreen. My family spends lots
(26:13):
of time outdoors and we all love upf clothing as
added protection when we inevitably forget to reapply our sunscreen.
Animals included. My horse, Coco is a Pinto with very
sensitive pink skin under all her white hair. I thought
you might get a giggle from these photos of her
decked out in her upf sheet and mass to protect
from sunburn and flies with her mule buddies Molly and Clover.
(26:36):
The muzzle over Coco's nose is to limit the amount
of grass she can eat, as she also has a
tendency to get a bit chunky. Altogether, it looks like
she's ready for a spacewalk or something. On another subject,
I meant to write about ages ago milkweed. I love
gardening and supporting pollinators, but urged caution. With spreading milk
weed seeds around, it's often fatal to horses. As little
(26:58):
as zero points zero zero five percent body weight consumption
considered a toxic dose. Horses eat about two percent of
their bodyweight a day. For reference, we battle many toxic
plants in our pastures, milkweed and other podcast subject whilst
snakeroot among them. Thanks for all the entertaining and informative
episodes they make Farm chores much more enjoyable. Katie and Coco. Okay,
(27:18):
Coco's the cutest thing on the planet. I saw this email,
I was so excited. I love it. I did not
know that about milkweed at all, so I'm super glad.
She included that you may recall when we talked about butterflies,
we had suggested that milkweed will help with their habitats.
So if you do plant milkweed, be careful and try
to keep it places where a horse would not be.
(27:40):
Ours is in a like a big garden tub in
the on the deck, so I don't think a horse
would get up there. If it did, there are other
problems going on. But this is why this made me
laugh so hard. And it's a personal story that has
nothing to do with this show, but it's so funny
that I felt like I should share it. So we
used to have a we have talked about on the
(28:00):
show many times, mister Burns, who was a Devin Rex,
which means he has short, curly hair and he has
he had coat break on his tummy, so his tummy
was pretty much just his bald skin. And I also
used to write trying to think of the most careful
way I can ward all of this so no one
(28:22):
gets mad at me. I used to write sewing blogs
for a big company like Little how To's, and one
of the ones that I wrote was a little T
shirt you could make for a cat, because I had
made a T shirt for mister Burns which was very
cute and he loved it. And I got so much
(28:44):
hate mail from that blog because people told me I
was abusing my cat and it cracked me up because
I eventually had to post on like that company's social media,
mister Burns gets sunburns on his tell me he actually
needs to wear some club right, But everyone thought I
was a horrible animal abuser. So listen. The internet is
(29:10):
full of people who want to tell you what to
do and be mad at you. But what I want
to tell you what to do is keep loving Cocos
a cute yeah, ever, very cute. And I'm so thankful
that you know she has a great life and is
being incredibly well caredful obviously, so Cocoa, you sweet baby.
And you know some animals get sunburns. They I don't
(29:32):
think people think about that very often, Like we think
animals are natural creatures that live in nature. They have
all their stuff sorted out by evolution. No, not necessarily.
There are animals that can get sunburns and all kinds
of stuff. I had the cat that I grew up with,
who was an outdoor cat, which is not something I
(29:52):
would do now, got a sunburn on her nose and
U It was actually pretty scary because we didn't really
know what was happening at first. It was like she
kept re irritating it. So yeah, yeah, mister burns indoor only.
But he would lie on his back. He really loved
(30:13):
to be hot, and he would lie on his back
with his legs splayed out, with his tummy exposed and
the sun the sun in front of what was in
our old apartment, a sliding glass door that did not
really have like a UV coating on it, And he
got sunburn once, and I was like, okay, we got
to address this problem. There are lots of breeds of
(30:33):
cats that have low coat or our hairless often have
to deal with sun protection. So stephoy ie. If you
see an animal in clothes, it doesn't necessarily mean that
their person is abusing them. It's also just fine. In general.
I wish we as a society would like pull back
on this practice that I feel like has has really
(30:55):
spread through social media of always making the least like,
the least generous, most critical interpretation of every conceivable thing. Yes,
I would like it if we as a society did
not do that anymore and instead maybe extended people that
would not even the benefit of the doubt, like you
(31:17):
just don't even need to go scream at that stranger
on the internet about that shirt that they made. How
will they not know? And that I know better than
everyone if I don't yell at them online. Anyway, this
turned into a PSA you may not have been expecting
at the end of Anne Radcliffe, but here we are.
If you would like to write to us, maybe tell
me I abused mister Burns by putting a T shirt
(31:39):
on him. Listen, that thing was black, it had pink stars.
He felt very pretty. You could do that as at
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(32:02):
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