Behind the Scenes Minis: Tennis, Trash Television and Art

Tracy discusses the difficulty in assessing the reality of Charlotte Cooper Sterry's hearing loss, and recalls a song about Martina Navratilova. Holly talks about how Richard Dadd's art didn't reflect any of his delusions or mental illness.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio Happy Friday. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm
Holly Fried. We talked about Charlotte Cooper Sterry this week
so much tennis tennis championship, tennis champion. I said that

(00:22):
one time while recording too and had to do it
over when I called her a championship instead of a champion.
And a weird coincidence of timing. This episode is not
coming out immediately adjacent to Wimbledon, but I did research
and write it as Wimbledon was happening, which was not
planned at all, and we just had like a weird

(00:44):
logistical situation where the actual episode is coming out at
a two be determined date in the future, so you
all will be in the listening audience learning about it.
I don't know, probably shortly after we have learned what
date the episode will wind up coming out. It's a
little mystery at the moment. I did go down a

(01:04):
big rabbit hole about the descriptions of her as deaf,
because so many articles about her that I read were
all similarly brief. They all had the same detail of
the age being twenty six and the description being deaf,
but like no clear indication of where that information had

(01:28):
come from, and the fact that it was like the
same year in all of them. This has to have
come from somewhere. And we've definitely had situations on the
show where there was some particular detail that wound up
in an article somewhere, and then that wound up in
all of the other articles, and so I just I
went down this rabbit hole trying to find it out,

(01:51):
trying to get more detail. Even the couple of sources
that described it as being the result of an infection,
I don't actually know if that was actual information from
somewhere or if it was an assumption on the part
of the writer, because there are various infections that can
cause hearing loss. And again, I think today a lot

(02:11):
of people, especially outside the deaf community, when they hear
or read the word death, think of like a total
or near total absence of hearing. That's not necessarily the
case with everybody, but I think a lot of people
expect the word deaf to mean like a near total

(02:33):
absence of hearing, while heart of hearing might mean a
different degree of hearing loss. At the time she was living,
though there was kind of more of a spectrum in
common use, and I just really don't know what specifically
that meant for her, And you know, her nephew, in
a book about Wimbledon even was a little I don't

(02:57):
want to say evasive, because that has a kind of
take of trying to hide something. But like even what
he said was not particularly exact, because he was like, well,
I think I'm right in saying that she couldn't hear
the ball, which sounds like it probably wasn't something they
discussed in the family much either, Right. Yeah, So I
have a lot of curiosity about that, just because you know,

(03:21):
it's important to talk about people in history and you know,
their actual lived experiences, and I just don't have a
lot of information about it. Weird thing I stumbled across
in some of the research in the part about the
history of tennis, when we were talking about court tennis
and lawn tennis. Real tennis, Yeah, real tennis. That sort

(03:46):
of has a, you know, an implication that lawn tennis
is the fake tennis. And I feel like some of
the people writing about it today it almost felt like
that was their opinion on it, because I would read
some depictions that were like, court tennis is much faster

(04:06):
paced than lawn tennis and much more physicality required on
the part of players. It just came off as sounding
really snobby to me, almost of being like court tennis
is clearly the superior sport to lawn tennis, and the
tone of it. Not everything sounded that way, but there

(04:28):
were a few things where I was like, this sport
sort of strikes me as being a little exclusionary, right,
But I think that's a common behavior, right, Like I
don't love it, but there are always people who like
whatever they're into, they need to prove that it's the
most best one sure, Like you know, we I have

(04:50):
run into I love rabbits. I think they're rad pets,
but I remember meeting somebody at a party who was
like really into their rabbits, to the point that you
couldn't say I have a cat without them running over
and injecting into the conversation to tell you why you
should have a rabbit and it's a way better animal.
And it's like they're both cool. Do you love your rabbit? Cool?

(05:10):
I also love my catcer whatever anybody has, right, And
I don't know why there is that tendency for some
people to want their thing to be the most one.
I'm sure I have done it at some point in
time as well, when I was younger, I hope. But
I think that's probably what feeds those kinds of narratives

(05:33):
where people really want to assert that if you're not
doing this, you're not doing the best one. Right, Yeah,
just do what you like. It's fun. Yeah, that seems great.
I also would love to know about more about Charlotte
Cooper sterries, like personal life beyond tennis, because vast majority
of what we talked about today was about tennis, and

(05:54):
she did have a life beyond tennis. She had kids, Yeah,
and you know, it's clear that the whole family was
really involved in athletics in general and tennis specifically, but
like you know, it's not the only thing in her life.
It does seem like she was really well liked and
well respected and people thought she was a great player

(06:15):
and also like a great sport, like a kind and
respectful person to be sharing the court with. But that
really know nothing beyond that, Like, right, the one clue
that we have is her basically saying, like, you know
how to train year round, It's fine, you could do
other stuff, enjoy your winter, whatever you want to do,

(06:38):
which I do love. Yeah, yeah, just hang out. You
can play other stuff if you want. You don't have to.
If ever, there were a great example of work life balance, right,
just the casual like, no, I know, just take the
winner off. It's fine. I'm good. Sometimes I play a
little little something something to keep my eye moving, but

(06:58):
that's fine. I like how she seemed almost embarrassed to
mention ping pong as an option. Ping Pong's crapy of
things to play. Yeah, I uh, I've never been particularly
good at things that required that style of like hand
eye coordination. I never played tennis because I associated it

(07:21):
with people that would not like me growing up. Okay,
you know what I mean. Like, yeah, I was clearly
not a herd that was really into my particular flavor
of weird and like, that's cool. You have that, I'm
gonna go do. Yes, Not that I was ever, Like
I wish I could have played tennis. It just never
shook out that way, right right. It does seem like

(07:44):
her family was pretty comfortable. It's the impression I got anyway.
She also, though as far as I know, only ever
had two rackets. There was the good racket for playing
in good weather, and there was the not as good
racket to play when it rained. I love she would
mess up her good racket. I love that too. I
love that as a maximalist that buys twenty seven of everything.

(08:05):
I can't imagine it, but I love it. Yeah. I
also love the pictures of her and what she played
tennis in because it really was skirts all the way down,
always to the ground, and you know, like full long sleeves.
There's a bunch of there's a picture of her in particular,

(08:26):
she's got a necktie on. Love. I love it. I
love all of it. Random side note from this episode
is that there is one mention of Martina Navratilova. Do
you remember a special that was on Comedy Central and

(08:48):
like the nineties called out There? I think it was
called out There. I think they were out there and
out there too, And it was like a comedy special,
like specifically of gay and lesbian performers, And there was
a singer named Frank who sang a song about Martina Navertalova. No,

(09:15):
somehow I miss this was all of this, so uh yeah,
So it was a song about Martina Navratilova, including spelling
out Martina Navratalova letter by letter. I don't know. Anytime
I think of Martina and Avertelova, I get that song
in my head. See I think of her now on Bravo.

(09:38):
Oh yeah, because her wife is a real housewife. Oh
I never knew that. Yeah. And I am an aficionado
of trashy television, which I put all Bravo shows under.
I am not calling anyone on them trash. I'm just
saying that is not high brow entertainment. And that's how
although I don't watch that one regularly, that one is Miami,
and I don't keep up with it. Right, It's not

(10:01):
a thing that is in my sphere of knowledge in
any way, it is in mind because that is where
I really started doing. You are actually indirectly the cause
of why I got into Bravo. Really, here's why. Okay,
Because when I first started working at How Stuff Works,
and you were the site director and I was the
tech editor, right, and I would just find my brain

(10:25):
broken by the end of the day because often there
would be like an article about a technology that I
didn't know jack about, and I would have to learn
enough about it to be able to edit the article
and fact check it, and so by the end of
the day. There was one day in particular where my
husband was like, you are watching a lot of trashy

(10:47):
reality TV lately, and I was like, Babe, I had
to learn how telemetry works today, and right now I
would just like to watch very pre lyedged, pretty people
yell at each other over petty problems because that's about
what my brain can fathom. And he was like, okay,
And ever since that he's been like, I get it completely.

(11:10):
Like at the end of the day he's like, do
you need to watch some garbage? And I'll be like, yeah,
kind of right, yeah, yeah. And that's why I know
who's on every Bravo show. Yep, I know. I don't.
I'm like, do we even have Bravo at my house?
I don't actually know which has come in handy. I

(11:32):
don't remember why. There was another time where you know,
we used to peek behind the curtain. The way how
stuff works used to work was that like you would
as an editor, as a copy editor, get the stuff,
assign it to writers h it would come back, you
would copy edit it. You would also hand it to
another editor for an eyeball pass right, and then that

(11:55):
would make sure a lot of eyes were on and
you would catch things. And one of our other editors, I,
I don't remember why another housewife had come up on
an article that was not specifically about them, but I
was like, that's not how you spell her name, and
it was like she just happened to have an odd
spelling of a common name. The other editor was like,
I never in a million years would have caught that,

(12:17):
and I'm like, yeah, you're not watching garbage. Yeah anyway, Uh,
I love that little backstory. I have the song about
Martina navratilovas I don't remember. I think that's the thing

(12:38):
I remember most from those two comedy specials, although I
bet if some clip from it showed up in front
of my face, I would be like, oh that I
watched that like twenty five times. Now. I feel like
I gotta find that song. I think it's called m
A Rtna. Well, I mean, I know, Frank, I don't
know why I wouldn't know that. Well, I'm gonna seek

(13:02):
it out though everybody can go google it. Yeah. So anyway, anyway,
tennis sport, I know so little about that. I could
not bring myself to summarize explanations of how to score it. Yeah,
it's always been a little bit of an inscrutable scoring

(13:23):
system to me. Like, I understand it. I've seen how
it scores, but I'm still like, but why Yeah, and
there's no there's no poor quas for me, and I'll
never know. Yep. We talked about the sad story of

(13:45):
Richard Dad this week. Yeah, I don't want the sadness
of his story to discourage anyone from going looking for
his art. It's quite beautiful. And one of the interesting
things about his art is that it's kind of like
what I said at the top of the show. I
was fascinated by a painting and was like, I want
to know about the person that made this painting, not
knowing it was going to lead me down a path

(14:06):
of sad and scary things, right, And that is kind
of the case of all of his artwork. If you
look at it, no part of you probably would get
to the point of I bet someone who was in
an institution or dealing with mental illness made this art.
Most of it is very pretty, doesn't cover any of

(14:29):
the sort of demonic issues he talked about in his
therapies in his confessions. It's just sort of fascinating that
it was almost like a completely separate part of his
brain doing that as what was dealing with his other
issues in the way that I will always look for
a thing to tickle myself with, even in very dark

(14:51):
and sad things, I find myself wondering about Dad's understanding
of and grasp of Egyptian religion. Here's why. I mean,
we know, at this period in time right, a lot
of English and US based people were traveling the world

(15:14):
and coming away with some very incorrect understandings of other cultures.
Questionable interpretations. Yeah, one hundred percent. But the thing that
kind of gave me a little just personal chuckle was
that he had said his his father was the son
at one point, s u n son. And I'm like,

(15:34):
but if his father is a Cyrus, that's not the
right Egyptian god to be the son. So it was
just like, I wonder if anybody was like, do you
mean raw? But that's that's just me being silly, because
I just am and I'm as I said, it's like
the antidote of La because you know, a Cyrus is

(15:56):
about fertility and agriculture. And the afterlife. The afterlife and
the demon stuff makes a little sense. But as we
mentioned at the end of the episode, there were like
interlocking religious ideologies here, none of which were really like
true to their origin state. You know, if you followed
any of those religions, you'd be like, that's not quite right.

(16:19):
So it may have just been his brain trying to
piece together anything he remembered to make some sort of
cohesive picture for himself. But that gave me a little
bit of a chuckle in the darkness. We did not
talk about Charles Dickens during this, so we mentioned that
Dickens was a friend of his fellows in the click
right and Dickens. Apparently I did not follow this thread

(16:43):
because I did not have Rabbit whole time. One thing
right up that I read mentioned that Dickens had, when
this whole thing went down, kind of done a stand
by me with some of his friends and been like,
you want to see the place where dad killed his
dad and shook them to the park. But I don't
know if that's true or not, but I kind of

(17:04):
want to look it up now. We do know that
he visited Bethlem when Dad would have been there, but
it doesn't appear that it was like to see him
or anything, which is interesting. So I have this whole
like how much did Dickens know? And was he a
horrible ghogle about it? Yeah? Do we really know how

(17:28):
the rest of his family coped with this? It's almost
like you've read my notes and would like to make
a segue for me. Yes and no. So one of
the things that comes up in a lot of accounts
of his life, but which I didn't find a lot
of additional info on other than the mention and the

(17:49):
numbers change, is that several of his siblings also had
some sort of mental break at some point. And so
that's one of the things that comes up in a
lot of you know, kind of analyzes that modern doctors
try to do on Dad is like, you know, is
this a genetic thing that was going on with their family?

(18:11):
Was their predisposition? Did they all have the same heavy
metal poisoning? Right? And I didn't find anything that was
like conclusive. Additionally, some things will say like two of
his siblings, things will say three of his siblings, Some

(18:33):
will say all of his brothers but not his sisters.
Some will say all of his siblings had some sort
of issue in this area. We're also talking about a
time when, even though we know that people were pointing
out like there is something going mentally wrong with Richard,

(18:54):
there was probably also a lot of brushing under the
rug of people's issues, especially in a family that maybe
is trying to figure out how to cope with all
of this and maybe doesn't want to talk about any
of it anymore, right, keeping in mind that it is
also a family that is grieving from a horrific incident. Sure, yeah,
so I don't know a lot about it, and it

(19:18):
does seem I mean, in a way, it's very respectful,
but it leaves us with a lot of question marks. Right,
The press did seem to leave his family alone, so
I didn't find a lot of I didn't find any
commentary in any of the articles I look through where
they were like, we asked his brother Samuel, who was
the person that was called when all of this started happening,

(19:41):
one of his older brothers to manage things and help
kind of and step into the role ahead of the
family at that point, But there were never any quotes
from anyone in the family, which is interesting. So we
don't know, Yeah, and it breaks my heart. Yeah. I mean,
I'm glad that his art gets recognized, at least to

(20:04):
some degree. I know you cannot really divorce it when
you're doing an exhibition of it from the circumstance of
its creation, but I do feel like it would be
cool and impossible and in its own way not really
responsible to just have an exhibition of his artwork and
not talk about any of his stuff, just to see

(20:25):
how people perceive it and interact with it. Because once,
you know, once you look at a piece of artwork
and someone says, this person went mad and killed his
father and then he painted all this, you're going to
be like looking for clues. There's a patina of like
presumption that hits all of it at that point that
you kind of I'm not faulting anybody for thinking that

(20:47):
way either. It's natural to do, but I would be curious,
you know, I have only my one experience of that's
a cool painting, but I don't know what anyone else
would do. There's also people have incredibly strong opinions when

(21:17):
someone kills someone else and is later found to have
done that because of a mental illness, right, the mental
illness was a contributing factor like when I was a kid.
I don't want to go into too much detail, but
there was a mass shooting near where I lived by

(21:40):
someone who was then found not guilty of having committed
that crime because of a mental illness, which, as I
understand it, then led to the state of North Carolina
like redoing the legal code to not allow that anymore.
But that has been decades and decades ago, and people

(22:03):
still have enormously strong opinions about how all of that happened,
and feeling like justice was not served right because he
was institutionalized rather than being imprisoned or executed. Right, I
think that is sadly pretty common. Yeah, I mean it

(22:29):
also right, It's tricky because you don't want to play
into the idea that people dealing with mental illness are
inherently dangerous, because there are people all over the world
all the time dealing with all different levels of their
own mental health evaluations and diagnoses that are in no way,

(22:50):
even like within one thousand miles of being dangerous. Right,
this one, there are some writings that I found. The
way they're older writings, but the way they are penned
in talking about his father are almost a little victim
blame me because it's like everyone told him his son

(23:13):
was popping off and he was dangerous and he had
delusions that were violent in nature, and he was like,
let's go to the country. And I'm like, nobody won.
Nobody deserves to be brutally murdered. That's just full stop, right.
But two, Like, contextually, again, this is not a time
when we as a whole, as humanity had a lot

(23:35):
of good tools to deal with someone going through something
like that. And you know, you also have to consider
that for a parent who clearly loved his child to
see them going through something painful and not themselves, that's
gonna impact your decision making at times, and maybe you

(23:56):
won't make the right decision because you can't know what
the right decision is. You have to make a best guess.
I mean, that's life, right. This is Milan Candero's unbearable
lightness of being is that you can only make the
one choice and then you create this outline of what
you think life is. But yeah, I found that troubling
that there is a little bit occasionally of like Robert

(24:18):
Dodd had done the right thing, It's like you don't
know that would have been the right thing, right, You don't.
You're not a prognosticator that can determine what the other
path would have looked like. It's tricky. It's tricky. There
are only a couple of biographies of Dad, and they're
hard to get and they're expensive. I went ahead and

(24:40):
purchased one because I just really wanted it. But I
wish there was more readily available comprehensive stuff, because most
articles that you find will either talk about like his
trip and his mental break or his murder or his
institutionalization and the whole picture, so you end up having

(25:04):
to kind of piece the puzzle together. I got more
in many cases from like looking at old newspaper accounts,
because they would be like, here are his parents, here's
where he was born, here's where and I'm like, oh, yes,
at last, so yeah, that's interesting. Sorry to be Debbie
Downer this week, Deborah down But hopefully the Gecko email

(25:28):
softened the blow Listen, we're gonna get into Halloween soon.
I make no promises. This could get very dark this year.
I don't know. I don't know. I'm fine, but that's
clearly where my brain is going at the moment. Hopefully
that did not ruin your mental state in any way
or make you feel sad, hopefully just thoughtful and pensive.

(25:52):
If you have time off this weekend, I hope that
you spend it doing whatever brings you the most joy possible.
We need more of that in the world. If you
don't have time off, please seek out joy if you can.
I hope everyone is kind to one another and makes
it easy for other people to find joy. And we
will be right back here tomorrow with a classic episode,
and then on Monday we will have a brand new

(26:13):
one for you. Stuff you missed in History Class is
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