Cassius Coolidge and Dogs Playing Poker

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 V.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson. Odds are really good that you probably don't immediately
recognize the name of the artists that we're talking about today,
but they are just about equally good.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
That you have seen his work. He is sometimes called,
and I love this, the dog World's Michelangelo a although
there's another artist who will get invoked later. But Cassius
Marcellus Coolidge's most well known art is the Dog's Playing
Poker series. But even with that, those paintings often get misnamed.

(00:45):
We'll talk about that. But he also contributed and in
one case patented, other types of art that have become
common throughout the world. He really was a true renaissance man.
He was interested in a lot of different things and
in using his creativity cross a variety of disciplines. So
I thought he would be fun to talk about today.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
So Cassius Marcellus Coolidge was born on September eighteenth, eighteen
forty four, in between Antwerp, New York and Philadelphia, New York.
So Antwerp was still is a very tiny town, and
it's often referenced by its larger neighbor to the southwest,
which is Watertown. His farmer parents, Nathan and Martha Coolidge,

(01:26):
were Quakers. They're abolitionists. A bunch of sources say that
they named their son after the brother of abolitionist Henry Clay.
I think it is way more likely that they named
him after Cassius Marcellus Clay, who was Henry Clay's cousin
and was a prominent abolitionist in his own right. Cassius

(01:47):
and his younger siblings John, Clinton and Abbey were raised
in an abolitionist household, and it seems like Nathan and
Martha had at least one other child who may not
have survived their childhood. What by the name Cash, and
that shows up spelled with both a C and a K,
but in later years when he made art, he pretty
consistently used the K spelling. Cash went to the school

(02:12):
in Antwerp before moving on to Poughkeepsie to take business
courses at Eastman's College.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, and like letters among the families, some people will
use the C and some people will use the K.
But you can very clearly see when he signs art.
He uses K and signs it cash coolidges, as I
said earlier. Often described as a sort of renaissance man,
and his earliest career moves were certainly not in the
art field that he became known for. In eighteen seventy one,

(02:39):
he opened Antwerp's first bank, the Bank of Antwerp, in
a building that he constructed. And this sounds a little
bit out of the blue, but it seems that Cash
had some experience in banking because he had worked at
the Eastman College Bank while he was going to school,
and a lot of his courses at the school were
ones that would help him run a financial institution. He's

(03:00):
also said to.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Have worked briefly as a druggist and a handyman, and
to have eventually purchased the drug store as an investment.
He doesn't appear to have remained active in the running
of the bank. He moved to Rochester in eighteen seventy three.
He had never been the bank president as at its founding,
another man, John d Ellis held that title. He eventually

(03:23):
sold the drug store and the bank, as well as
a second drug store he'd opened with one of his brothers.
The bank building burned down in eighteen eighty nine, although
it was rebuilt. That same bank, the Jefferson Bank, also
commissioned a portrait from Coolidge.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
He dabbled in journalism as well, and he started a
short lived newspaper in Antwerp, and then after that failed,
he became a writer for the Watertown Times. Most of
his work for that paper involved writing accounts of his
travels to Europe that he took in the early eighteen seventies.
That was in a serial called Cash's Column. Coolidge also

(04:00):
had so many other jobs in his early adult life,
including being a sign painter, being the Antwerp town clerk,
being a maplesap collector, a school superintendent, and even a
farm hand. At some point Cash traveled to New York City.
He might have taken art lessons, and he eventually started
drawing to make money, first as a cartoonist for local papers.

(04:25):
He also used his drawing skills as a performance. He
would charge people to watch him sketch at a super
fast pace. Yet another job was drawing illustrations for his
cousin Azaneth Coolidge's books. Those illustrations were incredibly detailed, full
page works, as in books seemed to have been largely

(04:46):
ways to talk about the Quaker ideals of peace in
fictional settings. A nineteen oh eight review of one.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Of these books in the periodical The Advocate of Peace reads, quote,
the principles of peace are being taught not only by tracts,
lectures and treatises on international law. They come into all
kinds of writing, and frequently appear in the present day
story and novel The Prophet of Peace, a story with
an old fashioned farmhouse setting illustrated generously by quaint and

(05:15):
clever pictures of country life, teaches peace and some of
the conversations held by its characters. While not a contribution
of technical value to the literature of the peace movement,
it has its use in calling the attention of the
reader to the wisdom of peace and the mistakes of war. Similarly,

(05:37):
as an asked preface to another book that he wrote
about an Independence Day disaster talks a lot about how
the idea of national pride is often used to get
men to agree to go make war. So clearly, these
projects that were being done within the family were all
still very much in the ideals of Quakerism, even if

(05:59):
cash is Life didn't seem to really talk about it,
and certainly his artwork didn't. In eighteen seventy four, Coolidge
submitted a patent application for what he called improvement in
the process of taking photographic pictures. So if you just
read that, it sounds like it might involve a camera
mechanism or some other technical development, but.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
Your way off base. Coolidge's idea was a little bit different.
Here is part of how the inventor described his new invention. Quote.
In the accompanying drawing, A represents the head and be
the body of the person whose picture is to be taken.
Zero represents a sketch or drawing of a miniature body
of any desired form or shape, and with or without

(06:43):
any additions. This sketch or drawing is held up in
front of the person in proper position, so that when
the picture is taken, the head a will appear as
forming part of or belonging to the miniature body. The
large head and small body being taken at one time.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
So if you've ever stood behind a life size drawing
of a character that had an opening to put your
face through to take a funny picture, that is thanks
to cash Coolidge. He notes in his patent application that
other people had already used this cutout method to create
frames for people. His patent was on the creation of
the funny drawings that created caricatures. Coolidge is credited with

(07:26):
creating some of the classic setups of this photo op
that are still often used at carnivals today, like the
strong Man and a woman in a bathing suit. Coolidge
started a mail order business to sell these photoprops, and
that continued for years and brought in a steady income.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
Yeah, that really kind of funded his ability to do
a lot of creative things during his life because he
always had that money coming in. Uh that same year
and for several years after, Coolidge's name appeared in a
lot of newspaper announcements for things like lectures he was
giving about drawing, and these had titles like offhand Sketching,
suggesting that he was talking to people about a loose,

(08:05):
casual style of drawing that he was very good at.
These were also described as inimitable crayon sketches in one
of the write ups where he was part of a
full day of activities at the Free Academy of Rochester,
New York, and he gave lessons in both art. As
these suggest and also penmanship as a way to make money.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
Coming up, we'll talk about Coolidge's comics and a somewhat
surprising project, but first we will pause for a sponsor break.
In his early career, Coolidge also drew cartoons for various publications.

(08:47):
One of these, titled The Accommodating Money Lender, appeared in
the Rochester magazine The Cosmopolitan in eighteen eighty seven. And
this is a four panel cartoon, and each panel features
a brief story of a man named mister well to Do.
The first panel reads quote mister well to Do, now
living in the city, has received several calls from his

(09:08):
former country acquaintances. Young mister Snoozer chanced in town in
search of his fortune six months ago, got busted and
borrowed a ten to get home with never heard from since.
The next two panels are similar stories of mister well
to Do giving money to people who ask for it,
and each of these stories end with never heard from since,

(09:29):
suggesting that the person never reached back out to pay
back the money. But then in the fourth and final frame,
another person asked mister well to Do for money, at
which point Well to Do snaps and reduces the man
through a beating to quote a very small grease spot.
And that frame also ends with the phrase never heard

(09:50):
from since. So a little violent, yeah, but also funny,
depending on your sense of humor. In eighteen ninety two,
Cash Row to play comic opera about a mosquito epidemic
titled King Gallinipper. A Galinipper is a name for the
mosquito species sorophoraciliata. It's a larger, more aggressive mosquito than

(10:12):
other common North American varieties. According to newspaper write ups,
the play was about quote, the struggle between the mosquitoes
and the mortals of New Jersey and Staten Island. In
addition to writing the script, Coolidge was also the production designer,
creating the designs for all the sets and costumes. A
write up in The Evening World, written by a reporter

(10:34):
who attended a rehearsal noted quote, there will be fetching
costumes and seductive dances by swarms of King Gallinipper's subjects.
I really wish I could travel back in time and
see this play, because though it sounds like it was
something of a lark, it got a lot of newspaper attention,
including a write up in the New York Times under
the headline Adventures of Tourists in His Realm, presented by Amateurs.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
The preview review read quote. A dress rehearsal of King
Gallinipper was held last night in the theater of the
Manhattan Athletic Club. This is the moving title of a
musical burlesque to be given by members of the club
and their friends, and for which Professor Karl Marwig has
been wearing away his gray matter for weeks past, drilling
choruses and inventing dances. The piece was written by Cassius M. Coolidge.

(11:24):
It is proclaimed on the bill to be purely American,
and the music is bright and pleasing. The story is
of the marital and amorous adventures of certain human tourists
in the realm of Gallinipper, King of the Mosquitoes. The
scene is laid in Box Hellow Park, New Jersey, and
in the Mosquito Palace. The first performance will be given
in the club theater tonight, and the piece will be

(11:46):
repeated Tomorrow and Saturday evenings and at two o'clock on
Saturday afternoon. Much time, money and labor have been expended
by everybody connected with the entertainment, and the advanced sale
of seats is already large. Over sixty persons take part
in the play, among them being only a few professional
people to steady the stage. Especially good is the skirt

(12:08):
dancing of Miss Aid a lot, and there is a
brisk song by Miss Lillian Poole which the chorus helps
to make effective. A serpentine dance by Miss Lambert will
Win much applause. The honorable Walton Storm, widely suspected of
having been an honest and lonely Alderman, is one of
the hard working comedians. The opera is produced under the

(12:28):
direction of William A. Cortland. Sixty people is a lot
for a play that is a lark.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
It's a lot in general, I think, yeah, unlet's you
have like a musical with a huge company. King Gallinipper
was not the only play Coolidge wrote. There were two others,
Western Heiress and La Moustique. Those two plays were only published,
though they were not staged.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, I did not manage to get my hands on
those to find out what they were about. But I'm curious,
given the plot of King gallan Nipper, they sound like
they were probably also hilarious. Later in eighteen ninety two,
Coolidge was commissioned to create a portrait of George A Banker,
a competitive track cyclist from Pittsburgh. The portrait, which was

(13:16):
two thirds life size, featured Banker on his bike speeding
past a grandstand, and it was a recreation of a photograph.
A write up in the Pittsburgh Dispatch noted that Coolidge
was also quote an enthusiastic cyclist, which might be why
he was the artist selected for this commission. Just a
month after that portrait was unveiled, the New York Evening

(13:37):
World mentioned a cycling race that was to take place
between Coolidge and a man named Percy Kent, describing the
men as quote two rival scorchers of eminence who have
long been a terror to the tour committee. So Coolidge
appears to have been more than just an avid cyclist.
He was competitive and apparently quite good. He won that

(13:59):
seventeen mile race, completing it in an hour and eleven
minutes and beating his rival Kent by a full five minutes.
Another write up that autumn, also in the Evening World,
noted of Cash's art that his quote wheeling sketches and
paintings are so much admired by both critics and amateurs,
so one other completely random thing he was deeply involved in.

(14:22):
The early eighteen nineties were clearly a very creatively productive
time for Coolidge. In the autumn of eighteen ninety three,
The Son of New York ran a piece about a
painting by Coolidge, and it appears to be the first
mention of his artistic subjects being dogs playing poker, noting quote,
he has just painted a picture of a game of poker,

(14:42):
which is sure to be applauded by the devotees of
that excellent nerve test. The article describes the painting in detail,
and it has a fully developed story and character names.
The Sun writes, quote, mister Coolidge's poker party is composed
of three fine Saint Bernard's. They all bear distinguished names.

(15:02):
On the right sits the dealer William C. Whitney, behind
a pleasing smile and a large stack of Red's whites
and blues. At his left is Grover Cleveland, sagacious looking
and betraying no sign in his face of the four
aces that the onlooker may discover in his hand. At
Grover Cleveland's left, and facing the spectator in the center

(15:23):
of the canvas is Joe Jefferson, whose stack is low
and whose purse lying beside him on the table indicates
that he had to go down into his kick. He
and Grover Cleveland are both watching William C. Whitney with
faces very full of human poker playing expression. There's a
more description about the way the hand is playing out,

(15:45):
and the writer of this piece is very complimentary of Coolidge.
This painting was called a pat Hand and it was
displayed in the window of a business called Douglas and Cooks.
Why Coolidge started to draw for primorifized animals is unknown,
but it would become his most significant legacy.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
Yeah, he was not the only artist to do it,
but he certainly got a lot of attention for his
In eighteen ninety four, he painted another piece featuring the
dogs playing cards in a painting simply titled The Poker Game.
This is one that is sometimes mentioned as having been
licensed by cigar companies to make prints as giveaways. That

(16:27):
makes sense because a lot of these dogs smoke cigars.
This is actually a piece of information that seems a
little bit fuzzy when you look at various different accounts
of his life. Some say that he started out by
painting dogs in poker games, specifically for cigar boxes, But
that eighteen ninety three example of a pat hand seemed
as though it was a full size painting that was

(16:47):
just intended for display. The truth remains a little bit
fuzzy here, as there isn't any clear record indicating that
it could have been a work for higher project for
a tobacco company. One would think that if it were, though,
there would have been some mention of that in that
long write up about it. He was painting dogs, playing
cards and smoking cigars, cigarettes and pipes well before he

(17:09):
was commissioned to make the series that became famous for
those components, and we're going to talk about that series
in just a moment. Though today his name isn't widely known,
it does seem like in his late forties and early
fifties Cassius Coolidge enjoyed a significant degree of notoriety in
New York. He appears in so many articles in newspapers

(17:31):
all around the city and is even called King Cassius
in one of them, because he was so well known
across so many fields, and it seems he was quite
well liked. Some writeups of a pat Hand mentioned that
Coolidge was busy with a lot of new projects, including
a novel which he had already written five hundred pages of,
but which did not yet have a name. He was

(17:53):
also working on an illustrated book of biographies of nationally
important people.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
It's the Best of My None. Neither of those projects
was ever published, but the attention that a pat Hand
gotten newspapers, as well as the popularity of giveaway prints
of the Poker Game, boosted Coolidge's profile enough that he
was asked to make more work in that same style.
In nineteen oh three, Brown and Bigelow Printing company in
Saint Paul, Minnesota, contracted Coolidge to make calendar illustrations. Incidentally,

(18:24):
that company still exists and you can still buy Coolidge
prints from them. This is the beginning of his most
famous works. While many people refer to many of the
sixteen paintings Coolidge created for this job with the title
Dogs Playing Poker, each work actually had a separate and
distinct title, and Dogs Playing Poker is considered the colloquial

(18:45):
name of the series because nine of them feature dogs
at a poker table. The most famous one, which gets
labeled incorrectly, all the time as dogs playing poker is
actually called a Friend in Need. A Friend in Need
features seven dogs around a poker table. In the foreground,
a bulldog is passing the ace of clubs to a

(19:05):
friend with one of his back paws under the table.
The pass off ace will give that friend four aces.
The other five dogs appear to be oblivious to this,
save that one of them appears to be a cattle
dog or maybe a Great Dane, and he's looking on
from the back of the painting with an air of suspicion.

(19:26):
Even the recipient of the helpful ace seems not to
realize what is happening just yet. And that's really part
of the appeal of these works. They feel like they
capture a specific and often tense moment, and also they
are dogs, and also they are very fun. Yes, who
does a lot of pooch playing cards. But two of

(19:47):
the paintings in this series, called A Bold Bluff and Waterloo,
are actually companion pieces that show that tense moment and
then the aftermath of it. And we're going to talk
about those two paintings and more after we hear from
the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class
going we mentioned the two companion paintings, A Bold Bluff

(20:15):
and Waterloo just before the break, So here is there
one two punch of a story. In A Bold Bluff,
a Saint Bernard is shown making a bet on his hand,
but all he has is a pair of twos. The
painting leaves the viewer with no answer as to whether
his risky move will pay off. But then Waterloo gives
the answer, as the same tableau is shown in the

(20:37):
moment after all cards are laid on the table. The
Saint Bernard that bluffed is raking in his winnings. And
the best part of this painting, in my opinion, is
the bulldog across from him, whose mouth hangs open in disbelief.
It is the best picture of shock I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Another of the Poker series, His Station in four Aces,
depicts the end of a poker game as a train
has pulled into the station and the conductor is urging
the players to leave the car. A bulldog on the
left side of the painting has a distraught expression because
he would have won the game if it had been
allowed to finish. His hand is showing four aces.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
There are a number of instances where a hand of
four aces shows up in these paintings, but not all
of the paintings feature a poker game. Sitting up with
a sick friend shows a thwarted poker game. The painting
depicts a scene of five men dogs who it seems
wanted to have a poker game, but they have been
interrupted by two women dogs who have uncovered the apparent

(21:39):
ruse of camaraderie for an ill acquaintance. Those two lady dogs,
who are wearing wide brimmed hats with plumes so you
know they're women, have their mouths open in a way
that suggests that they are barking chastisements. One of them
also has a parasol raised in the air, and it
looks like she's about to maybe clunk one of the
male dogs on the head with it.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Some of Coolidge's paintings in the series don't even feature
a hint of poker, although they're still categorized under the
Dogs Playing Poker umbrella. New Year's even Dogville shows a
lush scene of dogs in what appears to be a ballroom.
Several dogs are coupled up and dancing, and a lot
of them are panting from the exertion while most of

(22:22):
the poker paintings contain no lady dogs, this one has
a lot of them. They're wearing fancy hats and carrying
purses as they dance with their partners. In the background.
There are also tables filled with dogs that are celebrating
away from the dance floor. Another painting, titled one to
Tie To to Win, shows a dog baseball game from

(22:44):
a perspective that makes the viewer feel as though they
are in the stance watching the ten scene play out.
Another called Riding the Goat shows a blindfolded dog on
the back of a goat being led on a sort
of parade before what look like a king and queen,
who are also dogs in the background. It sort of
suggests a court jester situation, and this one has also

(23:05):
been associated with Masonic symbology, and Coolidge was a Mason,
so it seems he may have worked in some visual
humor for other Masons while still keeping the scene general
enough that non Masons could still get their own humor
from it. Other non poker paintings in the series include
ten Miles to a Garage, which shows a dog family

(23:26):
whose car has broken down on the way to a picnic.
Breach of promised Suit shows a court case over a
broken marriage engagement. A Bachelor's Dog shows a dog in
an easy chair, smoking a cigar and reading a paper
with a glass of what looks like beer, and the
Reunion features several colleagues around a table, all smoking pipes

(23:47):
and drinking.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
All of these paintings were used, as we said, for calendars,
so they were designed to be intentionally appealing to a
wide range of people, specifically the middle class, which likely
saw similar scenes play out in their own human lives.
And these paintings did appeal to people so much so
that the images were reprinted on a lot of other

(24:10):
products beyond just the calendars. But Coolidge's contract did not
give him any additional payment for additional usage of that imagery.
If it had, he would have likely been set for
life because they were very popular. In nineteen oh nine,
Coolidge got married to one of his art students who
he had also hired as a letterer for his mail

(24:33):
order character cutouts business. That was Gertrude Kimmel. This is
kind of a May December romance of sorts. Coolidge had
never been married. He was sixty four at the time
and Gertrude was less than half his age at twenty nine,
so while she was one of his art students, she
was fully an adult, yes, one hundred percent. On June

(24:53):
twenty seventh, nineteen ten, Cash and Gertrude had a daughter
named Gertrude Marcella, and she went by her middle name
Mark Marcella. The year that Marcella was born had other
significant changes for the new family. They moved to bay Ridge, Brooklyn,
and the family's finances got a lot leaner in the
nineteen teens because the mail order comic caricatures business had

(25:14):
slowed considerably, so Coolidge was earning very little money. He
also wasn't really painting anymore, likely because sometime around this
period he is said to have suffered an injury when
he fell from the window of an abandoned house. He
was apparently trying to chase some kids that were playing
in it out of it, and that's when he fell.

(25:35):
So confined to not doing a lot of like full
body movement, he tried his hand at writing full time again,
but it did not take off and it didn't generate
much money at all. Gertrude was motivated to find a
career where she could make enough money to support the family,
and she took courses to become a librarian. She was
able to parlay that education into a position as a

(25:58):
law clerk in Manhattan, and her income was the main
source of the money that they lived off of. Cash
became something of a house husband. He managed the family's
home while Gertrude commuted to work every day. Eventually, in
nineteen twenty eight, the Coolidge's downsize to a smaller home
in the Grassmere neighborhood of Staten Island. At that point,

(26:20):
their daughter Marcella was still just the teenager. In nineteen
thirty four, Cassius Coolidge died at the age of eighty nine.
He was buried in his hometown of Antwerp, New York,
at the Hillside Cemetery. His wife Gertrude was buried by
his side, but not until her death forty three years
later in nineteen seventy seven.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
According to a two thousand and two interview with gwynn Atchison,
the town historian of Philadelphia, New York, in nineteen ninety one,
Marcella Coolidge donated a print of one of her father's
paintings and left. That print became part of the town's
Coolidge exhibit, and for quite some time the Antwerp Library
has had a small exhibit in the back of the

(27:01):
building to honor the hometown artist. This includes a self
portrait of Coolidge, but the work is damaged, just not
in pristine condition at this point. Yeah, Marcella would have
been eighty, I believe at this point she kind of
just popped in and was like, Hey, I have one
of my father's paintings.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
He grew up here. Here you go with the town
like it, and they were like sure. Although Coolidge is
not today a famous name in art, he certainly does
have ardent fans. In the latter half of the twentieth century,
Coolidge's dog paintings experienced a surge in popularity because they
had been reproduced many times from their creation, they were accessible,

(27:39):
and although a lot of the art world perceived them
simply as kitch, which by the way, I don't know
if people know kitch is a German word for trash,
they did gain really a cult following In nineteen ninety
eight saw the Bees auctioned one of his paintings off
for seventy four thousand dollars. So that's not the wild
amount that you might see for other artists that we've

(28:00):
mentioned on the show before, but it was certainly a
significant amount of money. And then a few years later,
in two thousand and five, two of the dog Poker
paintings bundled together, So those two that tell two parts
of a story A bold Bluff and Waterloo sold for
five hundred ninety thousan four hundred dollars, which was I
would say, a huge amount of money for art. So

(28:23):
although Coolidge hasn't ever really garnered a ton of respect
in the art world, there are clearly people willing to
pay the kind of money for his work that one
might normally expect for more critically acclaimed artists. It's hard
to pin down the precise appeal of Coolidge's work.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
Some of it might just be that people like dogs.
Most of the dogs and Coolidge's paintings are stout or
large breeds, so there's a lot of bulldogs, Saint Bernard's
and Grant Danes, and of course all of those are
still popular as pets. Some of the appeal has been
attributed over the years to the fact that Coolidge's paintings
stick to old school gender stereotypes in a world that

(29:03):
is unfettered from a need for refinement.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
Art historian Moira F. Harris said, in an interview with
The New York Times, quote, his paintings of people look
like dogs. I don't think his people are very good,
but his dogs are wonderful. It's not Beatrix Potter. It's
not anything gentle. It's a man's world. In an interview
with his daughter Marcella, when she was ninety two, she

(29:26):
stated plainly that she didn't like her father's work, suggesting
that there was a gender divide on its audience. She said, quote,
I don't like it. Girls don't like things like that.
It was for boys and men. She also told The
New York Times that she was more of a cat
person and that cats would never play poker.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
But part of the appeal of these odd, humorous works
is that they harken back to classic pieces of art
that have been revered for decades or even centuries. Coolidge
was said to have modeled a number of the figures
in his dog paintings after depictions of people that he
saw in classical works of art, particularly those of Caravaggio.

(30:09):
His painting the card Sharps does show some similarities to
some of the poses and lighting of the dogs in
Coolidge's work. So if you love the Dogs Playing Poker series,
you could be responding to the familiarity of a work
of art that you have seen in a more serious
art context, while your brain just kind of enjoys the

(30:30):
levity and absurdity of dogs cheating at card games. And
I wanted to end with this great quote by writer
Dan Barry of The New York Times about Coolidge, who
wrote quote, through his art, he created a fairer world
in which opposable thumbs were not required to hold a
beer bottle, button a shirt, or lift that glorious Aspha

(30:52):
card Tables felt. I love dogs playing poker, so I
don't clearly subscribe to his daughter's serie that women don't
like them. But that is Cassius Coolidge, who you know,
he deserves some.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Credit for the many things. I mean.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
I was kind of blown away when I found out
that he's the one that invented you know, goofy carnival cutouts. Brilliant, brilliant. Yeah,
when I first read through this outline and you said
that he even patented an art, I was like, what
in the world could that be? And then I got
to that part and said, oh, that's delightful.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
It's really funny. And the drawing of that patent is
very funny because it is not the large style ones
that he eventually started working on. It's like a little
like if you were holding a poster board of a
man on a bicycle under your chin. It's very cute. Okay.

Speaker 2 (31:44):
I also have listener mail, and of course I had
to include dogs. I feel like I should say before
I start this email, I should tell you that because
Tracy and I have been traveling, we can't remember what
we haven't haven't read, and we had a long moment
where we had to look at when this came in
and whether I would have I've read it before, but
it involves a dog, and that's it's important. This is
from our listener, Carol, who writes, Hi, Holly and Tracy.

(32:06):
I have been a listener since the early days with
Sarah and Deblina and love the podcast. I was so
excited to see the episode about Marjorie Meriwether Post because
I recently chaperoned a trip with my daughter's Girl Scouts
troupe to visit Hillwood Estates. I really didn't know anything
about the estate or about Post before we went, and
now having listened to the podcast, can't wait to go

(32:27):
back with greater understanding. The mansion is absolutely gorgeous, with
the collections of art, jewelry, and ceramics beautifully displayed. I
didn't take many pictures because of wrangling a group of
eight year olds, but I am attaching a picture of
one of Post's dresses that I think you would both love.
Like pretty much everything in the mansion, it is just beautiful.
Next time you are in DC, it is well worth

(32:48):
a visit. I want to say that I so appreciate
hearing so many stories over the years. One of my
favorite things is hearing how people's lives take unexpected turns
and the understanding that we all live multiple lives in
our one lifetime. It reassures me that I'll never have
it all figured out. My pet contribution is our ten
year old golden doodle, Archimedes, who is the best dog

(33:09):
ever and enjoys going swimming in the summer, snuggling everyone,
and expertly sussing out who will be the weakest willed
person to give him treats when dinner guests are over.
Thank you for all you do to enhance our understanding
of the world kindness regards Carol. Okay, this dress is gorgeous.
It's so pretty. It's one of those things that when
you initially look at it, it's not a dress that

(33:31):
has a lot of like detailing on it in terms
of like embroider or beating or anything. But the longer
you look at the more that you realize it is
an absolute feat of design because it has these really
cool like fold over not details. It looks like it
is velvet with fur trim. Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Yeah, I just

(33:53):
opened it. It's really lovely.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
I want to figure out how to make that bodice
and I listen. Archimedes come over. I'll give you a
credit card you can buy your own treats. That dog
is so cute. I sort of can't deal with it.
I bet he could cheat at poker and no one
would be any of the wiser, and even if they were,
they wouldn't call him on it because he's so ding
dang cute that they want him to win.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
What an angel baby? He looks biggish, which I love.
A big goofy sweet dog. I bet that's an A
plus cuddle. What Archimedes wants to have a hug. Carol,
thank you so much. Your beautiful pooch and this gorgeous
dress warmed my heart and I too, Like I said,
I want to visit Hillwood. While we were in Morocco,

(34:37):
two of the people with us had mentioned that they
had been to Hillwood, but they didn't realize all of
the connections. I think that's why I was confused as
to whether I read this. They had a very similar
story of like I went to Hillwood and I didn't
realize and then I read it. Now I want to
go back, and am my deja vooing this whole thing.
Let's all go. We can plan a trip to Hillwood Estates.

(34:59):
I definitely want to go, so it's on my shortlist.
Thank you again for writing. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History Podcast
at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also subscribe to the
show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to
your favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is

(35:19):
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.

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Holly Frey

Tracy Wilson

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Cassius Coolidge and Dogs Playing Poker