Rufus Wilmot Griswold

Griswold is most commonly known as Edgar Allan Poe's rival, and for creating negative characterizations of Poe that have endured more than a century. But his life story beyond his connections to Poe is worthy of examination on its own.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson and Tracy.
I don't think it's any secret that Edgar Allen Poe remains,
almost a hundred and seventy years after his death a

(00:23):
figure of fascination and intrigue. Yeah, it's definitely true. One
of the names that often comes up as part of
post story is his friend of me, Rufus Griswald. If
you watch the recent PBS documentary Edgar Ellen po Buried Alive,
you would have heard some of the story of their
contentious relationship and how today Griswald is largely blamed for

(00:44):
a degree of character assassination that took place after post death.
Griswald is also mentioned briefly in a previous episode of
Stuff You misson History Class that was hosted by Sarah
and DUBLINO that is specifically um about post death. But
we want to dig a little bit deeper into who
exactly Griswold was and how his story gets tangled up

(01:05):
with pose and why his name did not have the
same staying power of his rival. We are also coming
up on Griswold's birthday, so it seems like kind of
a good time to tackle this story. The date of
Rufus Wilmot Griswold's birth is reported differently depending on which
source you look at. His Encyclopedia Britannica entry lists it
is February fifteenth of eighteen fifteen, but Joy Bayliss, who

(01:27):
wrote the only comprehensive biography of Griswold in ninety three,
sites February of eighteen twelve. Both of these dates are
found in various other publications, so you might see it
either way depending on where you look. Sources do agree
that he was born in Benson, Vermont, to a Calvinist family.
His father had a farm and also worked as a shoemaker,

(01:50):
and there have, i should note, been other people who
have written about Griswold's biography, but that Bayliss one is
really like the most detailed at least that I've ound.
And Rufus was from a very large family. His parents
had fourteen children in all. Rufus was the twelfth, and
when he was still young, somewhere between seven and ten,

(02:11):
his parents sold their farm and they moved to Hubbardton,
to the east of Benson, and as a child, his
personality is described as unruly, reckless, and restless. In eighteen thirty,
Griswold briefly enrolled in school at the Rensseler School in Troy,
New York, but he was barred from the institution after
playing a prank on one of the professors. His brother, Heman,

(02:33):
who was a successful businessman in Troy, helped Rufus get
into the school, and then after this failure, Rufus was
to move into his brother's counting room and then work
for him. Rufus was not really enthusiastic about this arrangement.
Given this whole series of events, it's not a specially
surprising that he left his family behind at the age

(02:54):
of fifteen to make his own way in the world.
So he set out, describing himself later in his writing
as quote a solitary soul wandering through the world, a homeless,
joyless outcast. Even though he had painted himself as an outcast,
he soon moved in with a friend, writer George D. Foster,
in Albany, New York. He had made George's acquaintance while

(03:15):
he was in Troy. Griswold lived with Foster, who was
seven years his senior, for two years. There has been
some speculation that their relationship might have had a romantic
aspect to it, but that really remains unclear. The primary
evidence is a letter that Foster wrote to Griswold after
Rufus had moved away, which read quote, I have loved

(03:36):
often and deeply. My heart has burned itself almost to
a charred cinder, by the flames of passion which have
glown within it. And yet I have never felt towards
any human being, man or woman so strong and absorbing
affection as I bear you. Farewell, farewell, Come to me
if you love me. I feel like this tells us
a lot more about how Foster felt than how Griswold felt.

(03:59):
That is exactly the thing. Uh. We we really don't,
you know. I mean, you never know what happens between
two people when they are away from the rest of us.
But clearly Foster felt very strongly for him. We do
not know if that was reciprocated. Uh. Foster would later
go on to a claim for his series about life
in New York, which was titled New York and Slices,

(04:19):
in which he published in the New York Tribune. His
most well known work, though, is in a similar vein.
It's a series of literary snapshots of New York titled
New York by Gaslight. At this point, Griswold's story gets
really hazy. He wandered around for a bit, But while
his late teens had for a long time been described
as a period where he traveled the world, it's more

(04:40):
likely that he merely traveled the southern US and then
back north. He Yeah, some of that is probably him
building up his own story in his own mythos. But
Grizzwold was a journalist from early on in his life,
and after a short apprenticeship with a printer, he actually
started his own paper, The Porcupine in Syracuse, New York,

(05:00):
and this publication was perhaps named as a warning because
he used it as a platform to write criticisms of
the residents of Syracuse. Starting in late eighteen thirty four,
he worked at another Syracuse paper, The Constitutionalist, but soon
moved on to an editing position at The Choccaco Wig.
He also started editing for other papers, including The Western

(05:21):
Democrat and The Literary Enquirer. In early nineteen thirty six,
Rufus moved to New York City and met Caroline Searles
shortly after he arrived. And the story goes that he
and a friend named Butler had been out walking when
a rainstorm hit, and Butler had a friend who lived nearby,
and so the two men sought shelter from this storm there,

(05:42):
and that was where he met Caroline. It was in fact,
her family's home, and the two fell instantly in love.
Griswold and the nineteen year old Searles were soon engaged,
and they married the following year. During Griswold's early time
in New York, he dabbled in multiple possible career paths.
He worked as an editor at multiple publications to make money.

(06:02):
He also considered entering politics, but his chosen party, the Whigs,
didn't support his ambitions in this arena, and he abandoned
the idea. He became a Baptist clergyman in in eighteen
thirty seven, but he never really got into regular religious work. Yeah,
there's some theorizing that perhaps Caroline had kind of pushed

(06:23):
him into that avenue, but then that he kind of
did it to appease her, but it wasn't really something
he cared a great deal about. In eighteen thirty nine, Griswald,
along with Park Benjamin Sr. Founded a newspaper called Brother
Jonathan and this paper, and we have to use the
air quotes. There was really just a means to reprint
existing British novels, which they were doing without permission. Griswold

(06:47):
and Benjamin called their project a newspaper so that they
could take advantage of reduced postal rates that newspapers were given.
Brother Jonathan ended up having something of a coup and
Benjamin and Griswold lost control of their paper, so they
started a new one that functioned on the same business
model of pirating published novels putting them out in installments.

(07:09):
Their new venture was called The New World, and it
positioned itself from the beginning as Brother Jonathan's rival publication.
And you'll actually sometimes see Brother Jonathan's founding listed as
eight forty two, and that actually marks its relaunched under
Benjamin Day, who took over from them and reset the
publication number to volume one, number one. At that time,

(07:32):
both of these newspapers had to compete with the very
source material that they were they were cribbing. Many readers
were happy to just buy the published novels so that
they could have the whole thing in its entirety and
not have to wait for multiple installments to come out
to finish the story. And so to try to snatch
a little bit more of the market, the New World
began printing entire novels in a single issue of the

(07:55):
paper and issuing them as extras to the paper, charging
fifties ends a copy. And this was a really successful move,
and one that Brother Jonathan and other similar papers immediately
started to copy. But those other papers glutted the market,
and the competition drove the prices down to less than
ten cents a copy. Not long after, the US Postal

(08:17):
Service more or less ended this entire niche of US
publishing when it declared that these periodicals could no longer
take advantage of the newspaper rate to publish pirated works. Eventually,
Brother Jonathan was actually absorbed by the New World in
eighteen forty four, so that was some years down the road,
but the New World only existed for another year even

(08:38):
after that that takeover. We're going to talk more about
the relationship between Caroline and Rufus and a somewhat unusual
living situation after we pause for a quick spotsor break.
Rufus and Caroline had two children, both daughters, early in

(08:58):
their marriage. Their first child, Emily Elizabeth, was born in
early eighteen thirty eight, just as Rufus was starting a
new job in Vermont. Caroline stayed in New York until
the baby was born, and then moved to Vermont several
months later, but they moved to New York again in
eighteen thirty nine so that Rufus could work for Horace
Greeley at the Daily Wig. He also became friends with

(09:20):
Park Benjamin during this time before their venture and brother Jonathan.
The two of them had worked together on a paper
called The Evening Tatler. Greeley thought this effort, which included
some barbs aimed at Edgar Allan Poe, was not very
worthwhile as an endeavor, so he tried to find other
jobs for Griswold, including a failed attempt to have him
employed by the Southern Literary Messenger. He instead got a

(09:42):
job as an assistant editor at The New Yorker. Yeah,
I like that in kind of a mentor position. Horace
Greeley was like, no, no, no, no, please don't please,
don't work on that garbage. Do something better with yourself. Also,
I'm struck throughout griswold story, and if you look at
any stories of people that worked in journalism during this time,

(10:04):
of just how much they were all kind of shifting
around from publication to publication. But not long after their
second daughter, who was named Caroline after her mother, was born,
Rufus moved away from the family, first to Philadelphia to
shop an anthology project around, and then to Boston to
work on Boston Notion, and eventually to Philadelphia again to

(10:25):
work at the Philadelphia Daily Standard in November of nineteen
forty and this was all sort of rather sudden move.
He had abandoned his work in New York and his
family just stayed behind. He did make regular trips to
New York to visit with Caroline and the girls, but
he lived primarily in Boston and then Philadelphia. Throughout all this,
he published the book The Biographical Annual, containing memoirs of

(10:48):
eminent persons recently deceased, in eighteen forty one, but who
was dismay It did not do very well when he
later published the anthology The Poets and Poetry of America
in April of eighteen forty two, he on a lot
more success, and this is kind of the project that
he is often most famously linked to. Po for this

(11:08):
volume featured ninety one writers with a brief biography and
some work from each of them. And while Poe was featured,
his biography was inaccurate. There were only a few of
his poems in the book, which included The Sleeper, The
Haunted Palace, and the Coliseum, and he was kind of
shoved at the back, and by comparison, other poets who
today are scarce remembered, had far more of their work included.

(11:32):
The main criticism of Griswold's anthology, though, was that it
favored New England poets and it snubbed those from the South.
Griswold had made Poe's acquaintance in eighteen forty one. Griswold's
version of events was that Poe had come to visit
him when he was not at home in May of
that year and left behind two letters of introduction. They
met the next day and discussed the anthology project that

(11:54):
Grizzwold was working on, which became Poets and Poetry of America.
Poe was paid by Griswold to review the anthology, and
the review was overall pretty kind, but did not offer
the level of praise that that Griswold had been expecting. Yeah,
Poe at this time was working as a literary critic

(12:14):
among other endeavors, and he was known for being you know,
pretty Uh. I guess harsh is a good word. He
was just very direct. He didn't really cut anybody any slack. Uh.
He had a high standard that people had to meet
before he would really offer praise. Uh. This whole weird

(12:36):
interaction between the two of them where he was supposed
to write this review and Griswold wasn't happy, and it
really became something of a cat and mouse game between
these two men. So Poe thought that Griswold would have
the review suppressed and because it wasn't you know, especially
like crazy And it allegedly delighted Poe to think that

(12:57):
he had been paid to write a puff piece and
that he instead gave a review that would never be
seen because of its depth of honesty. But Griswold had
the review printed because he didn't want to give Poe
the satisfaction of thinking that he had somehow bested Griswold
or in any way offended his ego. Two years into
Griswold living separately from his family while he chased jobs

(13:19):
all over the Northeastern United States, the Griswold's had a
third child in early November. Rufus went to New York
to visit his wife in New York and newborn son,
and then three days after he returned to Philadelphia, he
received terrible news. Both Caroline and the baby had died
from an unknown cause. This sudden loss was naturally, really

(13:43):
intense and quite harrowing for Rufus Griswold. He returned immediately
to New York, and he wouldn't leave Caroline's coffin for
thirty hours. When his friends and family begged him to
rest and move away from the coffin just to get
a break, he instead insisted on embracing his dead wife,
and his two young daughters at this point were on
hand to witness all of this extreme exhibition of grief.

(14:06):
He wrote in a letter to family friend James T.
Field's quote, you knew her, my friend. She was my
good angel. She was the first to lead me from
a cheerless, lonely life to society. She was not only
the best of wives, but the best of mothers. Alas
for me, I shall I shall never more have a
home to fly to you in my sorrows, never more

(14:27):
a comforter of my afflictions, never more a partner to
share in all my woes, or to be a source
and author of all my pleasures. May God forever keep
you from all such sorrow. On November eleven, Caroline was
buried in Brooklyn at Greenwood Cemetery, but Rufus cried and
fell across the coffin in its tomb so that the

(14:48):
ceremony couldn't be concluded, and eventually Caroline's uncle had to
pull Griswold away. On November six, an anonymously written poem
titled five Days appeared in the New York Tribune. This
was Griswold's work, and it walks the reader through a
series of events in his life just prior to and
after the death of his wife and child, and his

(15:09):
difficulty coming to terms with the loss. Griswold's grief continued
to consume him. He continued to dream that Caroline was
alive and that they were reunited, and forty days after
the funeral, according to his own account, Rufus returned to
the tomb and had the sexton open it, and then
went down into it and opened Caroline's coffin. Uh. He

(15:33):
was with Caroline's remains a long while. He actually allegedly
fell asleep embracing the body before a friend came and
retrieved him. It does seem as though seeing Caroline's decaying
body helped Griswold to finally process her death to a
point that he could move on. He wrote of the experience,
quote in all this, I know I have acted against reason,

(15:55):
but as I look back upon it, it seems that
I have been influenced by some power to you strong
to be opposed. The same account continues, quote, I go
forth today a changed man. I realized at length that
she is dead. I turned my gaze from the past
to the future, and rufus. Griswold still had two daughters
to provide for, so he eventually he went back to

(16:18):
his work. His turn at the Philadelphia Daily Standard marks
Griswold's transition into literary crisis criticism, and that's something that
he would actually do for the rest of his life.
In eighteen forty two, Griswold became assistant editor on Graham's
magazine after the post was left by his predecessor, Poe.
Griswold stayed at the job for a year, and he

(16:39):
ended up leaving the position as his animosity between him
and Poe started to escalate. A new review of the
Poets and Poetry of America had appeared in the Philadelphia
based literary journal Saturday Museum, and it was scathing. Griswold
believed Poe had written it, although it was in fact

(17:01):
one of Poe's friends. This caused ongoing friction between the
two men until it finally reached this point where Griswold
wanted to get some distance from his rival. The eighteen forties, though,
did end up being really quite productive for Griswold. In
something of a surprising twist, giving his ventures in publishing
novels in Brother Jonathan without permission, Griswald, along with a

(17:22):
number of other figures from his literary circles, started the
American Copyright Club, which was designed to promote copyright law
and the protection of creators from doing exactly the sorts
of things that he had been doing just a few
years earlier. He also continued to publish anthologies. In eighteen
forty five, Griswold edited a collection of John Milton's prose,

(17:43):
and this was the first United States edition of that work.
And we're about to get into Rufus Griswold's brief second marriage,
but first we will take a quick break and have
a word from one of our fantastic sponsors. So another
major event happened in Griswold's life in eighteen forty five.

(18:05):
He got married again, and this time his bride was
a Southern woman more than a decade older than him,
named Charlotte Myers, and they said their marriage vows on
August eighty five. But Rufus almost immediately left. Charlotte allegedly
there was some physical condition which rendered her quote incapable
of being a wife. I am needlessly curious about what

(18:30):
that was about. There's a lot of speculation about it,
whether this was some physical abnormality that could have probably
easily been corrected, or if there was some other issue
with it. But basically it appears that the marriage was
never consummated, and once it was apparent that it never
would be, uh Rufus was out all right. Then the

(18:51):
two of them separated, and as part of the terms,
Charlotte kept one of Griswold's daughters, Caroline, who she had
grown very fond of. His other daughter, Emily, was dropped
off with relatives in New York, and Griswald threw himself
into his work once more. I'm not a parent, but
that still sounds sort of horrifying. That doesn't seem a

(19:11):
little odd. There's going to be some more horrifying follow
up on that um. His next project was The Prose
Writers of America, and this offered something of a tense
scenario for the editor because at this point Edgar Allan
Poe was a celebrated writer and there was absolutely no
way that Rufus Griswald could exclude him from such a

(19:33):
compilation without inviting some pretty harsh criticism and a dismissal
of the works validity. So he wrote the Poe and
asked him to submit some prose for the anthology, including
in his letter quote, although I have some cause of
personal quarrel with you, which you will easily enough remember,
I do not, under any circumstances permit as you have

(19:53):
repeatedly charged my private griefs to influence my judgment as
a critic or its expressions. I retain therefore the early
formed and well founded favorable opinions of your works. This
publication ended up earning Poe a great deal of praise. Poul,
we should point out, was not the only rival in

(20:15):
Griswold's career. In eighteen forty seven, he published a book
titled Washington and the Generals of the Revolution, and at
around the same time, the Reverend jewelt He Headley also
published a book about George Washington titled Washington and His Generals.
The parallel publications led to tension between the two men,
with Headley casting a shadow over Griswold's work by insinuating

(20:39):
that even his closest friends called Rufus a liar. Later
that same year, Griswold also got into a rivalry with
Elizabeth Ellett, who wrote a book on women of the
American Revolution using materials from Griswold's personal library. When she
neglected to thank him in the book, he was offended.
He later wrote a note of about her in an

(21:01):
anthology of Women Poets that basically stated that she made
quote valuable and interesting work, but that she used men
to do so. Yeah again that that the nineteenth century
literary circle drama is unsurpassed. UH When Edgar Allen Poe
died on October seven, nine, Griswold became his literary executor.

(21:23):
He claimed that Poe had requested this and that Poe's
relatives had supported the decision, but it seems that he
may have forged some of the documentation that backed up
this claim. On October nine, a lengthy obituary titled simply
Death of Edgar A. Poe ran in the New York
Daily Tribune. It began Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He

(21:47):
died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. This announcement will
startle many, but few will be grieved by it. The
poet was well known personally or by reputation in all
this country. He had readers in England and in several
of the states of Hotinental Europe, but he had few
or no friends. And the regrets for his death will
be suggested principally by the consideration that in him literary

(22:10):
art has lost one of its most brilliant but erratic stars.
That is just unnecessary, And that's only the beginning the
rest of this very long obituary. It's not like an
o bit that we would see today, where it's a
few paragraphs. It's really quite lengthy. Uh. It walks through
pose life. It outlines and details his many faults as

(22:31):
a man and his gifts as a writer. Uh. It
talks about, you know, some problems with drink and potential
other substances, and near the end it reads quote, we
must omit any particular criticism of Mr Poe's works. As
a writer of tales, it will be admitted generally that
he was scarcely surpassed in ingenuity of construction or effective painting.

(22:53):
As a critic, he was more remarkable as a dissector
of sentences than as a commentator upon ideas. He would
is little better than a carping grammarian. As a poet,
he will retain a most honorable rank in This obituary,
which praises post writing but pretty much takes him down
in every other way, was signed Ludwig, but it was
eventually revealed that it was in fact Griswold that wrote it.

(23:17):
In eighteen fifty, Griswold's dearest friend, poet Francis Sergeant Osgood, died.
She had been a piece of this whole feud between
Griswold and Poe. It seems like for a time, even
though he was married. Poe had entertained the notion of
having a relationship with Fanny Osgood in a romantic way,
but he felt that Griswold's interest in her got in

(23:39):
the way of that. In any case, Griswold once again
grieve deeply, but he seemed to deal with his feelings
of loss around Fanny Osgood by working through them. He
worked on Fanny's memorial with writer Mary Hewitt. He worked
on several books, and he started working at International Magazine
two years into his time there. That publication actually merged

(24:01):
with Harper's Magazine. That same year, he edited a compiled
works of Edgar Allan Poe, which he worked on with
James R. Lowell and MP Willis. The book included a
biography of Poe titled Memoir of the Author, which has
been a source of a lot of fallacies about Poe
that have persisted for decades. Griswold took the opportunity to

(24:23):
basically write a fictitious account of his rival's life, painting
him as an utter mess and even substantiating his claims
with falsified documents. Unfortunately, because Griswold's version of post biography
was sourced by other writers over the time. A lot
of these falsehoods that he published have persisted. By eighteen

(24:44):
fifty two, Griswold had a new dilemma. As part of
his settlement with Charlotte Myers, he was sworn to never
marry again, and in fact they were not legally divorced,
but he was contemplating a third marriage, this time to
the poet Alice Carey, and there romance, which had been
conducted via letters, had been intense, but it in fact
did not stand the test of time. Griswold actually found

(25:07):
another woman that he felt he'd rather marry, Harriet Macrillis,
who was wealthy in addition to being a woman of
good social standing. Charlotte had no interest in legally divorcing Rufus,
although she eventually acquiesced on the condition that Caroline would
become solely her child and a move that may be
difficult for listeners who are parents to really comprehend. Griswold

(25:29):
agree with this, and he never saw Caroline again. He
was granted a divorce and he married Harriet Macrillis on
in December of eighteen fifty two. The two of them
had a son named William the following year. But even
though it seemed like, despite your feelings about his decisions
regarding his daughter's he had gotten his life kind of settled,

(25:50):
he really did not achieve a level of happiness or bliss.
His marriage was soured before long when Elizabeth Ellott, who
you remember he had that bit of a tangle with,
convinced Charlotte Meyer that she should contest the divorce she
had agreed to and have it vacated. And the scandal
of all of this led Harriet to leave, taking Griswold's

(26:12):
daughter Emily with her. Uh their train was in an accident,
and Emily was briefly pronounced dead, but was revived soon after.
In fall of eighteen fifty three, Griswold was badly burned
when his home caught fire. In eighteen fifty five, Griswold
wrote The Republican Court or American Society in the Days
of Washington. This is generally considered to be his best work.

(26:35):
It's a portrait of high society in the early days
of the United States, and it draws parallels between the
royal courts of Europe and the social structure that formed
around George Washington is the first president of the United States.
The Republican Court is available to read on archive dot org. Yeah,
we'll link to that in the show notes. Uh. And
after his third marriage ended, Griswold moved into a rented

(26:58):
room in New York City. His health declined due to tuberculosis.
In an eighteen fifty seven he really became very ill.
Alice carry, the poet woman that he had pushed aside
in favor of Harriet McCrillis, actually took care of him
in his final days. But when he sent word to
Harriet asking to see her and their son William one

(27:18):
last time, she traveled immediately to his bedside, and she
remained there until he died. Griswold died just short of
eight years after Edgar Allen Poe on August eighteen fifty seven.
A death announcement for Griswold was included in Emerson's Magazine.
In Putnam's Monthly volume five, published in eighteen fifty seven,

(27:40):
Here's what it's said. Quote, the earthly career of this
man has terminated, and as public journalists, it is needful
that we should have something to say of one who
has been more widely associated with the literature of the country.
And with literary persons than anyone left to us, we
shall say little of the experience of Mr Griswold, painful

(28:01):
as it is, and as full of sorrow to himself
as to others. No one is evil without knowing pain.
No one is weak without the pangs of weakness. That
rufus W Griswold was a weak and ill judging man,
no one will deny. As a man there was much
in him to regret. But those who knew something of
his last lonely years, his bed of solitary and unsheared suffering,

(28:24):
will feel for him only pity, as one who was
made to a tone deeply for all the mistakes of
his life. Yeah, after his uh obituary of Poe, Yeah,
it seems fitting that someone thought that that's maybe how
they should write about him at the end. Yeah, but
it is quite sad, and it is generally accepted that,

(28:45):
like once Caroline died, he became very conflicted about a
great many things and really couldn't quite ever get away
from the path of growing kind of more bitter as
he went, right, which is terribly sad. But yeah, he's
an interesting figure in and we don't hear much about
him outside of just being the guy that hated Poe

(29:08):
when really he had this, you know, a rich life
all his own. Is pretty much anyone we would ever
talk about. Does uh So? That is Rufus Griswald. Do
you have some listener mail for us as well? I do,
and it's peppy. It is another wonderful holiday card that
we received. We've gotten so many beautiful ones. This one
is from our listener Chip and he writes, Dear Holly

(29:30):
and Tracy, I cannot tell you how much I have
enjoyed stuff he missed in history class, in the car
at home while cooking, you name it. Your Your work
is always something I look forward to hearing. I know
you hear this all the time, but truly you do
excellent work as conveyors of information, and you're very entertaining
as well. The podcast of the Devil's Footprints of Devonshire
and It's fabled Kangaroo was so funny. I dropped a
bowl of cheesecake better and I didn't even stop laughing

(29:52):
to clean it up for a good five minutes. I'm
still imagining a band of villagers trekking across the countryside
following the prince in the snow also the podcast concerning
the Green Children of Wolpit and the Count of Saint Germain.
We're very amusing. Thank you so much for what you do.
Thank you, Chip. I mostly wanted to read it because
I want to have a moment of silence for his
cheesecake batter. I'm very sad. But also it's just a

(30:16):
lovely card. And Chip did a thing that I wanted
to mention because I keep seeing people do it lately,
and I love it because it's a nice hearkening back
to um kind of an old fashioned form of correspondence,
which is that he used a wax seal lovely with
his monogram. And those are like becoming vogue again and
I love it. I'm glad they were coming vogue again
because I've had one for like twenty years. Yeah, I

(30:38):
mean I in this year in particular, we've gotten, you know,
a lovely raft of holiday cards every year that we've
been on the show, and this year in particular, I
noticed a massive uptick in the use of those. So
I'm glad that those are are back in the public consciousness. Uh.
If you would like to write to us, you can
do so at History Podcast at House Stop works dot com.

(30:59):
You can also find as that missed in History dot com,
where every episode of the show that has ever been
done is still there archived uh and every episode that
Tracy and I have worked on includes show notes. So
come and visit us at Missed in History. You can
also visit us on social media. We are Missed in
History pretty much anywhere that you would encounter social media,
and we hope you come and visit us at missed

(31:20):
in History dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Because it has to Works dot com.