August 5, 2017 • 33 mins
We're revisiting a classic episode, all about the Count of Saint Germain. His story features teleportation, alchemy and even rumors of immortality. Was he a spy? A concealed royal? A skilled con man? Or just a compulsive liar?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, it's time for another Saturday classic. So for folks
who are just joining in or who are wondering why
stuff you missed in History class showing up in their
podcast feed on the weekend. Uh, We're trying a new
thing for listeners who may be are newer and haven't
taken a dive into the back catalog. So on Saturday's
we're gonna re air some of our favorites from the past.
Today we have the Count of san Gramat. He claimed,
(00:26):
among many things, to be an immortal and to know
the Queen of Sheba. And in the years since this
episode first came out, he also became a recurring character
in the second season of the TV adaptation of Outlander,
so at least among fans of Outlander, he maybe has
a little wider name recognition than before. So let's hop
right into his story. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
(00:49):
History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Collie Fry, I'm Wilson. The
subject of today's episode is the center of so many
myths and stories and rumors that it's a little bit
(01:09):
hard to separate fact from fiction. That we will do
our best to make sure we hit the actually documented
elements of his story. Uh. There are accounts of teleportation,
involved alchemy, even immortality that swirl around this person, who
is the Count of Saint Gema. You'll also see him
referenced in uh the foreign version of Comte de Saint
Gemin Uh. And did an immortal actually walk among the
(01:33):
aristocrats of Europe in the eighteenth century courts? I'm gonna
say odds or no, but he has some interesting and
compelling fastest to his story. He does seem to have
perhaps convinced many people that he did. Yeah, and he,
you know, allegedly could make himself invisible. He according to
some accounts New Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Some
(01:56):
accounts even put him at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Taste. Uh. However,
he can also turn let into gold apparently, or something
close enough, according to one actual account that was written
in the letter. And we'll talk about that more specifically.
But what was the real deal with this guy? Was
he a charlatan? Was he an actual legit mystic or
(02:19):
was he just sort of a madman caught up in
his own lies. I'm not sure that the truth has
to include or exclude any or all of those, because
it's really there's a lot of stuff involved and many
layers and weirdness. I made a weird noise, that's how.
That's how convinced I am that one of the things
(02:41):
list of possibilities is not the right one. I am
generally a very skeptical person, so I, you know, suspect
that not the real deal. But that's you know, yeah,
that is I'm kind of an accums razor, kind of galt. Well,
I am the uh the extreme claims or are extreme evidence,
(03:01):
which you know, some guy wrote this in a journal
does not count right. Uh So normally we would do
early history on people and well kind of, but when
we get to the like when was he born, Well,
it's really tricky in this particular one because there are
(03:23):
different stories and in some cases no story. Most reputable
sources that try to put his birth somewhere on the
timeline put it somewhere between seventeen ten and seventeen twelve.
And there were times late in the Count's life that
he claimed that he was the son of the Transylvanian
Prince Farrank, the second Recuzzie, who led a Hungarian uprising
(03:43):
called the Kuric Revolt against the Habsburg Empire and Recuz
he had several sons, one of whom died as a child,
and those who believe that Count Sangrement was the Transylvanian
Prince's son claimed that that death, the death of the child,
had been fake to protect the young boy in the
midst of this political tumult, and this version of the
(04:05):
count's origins, if you buy into that, actually puts his
birth a little bit earlier, around six I think there's
a lot bit earlier it does. But you know, he
was ageless, much like Dick Clark. So I was gonna
say Dorian Gray. I went with a less impressive and
more pop culturally reference. Yes. So he first appeared in
(04:28):
historical documentation much later. In seventy five, he was mentioned
in a letter from Horace Walpole, who was the fourth
Earl of Orford and the author of the horror fiction
of the Castle of a Toronto, which is like one
of the first horror novels in English. I read it
before you. I'm sure you can find it for free
on the internet. Um. So, this letter was from Horace
(04:53):
Walpole to Horace Mann, who was a London merchant and diplomat,
not to be confused with the American educator by same
name that he was around about a hundred years later.
So the two Horaces maintained a friendship through correspondence for
more than four decades, and on December nine, Walpole wrote
the following We begin to take up people, but it
(05:16):
is with as much caution and timidity as women of
quality begins upon their jewels. We have not ventured upon
any great stone yet. The Provost of Edinburgh is in
custody of a messenger, and the other day they seized
an odd man who goes by the name of Count
Saint Germain. He has been here these two years and
will not tell who he is or whence, but professes
(05:37):
that he does not go by his right name. He sings,
plays on the violin wonderfully composes, is mad and not
very sensible. He has called an Italian, a Spaniard, a pole,
a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico and
ran away with her jewels to Constantinople, a priest, a fiddler,
a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated
(05:59):
curiosity about him, but in vain however nothing has been
made out against him. He is released, and what convinces
me that he is not a gentleman stays here and
talks of his being taken up for a spy. So
the Count was arrested and released and then opted to
hang out and talk about his arrest and how he
was suspected of being a spy. He had been suspected
(06:20):
of being a Jacobite agent, but was released when nobody
could find any evidence of it. And in seventeen forty six,
roughly a year after this letter was written, so at
this point he's been in London for about three years.
A performance of musical compositions by the Count took place,
and those musical pieces were also published at the same time,
and the Count was apparently genuinely talented as a composer.
(06:42):
He wrote at least forty Italian arias, seven solos for violin,
and six trio sonatas, as well as other things, but
those are kind of some of the high point of
his uh CV as a composer. However, after this this
musical um composition publication, he vanishes from the record, either
(07:03):
he left London or kind of faded into the background
for a while, and during his time on the d
L he said to have been in Vienna for a
while and then in India. And I should point out,
as we talked about kind of these kind of major
turning points in his story of him being in a location,
he was allegedly kind of constantly traveling. So even if
(07:24):
he was kind of setting up regular um um house
in some particular space, he was also probably going out
and visiting many other places at the same time. Allegedly. Uh.
The count next appeared in Versailles in seventeen forty eight,
and Charlouis august Fouquet, Duke de Bellisle, made Saint Germains
(07:46):
introductions at court, presenting this mysterious count as an expert
in dye and textiles, and this being the court of
France in the eighteenth century, that was basically enough said, uh,
you know someone who can make beautiful things, You're in right.
And so for two years he made himself extremely comfortable
in French society. He went to parties and charmed everybody there.
(08:07):
He started dropping little hints about being a very extraordinary individual.
He would give away diamonds, saying that he could just
make them. He would play the harpsichord and the violin
with very great skill. He would give beauty advice to
the ladies of the court, and he eventually gained the
ear of King Louis the fift himself and one of
Saint Germiles habits was to set up a lab wherever
(08:30):
he went, which is where he would do things like
mixed beauty elixers for the ladies. He would die fabrics
and other media, and he would also work his alchemy. Uh.
And it's interesting because he was apparently quite a good chemist,
Like he really was good at like textile dying and
coming up with different paints. Uh. One story says that
he made a paint that was odor free, which at
the time was completely unusual. It's unusual now, um. But
(08:55):
then there was always also this alchemy element to it.
And he said to have removed a flaw from deep
within a diamond for King Louis fifte without diminishing its size.
But he would never disclose how he achieved this feat.
I have an idea, you do that he did not
do this for real. I'm extremely skeptical about his whole story,
(09:19):
Like I have an idea, no so um. During this
time he allegedly had an exchange with an elderly countess
who had accompanied her husband to Venice in the early
seventeen hundreds. This countess asked him whether his father had
been in Venice in seventeen ten, and he is said
(09:39):
to have replied, no, madam, it is very much longer
since I lost my father. But I myself was living
in Venice at the end of the last and the
beginning of this century. I had the honor to pay
you court then, and you were kind enough to admire
a few barkarrolls of my composing, which we used to
sing together. And the countess was rather be fuddled at this,
(10:01):
and she told the count no, no, this could not
be the case. The man she was speaking of had
been in his mid forties, and that was the age
that the count appeared before her there in the court
of France. And again she's referencing seventeen ten, and this is,
you know, in the seventeen fifties. And uh, he replied
to her, just simply, madam, I am very old. I
(10:21):
totally saw this conversation. And one of the lord of
the Rings extended editions, he's one of the Donadines, so Basically,
any time the account was questioned about his past, particularly
his childhood, he would get into these astounding tales or
divert the conversation to another topic. And this really got
tongues wagging and created all the speculative gossip around him. Yeah,
(10:44):
which in the court of France at this time, I
mean publicity uh. And while he was in France and
rubbing shoulders with royalty, he had this other weird cork
which added to this sort of cloud of speculation, which
is that he allegedly never ate in public. Uh. Though
according to some accounts, he would occasionally eat in front
of people, but it was only oatmeal or lean cuts
(11:05):
of chicken uh. And in some accounts he tells people
that this is all he eats, rather than them actually
witnessing it. But this just added to his sensational reputation,
which just grew super rapidly. Also growing very rapidly was
his responsibility to the king. King Louis the fifteenth started
sending him on missions, sometimes of a rather unclear nature,
(11:29):
and this is what led to rumors that he was
the king's personal spy. It also drew the scorn of
lots of other people. Yeah, you couldn't really be the
King's favorite without making people angry, uh, and the Duc
de Choise was particularly suspicious of the seemingly mystical count.
And there was also um a matter of heightened tensions
(11:51):
because this was all going on at the height of
the Seven Years War between England and France. So for
him to be a secret spy with the ear of
the king during this time, it was a very tenth
time and it made people that should have been important
in state affairs kind of left out of the loop
of these doings, and that was an irritant. While san
Germain was traveling to Amsterdam on business for the King,
(12:14):
Schwazoe and the Count of Affrey were exchanging letters about
what he was doing. San Germain had told the Count
of Affrey that Amsterdam finances were in just a terrible
state and that he alone could fix them. He pitched
this scheme to do so, which involved lots and lots
of moving parts and the establishment of a fund for
(12:34):
France to be bankrolled by the Dutch. He also told
Afrey that he had made all these plans without the
knowledge of the higher authorities, claiming that he had been
sent with this general sort of mission to negotiate peace
between the warring countries. Sounds pretty shady. Yeah, Afrey was
there in Amsterdam and he was receiving this man and
(12:55):
talking to him and being like, wait, you want to
do what? Uh? And in the meantime him Uh. Choizoi
had also intercepted this letter from Saint Germain to the
Marquise de Pompadour, who was King Louis the fifteenth Chief Mistress.
And in this letter Saint Germain deeply mischaracterized his connections
at the Hague. So while Choizoi and Afrey were comparing notes,
(13:18):
they did not match up to what Uh the Count
was saying was going on when they saw this letter
that he had written the Marquise Uh. And this letter,
combined with the accounts from the Count of Afrey, we're
really quite damning for Saint Geremain. And a letter that
went from Schwizoi to Afrey on March nineteen, seventeen sixty.
(13:40):
This is this is what was written down, Sir, I
send you a letter from Monsieur de Saint Germain to
the Marquise de Pompadour, which in itself will suffice to
expose the absurdity of the personage. He is an adventurer
of the first order, who was, moreover, so far as
I have seen, exceedingly foolish. I beg you immediately, on
(14:00):
receiving my letter, to summon him to your house and
to tell him from me that I do not know
how the King's Minister in charge of the Finance department
will look on his conduct with regard to this object,
but that as to myself, you are ordered to warn
him that if I learn that far or near, and
much or little he chooses to meddle with politics, I
(14:22):
assure him that I shall obtain an order from the
King that on his return to France he will be
placed for the rest of his days in an underground dungeon.
Exclamation point. It goes on. You will add that he
may be quite sure that these intentions of mine concerning
him are as sincere as they will surely be executed
(14:45):
if he gives me the opportunity of keeping my word.
After this declaration, you will request him never again to
set foot in your house, and it will be well
for you to make public and known to all the
foreign ministers as well as the bankers of Amsterdam, the
compliment that you have been commanded to pay to this
insufferable adventurer. Yeah, Saint Germain did not return to France. Uh.
(15:10):
He fled to England after this all went down, but
he did not stay there for terribly long. And before
we go on to his next crazy adventure, do you
want to take a moment and here worked from our
sponsors deeper. So now back to the Illustrius count. In
(15:31):
seventeen sixty three, Saint Germain turned up in Belgium, and
this time he was going by the name of Surmont.
You may recall that I mentioned in the Rose Barton
episode people would change their names frequently at this time. Uh.
And the count was a pro at that he was
constantly going by different names. Uh. And he purchased a
parcel of land there in Belgium, and he set up
a lab. And his intent was to enter into a
(15:55):
contract with the Belgian government to provide them certain proprietary
chemical process This is that he had developed, so some
of these things, like you know, specific dies and paints
that he had been working on. One of the most
important aspects of this attempt at a business deal with
Belgium comes in the form of a letter sent by
an official who met with San German slash Sermont. This official,
(16:18):
Carl Cobenzel, sent the following in a note to Prince
count It's the prime Minister, and he says, it was
about three months ago that the person known by the
name of Comte de Saint Germain passed this way and
came to see me. I found him the most singular
man that I ever saw in my life. I do
not yet precisely know his birth. I believe, however, that
(16:39):
he is the son of a clandestine union in a
powerful and illustrious family, possessing great wealth. He lives in
the greatest of simplicity. He knows everything and shows an uprightness,
a goodness of soul worthy of admiration. Among a number
of his accomplishments he made under my own eyes, some
experiments of which the most important were the transmutation of
(17:00):
iron into a metal as beautiful as gold and at
least as good for all goldsmith's work. The dying and
preparation of skins carried to a perfection which surpassed all
the Moroccos in the world, and the most perfect tanning.
The dying of silks carried to a perfection hitherto unknown.
The like dying of woolens the dying of wood in
the most brilliant colors, penetrating through and through and the
(17:23):
whole without either indigo or cocael, with the commonest ingredients,
and consequently, at a very moderate price, the composition of
colors for painting ultramarine is as perfect as is made
from lapis leslie. And finally removing the smell from painting oils,
and making the best oil of Provence, from the oils
of Novette, of Coursat, and from others even the worst
(17:45):
I have in my hands. All these productions made under
my own eyes. I have had them undergo the most
strict examinations, and seeing in these articles a prophet which
might mount up to millions, I have endeavored to take
advantage of the friendship that this man has felt for me,
and to learn from him all these secrets. He has
given them to me, and he asks nothing for himself
beyond a payment proportionate to the profits that might may
(18:08):
accrue from them, it being understood that this shall be
only when the profit has been made. So this letter
creates a public record of San German's alchemical skills, and
whether Cobenzel was duped or was some sort of co conspirator,
is not really known. Yeah, we don't have those actual
samples he claimed to have to back any of it up. Well,
(18:29):
and if if anybody had really ever figured out how
to turn let into gold, surely that would have spread
like wildfire. Yeah, that where someone would still be plying
that trade. Yeah, well, you know that was like the
big alchemical quest for a really long time, like let's
figure out how to turn base metals into gold. Yeah,
we know that does not really work. That's Antoine Lavoisier
(18:51):
would have some things to say. This letter, as you said,
creates this public record. Uh. But the deal fell through
just the same, and Saint Germain moved on, and the
years after things went south in Belgium he basically went
all over the globe. Maybe not all over the globe,
he went a lot of places. Uh. In seventeen sixty two,
(19:12):
Saint Germain was in St. Petersburg, just in time for
Catherine the Great to seize the throne in a coup.
And whether or not Saint Germain was involved in that
coup is actually a matter of some debate. There are
people that will directly trace it to him and say
that he, you know, as part of his greater mystical being,
has catalyzed many important world events, this being one of them,
and others are like no, he just happened to be there.
(19:35):
After leaving Russia, he stayed out of high profile circles.
There were sightings of him in various places, but the
official accounts of where he was or somewhere between between
sparse and non existent. And then almost a decade later
he turned up in Bavaria in seventeen seventy four, and
he was at this point traveling under the name of
(19:56):
Zarogi and feigning to be older than he had previously
said he was, although he eventually claimed to be the
son of Prince Requisie. When he was caught in this deception,
it seemed like he had maybe stolen someone's identity. Uh.
And then someone figured out that that could not be
the case, and he said, no, no, no, I'm an
(20:17):
exiled I'm a prince on the run. In seventeen seventy six,
he was peddling his chemistry wears in Germany, trying once
again to get a government contract, and in spite of
getting some positive interest for his non mystical wears, he
blew the deal once again. He started talking about all
of his alchemy skills and how amazing he was, and
that soured the negotiations. Another reason that Sandra Man lost
(20:40):
the deal was contextual suspicion. He was not the only
person in Europe claiming to be an alchemist, and enough
nobles had been duped and in Germany only shortly before
he came on the scene, that there was just a
general reluctance to get involved in this kind of business. Yeah,
there there had been other miss a cool people trapesing
(21:01):
around getting money out of people, so naturally, you know,
it was kind of a we just got burned by this.
You might you might be real. I don't know. But
while he was in Germany, the Count of Sagrement made
a really important friend, and that was Prince Karl of
hes Kassel, Governor of Schleiswig Holstein. And Prince Carl took
(21:22):
in this wandering mystic and he set him up with
a lab for performing his chemistry and a chemical experiments,
and you know, lodging set him up with the little house.
He has been associated with the Rosicrucians, the Society of
Asiatic Brothers, the Knights of Light, the Illuminati, the Order
of the Templars, and has even been named as a
co founder of the Freemasons. But being secret societies, we
(21:43):
naturally don't know a lot about what level of involvement
he may have had, if any. Yeah, and some uh,
you know, some texts saying, you know, we want to
disassociate from him. We just don't know. But what we
do know is that he spent several years in Schleswig
at this point with Prince Karl, and it's here that
he's reported to have met his end. He died on
(22:05):
February eighty four after catching pneumonia. The Count is said
to have told Prince Carl that he left a note
for him and his personal effects to be opened in
the event of his death, but no such note was
ever actually found. Yeah, and Carl wasn't there when he died.
He was away in his personal physician, uh witnessed the death.
But so when Carl came back, he was expecting a
(22:26):
note and got none. Well, before we go on to
kind of the postmortem legend, do you want to take
another moment for an ad break. Of course, you were
so at this point in time in our story, the
Count Sangerement is deceased h And as we said at
(22:49):
the top of the podcast, sussing out how much of
his story and his legend regarding his metaphysical life is
based in any sort of reality is difficult. At the
very best, he may have been nothing more than a
compulsive liar, spinning up tail after tail to cover his
humble or shameful past or to work his way into
(23:09):
high society. He was definitely well educated, able to speak
many languages, able to hold his own in conversation with
the highest rungs of society. He was definitely skilled as
a musician and a composer and a successful chemist. And
adding to the mythos surrounding the count is also a
little problem of names and conflation. First, the Count of Sangrement,
(23:32):
as we said, meant by went by many aliases during
his lifetime. And second, there were salon comedians in France
doing Sagrement parodies. Uh, And it's entirely likely that some
of the boasts that they made in jest eventually kind
of made their way into the legend and kind of
got confused over what was reality and what was comedy. Uh,
(23:54):
Because he was I mean as much as many people
were really blown away by him and thought he was
a amazing there were also people that were like, you, guys,
he's a charlatan. Yeah, and he became a joke too
many people. Yeah. Well, when when you gave me this
this outline and I was reading through it for the
first time, I was thinking, this sounds a whole lot
(24:14):
like Cassanova without the sex part, which I know, which
makes it really funny, because Cassanova just added to the confusion.
Not only would he sometimes impersonate the Count as a joke,
his autobiography includes this description of the man that's completely
counter to every other description of him by anyone else. Yeah,
(24:37):
and it's believed that that description, it like talks about
him wearing these long plain robes and stuff, just things
that had nothing to do with him. Uh. And it's
believed that was added by an editor, or that there
was somewhere some sort of translation or trans But this
is believed to have been added by an editor or
somehow like lost a little bit in translation on the text,
(24:59):
or maybe cassan o it did it on purpose. Isn't
as possible. Uh. The sort of ironic comparison there is
that Unlike Cassanova, the Count of Sangrement was not associated
with sex at all. Really he had He's often described
as living a chaste life, so but he interesting counterpoints
to one another. He had. He had this weird con
(25:21):
artist globe trotter is right up Cassanova's alley. We can
get the two of them in the baron of Arizona together,
I think we would have a really spectacular historical meet
and greet. Uh. And there have also been other people
with the same title in history, uh, and sometimes their
stories have been accidentally mingled with this Count of Sagrement.
So his legend has gotten really nebulous and there aren't
(25:45):
any hard edges to it. It just kind of grows
and ebbs and flows. And there are historians who believe
that he really was a missing son of a of
Transylvanian royalty, and that there was some kind of secret
arrangement or signal that validated this with other royal which
explained his ability to just mix so easily with all
the courts of Europe. Yeah, most uh, non noble born
(26:08):
people couldn't just stroll into like the court of France
and end up being BFFs with the king, but he
managed it no problem, and he you know, had contacts
all over the place. But uh, to make the historical
record and the story of Counts sentiment even trickier, there
have also been plenty of people willing to assert that
he lives on and they kind of want to believe
(26:29):
and that kind of you know, get fished into building
a mythos. He's not a time lord. No, although there
are people that have suspected that he was a time traveler.
I mean there are people that believe. I'm just gonna
go on the record and saying that that I do not.
And he was also allegedly sighted at a Masonic meeting
(26:51):
the year after his death, and it was just the
beginning of all these post mortem appearances. Yeah. Some will
even claim that he was actually once Sir Francis Bacon
and that he was either rejuvenated in some way or
he was reincarnated as the Count. Plenty of people throughout
the years have been really happy to use the nebulous
details of his life to kind of fill in missing
(27:14):
pieces of the puzzle for their own gain. So he's
he's wound up in all kinds of occult books and
and crackpot theories. Yeah, and sometimes you know, he's cited
as having said things that he never said. But because
there's such a weird series of gaps in his record,
to will be like, oh no, this was in that
(27:35):
time when there isn't a lot, but I know I
have the text. Uh. And there have even been people
who have become convinced that they actually are the Count reincarnated,
or that they're channeling the deceased mystic. One of the
quotes that usually comes up in relation to his great
standing is Voltaire's line and a letter to Frederick the Great,
in which he calls the Count quote a man who
(27:57):
knows everything and who never died. Yeah, this gets brought
up all the time. People are like, no, this is
the man that Voltaire said this about. Okay, that sounds
really good, but it ignores the source because Voltaire was
known for his sarcasm, and it ignores the context because
in this same series of correspondence between uh, Voltaire and
Frederick the Great, Frederick refers to the Count as on
(28:19):
conte perrier, which translates literally to a story for laughing.
He's calling him a joke. Like these two are basically
kind of having a gossipy, what a train wreck discussion
about this guy, And so it's kind of quoted in
a way that I'm confident Voltaire never intended. And of
course there are people who think that he himself was
just deluded and believed all of these legends about himself
(28:41):
that had been circulating while he was alive. Yeah, I
mean we in the first thing that we read about him, uh,
in the Horaces letters, they say that he's mad. I mean,
lots of people describe him as a madman. So I
think there's, you know, some credence to that. One interesting
note that will kind of conclude with is that while
Sagrement uh was you know, he's described sometimes as boastful,
(29:06):
but it seems like he was really pretty careful in
his conversations with people to never state outright any of
these extraordinary claims that are often attributed to him. He
would drop hints he was like a pro at conversation manipulation,
and he would never say he had an elixir of youth,
but he would just tell people he was very old,
and then mentioned that he had this lab and that
(29:29):
he worked on things, and then he would direct the
conversation elsewhere and people be like, oh, what is he hiding?
He he does have the elixir of life. He kind
of was really good at seating his own reputation, it seems,
which to me suggests the level of savvy that is
beyond what a deluded madman would be able to come
up with. But we'll never know for sure, and that's
(29:49):
just my conjecture on it. Yeah. So that is the
Count of Sagrement. And there are so many stories of
him in addition to those that we've relaid. Uh, you
could really lose many many days combing the internet for
various If you do a search on him, you'll get
a nice combo of historical reference and also believers, people
(30:11):
that really want to believe that he's out there somewhere theories. Yeah. Uh,
But the story of the Count. Do you have a
story of some listener mail? I do, uh. And this
particular piece of mail comes from our listener Lara, and
it is in reference to footbinding, and she talks about it, uh,
(30:32):
in relation to an event in her own grandmother's life.
She says, I wanted to write in response to the
recent show about footbinding. I was struck by similarities between
the experiences of the older Chinese women and my German
Mennonite grandmother. I've attached a photo of my grandmother and
grandfather on their wedding day, which is lovely. Uh. For
the to the nineteen sixties, Menonites war quote plain dress
(30:53):
cape dresses for women, and she explains that a cape
dress was a special dress with an extra piece of
cloth in the front to cover up the breasts and
a covering which was a lace head covering with bonnet strings,
and men wore plain coats, usually a dark colored coat
with a high neck. Dress was very much part of
church membership, and the bishops spent a lot of time
regulating dress, and women like my grandmother spent a lot
(31:16):
of time figuring out subversive ways to wear their coverings,
like letting the strings hang down their back rather than
putting them in the front, which was considered especially daring
for some reason. Lara does not know why, uh, and
she says, I'm not really trying to draw a comparison
between the permanently damaging tradition of footbinding and Mennonite Plaine dress,
but I think that the older Chinese women's ambiguous feeling
(31:38):
about the changing traditions was very similar to my grandmother's
mixed feelings about choosing to stop wearing plain clothes in
the nineteen sixties when other women burn their bras. Side
note from Tracy and I. There's some debate about whether
or not that actually happened. Most people say it did not.
There was more of a freedom trash can where bras went,
but just the same we wanted to acknowledge that as
(31:59):
not always being an accurate depiction of what was going on.
Some men and nite women, according to this letter of Lara's, Uh,
burned their coverings. My grandmother didn't burn her covering, but
she did stop wearing it. She once returned to her
home church, which is very conservative, and on Sunday morning,
the preacher preached a sermon especially about her and her
lack of traditional dress. Uh. That's a really, you know,
(32:22):
fascinating insight. I mean, it's it's easy, I think when
you're kind of reading through it to go. Of course,
they this was their standard, and then they were told
it wasn't the standard, and that's a difficult mental break.
But it's kind of a nice comparison to explain, like
this is another person who went through sort of a
similar thing as she says, it's not the same as
a disfiguring, you know, permanent thing, but it's like it
(32:43):
gets you question. Her grandmother questioned this her whole life. Hey,
since these episodes that were sharing our past classics, we
have some updated information that will super seed the contact
stuff you've heard before. If you want to email us,
our email address is History Podcast at house to Works
(33:06):
dot com, and you can find us across the spectrum
of social media as Missed in History. You can also
find us at missed in History dot com, and you
can visit our parent company, house to Works at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
Hey, it's time for another Saturday classic. So for folks
who are just joining in or who are wondering why
stuff you missed in History class showing up in their
podcast feed on the weekend. Uh, We're trying a new
thing for listeners who may be are newer and haven't
taken a dive into the back catalog. So on Saturday's
we're gonna re air some of our favorites from the past.
Today we have the Count of san Gramat. He claimed,
(00:26):
among many things, to be an immortal and to know
the Queen of Sheba. And in the years since this
episode first came out, he also became a recurring character
in the second season of the TV adaptation of Outlander,
so at least among fans of Outlander, he maybe has
a little wider name recognition than before. So let's hop
right into his story. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
(00:49):
History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Collie Fry, I'm Wilson. The
subject of today's episode is the center of so many
myths and stories and rumors that it's a little bit
(01:09):
hard to separate fact from fiction. That we will do
our best to make sure we hit the actually documented
elements of his story. Uh. There are accounts of teleportation,
involved alchemy, even immortality that swirl around this person, who
is the Count of Saint Gema. You'll also see him
referenced in uh the foreign version of Comte de Saint
Gemin Uh. And did an immortal actually walk among the
(01:33):
aristocrats of Europe in the eighteenth century courts? I'm gonna
say odds or no, but he has some interesting and
compelling fastest to his story. He does seem to have
perhaps convinced many people that he did. Yeah, and he,
you know, allegedly could make himself invisible. He according to
some accounts New Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Some
(01:56):
accounts even put him at the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Taste. Uh. However,
he can also turn let into gold apparently, or something
close enough, according to one actual account that was written
in the letter. And we'll talk about that more specifically.
But what was the real deal with this guy? Was
he a charlatan? Was he an actual legit mystic or
(02:19):
was he just sort of a madman caught up in
his own lies. I'm not sure that the truth has
to include or exclude any or all of those, because
it's really there's a lot of stuff involved and many
layers and weirdness. I made a weird noise, that's how.
That's how convinced I am that one of the things
(02:41):
list of possibilities is not the right one. I am
generally a very skeptical person, so I, you know, suspect
that not the real deal. But that's you know, yeah,
that is I'm kind of an accums razor, kind of galt. Well,
I am the uh the extreme claims or are extreme evidence,
(03:01):
which you know, some guy wrote this in a journal
does not count right. Uh So normally we would do
early history on people and well kind of, but when
we get to the like when was he born, Well,
it's really tricky in this particular one because there are
(03:23):
different stories and in some cases no story. Most reputable
sources that try to put his birth somewhere on the
timeline put it somewhere between seventeen ten and seventeen twelve.
And there were times late in the Count's life that
he claimed that he was the son of the Transylvanian
Prince Farrank, the second Recuzzie, who led a Hungarian uprising
(03:43):
called the Kuric Revolt against the Habsburg Empire and Recuz
he had several sons, one of whom died as a child,
and those who believe that Count Sangrement was the Transylvanian
Prince's son claimed that that death, the death of the child,
had been fake to protect the young boy in the
midst of this political tumult, and this version of the
(04:05):
count's origins, if you buy into that, actually puts his
birth a little bit earlier, around six I think there's
a lot bit earlier it does. But you know, he
was ageless, much like Dick Clark. So I was gonna
say Dorian Gray. I went with a less impressive and
more pop culturally reference. Yes. So he first appeared in
(04:28):
historical documentation much later. In seventy five, he was mentioned
in a letter from Horace Walpole, who was the fourth
Earl of Orford and the author of the horror fiction
of the Castle of a Toronto, which is like one
of the first horror novels in English. I read it
before you. I'm sure you can find it for free
on the internet. Um. So, this letter was from Horace
(04:53):
Walpole to Horace Mann, who was a London merchant and diplomat,
not to be confused with the American educator by same
name that he was around about a hundred years later.
So the two Horaces maintained a friendship through correspondence for
more than four decades, and on December nine, Walpole wrote
the following We begin to take up people, but it
(05:16):
is with as much caution and timidity as women of
quality begins upon their jewels. We have not ventured upon
any great stone yet. The Provost of Edinburgh is in
custody of a messenger, and the other day they seized
an odd man who goes by the name of Count
Saint Germain. He has been here these two years and
will not tell who he is or whence, but professes
(05:37):
that he does not go by his right name. He sings,
plays on the violin wonderfully composes, is mad and not
very sensible. He has called an Italian, a Spaniard, a pole,
a somebody that married a great fortune in Mexico and
ran away with her jewels to Constantinople, a priest, a fiddler,
a vast nobleman. The Prince of Wales has had unsatiated
(05:59):
curiosity about him, but in vain however nothing has been
made out against him. He is released, and what convinces
me that he is not a gentleman stays here and
talks of his being taken up for a spy. So
the Count was arrested and released and then opted to
hang out and talk about his arrest and how he
was suspected of being a spy. He had been suspected
(06:20):
of being a Jacobite agent, but was released when nobody
could find any evidence of it. And in seventeen forty six,
roughly a year after this letter was written, so at
this point he's been in London for about three years.
A performance of musical compositions by the Count took place,
and those musical pieces were also published at the same time,
and the Count was apparently genuinely talented as a composer.
(06:42):
He wrote at least forty Italian arias, seven solos for violin,
and six trio sonatas, as well as other things, but
those are kind of some of the high point of
his uh CV as a composer. However, after this this
musical um composition publication, he vanishes from the record, either
(07:03):
he left London or kind of faded into the background
for a while, and during his time on the d
L he said to have been in Vienna for a
while and then in India. And I should point out,
as we talked about kind of these kind of major
turning points in his story of him being in a location,
he was allegedly kind of constantly traveling. So even if
(07:24):
he was kind of setting up regular um um house
in some particular space, he was also probably going out
and visiting many other places at the same time. Allegedly. Uh.
The count next appeared in Versailles in seventeen forty eight,
and Charlouis august Fouquet, Duke de Bellisle, made Saint Germains
(07:46):
introductions at court, presenting this mysterious count as an expert
in dye and textiles, and this being the court of
France in the eighteenth century, that was basically enough said, uh,
you know someone who can make beautiful things, You're in right.
And so for two years he made himself extremely comfortable
in French society. He went to parties and charmed everybody there.
(08:07):
He started dropping little hints about being a very extraordinary individual.
He would give away diamonds, saying that he could just
make them. He would play the harpsichord and the violin
with very great skill. He would give beauty advice to
the ladies of the court, and he eventually gained the
ear of King Louis the fift himself and one of
Saint Germiles habits was to set up a lab wherever
(08:30):
he went, which is where he would do things like
mixed beauty elixers for the ladies. He would die fabrics
and other media, and he would also work his alchemy. Uh.
And it's interesting because he was apparently quite a good chemist,
Like he really was good at like textile dying and
coming up with different paints. Uh. One story says that
he made a paint that was odor free, which at
the time was completely unusual. It's unusual now, um. But
(08:55):
then there was always also this alchemy element to it.
And he said to have removed a flaw from deep
within a diamond for King Louis fifte without diminishing its size.
But he would never disclose how he achieved this feat.
I have an idea, you do that he did not
do this for real. I'm extremely skeptical about his whole story,
(09:19):
Like I have an idea, no so um. During this
time he allegedly had an exchange with an elderly countess
who had accompanied her husband to Venice in the early
seventeen hundreds. This countess asked him whether his father had
been in Venice in seventeen ten, and he is said
(09:39):
to have replied, no, madam, it is very much longer
since I lost my father. But I myself was living
in Venice at the end of the last and the
beginning of this century. I had the honor to pay
you court then, and you were kind enough to admire
a few barkarrolls of my composing, which we used to
sing together. And the countess was rather be fuddled at this,
(10:01):
and she told the count no, no, this could not
be the case. The man she was speaking of had
been in his mid forties, and that was the age
that the count appeared before her there in the court
of France. And again she's referencing seventeen ten, and this is,
you know, in the seventeen fifties. And uh, he replied
to her, just simply, madam, I am very old. I
(10:21):
totally saw this conversation. And one of the lord of
the Rings extended editions, he's one of the Donadines, so Basically,
any time the account was questioned about his past, particularly
his childhood, he would get into these astounding tales or
divert the conversation to another topic. And this really got
tongues wagging and created all the speculative gossip around him. Yeah,
(10:44):
which in the court of France at this time, I
mean publicity uh. And while he was in France and
rubbing shoulders with royalty, he had this other weird cork
which added to this sort of cloud of speculation, which
is that he allegedly never ate in public. Uh. Though
according to some accounts, he would occasionally eat in front
of people, but it was only oatmeal or lean cuts
(11:05):
of chicken uh. And in some accounts he tells people
that this is all he eats, rather than them actually
witnessing it. But this just added to his sensational reputation,
which just grew super rapidly. Also growing very rapidly was
his responsibility to the king. King Louis the fifteenth started
sending him on missions, sometimes of a rather unclear nature,
(11:29):
and this is what led to rumors that he was
the king's personal spy. It also drew the scorn of
lots of other people. Yeah, you couldn't really be the
King's favorite without making people angry, uh, and the Duc
de Choise was particularly suspicious of the seemingly mystical count.
And there was also um a matter of heightened tensions
(11:51):
because this was all going on at the height of
the Seven Years War between England and France. So for
him to be a secret spy with the ear of
the king during this time, it was a very tenth
time and it made people that should have been important
in state affairs kind of left out of the loop
of these doings, and that was an irritant. While san
Germain was traveling to Amsterdam on business for the King,
(12:14):
Schwazoe and the Count of Affrey were exchanging letters about
what he was doing. San Germain had told the Count
of Affrey that Amsterdam finances were in just a terrible
state and that he alone could fix them. He pitched
this scheme to do so, which involved lots and lots
of moving parts and the establishment of a fund for
(12:34):
France to be bankrolled by the Dutch. He also told
Afrey that he had made all these plans without the
knowledge of the higher authorities, claiming that he had been
sent with this general sort of mission to negotiate peace
between the warring countries. Sounds pretty shady. Yeah, Afrey was
there in Amsterdam and he was receiving this man and
(12:55):
talking to him and being like, wait, you want to
do what? Uh? And in the meantime him Uh. Choizoi
had also intercepted this letter from Saint Germain to the
Marquise de Pompadour, who was King Louis the fifteenth Chief Mistress.
And in this letter Saint Germain deeply mischaracterized his connections
at the Hague. So while Choizoi and Afrey were comparing notes,
(13:18):
they did not match up to what Uh the Count
was saying was going on when they saw this letter
that he had written the Marquise Uh. And this letter,
combined with the accounts from the Count of Afrey, we're
really quite damning for Saint Geremain. And a letter that
went from Schwizoi to Afrey on March nineteen, seventeen sixty.
(13:40):
This is this is what was written down, Sir, I
send you a letter from Monsieur de Saint Germain to
the Marquise de Pompadour, which in itself will suffice to
expose the absurdity of the personage. He is an adventurer
of the first order, who was, moreover, so far as
I have seen, exceedingly foolish. I beg you immediately, on
(14:00):
receiving my letter, to summon him to your house and
to tell him from me that I do not know
how the King's Minister in charge of the Finance department
will look on his conduct with regard to this object,
but that as to myself, you are ordered to warn
him that if I learn that far or near, and
much or little he chooses to meddle with politics, I
(14:22):
assure him that I shall obtain an order from the
King that on his return to France he will be
placed for the rest of his days in an underground dungeon.
Exclamation point. It goes on. You will add that he
may be quite sure that these intentions of mine concerning
him are as sincere as they will surely be executed
(14:45):
if he gives me the opportunity of keeping my word.
After this declaration, you will request him never again to
set foot in your house, and it will be well
for you to make public and known to all the
foreign ministers as well as the bankers of Amsterdam, the
compliment that you have been commanded to pay to this
insufferable adventurer. Yeah, Saint Germain did not return to France. Uh.
(15:10):
He fled to England after this all went down, but
he did not stay there for terribly long. And before
we go on to his next crazy adventure, do you
want to take a moment and here worked from our
sponsors deeper. So now back to the Illustrius count. In
(15:31):
seventeen sixty three, Saint Germain turned up in Belgium, and
this time he was going by the name of Surmont.
You may recall that I mentioned in the Rose Barton
episode people would change their names frequently at this time. Uh.
And the count was a pro at that he was
constantly going by different names. Uh. And he purchased a
parcel of land there in Belgium, and he set up
a lab. And his intent was to enter into a
(15:55):
contract with the Belgian government to provide them certain proprietary
chemical process This is that he had developed, so some
of these things, like you know, specific dies and paints
that he had been working on. One of the most
important aspects of this attempt at a business deal with
Belgium comes in the form of a letter sent by
an official who met with San German slash Sermont. This official,
(16:18):
Carl Cobenzel, sent the following in a note to Prince
count It's the prime Minister, and he says, it was
about three months ago that the person known by the
name of Comte de Saint Germain passed this way and
came to see me. I found him the most singular
man that I ever saw in my life. I do
not yet precisely know his birth. I believe, however, that
(16:39):
he is the son of a clandestine union in a
powerful and illustrious family, possessing great wealth. He lives in
the greatest of simplicity. He knows everything and shows an uprightness,
a goodness of soul worthy of admiration. Among a number
of his accomplishments he made under my own eyes, some
experiments of which the most important were the transmutation of
(17:00):
iron into a metal as beautiful as gold and at
least as good for all goldsmith's work. The dying and
preparation of skins carried to a perfection which surpassed all
the Moroccos in the world, and the most perfect tanning.
The dying of silks carried to a perfection hitherto unknown.
The like dying of woolens the dying of wood in
the most brilliant colors, penetrating through and through and the
(17:23):
whole without either indigo or cocael, with the commonest ingredients,
and consequently, at a very moderate price, the composition of
colors for painting ultramarine is as perfect as is made
from lapis leslie. And finally removing the smell from painting oils,
and making the best oil of Provence, from the oils
of Novette, of Coursat, and from others even the worst
(17:45):
I have in my hands. All these productions made under
my own eyes. I have had them undergo the most
strict examinations, and seeing in these articles a prophet which
might mount up to millions, I have endeavored to take
advantage of the friendship that this man has felt for me,
and to learn from him all these secrets. He has
given them to me, and he asks nothing for himself
beyond a payment proportionate to the profits that might may
(18:08):
accrue from them, it being understood that this shall be
only when the profit has been made. So this letter
creates a public record of San German's alchemical skills, and
whether Cobenzel was duped or was some sort of co conspirator,
is not really known. Yeah, we don't have those actual
samples he claimed to have to back any of it up. Well,
(18:29):
and if if anybody had really ever figured out how
to turn let into gold, surely that would have spread
like wildfire. Yeah, that where someone would still be plying
that trade. Yeah, well, you know that was like the
big alchemical quest for a really long time, like let's
figure out how to turn base metals into gold. Yeah,
we know that does not really work. That's Antoine Lavoisier
(18:51):
would have some things to say. This letter, as you said,
creates this public record. Uh. But the deal fell through
just the same, and Saint Germain moved on, and the
years after things went south in Belgium he basically went
all over the globe. Maybe not all over the globe,
he went a lot of places. Uh. In seventeen sixty two,
(19:12):
Saint Germain was in St. Petersburg, just in time for
Catherine the Great to seize the throne in a coup.
And whether or not Saint Germain was involved in that
coup is actually a matter of some debate. There are
people that will directly trace it to him and say
that he, you know, as part of his greater mystical being,
has catalyzed many important world events, this being one of them,
and others are like no, he just happened to be there.
(19:35):
After leaving Russia, he stayed out of high profile circles.
There were sightings of him in various places, but the
official accounts of where he was or somewhere between between
sparse and non existent. And then almost a decade later
he turned up in Bavaria in seventeen seventy four, and
he was at this point traveling under the name of
(19:56):
Zarogi and feigning to be older than he had previously
said he was, although he eventually claimed to be the
son of Prince Requisie. When he was caught in this deception,
it seemed like he had maybe stolen someone's identity. Uh.
And then someone figured out that that could not be
the case, and he said, no, no, no, I'm an
(20:17):
exiled I'm a prince on the run. In seventeen seventy six,
he was peddling his chemistry wears in Germany, trying once
again to get a government contract, and in spite of
getting some positive interest for his non mystical wears, he
blew the deal once again. He started talking about all
of his alchemy skills and how amazing he was, and
that soured the negotiations. Another reason that Sandra Man lost
(20:40):
the deal was contextual suspicion. He was not the only
person in Europe claiming to be an alchemist, and enough
nobles had been duped and in Germany only shortly before
he came on the scene, that there was just a
general reluctance to get involved in this kind of business. Yeah,
there there had been other miss a cool people trapesing
(21:01):
around getting money out of people, so naturally, you know,
it was kind of a we just got burned by this.
You might you might be real. I don't know. But
while he was in Germany, the Count of Sagrement made
a really important friend, and that was Prince Karl of
hes Kassel, Governor of Schleiswig Holstein. And Prince Carl took
(21:22):
in this wandering mystic and he set him up with
a lab for performing his chemistry and a chemical experiments,
and you know, lodging set him up with the little house.
He has been associated with the Rosicrucians, the Society of
Asiatic Brothers, the Knights of Light, the Illuminati, the Order
of the Templars, and has even been named as a
co founder of the Freemasons. But being secret societies, we
(21:43):
naturally don't know a lot about what level of involvement
he may have had, if any. Yeah, and some uh,
you know, some texts saying, you know, we want to
disassociate from him. We just don't know. But what we
do know is that he spent several years in Schleswig
at this point with Prince Karl, and it's here that
he's reported to have met his end. He died on
(22:05):
February eighty four after catching pneumonia. The Count is said
to have told Prince Carl that he left a note
for him and his personal effects to be opened in
the event of his death, but no such note was
ever actually found. Yeah, and Carl wasn't there when he died.
He was away in his personal physician, uh witnessed the death.
But so when Carl came back, he was expecting a
(22:26):
note and got none. Well, before we go on to
kind of the postmortem legend, do you want to take
another moment for an ad break. Of course, you were
so at this point in time in our story, the
Count Sangerement is deceased h And as we said at
(22:49):
the top of the podcast, sussing out how much of
his story and his legend regarding his metaphysical life is
based in any sort of reality is difficult. At the
very best, he may have been nothing more than a
compulsive liar, spinning up tail after tail to cover his
humble or shameful past or to work his way into
(23:09):
high society. He was definitely well educated, able to speak
many languages, able to hold his own in conversation with
the highest rungs of society. He was definitely skilled as
a musician and a composer and a successful chemist. And
adding to the mythos surrounding the count is also a
little problem of names and conflation. First, the Count of Sangrement,
(23:32):
as we said, meant by went by many aliases during
his lifetime. And second, there were salon comedians in France
doing Sagrement parodies. Uh, And it's entirely likely that some
of the boasts that they made in jest eventually kind
of made their way into the legend and kind of
got confused over what was reality and what was comedy. Uh,
(23:54):
Because he was I mean as much as many people
were really blown away by him and thought he was
a amazing there were also people that were like, you, guys,
he's a charlatan. Yeah, and he became a joke too
many people. Yeah. Well, when when you gave me this
this outline and I was reading through it for the
first time, I was thinking, this sounds a whole lot
(24:14):
like Cassanova without the sex part, which I know, which
makes it really funny, because Cassanova just added to the confusion.
Not only would he sometimes impersonate the Count as a joke,
his autobiography includes this description of the man that's completely
counter to every other description of him by anyone else. Yeah,
(24:37):
and it's believed that that description, it like talks about
him wearing these long plain robes and stuff, just things
that had nothing to do with him. Uh. And it's
believed that was added by an editor, or that there
was somewhere some sort of translation or trans But this
is believed to have been added by an editor or
somehow like lost a little bit in translation on the text,
(24:59):
or maybe cassan o it did it on purpose. Isn't
as possible. Uh. The sort of ironic comparison there is
that Unlike Cassanova, the Count of Sangrement was not associated
with sex at all. Really he had He's often described
as living a chaste life, so but he interesting counterpoints
to one another. He had. He had this weird con
(25:21):
artist globe trotter is right up Cassanova's alley. We can
get the two of them in the baron of Arizona together,
I think we would have a really spectacular historical meet
and greet. Uh. And there have also been other people
with the same title in history, uh, and sometimes their
stories have been accidentally mingled with this Count of Sagrement.
So his legend has gotten really nebulous and there aren't
(25:45):
any hard edges to it. It just kind of grows
and ebbs and flows. And there are historians who believe
that he really was a missing son of a of
Transylvanian royalty, and that there was some kind of secret
arrangement or signal that validated this with other royal which
explained his ability to just mix so easily with all
the courts of Europe. Yeah, most uh, non noble born
(26:08):
people couldn't just stroll into like the court of France
and end up being BFFs with the king, but he
managed it no problem, and he you know, had contacts
all over the place. But uh, to make the historical
record and the story of Counts sentiment even trickier, there
have also been plenty of people willing to assert that
he lives on and they kind of want to believe
(26:29):
and that kind of you know, get fished into building
a mythos. He's not a time lord. No, although there
are people that have suspected that he was a time traveler.
I mean there are people that believe. I'm just gonna
go on the record and saying that that I do not.
And he was also allegedly sighted at a Masonic meeting
(26:51):
the year after his death, and it was just the
beginning of all these post mortem appearances. Yeah. Some will
even claim that he was actually once Sir Francis Bacon
and that he was either rejuvenated in some way or
he was reincarnated as the Count. Plenty of people throughout
the years have been really happy to use the nebulous
details of his life to kind of fill in missing
(27:14):
pieces of the puzzle for their own gain. So he's
he's wound up in all kinds of occult books and
and crackpot theories. Yeah, and sometimes you know, he's cited
as having said things that he never said. But because
there's such a weird series of gaps in his record,
to will be like, oh no, this was in that
(27:35):
time when there isn't a lot, but I know I
have the text. Uh. And there have even been people
who have become convinced that they actually are the Count reincarnated,
or that they're channeling the deceased mystic. One of the
quotes that usually comes up in relation to his great
standing is Voltaire's line and a letter to Frederick the Great,
in which he calls the Count quote a man who
(27:57):
knows everything and who never died. Yeah, this gets brought
up all the time. People are like, no, this is
the man that Voltaire said this about. Okay, that sounds
really good, but it ignores the source because Voltaire was
known for his sarcasm, and it ignores the context because
in this same series of correspondence between uh, Voltaire and
Frederick the Great, Frederick refers to the Count as on
(28:19):
conte perrier, which translates literally to a story for laughing.
He's calling him a joke. Like these two are basically
kind of having a gossipy, what a train wreck discussion
about this guy, And so it's kind of quoted in
a way that I'm confident Voltaire never intended. And of
course there are people who think that he himself was
just deluded and believed all of these legends about himself
(28:41):
that had been circulating while he was alive. Yeah, I
mean we in the first thing that we read about him, uh,
in the Horaces letters, they say that he's mad. I mean,
lots of people describe him as a madman. So I
think there's, you know, some credence to that. One interesting
note that will kind of conclude with is that while
Sagrement uh was you know, he's described sometimes as boastful,
(29:06):
but it seems like he was really pretty careful in
his conversations with people to never state outright any of
these extraordinary claims that are often attributed to him. He
would drop hints he was like a pro at conversation manipulation,
and he would never say he had an elixir of youth,
but he would just tell people he was very old,
and then mentioned that he had this lab and that
(29:29):
he worked on things, and then he would direct the
conversation elsewhere and people be like, oh, what is he hiding?
He he does have the elixir of life. He kind
of was really good at seating his own reputation, it seems,
which to me suggests the level of savvy that is
beyond what a deluded madman would be able to come
up with. But we'll never know for sure, and that's
(29:49):
just my conjecture on it. Yeah. So that is the
Count of Sagrement. And there are so many stories of
him in addition to those that we've relaid. Uh, you
could really lose many many days combing the internet for
various If you do a search on him, you'll get
a nice combo of historical reference and also believers, people
(30:11):
that really want to believe that he's out there somewhere theories. Yeah. Uh,
But the story of the Count. Do you have a
story of some listener mail? I do, uh. And this
particular piece of mail comes from our listener Lara, and
it is in reference to footbinding, and she talks about it, uh,
(30:32):
in relation to an event in her own grandmother's life.
She says, I wanted to write in response to the
recent show about footbinding. I was struck by similarities between
the experiences of the older Chinese women and my German
Mennonite grandmother. I've attached a photo of my grandmother and
grandfather on their wedding day, which is lovely. Uh. For
the to the nineteen sixties, Menonites war quote plain dress
(30:53):
cape dresses for women, and she explains that a cape
dress was a special dress with an extra piece of
cloth in the front to cover up the breasts and
a covering which was a lace head covering with bonnet strings,
and men wore plain coats, usually a dark colored coat
with a high neck. Dress was very much part of
church membership, and the bishops spent a lot of time
regulating dress, and women like my grandmother spent a lot
(31:16):
of time figuring out subversive ways to wear their coverings,
like letting the strings hang down their back rather than
putting them in the front, which was considered especially daring
for some reason. Lara does not know why, uh, and
she says, I'm not really trying to draw a comparison
between the permanently damaging tradition of footbinding and Mennonite Plaine dress,
but I think that the older Chinese women's ambiguous feeling
(31:38):
about the changing traditions was very similar to my grandmother's
mixed feelings about choosing to stop wearing plain clothes in
the nineteen sixties when other women burn their bras. Side
note from Tracy and I. There's some debate about whether
or not that actually happened. Most people say it did not.
There was more of a freedom trash can where bras went,
but just the same we wanted to acknowledge that as
(31:59):
not always being an accurate depiction of what was going on.
Some men and nite women, according to this letter of Lara's, Uh,
burned their coverings. My grandmother didn't burn her covering, but
she did stop wearing it. She once returned to her
home church, which is very conservative, and on Sunday morning,
the preacher preached a sermon especially about her and her
lack of traditional dress. Uh. That's a really, you know,
(32:22):
fascinating insight. I mean, it's it's easy, I think when
you're kind of reading through it to go. Of course,
they this was their standard, and then they were told
it wasn't the standard, and that's a difficult mental break.
But it's kind of a nice comparison to explain, like
this is another person who went through sort of a
similar thing as she says, it's not the same as
a disfiguring, you know, permanent thing, but it's like it
(32:43):
gets you question. Her grandmother questioned this her whole life. Hey,
since these episodes that were sharing our past classics, we
have some updated information that will super seed the contact
stuff you've heard before. If you want to email us,
our email address is History Podcast at house to Works
(33:06):
dot com, and you can find us across the spectrum
of social media as Missed in History. You can also
find us at missed in History dot com, and you
can visit our parent company, house to Works at how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how staff works dot com.
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