The Mad and Extravagant Life of Caresse and Harry Crosby

for that. I know I'll cry. I just can't wait. So good are you watching? And Or? Oh my god? And Or is so good? Honestly, they kind of raised the bar a little too high. Oh yeah, everything is a disappointment from everything. Star Wars now has to at least meet the bar that has been laid and Or and I've been so frustrated with Star Wars lately, but this is so good. So watch and Or and or watch something else while you're at it. Lord, I can't every time you just leave that there, come on and

or never start. You're doing it? Oh no, I'm doing Yeah. Well, I said, we get right to it today because we've got a big, chunky, sweet sexy episode here. So true. Oh my god, this one was suggested to us by a listener, Tom Bray. I'm not sure I'm saying that right, Tom, or tamber tamber could be tamber um at tambron on Instagram. Very cool suggestion for Caress Crosby. I'm so excited for

this suggestion. Thank you. Because Caress Crosby invented the bra in n and that might be the least interesting thing about her. She and her husband Harry Crosby lived wild expatriot lifestyles as American in Paris in the nineteen twenties. Please let me do that. They published a little known but soon to be household name authors like James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, A Nice Nan, and Charles Bukowski, with illustrations from artists like surrealist Max Earnt. They helped popularized photography

as an art form. And they fucked. Oh boy, did they ever surface every surface well. These two had an open marriage. They had topless parties, bathtub orgies, opium fueled sex romps, and side pieces galore. And one of their side pieces would end their mad and extravagant life together. So let's hear about the doomed love of Caress and Harry Crosbie. Please let's go, hey, their French comlution. Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. No matchmaking,

romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships a lover. It might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons apt for a concrete wall. But if there's a story with the second clinch, ridiculous roles, a production of I Heart Radio all right now. Most of this information comes from Jeffrey Wolf's nine eight biography Black Son, The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby and Linda Hamalians two thousand five biography The Cromoisty Queen, A Life

of Caress Crosby. So too cool books, Check them out. Mary Phelps Jacob always called Polly to distinguish herself from her mother. Mary had the world on a platter. Born in Boston to a family that could trace its lineage back to the Mayflowers, she moved in the highest circles of society, even though her family wasn't ultra rich. Anything she wanted she could have to the asking do you think that her ancestors in the Mayflower you know they're

looking down at her. They survived such hardships coming across the ocean, and she's out here just like getting railed smoking opium, and they're like, ah, yes. By lineage continues, that's why we came to the well. Like any blue blooded debutante of her stripe. I guess you could say she attended great schools, She learned dancing and writing, and she partied debutante balls all the time. She slept from four in the morning until noon. Okay, the podcast life.

She was living that podcast life. But despite this privileged life of luxury, she was not afraid to buck the conventions, and in Nten, at the age of nineteen, she demonstrated for the first time her commitment to nonconformity. She was getting ready for yet another debutante ball, and she really wanted to wear a new fashion of gown. This one was like more flowey and filmy than all the eighteen nineties holdovers that a lot of women were still wearing.

But the problem was the undergarments. Women were still wearing boned corsets at this time, and they're very rigid and uncomfortable. You couldn't really move freely in them. Even worse, they mashed Polly's impressive breast together into one unflattering mono boob and nobody likes that. And she could see the lines of the corset through the fabric of her gown. So she's like, this just is not working at all. This

is not the move. So she told her maid, hey, go get me a couple of pocket handkerchiefs, some ribbon, and some needle and thread, and together they fashioned a backless brazier um where the ribbon was like attached to the inside of the shoulders of the gown and like helped support her breasts and everything. But she was totally able to move freely around. She was a hundred percent more comfortable, and most importantly, her dress and tits were

looking at falling. Okay, so she literally created the over the shoulder boulder holder. Oh my god, she sure did, and it is like she had some significant boulders. Well. Of course, all the girls at the ball noticed. They were like, oh, my goodness, your boobs are incredible. How comes she gets to have two? So the day after the ball, all these girls bombarded her asking how she'd been able to move around so freely on the dance floor. They're like, you you were able to take a deep breath.

How you didn't cry one time? Well, when she showed them what she had made, of course they all wanted well. And not long after, a total stranger came up to Polly and asked her to make them one of her contraptions, offering her a dollar for her time. And that's when Polly realized that her backless bra it could be a viable business. What if what if more women don't want to be exceedingly uncomfortable constantly? You know, I might not

be the only one who hate this. So on February twelve, nineteen fourteen, she filed a patent for her design, but then she got distracted by more worldly matters. In nineteen fifteen, she married her long term boyfriend, Richard Peabody. There was another blue blooded, fabulously wealthy Bostonian who she had met at summer camp a few years before. In February of nineteen sixteen, their first child, William, was born, and Polly

discovered that Richard was a pretty indifferent father. At first, he was kind of excited to have a kid, but then he got bored with all you know, the noises needs the children are always having. He's like they don't pop out ready to have a sensible conversation. How many times a day you gotta feed this thing? Anyway, poured him a brandy and he didn't touch it no respect. Richard only had three interests basically. One was gambling, just not too unusual among the rich sprigs of society. Another

was drinking. Richard was a pretty bad alcoholic pretty much his entire life. And his third interest chasing fire engines and watching buildings burn. This one the yeah, we've all got our own hobbies setting fires. True. Some of us stamp collect right, some of us are into music. Richard likes to chase fire engines ash it must all burned.

This guy even convinced the fire chief to rig up a fire alarm bell at their house so whenever it rang, no matter the time, Richard would throw on his best firefighter's outfit that he kept, and then he would go and just sit down and watch the actual firefighters try and put out the flat. I love the hand like cat a little. He likes caused playing as a firefighter. He must have put it on. He must have put on sometimes just for fun, like at night. He's like

a firefighter. Apparently was a volunteer firefighter for a minute, but they said they had to let him go because he would show up drunk. And I like, you're too flammable right now, Richard, your breath is just making things work. Stand far away from the burning building. Then Richard enlisted in the army, first to go to Mexico to fight against Pancho BIA's cross border raids, and then he came

home briefly. Their second child, Pauline, was born in nineteen seventeen, but by then Richard was already in training to join the ranks of men who would fight in World War One. Polly and the kids moved in with their in laws and Danvers, Massachusetts, but when the war was over, Richard just remained in France for a while, just kind of enjoying the adulation of the French and his like bachelor lifestyle that he preferred to this domestic scene at home.

At some point, at nineteen twenty, he did come home, but he was in and out of sanitariums for drinking and acute depression, so it was really trying to get better, but he just could not seem to keep it going. Now, Polly wasn't one to sit at home you know, pining and crying. Okay, she In May nine twenties, she finally opened her fashion form, Brazier Company to manufacture her popular

broad design. But still those years were really lonely and difficult for her, and Polly's isolation did not go unnoticed. So on July four, Polly's friend Henrietta Crosby invited Polly to chaperone her son, Harry, and a couple of his friends to a dinner and a visit to an amusement park. Polly's twenty eight, she's married, she's got two kids. By Boston society standards, she was like a respectable matron. You can do anything, that old year old maid. She's she's

basically a grandmother, pastor prime. But she's got some life life lessons to teach us. I'm sure so much you can learn from her. She's seen it all inside outside. But to Harry Crosby, she was a hot tomale, real cougar. Oh yeah, he was like wow. Who he was like one. He was like wow, I can't do it. That's why

I wanted to hear again. Now, Harry Crosby, he was just a young boy of twenty two, six entire years younger than Polly, and although he was a slight, pale man, he was handsome, charismatic and a very intense individual, because, like Polly, he came from the upper crust of Boston. I say up a crust to Boston. I guess I

should say apakrasta boston um. His uncle was the richest banker in the nation, JP Morgan Jr. Harry had a pretty normal affluent childhood and he probably would have lived a normal affluent life, but everything changed when he was nineteen and he volunteered for the American Field Service Ambulance Corps like many of his elite peers. During the Battle of ver Doon, he was close to the front and he ferried wounded soldiers for three days without relief, along

with his friends Spud Spalding. In November, Harry was leading a few ambulances from the battlefield to the medical aid station when his ambulance was hit by artillery fire and completely destroyed. Harry managed to escape completely unhurt, but Spud, driving a second ambulance behind Harry, was hit in the chest with shrapnel. Harry saved his life by getting him to a hospital for treatment, and that night Harry was seen running laps around a track, just running running, no

apparent purpose or direction. You know that he just you know what I mean, like that, The adrenaline must have been so crazy, and then once you get to safety, you just can't sit like insane. Yeah, his brain must have just been going a mile a minute. My body had to match, you know what I mean. Let's just think about that trauma showing up in so many little ways like that, right, I mean, a guy bumped into me at target the other day. I couldn't sit still

for a week. Chaos. My brain was just a battlefield. Harry later said that after that experience on the battlefield, he no longer feared death. In nineteen eighteen, his team transported more than two thousand wounded during the Battle of Orm, which won him a quad de Gur, making him one of the youngest Americans ever to be awarded honor. After the war, Unlike Richard Peabody, Harry couldn't wait to get home back to the States, but he had to get

his uncle JP Morgan Jr. To intervene on his behath. Yeah, most soldiers were just hanging out for a while awaiting, and they got shuffled around different places like, they didn't all just get immediately, you know, recalled home. But JP Morgan had lent a lot of money to the war efforts, so I guess when he called, they're like, okay, whatever

you say. Pierre Proont, now when he met Polly, Harry was studying literature and fine arts at Harvard, but he was finding it tough to be back among the starchy elites he'd spent his childhood with. After his time in Europe and his wartime experience. He couldn't stand what he called quote dreary, drearier, dreariest Boston and quote Boston virgins who are brought up amongst sexless surroundings, who wear canvas drawers and flat heeled shoes. He really had an opinion

about the ladies of the ladies of Boston. Yeah, he wanted to live completely in the moment he decided he did not care for risk or consequences anymore. So it's not that surprising that he would pursue a society matron like Polly. Um. That would have been a weird thing for him to do if he cared about other people's opinions, but he didn't. So he's like, let me go for it. He was like, I don't care what people think of me.

I'm going to date an old woman. Twenty eight year old lady who here better slap sat the table and during dinner, Harry completely ignored the girl on his left, which was a major break with etiquette. You're supposed to like talk for a while on this side, and then every every few minutes everybody changes and they talked everyone on the other side. I think it's more of like

a natural turn. I had an idea for a party once, because you know, like if we hold a party like a bunch of people, you kind of get stuck talking to some of the Sometimes there's some certain people that you get stuck talking to for a long time, and you're like, I love you, but you have been dominating my time. I wanted to have a party where there was like a bell that went off every like twelve minutes and you had to shift conversations to someone else.

I love it. Let's call it the Palmadoro party. Oh yeah, it's kind of good because it's like, you know, oh, I went to this party. Oh man, I caught up so hard with so and so, but I never got to talk to who's his face? Right? And then they had to leave. Yeah, I know that looked up and face is gone. Who's his face? And I don't even know his name. That's how much I need to talk to him. So yeah, Harry's like, forget this other chick.

And he spent his whole time talking to Polly at dinner, and two hours after meeting her, he took Polly on the Tunnel of Love ride and confessed his undying adoration, which I kind of think is funny, like a twenty two year old would be like, I'll take her on the Tunnel of Low And I wonder if Polly was like, oh that is so cute, Oh my gosh. And he kept pressing her to meet him alone, and only two

weeks later, on July, she did. They had sex that night, and then two days later she went to New York with him and they spent the night together at the Belmont Hotel. When Polly described it later, she wrote, quote, for the first time in my life, I knew myself to be a person. Which that's some amazing sex I guess was Richard doing. But Elite Boston didn't feel like

Harry felt. They were all about consequences, and to them, Polly had betrayed the trust that the public placed in her as a chaperone, and she corrupted a young man. They're too public affair soon became the scandal of the season, which made life pretty uncomfortable for Polly. In the fall, Richard came home finally, and she moved in with him

to a three story tenement house. While Richard went to Harvard to finish his studies, Polly was pursued relentlessly by Harry kind of picked up a little puppy dog when we were alone. He sent her crates of flowers and boxes of toys for the children to her house in May. When she refused to see him, Harry threatened to commit suicide if Polly didn't marry him. My lord, the worst thing,

the worst stop never ever do that. He pasted her to tell Richard all about their affair, and finally Polly was like, oh my god, fine, hey Richard, here's what's going on. And Richard, without any prompting, was like, well, let's get a divorce. I mean, I guess neither of them were very happy, so he probably did was like, great, let me be a bachelor. You run off with this, what'd you say, twenty two year old? Whatever? Is have fun?

You wanna have three kids? Are You're problem? But this divorce is pretty much unheard of at the time, and wealthy Boston could not believe that they would go through with something so scandalous. For months, Polly lived in New York City without seeing Harry to just kind of let the scandal died down, and finally, in February of nineteen twenty two, Polly and Richard's divorce was final. Now Richard

ended up, he would go back into a sanitarium. He did finally get sober good and he remarried, and he started writing about alcoholism, and particularly was drawing attention to the effects of withdrawal, which was not very well understood at the time. Um he was the first person to assert that there was no cure for alcoholism. He said that alcoholics are either drinkers or teetotalers. They cannot drink

in moderation. He was the first person to say that, and like throughout the nineteen twenties, he treated alcoholics on an individual basis from an office in Boston that he opened. He used techniques involving like rigid scheduling, and like trying to learn to manage your emotions with reason instead of drinking, and all of these therapies that he kind of developed himself in a way, probably through all his sanitarium treatments to but he kind of put yeah, he'd like put

something together he that was working for him. So I think he was like, I'm just gonna share what's working for me. He allowed no religious or spiritual elements involved. He's like, I just want to you know, very very pragmatic. Yeah, practical stuff. So addicts would come from all over the world for treatment, and even though he was not a medical doctor, they started calling him doctor Peabody. He published

several articles. Finally, inty one he published his book called The Common Sense of Drinking, and it was read with serious interest by Bill Wilson, who was actually in the same Army training campus Richard, and he used that book as a guideline to start alcoholics Anonymous kidding yeah, and another Richard trained therapist opened the first free clinic dedicated to treating alcoholism at Yale in four So Richard, I mean, bad drinker, but he he took that on, you know

what I mean, And he really pioneered a lot of addiction treatment. I think that's cool. Sadly, Richard would relapse eventually, and he died of alcoholism in six That is too bad, um, Although interesting parallel Richard and Polly both recognizing a problem saying I'm going to do something about it, and then sharing it with other people once they find a solution. That is true. You can see what what maybe brought

them together? What kind of sports of character together? Yeah. Meanwhile, Harry, who'd been working a bank job that his uncle got him for about eight months, went on a sixth day drinking spree and quit the job. I feel like the six day drinking spree would have made sure he didn't have the job anymore. But maybe he's like, no, my uncle's JP Morgan, I'd better quit. His family arranged another bank job for him in Paris, and so he really caated.

In May, Polly followed him and they lived together in Paris for a couple of months, but in July Polly returned to New York City. She felt angry and betrayed because Harry had been messing around with someone else on the side, and this would not be the last time. But Harry did propose to Polly in September, and then he bribed his way aboard a steamship where she met him at the customs barrier and they went straight to

city Hall to get married that same afternoon. Now, I gotta say, he's like in May saying, if you don't marry me, I'll kill myself. Yeah. Finally her divorce comes through and he doesn't propose to her for another like eight months. Yeah, right, and then also is like messing around with somebody else on the side. I know. I'm like, well, what happened to all that? He's just a very dramatic person.

He's like in bed, he's like actively banging another woman, and he looks over at Paul and he's like, Hey, if you don't marry me, I'm gonna kill myself. She's like, do you want to finish first and then we can talk about this. I don't want to watch this show you're doing for me. So two days after their wedding, Harry, Polly and Polly's two kids left for Paris and their new life together, and what ridiculous life it was. We'll find out more about their sex parties, their questionable lovers,

and all their side pieces. Right after these words, welcome back to the show everyone. Polly and Harry established themselves in Paris with all the artists in Mont parnass and immediately started throwing off the yoke of their oppressive, blue blooded society that they had left behind. Weird Paris, baby, you take off that brazier singing around your head. One of the first things they did was lose Polly's kids.

Harry had ordered them as much as he had Polly before the divorce, but now that he had to deal with them, he was totally uninterested, so they like shipped him off to boarding schools like as often as possible. Harry convinced her in to close up her shop. He did not like her being tied to some manufacturing business.

He thought it was low um, so she sold her patents to the Warner Brothers Corset Company for fifteen hundred dollars, which is worth evaluating transferred twenty six thousand, five hundred dollars today. It doesn't feel like a lot that much because Warner went on to make fifteen million dollars off the bra patent in the next thirty years, So yeah, it feels like she could have probably gotten a bit more money for that. Yeah. Also, I didn't know Warner Brothers was in the bra game. I wish some of

their characters could get that much support. I wish their animation studio on HBO Max could get that kind of support. True, I want there to be an article that's like Eli Banks drags podcast Boy, David Zaslav's a real bone corset. Isn't it rigid and uncomfortable? Yeah? I guess so? Unliked

by many. America comes Alive dot Com does point out that there were similar bra concepts as Polly's out there when she invented her bra, because like, women all over the world had to wear these corsets, so women all over the world, we're trying to figure out how to get rid of them, find a new solution. So a frenchwoman named Erminid created a two part corset where the bra section was separate from the waiste section, and a lot of women would just wear the bra part. You

just kind of leave off the center. But Polly was still the first to file a patent for her design in the US, and she would later write quote, I can't say the brazier will ever takes great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it. Now. Harry worked this bank job that his uncle had gotten him in the place de la Concord, and Polly would row him down the river to work every morning, which I would move to Paris just to be able to take the river to work, saying, let me row myself

to work. Talk about public transit, right, there's just a river you could swim to work. You could take a little boat. Although it kind of makes me think of Ozark when they be on their little Sometimes water is the best way to get around. Pretty. It worked for us for many thousands of years. It sure did. It still does. Harry would wear a formal suit and carry a briefcase on this little boat, while Polly wore a very revealing a red swimsuit. She liked to have those

charms on disay. Oh, and she rode home alone and attracted all kinds of whistles and jeers from workmen who were appreciating the view. Now imagine a lot of people wouldn't appreciate such commentary today. But Polly did write in her autobiography that she thought the exercise was good for her breasts, and she enjoyed the attention. Fellas that's not an invitation or or a demonstration of how women are

going to feel. If you came exactly we we you will soon learn, if you have not discovered already, that this is a unique woman here in many ways. It was less than a year before Harry quit his bank job to devote himself to poetry and life. He wanted to seize the day. Every day he wrote home, often for money, with excuses like quote to make up for certain past extravagances in New York or quote to enjoy life when you can, or in one of his last messages home, he wrote, quote in all caps, please sell

ten tho dollars earth of stock. We have decided to lead a mad and extravagant life, to be a spoiled rich boy from Boston living it up and carress. If anybody knows anyone that I can write that letter to, who haven't email me? Do you? Because I wanna. His family would scold him for being so spend thrifty, but

they always sent the money, so he never learned. A Part of the reason they never tried to live on a budget, Paully and Harry was because they pledged a suicide packed together in case you hadn't think they were

crazy enough already. On October thirty one of nineteen forty two, the Earth would be the closest to the Sun in decades, and they decided that was the perfect time for them to jump out of an airplane together and then have their bodies scraped up off the cremated, and then have their ashes scattered from another airplane, like we just want to spend as much time in the sky as we can. I mean, I wish that they had included the scrape their bodies off the ground, because I feel like that

that detail right there. I feel like there's been enough to say, you know what, let's not jump out of an air That is somebody's job. If they're right there, will somebody's got to go find them before they can get cremated. Unless they unless they jump out of an airplane straight into a furnace. You know, they would have to have incredible incredible it's like a point break thing with the two. I'm just like getting out. Maybe they got wingsuits and they'll just dive into the fire. What

a what a choice. It seems like they decided to spend the twenty years left that they had in the most outrageous ways they could think of. So they quickly made friends with the art students who lived down the block. I mean the has invited them to one of their parties. They made quite a splash from jumping out of an airplane. No no, no, They both died their skin with red ochre. Harry wore a red loincloth and a necklace made of four dead pigeon, and he carried a bag of snakes.

Oh that's just my like we asked for ice. But okay, is there a bag? Check here? Hold this for me. Polly meanwhile, wore a sheer chemise at her waist, a giant turquoise wig and nothing else. That's just like Marge Simpson porn I know, but red is steady yellow. But and some some sources that she wrote it on an elephant as well. Why not? Why not? And of course the kids loved her toplessness. Ten of them carried her around and their shoulders cheering, and she was probably like,

bounced me up and down. Uh. They gambled. They bought and ran racehorses. They raced carriages through the Paris streets. They wore the most expensive clothes from the finest fashion houses. They even purchased an old mill outside of Paris that they called Les Moulon d s or the Mill of the Sun, and Harry went full emo. He wore all black suits, he painted his nails black, and he put a black silk flower in his button hole so he would be very at home at like a my chemical

romance concert. Now, it wasn't long before Harry decided that Polly was too prim and proper of a name for his wife. We live this mad extravagant life. You need a mad extravagant name like Harry, like Harry seeah. He convinced her to change it to something else. He wanted it to be uh, something with a C and an R in it, so that it would have a literation. He wanted there to be common letter that they could cross their names at Crosby cross is what he wanted

to call. So they briefly considered the name clitter Is before settling on the name caress I approved. They did. They think the name clitter iss uh people would be too sensitive about it. They thought it would really get on people's nerve And they were like, we could change your name to clitters, but then half of Paris couldn't find you and the other half might be rubbed the wrong way. So Caress Crosby became the name by which she was most well known, and they saved the name

Clitters for their dog instead. I could never find that damn dog. Where is that damn dog? Paul He's like, I can always find it, right, It's not that hard right there in front of you. They told her daughter Pauline that the dog was named a Greek goddess. So I'm imagining this like underage girlfriend, like clitter is, where are you clitterest? Hello? Mr bourgeois, do you know where my clitter is? Oh? No, He's like, ah, out of here, yikes, whoa yikes. And then later Pauline must have learned the

truth and been like, are you kidding me? Oh boy? Well, Caress and Harry also had an open marriage, one of the lesser shocking things they were doing at this time, But this was something that Caress was maybe not into right away. She was certainly surprised when she arrived in Paris only to discover that Harry was flirting with other women.

I would be surprised too if a guy was like Pester and me for a year, saying he would kill himself if he couldn't have me, and you find them like here I am and he's like, actually, I'm busy with another person tonight. Get back to you late in a few months. Like what in Caress introduced Harry to her friend, and that brings us to this episode's first side piece. Okay, I guess Constance crowning Shield Coolidge was a firecracker, much like Caress, who loved gambling and anything risky.

Constance and Harry met and started having an affair, and after a while Caress, even though she had introduced them, she could not handle this. She went to London by herself just to get away from these two, probably grossing her out all the time. Now, Harry told Caress that there was no way he could quote love her more than anyone in the world. This is absolutely impossible, Babe. I got so much love. I can't just give it

all to you. This's just too much. Wouldn't be fair, It would be faired all the other ladies out there. I got so much, Harri's got so much to give, cares But that does suggest to me that that's what she wanted. She clearly asked him to love her more than anyone else. Yeah, why did he feel the name to need to say that? Right? So that's what makes me think. She was like, oh, is that what you want? Kind of like ended up being like, all right, I

guess I can get into that eventually. But at first she was kind of like, oh, we can have an open marriage, but I'm number one, right, you love me more than anyone else. And he's like, he's like, well, I mean, you know, we're married, but so far, I don't like, I don't like to put titles on things. You know, rank people, you bitch. She's like, I don't care how you rank the rest. You put me at

the top. That's all I care about. So eventually Caress wrote to her friend Constance and said, you know, you're affair with Harry is kind of making me a miserable. Constance, she's a good friend. She immediately broke it off with Harry, and the three of them remained close friends for life, But this was far from the last time that Harry

would step out on Caress. Outwardly, Caress kind of appeared fine with it, and she had lovers of her own as well, but in her private papers, she worried all the time about Harry's loyalty, and Harry kind of had a bit of a double standard. He insisted on absolute freedom for himself, but at the same time he would get jealous and yell at Caress about her own lovers my least favorite thing. Yeah, don't do that. That's the worst.

So you want to here him. You don't want an open marriage, you know, like just be real, right, And I would say Caress also not really being real here either, if she is saying outwardly that she's fine with it and then writing in her journals like I'm nervous he's gonna leave me. Well, I I like what you said that. Maybe she was like, you know, the institution of marriage is dumb, and we should be able to be, you know,

free with other people and all of that. Like she might have had all that, but then she was like, but he won't say I'm the one, you know that. I'm like letting him do whatever he wants with his body, but his heart is mine. That's what she really cares about. Maybe demands conversation and agreements and honesty, you know, like that's what it needs. Caressed once wrote about Harry quote he seemed to be more expression and mood than man. Yet he was the most vivid personality I've ever known,

electric with rebellion. To know Harry was a devastating experience. Ah, there's I feel like you come across those people in history where they're just like, they're so you can't you want to spend all your time with them, and you're miserable for it. Magnetic yes, selfish, Yes, that's what I think the two words I would pick to describe Harry. If you let me have a third, i'd say melodramatic. I think I think those are the two that people were like, Oh God, this guy is cool, Like he

really does draw people like flies. Who's very charming. I made tons of friends. I mean, women loved him. He was forever having affairs and running out seducing all these ladies. But it was like, oh, people just wanted to strangle you. Just got to relax, Harry, or just that like, and yet because I'm so magnetized to you, it's making me miserable. Yeah, you know there's people like that too, where you're just like the fact that I cannot get enough of you,

and I don't know why because you're so frustrating. But there's just something about you that I just need more of all the time, even though it is poison. Wow. Yeah, But for the most part they're open. Marriage seemed to be pretty fun and sexy time galore for both of them. They would host like small dinner parties from their giant bed, and then afterward everyone would jump into their big, huge, sunken bathtub together and refresh themselves with bottles of ice champagne.

Drunken orgies were fairly common at the Mill of the Sun. One year, Harry let loose ten snakes onto the dance floor, I mean for real. He later described the night in his diary quote, I remember two strong young men, stark naked, wrestling on the floor for the honor of dancing with a young girl. And I remember a mad student drinking champagne out of a skull which he had pilford from my library, as I had pilfred it a year ago

from the catacombs. And in a corner I watched two savages making love, and beside me sitting on the floor, a plump woman with bare breasts absorbed in the passion of giving milk to one of the snakes. Wait a second, there was a part of me that. It was even like, I don't think you'd ever find me doing this, But two naked dudes wrestling for the honor of dancing with a woman. That's kind of cool. I'm at a cool

I'm at a cool party right now. That student drinking champagne out of a dirty old skull from the catacombs, I'm like, you do you, dude, I am at a crazy party right now. I'm sorry. This lady with a snake on her boob? Am I in antony and cleopatcher right now? Why why was she doing that? So many questions hallucinogens. I'm astanding it was definitely a drug related. At the mill, they added a race course. They would play drunken donkey polo on it. Okay, this party is

cool again. Again cool. A solid brass marine cannon would be rolled out and fired to announce special guests. Okay, I'm planning our my birthday party for next month. This is happening. Incredible the cannon at least right I was thinking about our dinner party question from that listener mail episode, and I was like, I don't know. I'm wrestling with whether or not I would I would invite to a party sin Harry, because first of all, I can never throw a part into they would find anything but boring.

And b if they were in charge of the party, I'm not sure I could hang. Let me be afraid of some of the should they do. I'm going, I'm going to this party. I can handle myself. I will simply leave and near the stairway at the middle of the sun, they left a box of watercolors next to a whitewashed wall and they called it their guest book. My God. Tons of famous people signed this wall, um,

including d H. Lawrence who drew a phoenix. Uh Salvador Dolly signed his name Douglas Fairbanks, the future King George the six which is like oh, King George plans On drunken Donkey, Polo had the Mill, Okay, King George, many many more names. And I love that idea too, having a wall that people just draw on like graffiti. I love it. I mean, they knew so many cool people that like priceless wall. Really, if you could cut it out into get somewhere now. When Paris or the Mill

got boring, somehow, they would travel far and wide. They visited Lebanon, Africa and the running of the bulls in Pamplona. They first smoked opium in North Africa in n and that became a favorite pastime of theirs. One of the most exclusive opium dens in Paris was called Drosso's, and once they got an invitation they became regulars. Harry would sometimes spend days at a time there. Harry also loved cocaine and hashish, so really hitting both ends of the

energy spectrum with his drugs. Like, I hope he didn't like smoke opium and then be like, let's do some cocaine just like literally can't wake back up again, or maybe it balances. I don't know, I feel sober as a god right now. Well, occasionally they would drive out to the country with two other couples, pull their cars into a circle with the headlights on, and then all

swap partners, wing in super fun winging Crosby's. Well, before you get too excited, they also did some more objectionable things, as Peter Lyle in the Telegraph rights quote in their war on the repressive cruelty of social convention and the deadening impact of puritanical morals. The Crosby's could be very cruel themselves in Morocco, Harry and Caress took a thirteen year old dancing girl named Zora to bed with them.

Harry's one known homosexual experience, another holiday dalliance with a boy of unspecified youth, left him in intense, if predictably short lived raptures. At another time, Harry slept with a fourteen year old girl he called Newbile with quote a baby face and large breasts. Yeah. Peter Lyle also writes that their friends quote held rape parties and paid to see female circumcisions to add to their stores of scandalous anecdotes. So gross, that's very uncool, extremely gross. These parties stuck

again the like the youth is disgusting. Yeah, and then also the idea that you're like, wouldn't it be cool if I knew about the worst ship in the world and soft, insane pain in front of me and misery? How cool would that be over a dinner party to talk about, like, who do you? What kind of cool do you think you are? That's so crazy to me that that that was seen as like a cool thing to do too. I mean, it's it's the same thing whenever you get into talking about hedonism and libertine activities

stuff like that. It's all consent. I mean that is like should be the foundational line you draw. We can do all kinds of crazy shit, but we cannot involve people who are too young to consent. We cannot involve people who are not consenting, and we cannot you know, mutilate people. I'm gonna assume against their will. Yeah, I mean,

I don't think many women want to be circumcised. Um, the rape parties, I'm assuming that they were the ones doing the raping home, and I would assume that the person doesn't know that's what their party is, or if they are like hiring prostitutes that were acting out of fantasy. Yeah, that's hard to say, because there is consensual non consent. You know, that could have been a thing. Um, but

it's given that they've already crossed these lines. I don't Yeah, I don't know, right, so they Yeah, you know, crossing lines is cool until it's not. Is the lesson in this paragraph. Because we had a real fun time at the party. It was like, oh my god, I hope no one saw me here. I don't want to sign your fucking guess. I'm running for senator later. These pictures are definitely going to pop up. But it wasn't all sex, money,

clothes and cars with them. After all, Harry was a poet, so they also spent a lot of money publishing their poetry, and they had a really important small press in Paris, and we will find out a lot more about that right after these words Welcome back everyone. So two of their first three books that Harry and Caress published were Caress's poetry collection Crosses of Gold and Harry's Sonnets for Caress. Now, money, of course, is no object, so they used only the

finest paper and ink um. The type setting was flawless, they made sure there's no errors, and they had beautiful illustrations. Antiquarian books expert and actor Neil Pearson says quote, they were publishing books of love poems to each other. Of course they wanted them to be beautiful. But unfortunately we couldn't find any of Caress's poems online, but we did find a short one of Harry's. So let's go down to Poetry Corner to hear Harry Crosby's unanswered why should

I be subservient to fate? Sepu The shows before a giant world, Poor little ship with little sail, unfurled to catch the sun breeze at the harbor gate. Why should I be a coal within a grate of never ending love? Why intercurled with some strange mermaid whom the tempests hurled far up the shore that mortals desecrate? Why all these wise and whereforees of the mind that strike like arrows on a marble floor, beyond whose frigidness read lions roar

to guard this on? I gave my youth defined? And why should drowning in the blackest sea be better than to worship at her knee? It's no whitman, Yeah, just no, it's okay. Question, Just I don't know why now is when I'm wondering this, there's still just coasting off Uncle JP's money at this point. Yes, he apparently got like what would be equivalent today to about a hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year allowance. Wow, he did a

lot with that. Well, that's he constantly overdraw his account, and that's why he called back and be like, give me more of my It was his inheritance that he was like, just let me because he really felt like again he's like I'm planning to kill myself, so I'm never going to inherit anything. So yeah, not, you know, the poetry is fine, it's nothing. I'm no analyst, but I wasn't. Yeah, it doesn't do much for me. Um And Caress also was like she called her own writing

pretty pedestrians. She said, I was still rhyming love with Dove example, Like She's like, I'm just just you know, mechanical of a poet or so. Yeah. It's not like either of these writers as writers, they were not like culturally significant. There's a reason you don't hear their poachers and they're not classic. Um. But their their first few books were pretty well received. People liked them. I guess their audience score was pretty good. This is all I

was looking for to think that hard. But their real service to the arts was that they decided to expand their press to serve other authors. Now, Harry had become obsessed with the sun, which was to him a symbol of perfection, enthusiasm, freedom, hate, and destruction, and he even had tattoos on the souls of his his feet. He had a Christian cross on one foot and a Pagan Son's symbol on the other. Which in my mind just looks like the sun from the Sublime at everybody in

the mid nineties got tattooed. All I'm saying. I'm sure that's not what it was, but that's all I'm saying. And his favorite color was black, so they named their business Black Sun Press. As extravagant as ever, they kept up with their quality papers and inks, their painstaking type setting. They published beautiful limited editions like three hundred copies of The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar All and Co. With illustrations by the German painter Alistairs. Amazing.

I mean some of these books I would give a lot of money just to look at um, just from the descriptions. They also published avant garde writers long before they were well known, like James Joyce's Tales Told of Shem and Sean, which would later be incorporated into Finnigan's Wake Um, or Ca Boyle's first book length work, Short Stories. Other names include Ernest Hemingway, who Harry once said quote

could drink us under the table. Well I know which I'm like, Well everyone knows that about Hemingway, but these two were parties, so he was probably very surprised to learn that anyone could do that. D. H. Lawrence is another person that they published, and Harry actually paid him in gold coins because he thought he'd like it, and he did. Ezra Pound was another one among many others.

Just tons, tons of names. And these books are just so lovely that they're kind of like Picasso's for book collectors. They're so rare, there's such limited quantities. I did it just a quick Google search to see, like, if I wanted to buy one today, what would it be? And I found a rare copy of their version of Alice in Wonderland I Know, with illustrations by avant garde artist Marie Lawrenson, for sale for four thousand dollars. God, damn it.

That's just above my birthday budget. Damn it just above my birthday budget. I said, four thousand dollars. But no, you said my birthday budget. Did I set your birthday budget? Yeah? Yeah, you said my gift I could ask for it could be no more than we could stretch to four? Right? Um? I think I said thirty five dollars. I feel like you're really odd. Zero You're gonna get zero presents? Fine, I'll draw one myself. Yes, please, please, draw your version

of Alice. I love Alice Winn and I probably could now Black Sun Pressed would evolve into one of the most important small presses in Paris at the time, and according to an article by Francis Booth on Literary Ladies Guy dot com, they also quote bullied, blackmails and kidnapped heart Crane into finishing his monumental poem Sequence The Bridge, which, along with Alan Ginsberg's Howell William Carlos WILLIAMS Patterson, is one of the great pillars of American twentieth century epic poetry.

Caress actually locked him into his room to make him finish writing once, which reminds me of William Colette, if you recall Willie one Colette in her room, or that was the story they told, right, I mean, it reminds me of rumpel Stiltskin. Enough, you better turn the straw into go. Mr Crane, goddamn poh, Mr Crane. Wow, jeez? Is that? I mean? Like, what do you say to something like that and you get one of the great

works of art in the world born of torture? I know, but there's something I kind of love about this that again, like this this um rich people helping artists be artists because they're like, what they're doing is providing a place for them to be without having to spend any money and just make stuff, and that is such an important part of an artist process. You just need time and space.

So that's what they provided. I mean, I I will say, I'm not opposed to a wealthy person grabbing me off the street, throw me in a van, taking me to some posh castle in Paris and saying you're not coming out of here until you finish your screenplay. All right, maybe I'll finally get it. Don have good food and sex parties and drunken donkey polo whenever you want, but you have to finish that screenplay. Yeah, but you know what, I could use some drunken donkey polo to kind of

get the juices flowing a little bit my creativity. I feel like it would inspire something. It would change my screenplay, that's for sure, because that is currently not in there. But I could add it. I could make it work. I'm thinking about it. Another artist that they helped develop pun Intended was the photographer en Ricartier Bresson, who would later be recognized as a master of candid photography and the pioneer of street photography. So humans of New York

take note exactly. Um. This guy was schooled in the arts, and he was fascinated by the Surrealists, but he didn't really care for his own paintings, and in the summer of nineteen nine, his air squadron commander had placed him under house arrest for hunting without a license. He met Harry Crosby by chance one day, and they bonded over

their shared interest in flying planes and photography. Now, photography was still a pretty new technology in nine, and weirdly, a lot of people back then thought that this wasn't gonna last, or that maybe it was nice for portraits and group shots, but it had no artistic merit. TikTok is great for little dances, but you can't do anything good with it, said the olds. Not me, come hip, I see the value. Um. But Harry, like me, was

not one of these people. He saw the value. He thought this was going to be the next big thing in artistic expression. He and Caress even print had some of their books with photographs instead of illustrations. So Harry persuaded Henri's commander to place Henri into Harry's custody and he took into the Moulan de Sole, where they spent

the next few months taking and developing pictures together. Harry even presented Henri with his first camera, and he presented him to his wife, Caress, who Henri was very taken with when he discovered that the couple had an open marriage. Whoo boy, he was on that like uh photography, punt like a like a like the mercury that sticks to the paper develops the photo finger on a shutter like a flash on a like. He was on that like a portrait on a tin plate and Caress, look we're taking.

He and Caress began an intense, long term affair, and that was good for Chris because Harry had a very intense thing of his own going on at the time as well. And that brings us to our next side piece. Got an idea. Josephine Noise Rach was a rich, blue blooded Bostonian. He was about to marry Albert bigelow In and she had traveled to Europe to buy the most beautiful clothes she could find for her wedding trousseau. Now right, Boston thought of her as fast and a bad egg.

So I guess she was already kind of bold and flirty and stuff. So they were like, oh, this one might get in trouble. And she went on to prove it after she met Harry by chance when she was out shopping. He guess he grabbed her fancy right away, because they've he probably grabbed her something right away. She must have liked it, because they meant to have sex as often as possible during her eight day visit. How often is as often as possible in eight days? Might

one say? I wondered that too, because I was like, surely she's she's got things to do, she's that family with her something watching her. How often could it possibly occur? Well? How often can Harry? You know, Harry'll make time. Harry's like, what I got to do? No, it's not the time I'm worried about for Harry. I'm like, how many times in a day can you do it? Pal? He had cocaine, and that's cocaine. He's like, don't worry about old Harry,

all right. The biographer Jeffrey Wolfe wrote, quote, Josephine was strong willed and selfish, and she did not agonize much, and deciding to become Harry's lover. Harry wrote to his mother about this. He was apparently pretty used to confiding in her just like whatever he was doing, and so I'm like, good for Henrietta, I guess. But some of his letters must have been really hard for her to read, including this one where he told her quote, I am having an affair with a girl I met, not introduced

at the leado. She is twenty and has charm and it's called Josephine. I like girls when they are very young, before they have any minds. What oh lord. His mom should have been like, first boat over there, I'm coming in, don't you dare? I raised you better? I didn't. I didn't know nanny raised you. And it was terrible. She probably told him, you know Mary as seventeen year old

or some girl mind. Funny thing. Also for for a guy to say, who rapidly pursued a woman six years old him too, So what a world this guy sucks? I think he sucks to. I think I don't like Harry. No you can't. I mean you can't like him. He's having sex with underage people. He thinks women are dumb when they're young, and that's why he pursues them like open marriage, but he wants to yell at his wife for doing it, like he's just got a lot of things up right. I would just oh, I would have

a real hard time with this guy. Harry called Joe Stephine quote the youngest Princess of the Sun and also the fire princess. Now. Their affair ended in June. After she went back to the US, she married Albert Bigelow. Done, done, done, Washington, Harry. It was a nice eight day sex soaked romp. That's the way to say it. Done now. Nope, just kidding. It started right back up again in August, so only

a couple of months later. Once Albert Bigelow was at Harvard as a graduate architecture student, Josephine, I guess, was like, let me fill up his class hours with something else, And according to Linda Himalian's book, unlike Caress, Josephine was extremely jealous and she wanted to fight all the time, and she would constantly send Harry quote half coherent cables and letters like what am I going to see you next? Where you meeting up next? I want to see you

right away? How dare you keep away? From me so long do you not love me? Like? Just always in his face now. On November, the Crosby's traveled back to the US to visit their families, and Harry and Josephine met up and they went off to Detroit together. Harry and Josephine checked into an expensive hotel as Mr and Mrs Harry Crane, and He's like, I need a last name. Who's that guy got locked up in my attic? Right

in the poem Crane? That's it, That's it. And for the next four days they just smoked opium and had sex. They ate all their meals in bed, and on December seven, Harry and Josephine went back to New York. Josephine planned to get home to Boston and Albert Bigelow, but Harry had a party to go to. Black Sun Press was about to publish Hart Crane's poem The Bridge and Heart

was throwing a big party to celebrate. Harry partied with E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, and many others at that party, which lasted until dawn, probably a lot of big words being thrown around, and of course Cummings he starts talking and you just can't stop because there's no punctuation, especially on cocaine. I bet Commings on cocaine. I can't say that he definitely did cocaine, but I have a comma, sir.

I gotta take a breath. A little E Cummings humor and therefore a p lit friends um now, according to Francis Booth on Literary Ladies Guy dot com, the next night, on December eighth, after this party, Harry very suddenly told Caress that he wanted to move up the date of their suicide pact. Remember that, I know right what She's like, what? We just have a great party. What is wrong with you? He wanted them both to jump out of their hotel room window the very next day and to achieve what

he called a son death. Caress was like, no, I'm good. I kind of thought we were joking about that whole suicide pacting like that was just an excuse for us to have some wacky, crazy fun. Maybe I'm still down to wait till whatever it is some time left. You're drunk anyway, Harry, why didn't she go sleep? This crazy

notion off right? And maybe maybe she was like he just got a weird ide because this was, you know, only a few weeks after the giant stock market crash of his uncle's busy trying to save the economy and stuff, so windows exactly. He might have just been like, this is the time, you know, I can see him getting real like worked up about a bunch of mass suicide events. Yeah, and then you know he did a bunch of cocaine and smoked a ton of opium at the same time.

He's having all kinds of crazy ideas. You know, what's a great idea? Some death was that? But then on December ninth, a poem arrived for Harry from Josephine. She had not left for Boston at all. She was still in New York, staying with one of her bridesmaid The poem was thirty six lines long, and it en did with the line quote death is our marriage. That same day, Harry wrote his final journal entrigue quote one is not in love unless one desires to die with one's beloved.

There is only one happiness. It is to love and to be loved. The next day, Caress met up with Harry's mother, Henrietta, and heart Crane to have dinner before heading out to see a Broadway play, but Harry didn't show up. That wasn't really like him, but Caress wasn't too concerned. She just called a friend named Stanley Mortimer, and she asked him to check his studio at the Hotel des Artistes because she knew that Harry used it a lot as a rendezvous for his various love affairs

and stuff. So she's like, he's probably lost track of the time his with some chick. Will you go get his ass and tell him to get to Broadway for this play. So Stanley went, but the door was locked and no answer to repeated knocking, so he ended up getting some help to break open the door, only to find Harry and Josephine laying together in bed, fully dressed but barefoot, locked in an affectionate embrace, with two matching

gunshot wounds through their temples. Harry was still holding the pistol in his hand, and his wedding ring, which he had promised Caress would never leave his left hand, was found crushed into the carpet. This, of course, made for some pretty incredible headlines in the newspapers, because you got two rich, married adulterers dying in an apparent murder suicide, which is already enough to make a newsman d rule.

But in addition they got too breathlessly report on all the unusual details, including Harry's red painted toenails, his foot tattoos, and the lack of the suicide. Note that that made speculation pretty rampant, because was this a double suicide? Uh? Maybe, But the corner reported that Josephine died two hours earlier than Harry, So had she shot herself and then maybe

he had doubts afterwards? Or had Harry shot Josephine. Peter Lyle in the Telegraph rites quote London's Daily Mirror speculated on psychological motives, while New York's Daily News blamed poetry and passion. Death itself had been the motive. Others speculated just as aspiring poet Harry's life had been his greatest artwork. Harry called cigarettes coffin nails and knew very well that

the drugs he was using held dangers. While the couple's caretaker at their holiday home was also the village grave digger. Harry had erect to stone inscribed caress and Harry in the grounds, so the guy was like obsessed with death yea, And people were like, maybe that was enough, and he had been talking about committing suicide the night before Josephine's like death is our marriage. It sounds like he was really on one and they who were both on they were both on one and and probably a lot of

drugs and alcohol. Definitely, they had definitely smoked opium and they had drank a bottle of whiskey as well, so that's those were both found in the hotel room as well. So they definitely were not sober and they made that decision. But Josephine's family, including her husband Albert, thought that Harry had tried to seduce her and then murdered her when he couldn't have her. But this, I don't know, it

sounds like wishful thinking. Yeah, Albert had said that they were totally devoted to each other and he had never married, He had never met Harry. Um, But I mean if they had been, it was almost a year that they had an affair going on, and she send him all these telegrams and ships, So I feel like he just wished that was true, but just oblivious or totally oblivious. Yeah,

she was good at keeping a secret. I guess I don't know, but well, Albert Bigelow went on to design buildings for the nineteen World's Fair, and along with his second wife Sylvia, he became a Quaker and one of them prominent protesters against nuclear weapons. He was also a freedom writer early in the civil rights movement. Once he was beaten with chains, and another time the bus he

was riding on was bombed in Alabama. He died in pretty amazing life to lead after all this, being disappointed in love so young, well man, Josephine sounded like a real handful. Okay, Sylvia sounds like a better match for Robert bigel Now, Kress, I mean, had to be devastating because first of all, she was always worried about Harry

not loving her enough. Then she finds out that he's like, I want to die with the person I love and dies with someone else after they already had a suicide pact, going and find her ring in the carpet, like just so many ways of being horrible to her, in my opinion, terrible. The first thing she did was get her children to her. So she got her son and her daughter brought them to her and they both went. They all went to the mill together and she just lived there for a

few months alone. But listen, she was far from done with her extraordinary life. Um. She didn't die until nineteen seventies. She hasn't many years left to contribute to the arts. Um. She continued to publish important authors and artists in paperback, like Enrimatiss, Pablo Picasso, Dorothy Parker, and Nias Ninn, so on and so forth. She actually was even about to publish a paperback translation of Love Vagabond by Collette when her company ended up closing because she could not convince

booksellers that paperbacks would ever be popular. God, she was so smart, and they just would not believe. Why wouldn't anyone want their booked away? Four? Like, what do you mean no one would want a paperback? I think they were likely probably associated with like dime novels or so they were like, no one will read a real book

that's in paperback or whatever. But I did wonder. I thought they must have had so many similar social circles as co lead that I'm surprised their names never came up in each other's story, right, So I'm glad there

was some kind of connection. She also had a decade long affair with a black boxer named Canada Lee that started in nineteen thirty four, even though, of course there are many laws at the time against interracial sex or marriage, so she would meet him in secret for lunch in Harlem, and when her brother said that he had a problem with it, she refused to speak to him for ten years. And Canada Lee was actually the only one of her

lovers who never asked her for money. Even when his nightclub was going under, he wouldn't let her rescue it. She also married a guy eighteen years younger than her who did nothing but run up her bills, go on years long solo trips by himself, and drink so fortunately she eventually divorced him in nineteen forty one. She did have to leave Europe during World War Two, and she was distressed to learn that the Nazis had made their base camp in the Mulanda painting over her incredible guest

book wall. So frustrating, even though ironically this wall included Ava bronze signature on it was Hitler's future wife, of course, so ironic. I guess Ava was hanging out at those parties, was hanging out with those chartings them a little more uncomfortable than they already were. Well, Ezra Pounds ended up being pretty big into passionate them as well, So I guess everyone was better than Ezra. Anybody you get a chuckle, just leave this house. Caress also helped an author named

Henry Miller support himself by ghost writing pornography. This guy had gotten a nice advance to write some smut, but he didn't really like writing it, and he knew that Caress was writing pieces of erotica for a nice nin smut club, so he asked her for help. She apparently churned out two hundred pages with no problem, and the publisher was like, or please, it's probably like what did

I do at one time? Chapter three, Donkey Polo. She bought a castle in Rome and made it into an artist's colony where they could stay for a season or a whole year at a time, just making stuff. Again, it cannot be overstated how important that is the artistic tellum. So I admire it, even though she herself said it was a very uncomfortable place that she would hate to

spend any time. Uh As Ninn once said about her quote, Caress Crosby enters but the buoyancy of a powder puff caressing voice was that how she gained the nickname of Caress from Harry Crosby. Her fur hat, her eyelashes, her smile all glittery with animation. The word on her lips is always yes, and all her being says yes, yes, yes to all that is happening and all that has offered her. She trails behind her like the plume of

a peacock. A fabulous legend. Wow, Caress Crosby, Caress, I mean, look, saying yes to everything can have such amazing things, and also you can have some really bad things. That's how you end up with Ava Braun at your parties, which again I do not want my photograph take. You know what I think? Actually, at the end of this, I have to skip the party. Oh yeah, you're not going Look it was it was all fun and games. We're drinking out of skulls and wrestling on the floor, and

then there's miners. Uh, there's some weird mutilation happening. And also, oh, who's that over there? Oh it's just Adolph Hitler's wife. Come on, even future wife. Still I'm imagining that I have my current knowledge being invited this party and I'm like, no, I'm sorry at a hard pass. It does feel like an Epstein's Island type thing. There's many names that you're like, how cool to party with them, and then when you find out what's going on or not, I'm so glad

my name is not catch and anyway. So yeah, I mean, I really it was such a cool suggestion. Thanks again to Tombre, Tamber tom Brim. However you say it, let us know. I'm sorry if I mutilated it, but thank you for this suggestion. Because they just had a really complicated life. They weren't. They're not people that it's easy to decide when there another about I mean, they did a lot of terrible things. They did a lot of cool things, really rich and layered and complicated and terrible

and awesome, just interesting wealthy Americans and Europeans in early century. Yeah, we're all that. I mean, they were doing such cool

stuff and also like the worst things. I know, it's so true to just to bring it back to and or I did see somebody say that what they were loving about the show is how much they would They were trying to show how bad people can be good and righteous and very like I'm trying to do the right thing, and good people can be very ruthless and cruel, and that just saying, like you just the actions alone, is it's really hard to just judge someone that they're

individuality and how are they working in the system there in and all that sort of thing. It was just really interesting and I was like, that's how I'm feeling right now. Yeah, I feel like we feel that so often on the show. And I think any historian, you know, not that we're like historians, but we're sitting here reading a lot of history, and you do find that it's really hard to just call someone a good or a

bad person. Um. I mean, you know, there's certainly that like a drop of bad can really make can really you know, tent your whole color into something pretty bade um. So there's that, But also, you know, some fascinating things in the world would never have happened without some of these awful people were or they would have good people. That's what you don't know. I wish they had just been good people and not or it would have just

been different art. You know, like that's the thing that that's sometimes I have to catch myself when I'm like, oh, but how could we live without as repounds book or whatever? You know whatever, I'm not you know whatever, I mean, we could be fine with that, but you know what, never like James Droys or whatever, you know what your favorite author is that somebody helped usher them into the zeitgeist somewhere or another, and you're like, well, thank god

they did that. I wouldn't change anything, because I would not want to not have this book available to me now. But like what was not made otherwise that you might cherish as much because you don't know about the other thing. You know, just time and how it works. Sure is well? I hope you'll enjoyed this episode. Who's Wild rid Crazy is wild, truly wild, so bumpy. It must be what it must be like to play a game aim of Drunken Donkey Polo and now we all know go through

the cross flay. Uh, let us know how your game a Drunken Donkey Polo went. Listen to this one. We'd love to hear from you, and please send us more suggestions like these. Please really give us so much to work with and it's so fun. We love hearing them. Shoot us an email ridic Romance at gmail dot com and we're on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dianamite Boom and I'm at Oh Great, it's Eli and we're both at ridic Romance is so follow along, reach out and

we'll catch you all the next episode. Love you, Bob, So long. Friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show Tell your friend's names, Uncle Sandez to listen to our show, Ridiculous roll NaNs