Radio War Nerd EP #417 — The US Civil War, Part 17: Women's Civil War Diaries (Cont.)

Listening to this late, I recall a story Jim Backus told while he was a panelist on the Match Game back in 1973 or 1974, which illustrates how popular Mr. Magoo was. At one point, he had been on a movie with Marilyn Monroe, and Backus got called up to Monroe's dressing room. Obviously Backus thought about *that*, but when he got there, Monroe's request was that he perform Mr. Magoo's voice for her.

Sign me up for the civil war - west coast edition please

Woo-hoo, oblique shout-out to the Battle of Glorieta Pass in northern New Mexico!! I got drunk on secreted vodka among the Glorieta pines on a senior trip in high school, unconsciously toasting the union triumph amid a booze and weed haze. Poor New Mexico, always the forgotten, beautiful, high-altitude ass-end of every empire it's been a part of. Even the Confederates couldn't be bothered to hold onto it for more than 9 months.

My mum grew up speaking French at home in rural Uruguay in the 1920's.

My dad (a lifelong perv and also a mega colonialist/Anglophile, so a huge Burton fan) loves telling that Burton story. XD Poor Burton! But more importantly, didn’t you say in episode 1 that there is a Black woman nurse’s civil war diary as well? I wanted to hear about that one!! Regardless, thanks, great episode!

I was struck by the women diarists' matter-of-fact approach to death and illness at home (bursting eye-balls and all) but completely oblivious to what death looked like on the battlefield - a totally romantic vision. Could they really delude themselves that corpses on the field didn't bloat, that they were immune from maggots? What's that about???

Been meaning to read the Chestnut diary since running into a quote from it in The Hemmingses of Monticello. Very snide comment about how only the plantation wives cannot see the resemblance of the enslaved’s babies to their own husbands.

I haven’t read Chesnut but it is interesting to me that she has this moment of sympathy for an enslaved woman, which was more than most of the Lost Cause writers would concede 50+ years later. Is Chesnut smarter than them? Were nostalgic racists in the 1900s-1920s that much more vehemently pro-slavery than those who lived at the time? Both?

An interesting topic for a future Western Civil War episode could be the Los Angeles Mounted Rifles. A rather bizarre secessionist militia group formed in Los Angeles in 1861. They were made up mainly of Californios and recent arrivals from the border south, but also counted German Jews, Irishmen, and a single African American among their ranks. Many of members later crossed the desert into Texas where they became officers in the Confederate Army, including Albert Johnston who joined the militia as a “advisor.” The California Battalion, stationed at Los Angeles harbor, was created (in part) to quell secessionist sympathies in the Los Angeles area. It later participated in the battle in New Mexico mentioned in the episode.

A tale of two cities is amazing, I read it as an adult and it completely changed my opinion of dickens, it's a fantastic exploration of the nature of revolutions. It also has the best opening AND closing lines of a novel.

Happy new year to all, and thank you!

.As a child I felt I could never live up to my mother, whom I was told had read *all* of Dickens books at the age of six, while convalescing (or quarantined?) from scarlet fever for six weeks. My grandmother, a NYC public school teacher, had been persuaded by her principal to purchase a complete set! As a result of this and other signs of precocity, my mother was skipped ahead two grades in school (I was not precioous & still haven't read Barnaby Rudge.) You are to be congratulated for reading aloud to your son. Frankly I think five is too young for Dickens. However, when our children were quite young we rented from the local VHS store an Australian anime of David Copperfield, which they loved. (They do these things much better abroad). My son choked up when the dying Steerforth told David to remember him at his best, and David answered "You have no best or worse Steerforth, you are my friend." (You can't find this scene in any other dramatization I have found. More's the pity.) I think you are right that Dickens lend itself to a cartoon treatment, he is not a realist but creates fevered, phantasmagoric worlds. Anyway I later found an abridged cassette tape of Pickwick Papers which my seven-year-old daughter and I listened to in the car during the commute to and from school. She loved it and gave all her dolls Pickwickian names. (I had read it as a teenager because my uncle and cousin were reading it.) Anyway, Pickwick is, as they say, a "picaresque" novel, meaning it has no plot to speak of and so lends itself to abridgment. I always hated English class in school. I thought reading was supposed to be fun, so I, too, remember reading Great Expectations for class as painful. (No doubt it was the nature of the teaching). The David Lean movie, though, is pretty good, especially the young Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket, and Finley Currie, oh, my! Be that as it may, Bleak House, Little Dorritt, and Our Mutual Friend are great favorites of my family. We read the last one aloud. There is also a truly wonderful 1958 English movie of A Tale of Two Cities with Dirk Bogarde and the great Dorothy Tutin. Highly recommended --- but not for pre-schoolers -- maybe ninth grade.

I never really understood Civil War nerdery until you guys, thanks for more!

coming in weapons free with the Dickens hate! I've read a couple of his books over the last 2 years; I've got mixed feelings if I'm being honest - but BLEAK HOUSE has one of the best openings (briefing the reader about Jarndyce v. Jarndyce) by anybody, and many of his best character names. around the same time I read a few Sherlock Holmes stories, and with "A Study in Scarlet" you have to go, What the fuck is your problem with Mormons, man? I mean, you can take or leave Mormonism, but Doyle was off the chain with that one. I think this won't be a controversial take but, neither holds a candle to Melville.