Episode 02: The Hitchhiker’s Manifesto

In this episode, Caitlin and Francesgrace swap stories about the lives, deaths, and strange graves of Karl Marx, the philosopher, and Douglas Adams, the writer.

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Season 1. Episode 2. The Hitchhiker’s Manifesto

Caitlin: Hello and welcome to Grave Escapes, the podcast that helps those who've died tell their stories once again.

INTRO MUSIC.

Caitlin: We're back for episode two of Grave Escapes, which is the podcast that tells you all the stories behind those tombstones, you're so interested about if are like us. I am one of your hosts, I'm Caitlin Howle. And my other host is… 

Frances: Francesgrace Ferland. And I'm super stoked. 

Caitlin: I feel like I have to kind of explain why each grave has been picked because I'm sure our…I'm sure our listeners have kind of realized this point that there is sort of a method to why we're choosing these graves. So if you were with us for the last episode we discussed, HP Lovecraft and Sissieretta Jones, both who died without a head headstone marker. They were just interred, basically a poor man’s grave, poor man's cemetery, plots, funeral…They had no money. Let's just get there.

Frances: Paupers. 

Caitlin: They’re paupers. It was sad. Right? I'm not going to open that can of worms again. We’ve got too much to talk about tonight. 

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: So let me tell you why we picked tonight's graves. Last podcast. I mentioned I had gone on this literary road trip and that's how I discovered Lovecraft. Well, what led to that road trip was living in England for a summer. I had read a book about the cemetery named Highgate. And one day I convinced two of the people who were on the trip with me to go to the cemetery. I didn't actually know who was buried there. I just knew it sounded really cool. So I took the Metro…took the tube, farther than I had ever done on my own. I was like a little freaked out. A nd you have to pay to get in, which did cause some controversy between the people in my party. But so I'm walking through the cemetery and this was one of the moments where I was just like… kind of in this weird piece of Zen. It was stunning, you know? It was…it was truly beautiful. Like I was breath…I was just like breathless at how wow I was about the whole experience. One of the fun things was, is I started trying to see like who famous was buried in the cemetery. So I will say Highgate, for those of you who have gone, who does of you plan on going, it is divided into two parts. I was in the part that’s newer. 

As I was walking along, I realized that there was someone there that I really wanted to see, and that person was Douglas Adams, the writer. 

Frances: Oh yeah. 

Caitlin: So for those of you who don't know, Douglas Adams wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the prequels-sequels that went along with them. He was a fundamental part of my diving into writing and reading.

He changed a lot of my life. And I've always been this - I don't really know  how to describe this - wannabe  philosopher where I'm constantly consumed by my own thoughts and existentialism, but like, could I publish on it? No, just going to get depressed. You know, he helped me kind of find humor in the meaning of life ostensibly. 

 Frances: 42 

Caitlin: 42. He is going to be talked about on this podcast and I will get to that in just a moment. But the other one was someone I found in Highgate who blew my mind. And that's how we get to our first person on this podcast. The daddy of communism himself, Karl Marx. So Frances, tell me, what do you know about Karl Marx?What do you know about Marxism? 

Frances: So when I was in college, I had to read the communist manifesto and in school, I know he wrote with a guy named Engles. I know he was. Some other stuff besides the Communist Manifesto, I think Das Kapital, right? I think I read like two sentences of that too. Sorry, whoever assigned me part of that reading. I didn't do it. And that might be it. And now I know he's buried in Highgate Cemetery. 

Caitlin: He is buried at cemetery. So I want to walk you guys through…why I decided to talk about this. I have also studied Marxism. I'll talk about that more in a minute. Not well, just preface that. Not well, I'm not a Marxist. I do not specialize in this philosophy. I would go as far to say as even with two semesters of Marxism in a graduate level institution under my belt, I am dumped about Marxism. I'm just going to go ahead and say it…it’s a lot. There’s so much that goes into it. I feel like you made a decade to understand.

Frances: Oh yeah.

Caitlin: So anyway, I'm walking around Highgate. I found George Elliot's grave. I hadn't found Douglas Adams yet. I was getting a little persnickety, maybe a bit, about where is up with Adams and I come upon Karl Marx's grave. Listeners, Frances, picture. What you think Karl Marx would be? Would be buried as what? What do you think his headstone would look?

Frances: Well, he's the father communism. So I'd imagine it's very bare and very simple, right? 

Caitlin: That is also what I was going with. Right? 

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: Small plank, Karl Marx, birthday death date. Yeah. No, it is. There's a bust of him on his tomb. It is a tomb that is probably the size of like the front of my car. 

Frances: Oh, wow. That's that's a lot. 

Caitlin: Yeah. So I was, I don't know. I wasn't like mad, but I was really confused. 

Frances: That doesn't sound quite in line with what I'm thinking about communism and Marxism. 

Caitlin: I'm super young at this point. I'm not even out of college. I don't know much about communism and I'm just like: um, okay.

There are also people trying taking pictures of his grave. Think all those articles you see about people taking campy photos at cemeteries. This was one of them. And people throwing up the peace sign, people trying to touch the bust. And I remember being like: Hmm, hard pass, hard pass on all of this.

And then I went off to find out Douglas Adams. But I realized that I've had this misconception in my head for over a decade now that Marx having this tomb was ridiculous. And I don't know enough about him to actually make that judgment. And so my friends let's go on this journey together, who was Karl Marx?

Frances: Tell me things. 

Caitlin: All right, let's go to the David David Copperfield stuff: born 1818. In what was the kingdom of Prussia. Which I then had to do research on. That basically where he live now…something that's going to be a theme about Marx is that he doesn't have a country. We'll get to that in a minute.

Not much is actually known about his childhood, but he was the third of his family’s children, and became the eldest after, you know, lots of death. I had to say this: this part of his life truly thrills me. Basically at 17, he was like, yo dad, I'm going to run off and I'm going to study literature and philosophy.

And his dad was like, oh my fucking God, please get a useful degree. I obviously relate to that. But so he goes to the university of Bonn and then he joins this radical political group on campus. And… 

Frances: As one does. 

Caitlin: Yeah, I mean, it's like orientation, indoctrination. That's like how it goes. Yeah. So he's hanging out with all these radicals…so he's like: I want to study your literature.

I want to study philosophy and he ends his first semester and it was not an honor student put it to that way, which again, super relatable, right? Like who did not royally fuck up their first semester of college. Okay. Don’t, Frances. You did it? 

Frances: No, no. I definitely didn't. I definitely did. I peaced up out of the school. Changed schools, cause I was like: Nope, bye.

Caitlin: Well, so this is what Marx does. He ends up…His dad is like: um, Hey stop. And he's like, yes. So he gets serious about life. He does well in school and he actually does start studying law. 

Frances: Oh.

Caitlin:  It's like a year shift, like literally in about a year. It's like he decides to mature and he gets serious about life.

He also gets engaged to Jenny von Westphalen and their match was controversial. Marx had known her when they were like kids. And so he decides to get closer to her family. This I love. All right. He does end up doing a doctoral dissertation. He dedicates the dissertation to her dad. 

Frances: Awww.

Caitlin:  Which like I, in my master's thesis, I have some weird dedications, but I did not go that far. Just take that as you will. Now, listeners out there, would you dedicate your biggest research project of your life to your in-laws? That's the question. So Marx is studying law and he can't get away from his love of philosophy.

The theme here also is that he keeps getting in with these radical political affiliations. Right? So ostensibly the people who maybe are influencing him are also people who are going to be his biggest supporters. 

He finishes his doctoral dissertation in 1841. It's called The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.

I really hope I said all that correctly. If I didn’t, please tell me. And there's a great description of it that I found: ‘a daring and original piece of work in which Marx sets out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy.’ Now, at this time he's transferred. He's no longer in bond because he fucked around and they found out he's actually going to the University of Berlin. So he brings about this dissertation and they're like: this is real controversial and we are not going to give you your PhD. So he actually then takes it to the University of Jena and he does get his PhD.

But I want to go ahead and note that ruffling feathers is probably the biggest way we can summarize Marx's life.

Frances: Sounds about right. 

Caitlin:  Yeah, no, I mean, seriously, like next big event happens in 1844 when Marx meets — Frances, bringing it back — Friederich Engels in a cafe in Paris. So with Marx's background, Engels is known as a socialist. They're both writers.

The two become dedicated to and they want to bring about harsh and strict commentary on capitalism, the way people work, what it means to be a worker, and Marxism in this, in its infancy, is being formed. This is what is going to lead to Marx being Karl Marx…but Marx keeps making commentary on these things in a time where, well, let's say freedom of speech wasn't really a thing. He gets expelled from France and gets moved to Belgium. 

Frances: Oh fun!

Caitlin:  Yeah. So France was like, no. And also Germany was like, no, we're good. So he's in Brussels. Engels comes with him. 

Frances: Okay. 

Caitlin:  I mean, the they're buds, you know?

Frances: Where’s his wife? 

Caitlin:  So Marx’s wife has come with him at this point. Engels, his wife does follow, but she did stay in England for a time. 

Frances: Okay. 

Caitlin:  While they're in Brussels, he meets this group of other exiled politicians. I mean, politicians, isn't the right word, but people who have the same kind of philosophy and beliefs that he does, and they're, again, all exiles. No countries want these people. In 1848, we hit our first publication. 
Frances: The year of revolution! 

Caitlin:  Yeah. We get the Communist Manifesto. 

Frances: That's a perfect year for that. Literally. Cause everybody was like, I want independence all over the world. 

Caitlin:  And what happened is things get serious. There starts to be revolution. There starts to be upheavals. It…a lot happens. Political unrest is happening and Marx is…he's not the cause, but he's at the center of all the discussion. You know, he's talking about why these things should happen. He's talking about what power dynamics are. He’s talking about what work truly means, you know? And all this time, he gets kicked out of Belgium.

Frances: As you do.

Caitlin:  And then he gets kicked out of France again. 

Frances: France, Germany, Belgium… 

Caitlin:  He goes back to France. He goes back to France because he's like, oh, their government has changed. We're chilled now. And they're like, no. And so he ends up in England, 

Frances: Aww, poor baby. 

Caitlin:  Specifically, he's in London. And this is where I start to struggle.

I'm with Marx at this point, I have to be honest about that. He's dedicated to his work. He wants to have a better world. He wants humanity to have a better life. I feel like he is…he's protesting in an intellectual way. If that makes sense. He is focusing on labor. He's focusing on labor issues. He's focusing on wealth inequality.

I feel like this is…these are all things we're still talking about. They're all things that I'm interested in hearing his thoughts about. I’m behind him, but it turns out in he's doing all of this work. He's spending all of his time in his studies basically run his family into poverty. 

Frances: Oh…

Caitlin:  In fact, he has seven children and only three survive into adulthood. The theory is that it's because of the poor living conditions that he had while in London. 

Frances: That's appalling. 

Caitlin:  Yeah. So this becomes a theme. Now we have Mark's the radicalist, but we now also have marks the pauper Engels is independently wealthy and he does continue to support Marx. Now in England, Marx is writing he's publishing.

He puts out his other book. He's still talking and…and I do have to say just in the essence of time, I'm abbreviating this, right? Marx his life spend some time I implore all of you out there to find out more about Marx. A lot of people assume communism is what we've been fed. You know, so this idea that it’s this horrible thing and Marx did not intend for it to be that way.

So please understand you're interested at all in his theories. And I do think they're fascinating. Go read them. 

I really hate to make this comparison, but think of him as like an extremist, Bernie Sanders. It's not terrible, but you do need to understand it better. Marx's wife has died at this point and 15 months later, he also dies. His entire life, he had been sick and there's been this really weird debate as to what it was. Some people say that it was a liver disorder, but then there was actually a dermatologist who did something called a — I love this because I'd never heard of this before — he basically did a retrodiagnosis. His name is Sam Schuster of Newcastle University and he believes that it was a disorder of blockage. So basically like his bile ducts and his skin was just getting blocked. 

Frances: Oh…

Caitlin:  And this caused a lot of weird things to happen. He would get skin infections, he would get eye infections. You would also get arthritic pain. But the argument is that this disorder doesn't actually cause the arthritis. It's basically causing your skin to swell.

Frances: Ooph.

Caitlin: I would say the scientific name, but like I'm a writer for a reason. And pronouncing scientific names is not my thing. Please look in the show notes. We'll have it. 

(hidradenitis suppurativa is the disease) 

Caitlin: Marx gets sick and dies. Has nothing to do with this disorder, but he dies. And this is… this it’s weird. And kind of sad, to be honest with you.

Marx died in London and it's nothing is said about his death for two days. And he's pretty well known at this time. There is something that is run in a newspaper announcing that Marx has died, but they say that he's died in Paris and not in London. So his mourners don't know where to go and they end up not making it to a funeral.

Frances: Aww

Caitlin: And there's like a lot of thought as to why. Some of the theory is that because people thought that there would be like a riot at a funeral, that kind of thing. I mean, it's Marx, who knows. Everyone's scared of communism. I do have to say Engels was there when he died and he did give. I don't know…I think this is nice. I think this is nice. 

Engels says: On the 14th of March at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes. And when we came back, we found him in his armchair peacefully gone to sleep, but forever.

Frances: Aww. It's sad. 

Caitlin: Before we talk about the grave, I want to talk, I do want to make it, you know, Marx died with no money basically. 250 pounds. Converted thing. 25-30K says his daughters had nothing. They had nothing left. Engels on the other hand, continued to support Marx and he actually left some of his wealth to his surviving daughters when he died.

Frances: Aww. That’s cute. 

Caitlin: Engels had taken care of Marx, but now let's talk about this grave. Let's go back to this gigantic bust. 
Frances: Yeah. Where did that come from? 

Caitlin: So it turns out it wasn't marks. 

Frances: Oh, that makes waaay more sense. 

Caitlin: Yeah. No, I feel better now that I know that cause he did die, not a pauper, but not with money. And which also just, I think he would roll over in his grave knowing that like $30,000 is not enough money. You know? 

Let's talk about this. Karl Marx was actually buried in another part of Highgate. He was buried in basically this atheist-agnostic section and they ended up disinterring and reburying his entire family in 1954. 

Frances: Why?

Caitlin: Because a new tomb was designed. So there’s…the tomb that I saw was designed by Lawrence Bradshaw. It was unveiled in 1956. They also put all of his family together. The communist party of Great Britain funded this memorial. 

Frances: That is nuts. 

Caitlin: Right? No, I love that so much. The tomb has this giant bust. It is set in bronze and it is on a marble pedestal.

The pedestal has from the Communist Manifesto, his final words, workers of all lands unite. 

Frances: Maybe they could unite better if you didn't like, if you melt down the giant bust and gave them the money you used for it. 

Caitlin: But so here's some fun facts about this grave Frances. This is why I've kind of skipped over a bit of his life so we can have time for this. It's been defaced multiple times. It was bombed. 

Frances: What?

Caitlin: It was bombed.

Frances: By whom? 

Caitlin: It was bombed in the 1970s. So think about where we were then. 

Frances: Okay. 

Caitlin: Yeah. So two bombings…We've had yellow swastikas painted on the tomb. 

Frances: Ahh—

Caitlin: Yep. The grave has been damaged with a hammer. And the latest one is 2019. Someone had chiseled the grave, a plaque with a hammer.

And then a few days later, again, in 2019, someone put the words, doctrine of hate and architect of genocide and red paint. 

Frances: I mean, it's not his fault Stalin was a jerk. 

Caitlin: And this, like I said, please go read his theories. I don't think he wanted it to escalate as far as things have. Not defending what other dictators have done, but I don't think that's what Marx wanted.

Frances: I feel like there's a difference between Marxism and communism. 

Caitlin: Yeah. I actually think that's probably a better way of saying it, but because he used the word ‘communist manifesto,’ people lost their shit. Right?

Frances: It became something that it didn't start as. 

Caitlin: No. A hundred percent. So now let's talk about this. Do you want to know the most bittersweet, ironic thing about Karl Marx's grave?

Tell me what was one of his beliefs? It was that workers should be allowed to rest. Right? Marx's grave is currently under 24 hour services. 

Frances: Oh, my God 

Caitlin: Because of all of the vandalism… 

If you just left him where he was, this probably wouldn't be happening. Cause nobody would notice the grave. 

I do have to say it was kind of Big Dick energy for in the 1950-60 for them to be like, yeah, let's erupt this giant bust of Karl Marx.

Yeah, I feel like that was a group of people sending a message to another group of people that had nothing to do with him. 

Caitlin: Right. So Marx again is politicized. And again, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you about this today is because I didn't know this. 

Frances: I had no idea.

Caitlin: I thought that he died and was kind of like: ha ha ha, I convinced everyone to be a communist, look at my giant bust! But it wasn't that at all, he was, albeit, probably not the best person with how he treated his kids, his wife— but that's literally everyone we talk about on this podcast almost — but he, he is relatable. He wanted to think. Aand who out there hasn't had days where they just want to think, or maybe that's just my existentialism showing.

Frances: I definitely thought you were going to tell me that he started out as this fantastic for-the-people philosopher and then in later life decided actually he was like a raging capitalist or something like that. 

Caitlin: That would have been good twists, but it's weird. Cause like he's kind of a product of capitalism now.

Yeah. I mean, you have to pay to go see his grave. 

Frances: I take issue with that. It's up to you. 

Caitlin: I'm fine with that, I don't think you have to pay…I actually don't know this. I should confirm this, but I don't think you have to pay if you have family there. 

Frances: I don't know, but I do know that they're going to be reclaiming graves from the new graveyard. The new sec-the new half, it’s up on their website. 

Caitlin: I do worry about that. Marx is buried there. I don't think he's going anywhere. 

Frances: Probably not. Douglas Adams also. 

Caitlin: Probably not. Right. So let me tell you though Adams, right? So I finish my segue into the giant bust of Karl Marx, which also lets like kickstart that and put it on people's cars.

I'd love to see that. I just roll up to your house and with Karl Marx at home, my dashboard. Not just being focused. So let's talk Douglas Adams. So, well…we’re going to put this photo on our social media, but after my run in with Karl Marx, I finally finally got the bravery, which I probably now could do it.

But especially like in my early twenties, I was like, aah, people. I went up to one of the — I guess, the cemetery workers or one of the groundskeepers or the docent— I was like, hi, I'm actually looking for Douglas Adams, basically the front, right? When you walked in, I'd walk past in like three times. 

Frances: Aww.

Caitlin: And I walked over to his grave and it's truly the most simplistic grave I've ever seen. It just has his name, his birth and his death dates. But the thing that made me want to talk about this and I'm going to leave it to you to keep it up was on his grave. Someone had put a product petunia. And a little stuffed animal of a whale. 

Frances: Oh yeah. 

Caitlin: That with a ton of towels, I started crying. So Frances, I only know Douglas Adams is a writer who was Douglas Adams.

Frances: Douglas Adams was way more, you know what? I would argue that he wasn't a writer. 

Caitlin: Really. 

Frances: I would argue that he was. Basically any kind of artist you can get that's audio, audio related. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was actually written as a radio play… 

Caitlin: What?

Frances: That was converted into a book. It went through very many, many, many permutations.

Let me tell you about Douglas Adams. I first encountered him in 2004, when I read the first three Hitchhikers…the first three books in the increasingly inaccurately Hitchhikers trilogy. There are six of them. One of them is not written by him.

Caitlin: Wait, but we know it's written by?

Frances: Yeah. Oh, give me a sec…the guy who wrote Artemis Fowl

Caitlin: What?

Frances:…Eoin Colfer, I think. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: It was like an anniversary of the publication saying he's a huge fan. It was like a whole Thing. But Douglas Adams was born March 11th, 1952. He died May 11th, 2001. He was 49 years old. 

Caitlin: That's one of the things that bums me out the most is he's way too young.

Frances: Real sad. He had undiagnosed coronary artery disease, or basically heart disease, and he died of a heart attack. Anyone who tells you that exercise won't kill you? He was literally at the gym, in the middle of a workout, laid down on the bench and died. 

Caitlin: Wow. 

Frances: Pretty much. He laid down. He had a heart attack at some point passed out and never…I don't believe they ever revived him. he died at the hospital a little, a little while later.

Caitlin: Really sad. 

Frances: Very, very sad. But he did have a life well lived, so he. His parents divorced when he was a child. He lived with his mom and his sister. His parents remarried. He ended up with a full sister and four half siblings. So he had a big family. He was a weird kid, a little bit awkward, not very social.

Caitlin: Kind of assume that. 

Frances: Yeah, didn't have so many friends as a kid. Loved playing guitar. Loved making model airplanes until the mirror in his bedroom fell and crushed all of them and then he never made another one. While, you know, as a kid, everybody wants to be, I don't know, a pirate or a princess or whatever? Douglas Adams wanted to be a nuclear physicist. 

Caitlin: I want it to be a wizard. 

Frances: I wanted to be a pathologist, but actually I wanted it to be a detective when I was really little.

Caitlin: I had phases. I wanted to be a writer, which like that one happened, I guess, but definitely had a very long phase up until about the age of 23, where I thought I was gonna be a wizard. 

Frances: I had a long phase up until the age of 20, where I thought I would be a doctor. 

Caitlin: Yeah, no hard pass.

Frances: And then I realized that I liked the history of medicine more than actual medicine.

Caitlin: Fair enough. 

Frances: Switched majors. I blame that entire phase on the book of the hot zone by Richard Preston. 

So he wants to be a nuclear physicist. Turns out he's terrible at arithmetic. That means you can't really be a nuclear physicist. So he's very good at theoretical math, terrible at arithmetic.
Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Doesn't get good grades in the classes you need for physicisting. 

Caitlin: Haha. Physicisting.

Frances: He doesn't do that, but he gets his first taste of being a writer. When he's 11 years old, he sends in two letters to a magazine called The Eagle and he gets them published and he gets paid for them. He made like a couple of pounds. Becomes like obsessed with the idea of being a creative person and getting paid for things you create. 

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: He goes off to Europe, actually. He hitchhiked funnily enough…he hitchhiked across Europe because he was super broke to the point where he couldn't afford to youth hostels. He had to…he was sleeping in fields and places on trains. He was trying to get to Istanbul. You know what? I never actually checked to see if he got to Istanbul, but he eventually asked to come back and go to school. So he gets into St. John's College, Cambridge. Majors in English literature, and kind of hates writing, but wants to be a writer-performer. Like he, he wants to get into this elite club at Cambridge, that’s called the Footlights. Every person you have ever heard of that's in British comedy was probably in the Footlights. John Cleese was in the Footlights. Charles Shaughnessy was in Footlights, every single person, John Lloyd, like everybody was in this review group thing 

Caitlin: That’s so cool.

Frances: Wants to get in it first term. Then he's kind of like, screw you people. I still want to get in this club. So he comes back. The next term manages to get accepted into Footlights, but realizes that he kind of doesn't like Footlights. It's very traditional, very strict. 

Caitlin: So he's just like trial and error, everything. 

Frances: That is the story of his life.

Caitlin: I love that.

Frances: Let me try this thing. I don't like it. Let me try a different thing. I don't like that either pretty much. But so he's in Footlights kind of hates it. So when they wouldn't let him put on a particular show that he'd wanted to do or a skit that he wanted to do, cause they're very traditional. He left and formed his own group with a couple of his friends and apparently they put on a review that was the talk of Cambridge and everybody loved it. And it was hilarious, which is where he got sort of the taste for comedy. He was friends with all of the Monty Python guys, by the way. 

Caitlin: No, they're just like, truly like makes me happy. 

Frances: Oh yeah. He was six foot five as an aside, which apparently many British male comedians are very tall.

Caitlin: I’m gonna say, John Cleese is 6’4.

Frances: Yup. There were like five or six 6’4, 6’5, 6’6 British comedians. 

Caitlin: So it's not like big hands and feet the old adage and just like big hands, big feets comedian. 

Frances: Yeah, pretty much, pretty much. It's like, oh, you're tall. You should be in comedy. Not like basketball or whatever.

Caitlin: I'm five, nine. I'm not British, but I'm putting my application out into the world. 

Frances: There you go. Maybe you should teach yourself how to do a British accent. 

Caitlin: Oh no. I've been asked multiple times to never do that. 

Frances: That's fair. That's fair. 

Caitlin: One day, one day, everyone. I will tell you about me trying to fake a British accent in England and literally everyone on my trip passed me to stop for the rest of the duration. No, I'm just not, we're gonna steer past that. Anyway. Comedy, Britishness, trial and error, where we going? 

Frances: Comedy, Britishness, okay. So he is finally, he's like: meh school. He leaves school in 1974. 

Caitlin: All right. 

Frances: Then goes to London where he is increasingly broke in, increasingly borrow it into his overdraft pretty much. And doesn't really have a job. Lots of fits and starts. He tries to get a job at a BBC Radio 4. He's writing for stuff he's trying to get on shows. He's trying to get to be a writer performer. It's not working out. 

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: It’s just really straight not working out. Eventually. He is very desperate. He's behind on his rent and he's having all sorts of problems.

So he and Graham Chapman... 

Caitlin: Oh, my God. What? 

Frances: Of Monty Python fame, decide that they're going to write together. Graham Chapman apparently has a drinking problem at this time 

Caitlin: I mean…Monty Python.

Frances: And he’s not doing so great, I guess, writing- wise. So they team up and mostly fail. Nobody really likes their stuff so much. They write a few tidbits that ended up places. I think they wrote two skits for Monty Python together. Not much of anything comes of that. He's so desperate, he takes a job as a bodyguard for a Qatari family who are extremely wealthy and living in a hotel. 

Caitlin: All right. 

Frances: He said the job mostly consisted of himself sitting outside their hotel room.

Caitlin: Pretty much, man. I've had some weird jobs… 

Frances: So he gets this short-lived job still super broke. Still not going pretty much anywhere. He ends up moving home with his parents. Cause he's real broke. He'd been living off and on with John Lloyd with possibly Graham Chapman. I forgot, but he had some roommates at the time.

He goes home. He's moved back in with his family and he starts working on Hitchhikers. 

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: Hitchhikers, the idea came while he was laying in a field on his hitchhiking trip across Europe. The name came from him, looking up the stars going, wouldn't it be fun if you could hitchhike through the galaxy, when he's looking for an idea, he comes up with this.
So he starts writing the first few episodes of Hitchhiker's. He's writing it as a radio play. Pretty much, he pitches it to BBC for a BBC Radio 4 and they say, sure, we'll take it six episodes. We're putting on it at like 10:30 at night, whatever. It's fine. Obviously they needed something for the slot and didn't care what they were putting in there.

Caitlin: Right. 

Frances: He writes—And another theme of his life is he's terrible at doing anything on time. 

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: So. The show is being made and he's still writing episodes for it. It ended up being so close to the wire that he had to get John Lloyd to help him write the final two episodes because he just couldn't. He was doing too many things at that point.

Cause the first, first couple of episodes drop, everybody loves it. It's once a week at 10:30 at night. It gets…it starts getting good reviews, which is surprising because no one was reviewing that time slot on a radio show anywhere. He gets hired to write for Doctor Who at this time. 

Caitlin: What?!

Frances: Yup. 

Caitlin: I didn't know that. 

Frances: He wrote for…I believe he wrote two or three sequences for Doctor Who. He wrote one that never aired. It was called Shada. He wrote the Cricketmen, which I don't know if that's aired either. And he wrote the, I forget the name of it. It's like the something planet…I can't remember. 

(The Pirate Planet)

But he wrote a cycle for Doctor Who, a cycle of episodes for Doctor Who.

Caitlin: I did not know that.

Frances: So he's trying to finish Hitchhikers. He hasn't finished writing it. There was no book to base it off of. It's just creating a whole cloth while also writing for Doctor Who. Then he gets hired as a producer at BBC Radio 4. So now he has three jobs and is going absolutely out of his mind, which is why he hooks up with John Lloyd to finish the last two episodes of Hitchhikers.

Cause he's like, we need to record to these, these need to be done. Help me. This is the first time Hitchhikers has appeared in any form at all. John Lloyd helped with the final two episodes. He quits the producing job because he just can't do all the things. And Doctor Who hires him as script editor.

Caitlin: Nice. 

Frances: He thought that would be a great job, because he created his episodes and he created the plot line and he wrote them and he gave them to the script editor to, you know, edit. And so that's what he thought his job was going to be. Turns out a script editor on doctor who actually creates ideas with the writer. Um, so he was very overwhelmed by this whole thing and he didn't last, terribly long doing that, but so he finishes doing that and basically Hitchhikers just becomes its own thing.

Everybody loves it. He decides he’s…And so he figures he should write the book version of it. So he does, at one point there was a contract that was like a little bit of beef between him and John Lloyd, because they were going to ride it together. They weren't going to write it together. They were going to write it together.

They went away to write it together for a month to The Bahamas. But this was after John Lloyd sued him. Or almost sued him. It almost came to legal to like legal blows. It was a whole situation because John Lloyd was like, I took half the advance for this book. We were writing it together.

We agreed. There was a contract and you just decided you're going to do it on your own. And Douglas Adams was like, I need to do this on my own. Why don't you just take your half of the advance and stop doing this? So it worked out. They went on vacation together. He took his half of the advance.

And while John Lloyd sat in a bar drinking fruity Bahamas drinks, Douglas Adams shot himself into his room and wrote Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the novel. So it's on Radio 4. It also gets made into a TV show. It gets made into another radio version. I believe at one point it's also staged in four different versions. Two of them were really well-received. Two of them were really poorly received. So hitchhikers again, it is getting out of control. The second series, the second radio series is also…comes before that. I believe before the second book, the third book came before the radio series, I believe, but I could be getting this out of order.

There's a lot of Hitchhikers stuff happening. 

Caitlin: Yes. 

Frances: In all in this, it's getting picked up by American publishers. It's taking off. He is amazingly famous. All of a sudden, and no longer has to worry about money. He's no longer terribly broke. They try to make a TV show out of it. Apparently there's all sorts of problems with the TV show.

In the meantime, he's writing the third book in the series. He hates the third book in the series is horribly depressed. The whole, I believe, horribly depressed the whole time that he was writing it and hates it. So when it's not quite like the other two and the press point out, it's not quite like the other two, he goes, yeah, I know it's garbage, basically. 

The fans still really liked it. So he's sort of all over the place with Hitchhikers. In the meantime, he actually moves out to LA for a short period to try to get a movie made. That doesn't work. He moves back from LA. He starts writing the Dirk Gently books. 

Caitlin: Dirks Gently 

Frances: Dirk Gent—I never get that name correctly.

Caitlin: Is it Dirks Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency? Is that it? 

Frances: Yeah, something like that. He starts working on those meanwhile…while he was writing. Sorry, I'm getting this a little bit out of order, just because the biographies of him are all nonlinear because all of his books are non-linear.

Caitlin: Haha, I love that.

Frances: It's very hard to pin down timelines on this man's life. 

While he writes a third book, he's dating a novelist, Sally Emerson, who is still married, but legally separated. And…she breaks up with him to go back to her husband. He is very displeased about this and is very depressed. So that’s…that was part of the depression and part of why he hated Book 3 so much. So moves to LA, moves back, that whole thing.

He starts dating a barrister named Jane Belson, who after many, many bumps and many breakups and a broken engagement and a couple of cross country, cross-transcontinental moves, they get married and have a daughter in 1994 named Polly. Jane Belson died in 2011 of cancer, meaning that their daughter Polly was orphaned I believe at age 17.
Caitlin: Oh shit! 

Frances: Very sad. Um, the end of this at the end of Douglas’s life and the surrounding events are a little depressing. So all during this time, he's sort of all over the place, but he's working on. I was working on the, the dirt Gentry books he's working on the Hitchhiker's books.

He's also working on a book that I could not get a copy of. I could not get my hands on a copy of this book called The Meaning of Lif.  Which he did write with John Lloyd. So they finally wrote their book together. It came from…you know, that trip I told you about that they took that John Lloyd spent in a bar and Douglas spent writing? 

Caitlin: Yeah. Yeah.

Frances: Well, apparently during part of that trip, they spent some time playing bar games or drinking games. And one of them was picking place names and giving them definitions. As if they are just words, love that. Yup. So that's what the Meaning of Lif is. It's a dictionary of words for things we don't have words for like that feeling you get, when you wander into your kitchen to look for something, then can't remember what you were looking for.

Caitlin: I call that having ADHD. 

Frances: Apparently he called it…some placename in England. He gave it a name. Albuquerque was one of the words, but I can't remember what the definition for the word Albuquerque was, but I couldn't get a copy of this book. It is not in print in the United States potentially. Also not in print in Europe, 

Caitlin: Someone out there, send us a copy.

Frances: Yeah. Right? Oh my God. I'd love a copy of this book. He's also at this time becoming obsessed with word processors. He is obsessed with the computers. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: He was the first person in Europe to get his hands on a Macintosh computer. 

Caitlin: Wow. 

Frances: The second was Stephen Fry, another tall British comedian, who was his friend as an aside.

He was apparently acquainted with and potentially friends with Charles Shaughnessy, which I don't know if you knew who that is, but he is the guy from The Nanny. 

Caitlin: Alright.

Frances: And he's also on soap opera Days of Our Lives. I absolutely love him to pieces. So this, I was very pleased to hear that. So he's obsessed with computers.

He had many, many, many computers over the course of his life. Sometimes up to four or five at a time, he had every Macintosh that came out from 1984 to when he died. He was in a Mac, he was in an apple computer commercial. In fact, he loved Macs, but he also had all of the computers, he didn't care what it was, he’d probably buy it. And he was also, he was… he described himself as a radical. 

Caitlin: That makes sense.
Frances: It’s the same thing as a regular atheist, but people won't question whether you mean agnostic. If you say radical.

Caitlin: Hah! That’s so fair.

Frances: So…and he was also an environmental activist, he hooked up at one point with a zoologist named Mark Carwardine for BBC Radio 4 And BBC Radio 4sent the two of them to Madagascar.

Caitlin: What??

Frances: To find the Aye-Aye Lemur, which was apparently a critically endangered lemur that lived only on Madagascar. And I think…I’m not sure what the like, push behind this was. They were supposed to do like a one-off radio piece about it. I don't think the BBC thought they were actually gonna find this lemur. Critically endangered potentially extinct at the time, they weren't really sure. 

Caitlin: Right.

Frances: He shows up a Madagascar and they catch a glimpse of the lemur in the first like hour, immediately. They see the lemur, they photograph the lemur and it just was a resounding success all around. So BBC goes nice. Why don't you do it some more? And they did, I think it ended up being a six episode series for BBC on indeed critically endangered animals around the world. BBC didn't tell them which ones to do. They just said, go do the thing. 

Caitlin: Alright.

Frances: And so according to Mark Carwardine, this is how they decided it. He said, quote, “we put a big map of the world on a wall, Douglas stuck a pin in everywhere. He fancied going. I stuck a pin in where all the endangered animals were and we made a journey out to every place that had two pins.”

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: So they ended up going to Madagascar. So for the Aye-aye. Komodo in Indonesia for the Komodo dragon. They went to New Zealand to see a kakapo, which was apparently a parrot that had forgotten to fly, but didn't realize it had forgotten how to fly. And apparently just jumps out of trees. He tells a hilarious story about going to find the kakapo.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: They went to Ziaire to find a gorilla. They went to China to find the young of river dolphin, which is a really cool animal by the way. They went to Mauritius. They went to Brazil. They were all over the place. Right. And the series was called, I think, it was called Last Chance To See. It ended up being a book.

Caitlin: All right. 

Frances: And then after Douglas passed, Mark Carwardine did it again with Stephen Fry. To all the places they'd gone the first time to check on the animals to see if they're going there had done anything and what the status of the animals was now. 

Caitlin: That's super interesting. 

Frances: Yeah, it was kinda cool. He also apparently once climbed part of Kilimanjaro in a rhino costume.
Caitlin: So yeah, so he, he did a lot of random things is what I'm getting. 

Frances: Random things, uh, that was actually to raise money, to save the rhinos. Which is cool, but also very strange. He said it was extremely difficult to climb Kilimanjaro in a costume. 

Caitlin: I mean, it is just period. 

Frances: So yeah, very strange. So he's at the time of his death, he had moved back to LA.

He was working on the, getting the movie made. He was really excited about it. He was possibly planning a new Hitchhikers book, the book. Never panned out. It never actually happened. He was working on some material that he wasn't sure whether it started out as a Dirk book and then sorta changed to a Hitchhikers.

And then maybe it was going to be a standalone. He wasn't sure he was working on this when he, when he died. And basically he's just in a really good place. Everything's going really well. He had a lot of projects in the works and he goes to the gym one day and dies. 

Caitlin: It's horrible. 

Frances: Really sad, really upsetting. But about two weeks later, the internet decided to host the first International Towel Day in honor of Douglas Adams. 

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: It actually was on…they planned it on some sort of online like board forum, place listserve thing, which he probably would have loved because computers.

Caitlin: Right. 

Frances: And the Memorial that they did for him about a week after he died in London, it was in Trafalgar square was the first church service broadcast live by the BBC on the web.

Caitlin: Wow. 

Frances: So. Internet thing that he probably would have loved. He had two asteroids named after him after he passed, which was cool. They were looking…basically NASA or whoever names asteroids was looking for an asteroid to name after him. And they found one that was called 2001DA42. 

Caitlin: Oh, that's perfect.

Frances: And was like: oh, well we kinda gotta, so they named that Douglas Adams. And then there was another one that was named Arthur. Of course as well, which was kind of cool. So yeah, he had a wild and crazy life. People have been doing different versions of Hitchhikers since he died. They finished the… supposedly finished the series.

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: And there are two, two biographies out of him. One is by Neil Gaiman called Don't Panic. 

Caitlin: Oh. Didn’t know that. 

Frances: Yeah. It’s pretty cool. Apparently Neil Gaiman loved Douglas Adams, basically Douglas Adams knew every person who wrote any kind of comedy or had anything to do with like anything British. He knew everybody.

It was wild. That is the life and times.

Caitlin: I will share, as we finished up with Adams, this is my favorite Douglas Adams quote. And it's truly…this is what made me realize that I love him. This is from Hitchhikers. If you have read it, this will stick out too. But… “In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

Frances: Yes. 

Caitlin: It's funny though. Like hearing them, I actually do see some weird similarities between him and Marx. 

Frances: Yeah, kinda.

Caitlin: Like really weird…the random illness that kind of hits. I mean, Marx was in his sixties, but that's still pretty youngish to die. The weird stop and starts as well. You know, the ‘I'm here, but I'm not. Here. I’m not.’ I'm not…both staunch staunchly against religion. 

Frances: And definitely he spent a lot of time up in his head. So that's another  common denominator. 

Caitlin: Well, so if any of you are interested, please do more research about these people. I learned more about Marx than I ever thought I would. And honestly more about Douglas Adams. Who knew?

Frances: He was a wild guy. 

Caitlin: And, you know, just remember that these two people are both buried in Highgate Cemetery, but weirdly have some kind of interconnecting qualities and while Douglas Adams is not having a giant marble bust above his grave. I'm sure that we could like crowdsource that on the internet.

Frances: He probably would've thought that was uproariously hilarious. 

Caitlin: So funny. But all right. I think that's it for now. So thank you everyone for joining us yet again, for another episode of Grave Escapes, please follow us on social media. You know, the deal. And remember, we will see you in the cemetery.

OUTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Grave Escapes is hosted, written and produced by Caitlin Howle and Francesgrace Ferland and is produced and edited by Jesse D. Crichton. The music is melancholy after sound by Kai angle. Follow us on social media to see images of today's graves and more about us. Our social handle is Grave Escapes. For a transcript, show notes, and land acknowledgement, visit us online at www.graveescapes.com We'll see you in the cemetery.

Frances: We’d like to acknowledge that we recorded this podcast on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag, Pokanoket, and Narragansett peoples. Here in the Northeast and all across the country, native peoples are still here and thriving. For more information about indigenous history, we’ve added a link in the show notes to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States as a place to begin. For ways to support native leaders and communities, we’ve added links to both the North American Indian Center of Boston and Native Land Conservancy.