picture postcards

April 21, 2002

Today's Reading
Red Poppies by Alai, Trans-Himalaya by Sven Hedin

This Year's Reading
2002 Book List

This morning over breakfast we looked at the post card collection I bought at the FurrBall auction last night. Apparently the Chain Bridge was the most popular subject of Newburyport post cards in the early twentieth century. It's amazing how much postcard history we could deduce from this small collection.

Prior to March 1, 1907, it was illegal to write anything but the address on the back of the postcard. The picture postcards of that era had a small area of white space on the front for short messages. Most of them were printed in Germany. Were the Germans better printers? Was it cheaper?

The back one of the 1907 vintage cards is divided into an area for the address and an area for the message like postcards are today. The message area is labeled with the words: "This space may be used for Correspondence after March 1, 1907." Still printed in Germany. Apparently that didn't change until 1914.

My favorite is a post-1907 card of the Newburyport waterfront viewed from Rings Island, addressed to a Master Lawrence Brown. In childish block letters it reads: Lawrence Thank you for the peppermints. I do not like the whooping cough. Do you? Love Priscilla. Did Priscilla and Lawrence survive the whooping cough? Did they remain friends? Did they stay in Newburyport when they grew up? Postcards. Windows on the past.

It looked like it was shaping up to be a picture postcard kind of day in Massachusetts and now that I'm over my winter malaise it seemed like a good time to go to Marblehead to visit DJ (the cat formerly known as Domino), walk around the waterfront, take pictures, and, of course, buy used books. Nancy promised not read me long lists of people who drowned in the Spicket River in 1892 this time, so off we went.

At first DJ was a little standoffish but once I started browsing among the books she came over and chirped that funny little meow at me and led me to a bench where she wanted to be petted. We had excellent quality time and I filled her in on news of Newburyport and of Phil-Person-of-Domino whom I saw at the antiquarian book fair, and so on. Yeah, I talk to cats. This surprises you? After all, this cat knows my tastes in used books and talks to me.

I found volume one of Sven Hedin's Trans-Himalaya, a must have for the Tibet section of my library. Hey, eccentric Swedes count as much as eccentric Brits for this ... they do... at least Sven Hedin does... Speaking of eccentric Brits, though not in Asia, Nancy found Lord Dufferin's Letters from High Latitudes, and got really into reading it right then and there in the shop. Her comment: "Those Brits seem to have a need to be uncomfortable. " Lord Dufferin's account of his travels in Iceland have prompted other writers since his time including WH Auden and a guy named, I think, Tim Moore to write wonderfully complaint-filled Iceland travelogues.

The Much Ado folks gave us some more ginger beer and we were off to walk the alleyways. And I did take pictures of subjects besides DJ (the cat formerly known as Domino) -even a cat other than DJ - , which you can take a look at in my Marblehead picture gallery.