Before the 'back' was divided

I hope people enjoyed the documentary last week.

A few people have asked since seeing the programme what postcards looked like before the back was 'divided'.

You'll remember the modern card only arrived in 1902 after a German publisher (one F. Hartman) persuaded the Post Office to let him put a picture on the 'front' and then split the other side between message and address.

Well, here's an official card sent in 1875. That's 5 years after the postcard was introduced in the UK. It's much smaller than later cards and is printed in mauve. Only the address could be written on the side shown above, with the message restricted to the other.

You'll also see the stamp comes with the card. No need to buy one.

These cards were all made by De La Rue, the money printers. And incredibly, they were the only cards that could take advantage of the half penny rate for postcards.

De La Rue's monopoly was finally relaxed in 1894 after a campaign by the MP Henniker Heaton. After this, privately-published cards could be sent at the postcard rate. Go Henniker!

When something becomes so familiar, like the form of the postcard, it's easy to forget the people behind it. Yet how the card looks today was not inevitable. It needed people to change things. And in a curious way, the anonymity of Hartman and Heaton today is testament  to the totality of their triumphs.

A quote, a video and a postcard.

From Walter Benjamin's The Storyteller;


no event any longer comes to us 
without already being 
shot 
through 
with explanation 


by now 
almost nothing 
benefits storytelling 


almost everything 
benefits information

Postcard poetry

W.H. Auden said that a poem is never finished, only abandoned. For our Edwardian postcarders, poems weren't abandoned... they were sent.

I've put a couple of cards up recently containing poetry. Like the card to Miss Cameron in the lead up to the 1906 general election. And then there was last week's card which formed something of a haiku:

Noon. Please. Will meet you.

Love as ever, A. E. S..

Miss Case, New Parade.

While it may not be of Auden quality, this week's message to Robert is a cracking ditty - sensible advice for "when you court a love that's new".

Interpreters of fate to the rescue?

What's been great about starting Postcardese has been coming across people with similar passions. Like Reminiscene's blog or the PostSecret project.

Before then, collecting postcard messages had felt somewhat lonely.

In fact, it had been pretty hard to find any allies. One source of solace though was the German philosopher Walter Benjamin - no really, he was. His essay 'Unpacking My Library' is superb - go with me on this.

The essay neatly draws out the emotions involved in collecting physical objects which have mysterious histories - in his case old books.

For Benjamin, unanswered questions surrounding an object's journey over time create a kind of 'magic encyclopedia', waiting to be explored. This makes the collector, first and foremost, an 'interpreter of fate' - not quite a superhero I know, but it's as close as we're going to get. Anyway here's a link to the essay in full.

Enjoy interpreting this week's card! Looking forward to reading your comments.