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PAPER 
CHASE 


ALV1N  F    HARLOW 


PAPER  CHASE 
The  Amenities  of  Stamp  Collecting 


WORLD  RULERS  WHO  ARE  OR  HAVE  BEEN  PHILATELISTS 

Center:  President  Roosevelt.  Reading  clockwise  from  top 
center:  Carol  II  and  Marie  of  Roumania;  George  V, 
Edward  VIII  and  George  VI  of  Great  Britain;  Wil- 
helmina  of  Holland,  Alexander  III  of  Russia,  Alfonso 
XIII  of  Spain,  Porfirio  Diaz  of  Mexico,  Victor  Em- 
manuel III  of  Italy  and  Manuel  of  Portugal. 


ALVIN  F.  HARLOW 

PAPER 

CHASE 


THE  AMENITIES  OF  STAMP  COLLECTING 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


IN  CANADA,  OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


COPYRIGHT,    I94O, 

BY 
ALVIN  F.    HARLOW 


PRINTED  IN  THE 
UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY           ....  1 
II    THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT                   .          .11 

III  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS      .....  26 

IV  FROM  THE  GENERAL  TO  THE  PARTICULAR    .  JO 
V    THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP      ....  68 

vi   "COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND—"  .       .  88 

VII     NASSAU  STREET 98 

VIII     RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET   .           .           .           .  Il6 

IX     NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE         .  134 

X     BEDTIME  STORIES 162 

XI     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS      .           .  l8o 

XII     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS      .           .  2C>6 

XIII     "—NOR  CUSTOM  STALE  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY"  224 

XIV     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     .           .  248 

XV     THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST       .           .           .  270 

XVI     LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS         .           ,  288 

XVII     THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES      .           .           .          „  302 

XVIII     IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 325 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT           .           .           .          .           .  341 

INDEX      ...          .           .       v  ;          .           .          .           .  343 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

World  rulers  who  are  or  have  been  philatelists       Frontis. 

What  often  happened  to  your  letters  in  pre-envelope     PAGE 

days  22 

Rowland  Hill  and  the  first  postage  stamp  23 

An  American  postman  of  1865  33 

J.  Walter  Scott  and  his  store  in  1878  38 

Crystal  Palace,  Winfield  Scott  and  Elihu  Burritt  En- 
velopes 39 

An  American  Post  Office  of  1860  54 

A  $20,000  page.  The  August  issue  of  1861  55 

United  States  revenue  inverted  centers  70 

Inverted  centers  of  the  world  71 

Numerous  concerns  sell  stamps  by  the  pound  94 

Post  office  at  Albano,  Papal  States,  1850  95 

Modern  post  office  at  Vatican  City  95 

Old  Dutch  Church  Post  Office,  New  York  City  102 

Our  first  two  stamps,  the  5  and  10  cent  of  1847  103 

Dealers'  advertising  frames  in  Nassau  Street  118 

World's  highest  and  lowest  post  offices:  summit  of 

the  Jungfrau  and  Sea  Floor  off  Bahamas  119 

Great  collectors  134 

The  seven  United  States  inverted  centers  135 

Senator  Mead  and  his  stamp  collection  150 

Rare  stamps  stored  in  specially  built  safes  151 

Envelopes  of  Western  expresses  190 


Vll 


PAGE 


viii  ILLUSTRATIONS 

A  Gold-Rush  mining  town  post  office  191 

Transferring  mail  on  Union  Pacific  in  1876  191 

The  smallest  post  office,  Searsburg,  Vermont  214 

Early  R.F.D.  wagon  used  in  Mississippi  214 

Oddities  in  envelope  corner  cards  215 

Dockwra's  Postmarks  225 

Curious  home-made  cancellations  227 

Grotesque  home-made  cancellations  233 

Cancellations  on  New  York  ship  mail,  1871-76  237 
Congressman  franking  laundry  home  to  be  washed  251 
Jackson,  Franklin,  Hancock  and  Washington  franks  262 

President  Grant  frank  263 

Samples  of  specialized  stamp  collections  278 
Hand-painted  covers  autographed  by  world  rulers  279 

Order  book  of  Butler  &  Carpenter  294 

A  match  stamp  page  from  Holcombe  album  295 

Envelope   from    Lundy    Island   with    curious    local 

stamps  302 

Balloon  and  zinc  ball  letters,  Paris,  1871  303 

Graf  Zeppelin  'Round-the-World  envelope  303 

Civil  War  patriotic  envelopes  310 

Rare  air-mail  letters  311 

Stamps  in  sheets  bought  as  speculation  326 

Expert  checking  perforations  on  a  stamp  326 

Scenes  at  annual  spring  stamp  fair  in  London  327 

Children's  stamp  bourse,  Paris,  1875  329 


PAPER  CHASE 
The  Amenities  of  Stamp  Collecting 


THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY 


THREE  of  us,   including  a 
^        i_    i_  j  • 
young  author  who  had  mst 
J  O 

written  a  best-selling  novel, 

were  talking  together  not  so  long  ago.  The  third  man  drew 
a  folder  of  paper  matches  from  his  pocket  to  light  a  ciga- 
rette. The  author's  eyes  shone  at  sight  of  it  and  he  uttered 
a  glad  cry:  "Gosh,  there's  a  new  one!  May  I  have  it,  please? 
I'll  give  you  another  one  for  it!"  Believe  it  or  not,  the  man 
who  had  written  a  novel  which  delighted  tens  of  thousands 
of  readers  was  himself  a  collector  of  books— paper  match 
books.  .  .  . 

There  are  very  few  persons  incapable  of  becoming  inter- 
ested in  hobbies.  I  have  known  men  who  in  their  youth 
were  total  strangers  to  them  but  who  became  intrigued 
by  one  in  middle  or  older  life  and  went  perfectly,  gloriously 
nutty  over  it.  As  for  collecting,  there  is  no  telling  how  or 
when  it  began.  Perhaps  old  man  Neanderthal  had  a  ledge 
full  of  skulls  or  lethal  clubs  or  some  fine  pelts  which  he 
liked  to  drape  over  a  rock,  one  by  one,  and  bore  a  new 
acquaintance  with:  "Now,  this  big  wolf  I  killed  with  my 
bare  hands  right  up  the  gulch  yender  to  your  left.  It  was 
a  cold,  frosty  morning—"  and  so  on  and  on. 

Our  American  Indians'  collections  of  enemy  scalps,  their 
strings  of  teeth  and  quills  and  bear  claws,  were  all  for  van- 


2  THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY 

ity's  sake— pride  in  prowess  and  personal  adornment.  To 
collect  things  for  their  own  sake  required  the  objective 
touch  of  civilization.  Wealthy  Romans  of  the  empire 
period  picked  up  gems  or  vases  or  sculpture  in  a  desultory 
way— collecting  beauty  and  costliness— and  an  occasional 
fine  library.  Yet  we  do  not  find  in  Classic  times  the  urge 
to  collect  because  of  oddity,  rarity,  or  historic  significance, 
nor  yet  the  compulsion  to  assemble  everything  belonging 
to  a  certain  category.  That  was  another  step,  one  which 
developed  centuries  later,  and  is  only  seen  at  its  best  today 
in  the  accumulation  of  old  books,  coins  and  stamps. 
The  editor  of  Young  England  remarked  in  1862: 

The  use  and  charm  of  collecting  any  kind  of  object 
is  to  educate  the  mind  and  the  eye  to  careful  observa- 
tion, accurate  comparison  and  just  reasoning  on  the 
differences  and  likenesses  which  they  present  and  to 
interest  the  collector  in  the  design  or  art  shewn  in  the 
creation  or  manufacture,  and  the  history  of  the  coun- 
try which  produces  or  uses  the  object  collected. 

So  that's  why  people  collect  match  folders  and  milk- 
bottle  caps! 

It  is  a  curious  and  significant  fact  that  there  was  little 
collecting  of  any  sort  in  America  up  to  1850  or  '60.  A 
gentleman  in  Connecticut  in  the  later  eighteenth  century 
who  assembled  a  modest  assortment  of  "natural  speci- 
mens" became  quite  a  celebrity  thereby,  and  if  present  aca- 
demic customs  had  prevailed  then,  he  would  have  been 
LL.D.,  D.Sc.,  a  National  Academician  and  a  member  of  a 
dozen  learned  societies  in  no  time.  Natural  specimens- 
geology,  botany,  zoology— were  about  all  that  anyone  could 
think  of  as  collectors'  material  then.  Over  in  England,  boys 
went  in  for  that  sort  of  thing.  An  English  school  principal 


THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY  3 

wrote  to  the  papers  in  1860,  saying  that  he  had  just  learned 
that  some  of  his  pupils  were  collecting  postage  stamps,  that 
he  thought  it  a  very  educational  and  meritorious  pastime, 
and  wanting  to  know  why  there  were  no  dealers  issuing 
printed  lists  of  stamps,  as  there  were  of  birds'  eggs,  shells, 
butterflies  and  other  natural  specimens.  He  was  very  soon 
to  be  gratified. 

Up  to  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Americans 
had  been  too  busy  getting  a  foothold  in  the  wilderness, 
building  a  government,  establishing  commerce  and  indus- 
try and  accumulating  some  necessary  personal  dollars  to 
think  of  hobbies.  A  few  small  public  museums— mostly 
paintings  or  badly  stuffed  birds  and  animals— were  func- 
tioning on  starveling  endowments,  but  private  collections 
of  anything,  even  of  birds'  eggs,  were  almost  as  scarce  as 
hens'  teeth.  But  when  the  west,  in  1849  and  afterwards, 
began  pouring  gold  and  then  silver  into  the  national  blood 
stream,  some  folk  began  finding  a  little  more  leisure  on 
their  hands,  a  little  more  money  to  spend  on  something 
else  than  the  bare  necessities  of  life.  In  other  words,  our 
standard  of  living  began  rising  more  rapidly,  and  hobbies 
began  to  be  bora.  New-made  millionaires  were  looking 
around  for  paintings  and  not-too-naked  statues.  Numis- 
matics began  to  flourish,  then  stamp  collecting. 

Today,  less  than  ninety  years  after  the  Gold  Rush,  we 
are  the  most  indefatigable  nation  of  collectors  in  the 
world— because,  say  our  critics,  we  have  the  acquisitive 
tendency  most  fully  developed.  We  collect  everything. 
Look  at  this  recently  published  three-hundred-page  book 
on  the  collection  of  street-car  transfers;  discussing  with  a 
gravity  worthy  a  scientific  treatise  such  subjects  as  dating, 
types,  condition,  coloring,  reversibility,  the  forming,  ar- 
rangement, and  indexing  of  the  collection,  and  so  on!  And 


4  THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY 

what  old  timer  doesn't  remember  those  first  souvenir  or 
picture  post  cards  at  the  World's  Fair  at  Chicago  in  1893, 
and  the  resulting  fad  which  raged  violently  for  years?— fat 
albums  with  slotted  pages  for  holding  the  cards,  young 
people  soliciting  acquaintances  in  distant  parts  of  the  coun- 
try with  whom  to  exchange  cards,  and  that  unofficial  lexi- 
cographic outrage,  "philocarty!"  Why,  there  was  even  a 
magazine  of  Philately  and  Philocarty. 

Glance  over  a  copy  of  The  Swapper,  published  (at  least, 
it  was  being  published  not  so  long  ago)  out  in  Missouri: 
"A  Monthly  Newspaper,"  so  the  masthead  informs  us, 
"Devoted  to  the  Interest  of  Swappers  and  Hobbiests." 
(Just  raise  an  eyebrow  at  the  spelling  of  that  final  word  and 
let  it  go. )  Here  you  see  the  want  ads  of  collectors  not  only 
of  stamps,  coins,  Indian  relics,  dolls  and  clocks,  but  of 
milk-bottle  caps,  foreign  and  domestic  hotel  baggage  la- 
bels, meteorites,  deer  horns— but  listen:  "Will  swap  butter- 
flies, moths,  living  cocoons,  pupae,  moth  eggs."  One  ad- 
vertiser, verily,  wants  to  buy  a  petrified  man.  Another  has 
"button  charm,  string,  112  feet  long,  started  about  1830. 
5,004  buttons,  no  two  alike.  Will  trade  for  Indian  bead 
work,  sinew  sewn  or  what  have  you?"  Or  as  another  adver- 
tiser says  gruffly:  "Describe.  Watcha  want.  Write."  An- 
other wants  "a  native  plant  or  shrub  from  every  state  in 
the  U.  S.  A.;  also  foreign  countries."  Of  such  are  the  di- 
vertissements which  keep  us  from  going  crazy  in  these 
trying  times. 

There  are  inspiration  stories  in  this  paper,  too;  such  as 
the  one  about  the  man  with  a  nose  for  antiques  like  that 
of  a  French  pig  for  truffles,  who  was  prowling  in  an  old 
grocery  store  basement  when  he  discovered  two  barrels  of 
oil-lamp  chimneys  "beautifully  flowered  and  engraved  and 
of  Civil  War  vintage."  He  bought  them  for  twenty  cents 


THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY  5 

apiece  and  promptly  sold  them  to  antique  fans  for  $2.50— 
which  should  be  a  lesson  to  all  us  prowlers  to  leave  no 
cellar,  attic  closet,  cupboard,  barn,  woodshed  or  deserted 
house  unsearched. 

Odd  how  national  customs  and  habits  differ!  In  France 
and  England  in  the  iSyo's  many  children  were  enthusiastic 
stamp  collectors.  In  France,  even  the  little  girls  went  in  for 
it.  In  this  country,  they  have  never  to  this  day  become 
greatly  interested,  and  boys— with  the  exception  of  a  few 
well-to-do  chaps  in  the  east  who  went  to  private  academies 
—did  not  take  it  up  to  any  extent  until  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, because  not  until  this  century  did  any  except  those 
academy  swells  have  any  pocket  money  to  speak  of.  Being 
nearer  to  the  land  then,  youngsters  in  general  had  plenty 
to  eat  and  serviceable  clothes  to  cover  them,  and  even  a 
little  cash  to  devote  to  amusement,  but  most  children  did 
much  less  spending  on  their  own  then  than  now. 

Without  money,  for  a  long  time  there  didn't  seem  to  be 
much  that  boys  could  collect.  An  occasional  small-town  or 
country  lad  collected  birds'  eggs— which  eventually  taught 
him  American  ornithology— but  most  boys  just  assembled 
a  miscellany  of  marbles,  string,  crippled  penknives,  old 
keys,  ornamental  buttons,  bits  of  pencil  and  chalk,  nickel- 
plated  knobs  off  the  parlor  stove  and  unidentifiable  frag- 
ments which  might  have  been  the  unearthings  of  an  archae- 
ological expedition  on  the  site  of  Ur  of  the  Chaldees,  the 
entire  assortment  being  carried  in  the  owner's  various  pock- 
ets wherever  he  went.  But  how  the  picture  has  changed  in 
recent  years!  Boys  scarcely  able  to  walk  without  holding  on 
to  something  are  beginning  to  accumulate  stamps.  An  in- 
fant approximately  three  feet  tall  whom  we  saw  looking 
over  the  limited  stock  of  stamps  in  a  small  stationer's  shop 
informed  us  gravely  that  "I  specialize  in  British  colonials." 


6  THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY 

Today,  stamp  collecting,  though  not  yet  quite  a  century 
old,  is  the  number-one  hobby  of  the  globe.  Uncounted 
millions  are  its  devotees.  No  country  is  so  backward,  no  isle 
of  the  sea  so  small  and  remote  that  it  does  not  have  its 
stamp  collectors,  and  usually  its  philatelic  club.  Probably 
more  money  is  invested  in  philately,  or  is  spent  on  it  annu- 
ally than  upon  all  other  hobbies  combined.  Kings,  queens, 
princes,  presidents,  governors,  statesmen,  the  clergy,  the 
law,  medicine,  education,  the  arts,  scientists,  bankers,  big 
and  little  business  men,  housewives,  school  children— it 
claims  its  followers  among  them  all.  The  Indian  rajah  in 
his  palace,  the  pedant  in  his  cloistered  study,  the  priest  in 
his  vicarage,  the  millionaire  in  his  great  town  or  country 
house,  the  truck  driver  or  clerk  in  his  cottage  or  three-room 
tenement,  each  pores  over  his  album  with  the  same  zest 
and  devotion.  To  the  soldier  in  barracks,  the  naval  or 
merchant-marine  officer  confined  to  his  ship,  to  any  iso- 
lated soul  it  is  a  godsend,  filling  otherwise  dull  and  lonely 
hours  with  pleasant  occupation  and  study. 

The  stamp  collector's  progress  from  beginner  to  addict 
falls,  like  the  melancholy  Jacques's  chronicle  of  man,  into 
several  stages.  First— usually  in  his  teens— he  buys  a  small 
album  and  orders  various  ten-cent  assortments— "1,000  all 
different,  catalogue  value,  $2.37."  He  haunts  the  display 
cases  in  department  or  stationery  stores  and  outside  the 
stamp  dealers'  doors.  Presently  he  begins  taking  stamp 
periodicals  and  joins  a  club.  Within  a  few  years  he  is  not 
satisfied  with  a  used  stamp  detached  from  the  envelope, 
but  craves  the  envelope,  too— he  calls  it  a  "cover"  now.  He 
falls  a  victim  to  the  first-day  fad  and  has  a  cover  always 
ready  to  be  mailed  from  the  point  of  issuance  of  a  new 
stamp.  He  has  already  acquired  a  specialty  of  some  sort- 
perhaps  two  or  three  of  them.  When  he  begins  carrying  a 


THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY  7 

small  magnifying  glass  in  his  pocket  with  which  to  scruti- 
nize stamps,  his  case  may  be  regarded  as  hopeless. 

He  now  refuses  to  touch  valuable  stamps  with  the  fin- 
gers because  of  possible  soilure  or  greasing,  but  deftly  picks 
them  up  with  a  pair  of  tiny  tongs.  He  has  developed  an 
abnormal  sensitivity  to  delicate  nuances  of  color  in  inks. 
Looking  at  a  stamp  through  his  glass,  he  is  apt  to  become 
highly  excited  over  an  infinitesimal  break  which  he  dis- 
covers in  a  hair  line,  invisible  to  the  naked  eye,  in  the 
lower  left-hand  corner.  Such  reactions  are  found  only  in  a 
truly  chronic  case.  He  soothes  himself  by  carrying  around 
in  his  pocket  (as  a  rheumatic  man  used  to  carry  a  buckeye) 
a  wallet  of  particular  build  in  which,  under  glassine,  are  two 
or  three  cherished  covers.  The  patient  can  now  be  kept 
alive  only  by  occasional  injections  of  new  specimens,  and 
frequent  hot  stove  sessions  with  other  sufferers.  I  am  told 
by  those  who  have  sojourned  at  the  Battle  Creek  Sani- 
tarium that  perhaps  the  favorite  subject  there  for  parlor 
and  veranda  conversation  is  the  colon.  Even  so,  two  or 
more  philatelists  cannot  be  together  for  two  minutes  with- 
out talking  of  their  malady.  But  strangely  enough,  they 
seem  happier  than  most  normal  persons,  and  increasingly 
happy  as  their  condition  grows  more  pronounced.  As  that 
comic  character  of  three  decades  ago  used  to  chortle,  "Gee, 
ain't  it  great  to  be  crazy!" 

I  was  a  born  collector,  and  I  have  indulged  in  various 
types  of  such  pursuits,  beginning  with  tobacco  tags  and 
then  stamps  in  very  early  youth.  I  have  gone  in  for  old 
books  and  first  editions  in  a  modest  way,  I  have  collected 
various  kinds  of  prints;  and  even  in  middle  life,  when,  as 
some  friends  thought,  I  should  have  known  better,  I— most 
frequently  in  company  with  some  other  mental  case— have 
walked  to  and  fro,  to  and  fro,  for  hours  under  a  broiling 


8  THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY 

sun  in  the  rows  of  a  Tennessee  river-bottom  cornfield- 
richest  of  all  hunting  grounds  for  such  treasure— my  eyes 
searching  the  soil,  inch  by  inch,  for  Cherokee  arrow  heads, 
celts,  skinning  knives,  shards  and  discoidal  stones.  And  I 
must  admit  that  stamp  collecting  has,  from  several  points 
of  view,  superiorities  over  them  all. 

To  begin  with,  the  stamp  is  far  less  destructible  than 
cameos,  paintings,  prints,  first  editions,  fine  bindings.  Prop- 
erly handled,  a  stamp  may  almost  last  forever.  Again,  it 
occupies  the  least  space  of  any  collector's  item.  You  could 
conceivably  put  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  rare  stamps,  if 
you  had  all  the  best  rarities,  in  the  space  of  one  book  on 
your  library  shelf;  an  important  consideration  in  these  days 
when  our  living  quarters  are  steadily  shrinking  in  size.  Col- 
lectors will  have  to  think  henceforth  in  terms  of  smaller 
things.  I  once  knew  a  Pennsylvania  lawyer  who  collected 
tools  of  all  trades  and  occupations,  especially  of  colonial 
and  pre-machine-age  days— including  old  agricultural  and 
household  implements,  animal  traps  and  what  not— and 
even  went  in  especially  strong  for  millstones!  He  had  con- 
verted an  old  stone  barn  on  his  country  place  into  a  mu- 
seum, but  even  it  couldn't  hold  the  millstones;  so  there 
they  were  out  of  doors  in  rows,  a  sort  of  small-scale  Stone- 
henge. 

Another  value  of  stamp  collecting  is  its  relationship  to 
geography  and  history,  its  current  gossip  of  the  globe  we 
live  on  and  its  political  changes.  Again,  stamps  do  not  de- 
teriorate in  value  as— and  I  know  this  to  my  sorrow— do 
old  books.  There  are  waves  of  style  in  old  books.  A  few 
years  ago  Dickens  and  Thackeray  first  editions  in  the 
monthly  parts  brought  fancy  prices.  Now  they  are  out  of 
favor  and  have  fallen  to  a  tithe  of  their  former  price,  the 
American  collector's  interest  turning  to  Mark  Twain  and 


THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY  9 

other  American  first  editions.  The  man  with  a  lot  of  old 
English  stuff  on  his  hands  now  will  find  if  he  tries  to  sell 
it  that  he  must  take  a  loss. 

But  fashions  in  old  stamps  are  few  and  unimportant. 
What  was  a  rare  stamp  fifty  years  ago  is  necessarily  a  still 
rarer  stamp  today  and  therefore  more  valuable.  True,  there 
are  passing  fads  here,  too,  such  as  first-day  covers  and 
cachets  and  one  or  two  others  which  one  might  mention 
if  one  weren't  afraid  of  being  assassinated  some  dark  night, 
but  you  don't  need  to  invest  in  them  to  have  a  fine  collec- 
tion. And  it  is  true  that  the  world  depression  has  now  hurt 
prices  a  bit,  as  compared  with  those  of  the  golden  1920*8. 
But  if  you  have  not  gone  wild  and  bought  the  fanciest  of 
rarities,  regardless  of  price,  a  stamp  collection  is  a  sound 
investment,  even  today.  Even  the  fabulous  British  Guiana 
and  Mauritius  values  will  come  back,  some  day. 

Finally,  there  is  no  hobby  that  I  know  of  which  has  so 
many  pleasant  ramifications  as  philately.  It  lays  open  to  the 
collector  a  thousand  alluring  bypaths,  and  few  are  the  gen- 
eral collectors  who  do  not  stray  into  at  least  one  of  them. 
In  fact,  collectors  are  creating  new  ones  every  little  while. 
Through  philately  you  find  yourslf  becoming  involved  in 
the  history,  not  only  of  nations  and  of  mail  service,  but  of 
telegraphy,  transportation,  commerce,  manufacturing,  edu- 
cation, secret  societies,  the  arts,  hotel  keeping— in  short,  it 
is  not  one  but  a  congeries  of  hobbies. 

We  shall  not  attempt  to  tell  you  how  to  build  a  stamp 
collection.  The  best  method  we  know  of  is  that  adopted 
by  a  noted  British  collector,  Thomas  K.  Tapling,  who  was 
given  a  hundred  pounds  when  he  was  a  schoolboy  at 
Harrow,  with  the  stipulation  that  he  was  not  to  blow  it  in 
on  toffee  and  ginger  beer,  and  who  promptly  invested  it 
all  in  stamps.  That  was  around  1870,  when  a  hundred 


10  THE  INEVITABLE  HOBBY 

pounds  would  buy  most  of  the  varieties  then  in  existence. 
The  result  was  that,  before  Tapling  died  at  thirty-six,  he 
had  one  of  the  most  notable  collections  in  Europe. 

The  lesson  is  obvious.  You  just  take  the  five  hundred 
dollars  which  someone  gives  you  when  you  are  about  fif- 
teen, and  invest  it  judiciously  in  stamps,  and  then  carry 
on  from  there,  building  something  which  you  can,  if  neces- 
sary, sell  in  your  old  age  for  a  small  fortune.  Many  have 
even  begun  with  only  a  dime  or  so  and  done  the  same 
thing.  If  you  are  of  more  mature  years  when  you  read  this, 
you  take  a  thousand  or  two  which  you  had  thought  of 
putting  into  another  motor  car  and  buy  stamps  with  it, 
thus  acquiring  something  which  will  give  you  several  times 
as  much  joy  in  the  years  to  come,  and  will  be  a  permanent 
investment.  Two  or  three  thousand  invested  in  an  auto- 
mobile dwindles  practically  to  zero  in  less  than  ten  years, 
while  money  judiciously— mind,  I  say  judiciously— invested 
in  stamps  will  hold  its  own  or  even  grow  in  value. 

The  buying  of  these  new  United  States  commemorative 
stamps  in  full  sheets  as  they  come  out  and  salting  them 
down,  as  some  are  now  doing,  isn't  at  all  a  new  idea.  Away 
back  in  1863,  when  philately  was  young,  a  newspaper  re- 
ported that  collectors  were  "laying  up  considerable  num- 
bers of  obsolete  and  even  of  current  stamps.  This  practice 
is  grounded  on  the  assumption  that  the  Timbromanie"  (as 
the  French  called  the  fad)  "will  continue  in  vogue  for 
several  years,  and  that  before  it  goes  out,  many  stamps  now 
comparatively  common  may  become  rare  and  valuable  to 
collectors." 

Several  years!  Little  could  they  foresee  how  long-lived 
the  hobby  was  to  be,  nor  how  enormously  values  would 
increase! 


THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT 


M 


MOST  philatelists  are  un- 
r     , 
aware    how    near    we 

came  to  having  no 
stamps  at  all— and  where  would  we  be  now  without  them? 
Try  to  fancy  the  void— a  world  without  stamps!  Well,  just 
about  the  time  that  postage  stamps  began  to  be  made, 
massive  brains  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  were  opining 
that  Government  ought  to  carry  all  letters  free  of  charge. 
"Letter  postage/'  cried  Lord  Ashburton,  "is  the  worst  of 
taxes!"  The  American  Whig  Review  said  vehemently  in 
1848  that: 

A  tax  upon  letters  is  in  effect  a  tax  upon  speech.  It 
is  worse.  It  is  a  fine  levied  upon  the  affections.  It  is 
an  impost  upon  the  love  of  kindred.  It  is  a  penalty 
on  commerce;  an  amercement  upon  the  diffusion  of 
knowledge  and  a  drag  on  the  progress  of  civilization. 
It  has  been  well  said  by  eminent  commercial  authori- 
ties that  you  might  as  well  tax  words  spoken  upon  the 
stock  exchange  as  the  communications  of  various  per- 
sons living  in  Manchester,  Liverpool  or  London.  .  .  . 
If  there  be  any  one  subject  which  ought  not  to  be 
selected  as  a  subject  of  taxation,  it  is  that  of  inter- 
communication by  mail;  and  if  there  be  any  one  thing 
which  the  government  ought,  consistently  with  its 


ii 


12        THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT 

great  duties  to  the  public,  to  do  gratuitously,  it  is  the 
carriage  of  letters. 

And  there  was  much  more  to  the  same  end.  Men  of 
prominence  then,  as  now,  seemed  to  nurse  a  delusion  that 
Government  has  some  mysterious  source  of  income  other 
than  taking  it  out  of  the  pockets  of  its  citizens.  Free  post- 
age would  be  but  a  small  boon  for  the  present-day  poor, 
for  almost  anyone  can  find  two  or  three  cents  for  a  stamp; 
but  fancy  the  rich  gravy  for  business,  the  great  mail-order 
houses,  for  example,  if  they  could  send  all  their  letters, 
catalogues  and  packages  free  of  charge.  Fortunately,  the 
statesmen  of  the  era  decided  to  handle  the  thing  in  the 
honest  way  by  a  direct  charge  for  carriage,  and  the  happi- 
ness of  coming  generations  of  philatelists  was  thereby 
assured. 

For  long  before  1840,  postage  had  been  so  high  that 
poor  folk  couldn't  afford  to  send  letters  at  all.  In  the 
United  States  in  1800,  to  send  one  sheet  of  paper  three 
hundred  miles  cost  thirty  cents,  and  in  England  thirty 
years  later,  twelvepence.  In  any  country,  if  there  were  two 
sheets  in  the  letter  instead  of  one,  the  postage  was  doubled, 
regardless  of  weight.  A  book  manuscript  once  put  into  the 
mail  in  England  was  assessed  £10  for  postage.  Even  toler- 
ably affluent  persons  used  all  sorts  of  tricks  to  beat  this  im- 
post. Newspapers  went  through  the  mails,  of  course,  at 
much  lower  rates  than  letters;  and  by  underlining  certain 
words  in  the  newspapers  with  pencil,  messages  were  con- 
veyed; or  a  business  man's  name  and  address  on  the  wrap- 
per of  the  paper  might  be  written  in  more  than  a  hundred 
ways  to  convey  quotations,  buying  and  selling  orders,  and 
other  information.  Furthermore,  postage  was  collected 
either  from  sender  or  receiver,  which  necessitated  much 


THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT        13 

trouble  in  handling  and  caused  the  refusal  of  many  letters 
by  addressees. 

Rowland  Hill,  a  hitherto  somewhat  obscure  English 
business  man,  seeing  that  the  British  postal  service  was 
terrible  and  that  the  Post  Office  was  losing  money,  an- 
nounced after  long  cogitation  in  1837  that  letters  should 
be  sent  for  a  flat  rate,  that  that  rate  should  be  a  penny  an 
ounce,  and  it  should  be  paid  in  advance.  The  proposals 
were  at  first  greeted  with  loud  laughter  in  Parliamentary 
circles,  but  Hill  built  up  an  organization  of  supporters,  and 
finally,  after  three  years  of  battling  in  Parliament,  con- 
vinced a  majority  that  penny  postage  was  the  solution  to 
all  problems  of  the  service.  A  law  providing  for  it  was 
passed  in  1840. 

The  first  approximation  of  a  stamp  was  an  ample  and 
elaborate  design  covering  a  part  of  one  side  of  a  letter 
sheet;  a  design  centering  in  a  hard-faced  person  intended 
for  Britannia,  with  the  national  lion  dozing  at  her  feet, 
while  with  each  hand  she  launched  in  diverse  directions  a 
couple  of  naked  angels  who,  despite  their  total  lack  of 
equipment,  were  presumably  carrying  letters  to  all  parts  of 
the  world,  as  was  proved  by  elephants,  camels,  reindeer, 
American  Indians,  and  other  exotics  grouped  at  the  sides 
of  the  picture.  Or,  as  Barham  described  it  in  The  Ingoldsby 
Legends: 

And  with  him  he  brings 
A  set  of  those  odd-looking  envelope  things, 
Where  Britannia  (who  seems  to  be  crucified)  flings 
To  her  right  and  her  left,  funny  people  with  wings, 
Among  elephants,  Quakers  and  Catabaw  kings; 
And  a  taper  and  wax  and  small  Queen's  heads  in  packs, 
Which,  when  notes  are  too  big,  you're  to  stick  on  their 
backs. 


i4        THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT 

The  thing  caused  so  much  ribald  comment— Mr.  Buck- 
ingham, a  favorite  mime,  even  sang  a  comic  song  about  it 
at  Vauxhall  Gardens— that  it  was  "killed"  after  six  months, 
and  all  the  copies  on  hand  unsold  were  burned— about 
60,000  of  them!  Collectors  now  awaken  in  the  small  hours 
of  the  night  and  moan  as  they  think  of  that  funeral  pyre. 
No  government  today  would  be  so  stupid;  but  who  could 
have  dreamed  in  1840  that  people  would  some  day  collect 
postage  stamps;  in  fact,  that  philately,  a  word  as  yet  un- 
coined, would  become  the  premier  hobby  of  the  world? 

In  stead  of  this  Mulready  letter  sheet  came  the  first  ad- 
hesive stamp.  Experiments  with  such  stamps  had  been 
made  by  a  private  carrier  in  Paris  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, and  several  suggestions  for  such  a  symbol  had  been 
made  in  England  in  recent  years.  Sardinia  had,  between 
1818  and  1836,  sold  sheets  of  letter  paper  with  embossed 
receipts  upon  them  for  fifteen,  twenty-five  and  fifty  cen- 
tesimi.  But  now  for  the  first  time  a  real  adhesive  stamp 
was  to  be  used.  All  sorts  of  objections  against  it  were  urged 
—among  others,  that  it  wouldn't  stick;  it  would  come  off 
in  the  mails— as  frequently,  in  early  years,  it  did!  Or,  "The 
postmaster  would  take  the  money  from  the  sender,  and 
then  fail  to  put  the  stamp  on  the  letter."  Not  for  a  long 
time  did  it  occur  to  anybody  that  the  sender  of  the  letter 
might  just  buy  the  stamp  and  stick  it  on  the  letter  himself. 

The  British  Government  offered  a  five-hundred-pounds 
prize  for  the  best  design  for  a  stamp.  But  though  a  thou- 
sand or  more  designs  were  sent  in,  none  of  them  seemed 
to  suit,  and  the  Post  Office  created  its  own  design.  And 
after  all,  it  was  nothing  elaborate;  just  the  still-girlish  pro- 
file of  the  young  Queen  Victoria  as  its  major  figure,  and 
around  it  a  simple  frame  with  the  word  "Postage"  and  the 
denomination.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  from  that  moment 


THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT        15 

until  1924  the  name  of  Great  Britain  never  appeared  on 
its  stamps— nothing  but  the  monarch's  portrait,  with  the 
words  "Postage"  or  "Postage  and  Revenue."  Even  as  Tif- 
fany's in  New  York  for  decades  never  displayed  its  name 
on  its  building,  so  did  the  old  country  scorn  to  advertise. 
If  you  didn't  recognize  a  British  stamp  when  you  saw  it, 
that  just  indicated  the  profundity  of  your  ignorance,  that 
was  all. 

Another  interesting  fact  is  that  collecting  began  almost 
as  soon  as  stamps  began  to  be  issued.  But  the  first  collect- 
ing of  which  we  have  notice  was  for  another  purpose  than 
that  of  today.  A  reading  notice  in  the  London  Times  in 
1841  sets  it  before  us: 

A  young  lady,  being  desirous  of  covering  her  dressing 
room  with  cancelled  postage  stamps,  has  been  so  far 
encouraged  in  her  wish  by  private  friends  as  to  have 
succeeded  in  collecting  16,000!  These,  however,  being 
insufficient,  she  will  be  greatly  obliged  if  any  good- 
natured  person  who  may  have  these  (otherwise  use- 
less) little  articles  at  their  disposal  would  assist  her  in 
her  whimsical  project.  Address  to  E.  D.,  Mr.  Butt's 
glover,  Leadenhall-st,  or  Mr.  Marshall's,  jeweller, 
Hackney. 

Why  "cancelled"?  Unused  stamps,  properly  grouped  as 
to  color,  would  have  made  a  much  more  beautiful  room. 
True,  if  she  had  appealed  for  co-operation  in  that  line,  she 
might  have  had  something  of  the  experience  of  Bill  Nye, 
who  was  once  seized  with  an  ambition  to  collect  the  auto- 
graphs of  all  the  bank  presidents  and  cashiers  in  the  United 
States.  Those  were  the  days  when  national  banks  were  per- 
mitted to  issue  paper  money,  as  they  did  until  recent  years, 
and  Nye's  suggestion,  in  a  circular  letter  sent  to  the  bank 


16        THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT 

officials,  was  that  each  write  his  autograph  on  a  five-dollar 
bill  and  send  it  to  him  (all  bank  notes  had  to  be  thus  signed 
to  be  valid);  but  he  reported  an  almost  total  lack  of  in- 
terest in  his  worthy  project. 

The  stamps-for-decoration  fad  was  still  raging  several 
years  later,  and  the  English  magazine,  Leisure  Hour,  thus 
spoke  of  the  lady  collectors: 

These  antiquaries  beg  old  stamps  wherever  they  go 
and  amass  them  by  hundreds  of  thousands,  for  some 
cherished  purpose  of  their  own.  .  .  .  Now  it  is  to  line 
a  work-box  or  a  trunk,  or  the  interior  of  a  closet  or  a 
cabinet;  and  sometimes  their  ambition  takes  a  still 
higher  flight  than  this,  and  their  grand  design  is  to 
paper  a  room  with  the  defaced  Queen's  heads.  ...  It 
is  said  that  a  room  thus  papered,  when  the  affair  is 
managed  with  skill  and  the  walls  cleverly  varnished 
afterwards,  has  a  very  agreeable  aspect— the  walls  ap- 
pearing to  retire  considerably  from  their  actual  posi- 
tion and  thus  give  the  effect  of  larger  space  in  the 
apartment. 

In  1842  Punch  remarked  that: 

A  new  mania  has  bitten  the  industriously  idle  ladies 
of  England.  To  enable  a  large  wager  to  be  gained,  they 
have  been  indefatigable  in  their  endeavors  to  collect 
old  penny  stamps;  in  fact,  they  betray  more  anxiety  to 
treasure  up  Queen's  Heads  than  Harry  the  Eighth  did 
to  get  rid  of  them. 

But  in  the  '40*8  a  new  reason  arose  for  collecting  stamps. 
Brazil  began  issuing  them  in  1843,  various  Swiss  cantons 
fell  into  line  between  that  date  and  1850,  the  United  States 
and  Mauritius  in  1847,  France  and  Belgium  in  1849  and 


THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT        17 

many  more  in  1850.  Now  it  became  necessary  to  collect 
stamps  just  in  order  to  have  all  the  varieties,  and  school- 
boys began  to  take  it  up.  Jean  Baptiste  Philippe  Constant 
Moens  of  Belgium,  later  one  of  the  world's  great  philat- 
elists, said  he  began  it  as  a  boy  in  1848— and  by  1852,  at 
nineteen,  he  was  a  stamp  merchant.  According  to  some 
translators,  Balzac  referred  to  stamp  collecting  in  Le 
Cousin  Pons,  published  in  1847.  Philip  Kent's  translation, 
published  in  1880,  makes  one  paragraph  read: 

All  ye  who  can  no  longer  drink  from  that  vessel 
which  has  in  every  age  been  termed  the  cup  of  pleas- 
ure, apply  yourselves  to  the  task  of  collecting— no 
matter  what;  even  postage  stamps  have  been  collected. 

But  Balzac's  phrase  is  "on  a  collectionne  des  affiches," 
not  "timbres  postes."  "Affiche"  then  meant  a  bill,  placard, 
poster  or  sticker.  Was  the  novelist  really  thinking  of  stamps 
when  he  wrote  that?  France  did  not  begin  issuing  them 
until  two  years  later,  and  if  Balzac  knew  of  the  elementary 
collecting  which  had  begun  in  England,  he  was  well  abreast 
of  the  times.  But  probably  he  did;  what  else  could  he  have 
meant?  There  were  no  posters  worth  collecting  then. 

Dr.  C.  W.  Viner,  an  early  British  philatelist  who  lived 
to  the  end  of  the  century,  used  to  say  that  he  first  saw  a 
stamp  collection  in  1854.  ^  consisted  of  about  a  hundred 
stamps,  mounted  on  a  large  card,  the  names  of  the  coun- 
tries in  a  column  at  the  left.  He  was  told  that  the  arrange- 
ment followed  that  of  the  collection  of  a  man  named 
Scales,  "who,"  said  Dr.  Viner,  "if  he  is  still  living,  may 
boast  of  being  the  first  known  collector  in  England." 

The  hobby  had  its  birth  in  the  United  States  at  some 
time  in  the  1850*8— no  one  knows  just  when— again  among 


i8        THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT 

young  women,  who  were  now,  however,  collecting  for  the 
modern  reason.  It  was  noticed  by  the  Boston  Daily  Adver- 
tiser in  1860  in  a  kindly  manner  which  contrasted  sharply 
with  the  attitude  of  European  editors,  who  regarded  it  as 
beneath  contempt.  The  Advertiser  spoke  of  it  as  a  "mania," 
but  conceded  that  the  growing  importance  of  postage  made 
stamp  collecting  "something  more  than  a  mere  pastime, 
and  gives  to  it  something  of  the  dignity  of  a  collection  of 
coins  or  medals."  He  continues  with  words  which  have  a 
familiar  sound: 

The  stamps  of  Mauritius  and  Hawaii,  we  believe, 
are  accounted  among  the  most  rare,  and  next  to  these 
may  be  named  the  Russian,  for  which,  acting  as  an 
amateur  stamp  broker,  we  should  readily  be  author- 
ized to  offer  half  a  dozen  of  the  more  common  Italian, 
German  or  French  varieties,  and  perhaps  hundreds  of 
English  and  American. 

So!  Those  first  two  Mauritius  stamps,  of  whose  rare 
specimens  a  few  collectors  today,  with  glistening  eyes  and 
dribbling  chops,  get  only  an  occasional  glimpse— under 
glass,  with  an  armed  husky  standing  near,  ready  to  shoot 
if  one  so  much  as  points  an  awed  finger  at  the  treasure- 
were  already  rarities,  only  a  few  years  after  they  were 
printed,  one  at  a  time,  on  a  little  hand  press.  The  editor 
concludes: 

This  elegant  and  curious  "mania"  is  now  chiefly 
indulged  by  young  ladies,  but  we  cannot  tell  how  soon 
it  may  take  possession  of  the  more  mature  portion  of 
mankind.  We  have  already  suggested  that  it  is  not 
beneath  the  notice  of  the  most  dignified  literary  in- 
stitutions. 


THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT        19 

Which  final  sentence  suggests  that  the  editor  himself 
was  becoming  fascinated.  He  remarks  that  some  collections 
now  number  three  hundred  varieties! 

In  England,  the  editors  were  less  sympathetic.  The  first 
philatelic  magazine,  the  Stamp  Collector's  Review,  which 
appeared  in  Liverpool  in  1862  and  ran  through  nineteen 
numbers,  was  undiscovered  by  the  lay  press;  but  when  the 
second,  a  fine  little  monthly  called  the  Stamp  Collector's 
Magazine,  appeared  in  London  in  1863,  an  evening  news- 
paper editor  sneeringly  remarked  that  "that  weakest  and 
most  puerile  of  all  manias,  Postage  Stamp  collecting,  has 
at  last  found  a  literary  organ." 

A  French  editor  became  so  irritated  over  Timbromanie 
that  he  suggested  that  the  collectors  might  be  washing  the 
postmarks  off  the  stamps  and  selling  them  again.  Charles 
Lever,  the  Irish  novelist,  when  he  was  consul  at  Spezzia, 
Italy,  in  1864,  hinted  at  the  same  thing  in  a  satirical  skit 
on  stamp  collecting  written  in  the  name  of  his  fictitious 
character,  Cornelius  O'Dowd,  for  Blackwood's  Magazine: 

What  these  people  of  much  leisure  and  little  inge- 
nuity mean  by  it,  I  never  could  make  out!  Have  they 
discovered  any  subtle  acid,  any  cunning  process  by 
which  the  stamp  of  disqualification  can  be  effaced,  and 
are  they  enabled  to  cheat  the  Treasury  by  reissue? 

But  of  course  he  was  only  proposing  this  in  a  grumpy, 
jesting  way,  as  being  the  only  explanation  to  a  sane  person 
for  such  silliness.  Truth  to  tell,  collectors  of  those  days  did 
spend  many  hours  in  trying  to  wash  off  some  of  the  blotchy 
cancellation  which  so  disfigured  their  cherished  specimens, 
and  often  succeeded  only  in  ruining  the  stamp  in  the  proc- 
ess. As  another  theory,  Lever  wonders: 


20        THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT 

Is  it  the  intention  to  establish  a  cheap  portrait- 
gallery  of  living  princes  and  rulers?  Is  it  to  obtain,  at 
a  minimum  cost,  the  correct  face  and  features  of  the 
men  who  sway  the  destinies  of  their  fellow-man?  If  so, 
the  coinage,  even  in  its  basest  form,  would  be  infinitely 
preferable. 

It  seemed  to  him  that  a  collection  of  the  shoes  of  the 
rulers  in  question  would  be  far  more  logical  and  interesting; 
the  jack-boot  of  the  Czar  Nicholas,  for  example,  with 
which  he  kicked  one  of  his  marshals,  one  of  the  thrifty 
Duke  of  Modena's  shoes,  twice  soled  and  heeled,  and  so 
on.  But  as  for  stamp  collectors,  "What  curiosity  can  any 
reasonable  being  have  to  possess  the  commonplace  effigies 
of  the  most  commonplace-looking  people  in  Europe?"  As 
he  was  then  holding  a  consular  position  under  one  of  these 
commonplace-looking  persons,  Mr.  Lever's  nerve  was  ad- 
mirable. He  couldn't  get  away  with  that  sort  of  thing  in 
modern  America. 

Young  women  were  still  numerous  among  the  collectors, 
for  the  English  Young  Ladies'  Journal  said  in  the  same 
year  in  answer  to  several  correspondents: 

We  cannot  encourage  "exchanging  foreign  stamps/' 
for  we  do  not  see  the  smallest  good  resulting  from  it. 
This  foreign  stamp  collecting  has  been  a  mania  which 
is  at  length  dying  out.  Were  the  stamps  works  of  art, 
then  the  collecting  them  might  be  justified.  Were 
they,  in  short,  anything  but  bits  of  defaced  printing, 
totally  worthless,  we  would  try  to  say  something  in 
their  favour. 

But  a  few  months  later  (Dec.  14,  1864)  the  editor  was 
astounded  to  find  the  fad  still  alive: 


THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT        21 

We  had  almost  heard  nothing  of  late  of  the  postage 
stamp  collecting  mania,  till  suddenly  the  formidable 
announcement  is  made  by  an  advertisement  that  an 
amateur  is  ready  to  sell  his  collection— for  what  sum, 
would  it  be  thought?— nothing  less  than  £250! 

It  has  been  guessed  that  the  same  collection  fifty  years 
later  would  have  brought  a  hundred  times  as  much. 

Meanwhile,  despite  this  sniping,  the  hobby  was  growing 
by  leaps  and  bounds.  Some  of  the  most  famous  of  British 
philatelists  had  their  start  in  the  1850*8— E.  Stanley  Gib- 
bons, for  example,  later  one  of  the  world's  most  noted 
dealers,  who  began  in  1854  at  the  age  of  fourteen.  Two 
years  later  he  was  trading  in  stamps  in  a  small  way  in  a 
cornei  of  his  father's  pharmacy. 

It  was  in  1860,  the  same  year  of  the  Boston  Advertiser's 
editorial,  that  the  first  lists  of  stamps  for  collectors'  use 
were  privately  circulated  in  manuscript  by  a  hobbyist, 
Frangois  George  Oscar  Berger-Levrault— not  of  royal  line- 
age, as  his  name  might  indicate,  but  a  printer  of  Strasburg— 
and  in  the  following  year  this  gentleman  issued  a  twelve- 
page  list,  printed  by  autolithography.  A  few  months  later 
Alfred  Potiquet  of  Paris  published  the  first  printed  cata- 
logue—magnificently entitled  Catalogue  des  Timbres-poste 
Crees  dans  les  divers  Etats  du  Globe— which  leaned  heavily 
on  Berger-Levrault's  lists.  The  next  year,  1862,  was  a  mem- 
orable one  in  philately;  things  happened  rapidly.  The  first 
catalogues  in  English,  three  of  them,  appeared,  one  of 
which,  Mount  Brown's,  listed  twelve  hundred  varieties  of 
stamps.  A  young  artist  named  Booty  produced  the  first 
illustrated  catalogue— three  editions  in  one  year— for  which 
he  drew  all  the  pictures  and  text  on  the  lithograph  stone. 
Mount  Brown's  catalogue  was  promptly  pirated  in  America 


22        THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT 

as  the  Stamp  Collector's  Manual.  We  were  fighting  the 
Civil  War  at  the  time,  but  some  people  still  seemed  to 
have  a  few  moments  to  think  about  stamps.  Perhaps  the 
young  ladies  at  home  diverted  their  minds  from  thoughts 
of  the  boys  on  the  battlefield  with  the  fad. 

The  first  stamp  album  was  issued  that  year  by  a  French- 
man, Justin  Lallier,  and  published  in  both  France  and 
England.  Lallier  was  not  a  philatelist,  which  may  explain 
why  all  the  printed  spaces  on  his  pages  for  stamps  were  of 
the  size  and  shape  of  the  first  British  Queen's  head.  Many 
collectors  were  so  influenced  by  this  that  they  took  scissors 
in  hand  and  trimmed  their  valuable,  oddly  shaped  stamps 
down  to  fit  those  spaces— another  vandalism  which  freezes 
the  present-day  collector's  blood  in  his  veins.  One  of 
Lallier's  albums,  unused,  may  still  be  picked  up  now  and 
then  for  twenty-five  dollars  or  thereabouts.  Mount  Brown 
issued  an  album,  too,  even  smaller  than  Lallier's— its  pages 
measure  four  and  a  half  by  five  and  a  half  inches— with 
alternate  pages  wholly  blank  for  the  stamps  and  descriptive 
matter  on  the  pages  opposite  them. 

The  year  '63  saw  the  launching  in  London  of  the  first 
stamp  magazine,  as  we  have  already  noticed,  and  it  quickly 
built  up  a  remarkable  list  of  advertisers  throughout  the 
United  Kingdom,  as  well  as  a  few  in  foreign  countries,  who 
were  dealing  in  stamps  in  a  small  way.  One  announcement 
tells  us  that  a  collection  of  three  hundred  stamps  will  be 
raffled  for  a  shilling  a  chance.  Another  offers  curious  testi- 
mony to  the  popularity  of  philately.  The  galop  was  a  very 
popular  dance  then,  and  this  notice  announces  "Arthur 
O'Leary's  Stamp  Galop— The  most  Successful  Galop  of  the 
Season  and  nightly  encored.  The  Title-page  is  beautifully 
embellished  in  Colours  with  Postage  Stamps  of  Foreign 
Nations.  Sent  free  for  Twelve  Stamps."  About  the  same 


What  often  happened  to  your  letters  in  pre-envelope  days. 


T 


Sir  Rowland  Hill,  originator  of  penny  postage  in  England,  and 
the  rush  of  mail  at  the  London  post  office  when  it  went  into 

effect  in  1840. 


Courtesy  Scott  Stamp  and  Coin  Co. 

The  "Mulreadv  envelope/'  which  was  the  first  postage  stamp. 


THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT        23 

time  the  JBriefmarken  Polka  fiir  Piano  was  published  in 
Leipzig,  and  other  philatelic  adventures  in  harmony  fol- 
lowed from  time  to  time,  including  "The  Stamp  Collec- 
tor's Song,"  published  at  London  in  1886. 

An  informal  open-air  postage  stamp  exchange  had  begun 
in  London  about  1860  in  Change  Alley,  "leading  out  of 
Birchin  Lane."  There  in  those  long  English  twilights  from 
spring  to  autumn,  one  saw  every  evening  "at  least  fifty  boys 
and  some  men,  too,"  as  a  shocked  reporter  chronicled,  buy- 
ing, selling,  but  mostly  swapping  stamps,  even  as  you  may 
see  curbstone  traders  dealing  in  diamonds  today  on  the 
sidewalk  in  Maiden  Lane  and  a  certain  spot  on  the  Bowery 
in  New  York.  Rapidly  the  situation  grew  even  worse;  young 
ladies,  "album  in  hand,"  were  seen  there,  and— whisper  it— 
actually  "one  of  Her  Majesty's  Ministers."  Here  you  heard, 
said  the  reporter,  such  jargon  as  this:  "Have  you  a  yellow 
Saxon?"— "I  want  a  Russian."— "I'll  give  a  red  Prussian  for 
a  blue  Brunswicker."— "Will  you  exchange  a  Russian  for  a 
black  English?"— "I  wouldn't  give  a  Russian  for  twenty 
English." 

After  a  year  or  so,  the  police  meddled  a  bit,  on  the  the- 
ory that  merchandising  was  being  done  without  licenses; 
but  the  enthusiasts,  including  the  cabinet  minister  and  the 
ladies,  continued  to  meet  in  certain  alleys  off  Birchin  Lane 
and  do  their  trading  more  surreptitiously.  It  is  recorded 
that  "one  of  the  ladies  contrived  to  effect  a  highly  advan- 
tageous exchange  of  a  very  so-so  specimen  with  a  young 
friend  of  ours,  who  salved  his  greenness  with  the  apologetic 
remark  that  he  could  not  drive  a  hard  bargain  with  a  lady." 
Even  several  years  later  the  traditional  annoyance  persisted, 
as  we  find  in  the  concluding  lines  of  a  poem  describing 
Birchin  Lane  after  four  o'clock: 


24        THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT 

When  sudden  a  gruff  voice  is  heard, 
That  all  the  thronging  bevy  stirred; 
I  turned,  and  fix'd  my  eyes  upon 
A  bobby!  crying— "Stamps,  move  on!" 

A  shop  in  Birchin  Lane  housed  an  actual  dealer  in 
stamps— a  woman;  and  there  was  another  woman  in  Paris 
who,  with  her  husband,  ran  a  little  news  and  reading  room 
and  who  became  quite  a  noted  stamp  merchant,  her  shop 
being  the  lounging  place  even  of  the  rich  and  noble  philat- 
elists of  the  Second  Empire. 

In  Paris  by  this  time  collectors  had  begun  to  study  the 
watermarks  in  paper  and  to  measure  perforations.  The  sci- 
entific trend  was  on.  Controversy  raged  there,  too,  over  a 
one-word  name  for  the  hobby.  One  group  insisted  upon 
calling  the  collector  a  Timbrophile,  while  another  followed 
Monsieur  G.  Herpin,  who,  after  much  brain-sweat,  pro- 
duced a  word  compounded  from  the  Greek  <£&og  ("fond 
of")  and  ctT&eia  ("exemption  from  tax"),  thus  indicating  a 
liking  for  something  free  from  tax,  which  is  taken  to  mean 
a  stamp;  a  far-fetched  concoction  whose  derivatives  philat- 
ely, philatelist  and  philatelic,  with  their  awkward  shiftings 
of  accent  back  and  forth,  are  irksome  to  most  of  our  ears 
to  this  day.  We  wish  M.  Herpin  had  tried  again,  or  perhaps 
that  the  other  group  had  prevailed  who  preferred  Tim- 
brologie  as  a  name  for  the  hobby,  even  though  the  word  to 
American  ears  seems  to  have  some  connection  with  the 
lumber  business.  The  leading  French  philatelic  organiza- 
tion, by  the  way,  is  still  called  the  Societe  Frangaise  de 
Timbrologie. 

When  England  first  heard  the  new  word,  it  couldn't 
even  spell  it.  A  London  editor  informed  the  world  that  "A 


THE  YOUNG  LADIES  BEGAN  IT        25 

mania  for  collecting  postage  stamps  has  added  a  new  word 
to  the  language,  'philotelist/  ' 

Well,  the  rush  of  men  and  boys  into  "philotely"  seemed 
to  scare  most  of  the  young  ladies  out,  and  the  males  very 
nearly  took  complete  charge  of  the  hobby,  both  in  Eng- 
land and  America,  in  the  'yo's  and  '8o's.  Women  still  col- 
lected junk  stamps  by  the  million  for  the  benefit  of  mys- 
terious orphans  and  African  savages,  but  a  woman  philat- 
elist was  rare,  indeed. 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 


[HE     EARLIEST     American 

CHAPTER   THREE  |  ,,  ,  , 

stamp  collector  of  record 


was  William  H.  Faber,  of 
Charleston,  S.  C.  In  a  letter  written  in  1918  to  the  Metro- 
politan Philatelist  of  New  York,  he  said  that  he  began  col- 
lecting in  1855,  when  he  was  a  boy.  John  K.  Tiffany,  who 
became  one  of  America's  greatest  collectors  and  philatelic 
bibliographers,  said  that  he  first  became  interested  in 
stamps  and  began  picking  them  up  when  he  was  in  Europe 
in  1858.  These  men  must  have  had  a  natural  instinct  for 
the  hobby,  for  there  was  no  philatelic  guidance  or  inspira- 
tion then;  no  dealers,  no  price  lists,  no  stamp  magazines  or 
literature  of  any  sort. 

We  find  the  first  mention  of  an  American  stamp  mer- 
chant five  years  later.  In  the  autumn  of  1860  a  poorly 
dressed  man  was  seen  standing  at  the  lower  end  of  City 
Hall  Park  in  New  York  with  about  a  hundred  foreign 
stamps  tacked  to  a  board  (time  out  for  teeth-gnashing). 
Nowadays  the  story  sometimes  has  it  that  he  fastened  them 
to  the  board  with  pins  and  sold  some  at  one  and  two  cents 
each;  but  a  collector  who  remembered  his  park  peddling 
and  bought  stamps  from  him  said,  fifteen  years  later,  that 
he  used  tacks  or  nails  and  sold  at  the  flat  price  of  five  cents, 
"having  no  idea  as  to  the  real  value  of  the  stamps."  But  if 

26 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  27 

gossip  be  true  he  came,  in  after  years,  to  have  very  definite 
ideas  as  to  stamp  values,  for  this  man  is  said  to  have  been 
William  P.  Brown,  who  became  one  of  New  York's  best 
known  stamp  dealers. 

And  yet  it  might  have  been  another  fellow;  for  Mr. 
Brown  wrote  a  quarter  century  later,*  "I  think  I  am  the 
earliest  stamp  dealer  now  in  business  in  the  United  States. 
I  commenced  trading  in  them  somewhere  about  1860. 
John  Bailey  was  the  only  one  I  knew  of  at  that  time  in  the 
business;  he  is  now  working  for  the  coal  companies  at 
Hoboken,  N.  J." 

There  are  also  rumors  of  another  dealer  named  Brennan; 
but  nothing  definite  can  be  learned  about  him.  Probably 
there  were  three  or  four  who  drifted  into  the  business  that 
year.  Whether  it  was  Brown  or  Bailey  or  the  shadowy 
Brennan  who  first  appeared  there  at  the  lower  end  of  the 
park  can  never  be  settled  now.  Anyhow,  despite  the  tack 
holes  in  them,  their  stock  sold  well,  and  corner  news  ven- 
dors also  began  picking  up  a  few  used  stamps,  which  they 
sold  at  rising  prices— five,  six  and  ten  cents.  At  that  time, 
fifty  cents  was  considered  a  good  price  for  the  rarest  speci- 
men—if the  seller  happened  to  discover  that  it  was  rare. 

A  veteran  philatelist,  twenty  years  later,  recalled  that 
many  American  collectors  of  1860  were  monumentally  ig- 
norant of  geography  and  political  history;  they  had  no  cata- 
logues or  other  publications  to  guide  them,  and  the  tend- 
ency of  nations  in  early  days  to  omit  the  names  of  their 
countries  from  their  stamp  designs  was  very  confusing.  The 
collectors  couldn't  tell  Brazil  from  Peru,  they  didn't  know 
that  Bayern  meant  Bavaria,  the  Thurn  and  Taxis  stamps 
puzzled  them  and  were  assigned,  now  to  one  German  state, 
now  to  another,  and  the  first  Luxemburg  stamps,  with 

*  To  the  Western  Philatelist  of  Chicago,  Sept.,  1887,  p.  193. 


28  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

nothing  to  identify  them  but  a  portrait  of  the  King  of 
Holland,  threw  the  amateurs  on  their  beam  ends. 

The  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  in  1861  inflicted  some 
small  detriment  upon  the  stamp  business.  Some  of  the 
peddlers  probably  went  into  the  Army  of  the  Potomac  and 
watered  the  cornfields  of  Virginia  with  their  blood;  but 
one,  the  indestructible  Mr.  Brown,  was  somehow  missed 
by  the  draft  and  carried  on.  The  news  stands  continued  to 
sell  a  few  foreign  stamps,  among  which  was  an  occasional 
Confederate,  which  was  quickly  snapped  up  by  collectors. 
Boston,  too,  which  claimed  some  of  the  earliest  of  the  col- 
lectors—as we  may  guess  from  the  Boston  Advertiser  item 
of  1860,  already  quoted— also  had  dealers;  and  one  of  them, 
G.  Dexter,  issued  the  first  known  American  catalogue  or 
price  list,  a  mere  single  leaf  printed  on  one  side,  in  1863. 

In  that  same  year  the  first  American  stamp  album  ap- 
peared—a handsome  one  of  208  pages  bound  in  brown 
leather,  issued  by  those  veteran  publishers,  D.  Appleton  & 
Company,  who  were  evidently  keeping  abreast  and  even 
a  little  ahead  of  the  times.  William  R.  Ricketts,  noted 
collector  of  philatelic  literature  and  bibliographer,  has  a 
copy  of  this  album  and  says  that  the  only  other  known 
copy  is  in  the  Library  of  Congress;  so  it  seems  that  the 
publishers  in  their  enthusiasm  ran  ahead  of  the  times  a 
bit,  and  the  book  could  not  have  had  a  very  large  sale.  In 
fact,  it  is  so  nearly  forgotten  now  that  Scott's  album,  is- 
sued five  years  later,  has  often  been  spoken  of  as  the  first 
published  in  America. 

Philately  continued  to  grow,  despite  the  bloody  conflict 
which  was  tearing  at  the  heart  of  the  nation,  and  in  1864 
the  first  American  philatelic  periodical  of  which  I  have 
found  record,  the  Stamp  Collector's  Review,  began  to  be 
published  at  Albany,  N.  Y.,  and,  incidentally,  was  fathered 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  29 

by  S.  Allan  Taylor,  who  became  one  of  the  most  notorious 
of  dealers  in  counterfeit  stamps.  It  continued  for  twelve 
years. 

In  1863  one  of  the  great  figures  in  American  philately 
appeared  in  New  York— an  eighteen-year-old  boy  named 
John  Walter  Scott,  who  stepped  off  a  ship  from  England 
one  hot  August  day  with  few  assets  save  a  package  of 
stamps  in  his  little  trunk.  In  those  days  there  was  no  con- 
cern on  the  part  of  the  government  lest  the  immigrant 
become  a  public  charge— in  fact,  many  immigrants  went 
comfortably  right  from  the  ship  into  our  poorhouses— else 
young  Scott  might  have  been  shunted  back  to  Albion  on 
the  next  vessel.  He  had  begun  working  in  a  mercantile 
office  in  London  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  and  the  stamps  on 
the  firm's  foreign  correspondence  lured  him  into  philately. 
He  and  a  young  friend,  Charlie  Watson  (also  laden  with 
stamps)  came  to  America  together.  Scott  finally  sold  his 
stamps  to  a  pushcart  dealer  on  the  north  side  of  City  Hall 
Park,  at  Broadway  and  Chambers  Street— again  reported  to 
have  been  Mr.  Brown— for  ten  dollars. 

He  sought  but  failed  to  find  work— perhaps  the  patriotic 
New  Yorkers  didn't  like  his  British  accent— and  talked  de- 
spondently to  the  stamp  dealer— Mr.  Brown  again— of  en- 
listing; for  men  were  much  needed  to  replace  those  re- 
cently slaughtered  at  Chancellorsville  and  Gettysburg. 
Brown  had  evidently  done  pretty  well  with  his  outdoor 
business  by  this  time  and  must  have  taken  a  remarkable 
liking  to  the  English  boy,  for  he  offered  to  lend  him  a 
hundred  dollars'  worth  of  stamps  to  sell— at  some  other 
spot,  of  course.  Scott  made  about  thirty  dollars  a  month 
by  this  open-air  vending,  his  sister  helping  him  with  stock. 
In  a  letter  '^o  her  he  says  that  he  is  selling  the  "black 
English"  for  twelve  cents  each,  "a  very  good  profit." 


30  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

Nevertheless,  stamps  didn't  promise  to  make  a  fortune 
for  him,  and  in  1864  or  early  in  '65,  Scott  drifted  out  to 
Idaho,  a  new  Eldorado,  with  a  party  of  prospectors.  He  is 
said  to  have  been  interested  in  a  small  boom-town  hotel, 
but  in  May,  1865,  the  whole  town  burned,  as  mining  camps 
usually  did  sooner  or  later,  and  after  lingering  a  while  in 
hope  of  better  things,  he  started  in  July  afoot  for  California 
—a  daring  venture  in  those  days  when  painted  "hostyles" 
lurked  behind  every  bush  and  rock;  yet  by  November, 
John  Walter  reached  Sacramento  with  his  hair  on,  and 
there  did  the  best  he  could. 

It  was  in  1865  that  two  coin  and  stamp  journals  were 
founded  in  Chicago,  and  the  United  States  Stamp  Com- 
pany of  Lowell,  Mass.,  issued  a  price  list.  With  the  coming 
of  peace  there  was  a  rapid  gain  in  the  stamp  business  in 
the  North;  the  South  was  too  hard  run,  too  impoverished 
by  the  war,  too  absorbed  in  trying  to  make  ends  meet,  to 
give  much  time  to  hobbies.  Nevertheless,  by  1874  the  edi- 
tor of  the  New  Orleans  Picayune  was  so  pestered  by  boys 
coming  in  and  asking  for  a  few  old  stamps  that  he  darkly 
predicted  that  some  day  a  boy  or  two  would  disappear  and 
never  be  heard  of  again.  A  pioneer  philatelic  association 
organized  in  Wytheville,  Va.,  in  1878  got  itself  into  the 
news  frequently. 

In  the  North,  in  the  last  four  years  of  the  '6o's,  a  dozen 
new  stamp  periodicals  sprang  into  being.  Scott  had  re- 
turned via  water  and  Panama  to  New  York  in  '66,  and 
once  more  tried  the  stamp  business,  this  time  under  a  roof 
in  Liberty  Street.  Beginning  in  June,  1867,  he  circulated  a 
monthly  price  list— one  leaf  printed  on  one  side  only;  and 
in  December,  1868,  he  launched  the  American  Journal  of 
Philately,  which  claimed  to  be  sponsored  by  the  New  York 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  31 

Philatelic  Society,  organized  by  "eight  collectors  of  foreign 
postage  stamps/'  allegedly  on  March  21,  1867. 

But  Scott  had  a  captious  critic,  a  stamp  dealer  of  Boston 
named  Ferdinand  Marie  Trifet— many  persons  still  living 
will  remember  him  as  a  publisher  of  cheap  music,  classical 
and  otherwise— who  had  issued  a  leaflet  price  list  in  1866 
and  founded  a  journal,  the  American  Stamp  Mercury,  a 
year  later.  Perhaps  what  first  set  M.  Trifet's  teeth  on  edge 
was  that  word  "philately"  which  Scott  tossed  about  so 
freely.  To  Trifet  it  was  as  the  legendary  red  cloth  to  the 
bull.  In  July,  1868,  his  Mercury  raged  at  the  "self-sufficient 
wisdom"  of  "a  few  egotists  in  Europe  and  a  very  few  more 
in  America"  who  had  decided  that  this  should  henceforth 
be  the  name  of  "the  science  of  stamp  collecting."  After 
tearing  the  word  to  bits,  the  editor  concluded: 

The  word  Timbrophily  has  hitherto  been  found  in 
every  way  suitable  without  taxing  either  the  patience 
of  collectors  or  the  brains  (if  they  have  any)  of  the 
pedantic  egotists  who  coined  the  lovely  phrase  "Phi- 
lately." 

The  Mercury  continued  to  speak  of  Timbrophilists  and 
Timbrophilic  news,  and  even  produced  the  words  "Tim- 
brography,"  which  meant  writing  about  stamps,  and  "Tim- 
bropolism,"  for  the  business  of  selling  stamps;  which 
proved  that  M.  Trifet  could  coin  even  worse  words  than 
M.  Herpin.  But  all  his  brain-sweat  was  in  vain. 

Trifet  accused  Scott  of  copying  prices  from  his  list  and 
of  being  fundamentally  ignorant  of  stamps.  Stamp  maga- 
zines exchanged  with  each  other  then,  and  Trifet  admitted 
receiving  Numbers  Two  and  Three  of  the  American  Jour- 
nal of  Philately  "which  pretends  to  be  a  stamp  journal  run 
by  a  pretended  stamp  society"  but  hadn't  seen  Number 


32  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

One  and  didn't  believe  there  was  any.  When  Scott  later 
sent  him  a  copy  of  Number  One,  Trifet  denounced  it  as  a 
fake,  printed  for  the  purpose.  He  said  that  the  New  York 
Philatelic  Society— the  "Moonshine  Stamp  Society"  as  he 
liked  to  call  it— consisted  of  two  boys,  Scott  and  his  friend 
Watson— who  was  still  around,  selling  stamps— and  an 
imaginary  clergyman  who,  according  to  Scott,  promptly 
sailed  for  Buenos  Aires  and  so  passed  out  of  the  picture. 
Said  he  of  Scott: 

He  asserts  that  a  personal  friend  of  our  own  was  re- 
fused admission  into  the  Moonshine  Philatelic  Society 
on  the  ground  of  respectability.  .  .  .  Now  in  the  first 
place,  we  have  not  a  friend  in  New  York  or  elsewhere 
but  who  is  perfectly  well  aware  that  the  existence  of 
the  "Society"  is  a  simple  and  silly  fiction,  innocent 
enough  in  its  way,  its  design  being  only  another  of 
the  loud-mouthed  and  gaseous  pretenses  of  which  the 
columns  of  the  Journal  furnish  so  many  striking  ex- 
amples. .  .  .  The  "Society" ...  is  simply  a  pretense 
—no  meetings  are  held  and  the  so-called  Society  con- 
sists of  three  persons." 

Dr.  J.  Brace  Chittenden,  who  went  into  the  matter 
pretty  thoroughly  and  wrote  of  it  in  the  Collector's  Club 
Philatelist  for  April,  1924,  is  inclined  to  agree  that  this  first 
New  York  collectors'  club  was  more  or  less  imaginary— 
although  its  several  officers  and  directors  had  been  set  forth 
more  than  once  in  the  American  Journal  of  Philately. 
Chittenden  believed  that  Charlie  Watson  was  chiefly  re- 
sponsible for  the  hoax,  abetted  by  the  third  man,  John  J. 
Casey,  for  both  of  these  later  proved  to  be  deficient  in 
business  honor.  Scott  probably  agreed— though  with  mis- 


AN  AMERICAN  POSTMAN  OF  1865 


34  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

givings— that  the  fiction  was  "innocent  enough  in  its  way," 
but  when  Watson  and  Casey  in  later  days  strayed  from  the 
path  of  virtue,  he  broke  with  them. 

Scott,  however,  believed  in  a  little  puffery.  He  claimed 
a  circulation  of  two  thousand  for  the  Journal,  and  a  sale 
within  a  few  months  of  fifteen  thousand  for  his  album,  the 
first  in  America,  issued  in  1868;  both  claims  ridiculed  by 
Trifet  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  do  have  a  slight  odor 
of  inflation.  The  Mercury  said  that  the  Journal  had  "re- 
duced lying  to  a  science/'  Scott  fired  back  at  it  as  hotly  as 
he  could:  "We  feel  as  if  we  were  throwing  away  a  valuable 
page  of  our  Journal  in  criticising  the  September  number  of 
the  above  paper";  and  of  its  editor,  "We  look  upon  his 
language  as  a  disgrace  to  the  philatelic  press,  and  if  he  con- 
tinues to  write  in  that  style,  we  shall  have  to  pass  his  re- 
marks in  silent  contempt" 

The  last  notice  in  the  Journal  of  the  transactions,  real  or 
fictitious,  of  the  New  York  Philatelic  Society,  appears  in 
May,  1869,  when  it  is  said  that  Messers  Dinwiddie  and 
Scott  tendered  their  resignations,  "because  of  numerous 
business  engagements."  Thereafter,  New  York  had  no 
stamp  club,  true  or  imaginary,  for  another  five  years. 

But  American  philately  was  now  swinging  into  its  stride. 
Stamp  magazines,  mail-order  dealers  and  counterfeiters 
were  springing  up  like  weeds  in  a  wet  summer.  Poets  took 
pens  in  hand  and  dashed  off  some  of  the  worst  doggerel 
that  ever  sullied  paper.  One  effusion,  "The  Stamp  Col- 
lector," began  thus: 

Deem  not  his  mission  all  in  vane  (sic) 

Who  with  his  album  in  his  hand 
In  fancy  travels  o'er  the  main, 

Collecting  stamps  from  every  land. 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  35 

It  went  on  and  on,  with  no  improvement.  It  is  not  re- 
corded that  Lord  Tennyson  was  inspired  by  the  hobby,  but 
an  amateur  bard,  perhaps  with  the  spell  of  the  laureate's 
"Oriana"  upon  him,  seized  his  quill  and  struck  out  eight 
stanzas  like  this: 

What  now  is  asked  is  all  the  rage? 
What  thus  excites  the  present  age? 
What  actuates  the  youthful  sage? 
Timbromania. 

Trunks  and  attics  were  being  searched  for  old  letters— 
the  inexplicable  thing  is  that  they  haven't  all  been  ran- 
sacked yet— and  the  magazines  were  telling  readers  how  to 
steam  or  soak  stamps  off  the  envelopes  (lay  the  back  of 
the  paper  on  wet  woolen  cloth,  was  a  favorite  method), 
for  no  one  had  yet  thought  of  saving  the  whole  cover;  but 
collectors  were  warned  that  the  Russian  stamps  wouldn't 
stand  soaking,  because  "they  are  printed  in  water  colors." 

At  the  Academy  of  Music  in  New  York  on  May  zd, 
1868,  the  collectors  scattered  through  the  audience  were 
delighted  when  in  the  first  act  of  Offenbach's  new  opera, 
La  Belle  Helene,  a  story  of  ancient  Troy,  Calchas,  the  high 
priest  of  Jupiter,  receiving  a  letter  brought  by  a  dove  from 
Venus,  carefully  peeled  off  the  stamp  before  reading  it, 
explaining  to  Paris,  who  stood  by,  that  he  was  saving  it  for 
the  little  princess  Hermione,  "who  has  a  collection."  But 
this  whimsy  was  trumped  by  a  seedy  character  who  went 
into  a  shop  in  Louisville  and  offered  a  tattered  oriental 
stamp  for  sale,  claiming  that  it  was  the  identical  one  which 
had  carried  St.  Paul's  first  letter  to  the  Corinthians. 

The  gorgeous  bi-colored  stamps  which  the  United  States 
issued  in  1869  were  a  great  stimulant  to  collectors.  In  1871 
the  New  York  Sun  made  a  startling  discovery  and  an- 


36  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

nounced  it  in  a  headline,  "A  NEW  MANIA/'  declaring  that 
there  were  ten  thousand  stamp  collectors  in  New  York 
City  (which  then  included  Manhattan  only);  a  palpable 
overstatement. 

The  lads  who  began  collecting  in  the  '50'$  and  '60*8  were 
the  ones  who  reaped  the  real  financial  rewards,  if  and  when 
they  chose  to  do  so.  An  English  barrister  with  one  of  those 
double-barreled  names  so  much  affected  in  Britain,  Mr.  W. 
Hughes-Hughes,  ceased  collecting  in  1874  when,  according 
to  his  carefully  kept  accounts,  he  had  spent  only  sixty-nine 
pounds  on  his  stamps,  and  sold  them  twenty-two  years 
later  for  three  thousand  pounds!  Another  man  in  England 
spent  three-hundred-sixty  pounds  up  to  1871  and  sold  his 
collection  in  1898  to  Stanley  Gibbons,  Ltd.,  for  four  thou- 
sand pounds.  Ah,  them  was  the  days!  Don't  expect  things 
like  that  to  happen  again. 

But  prices  for  rarities  were  rising  to  unheard-of  heights 
even  by  1870.  Editor-dealer-collector  Scott  wrote  in  '71  that 
the  highest  price  he  remembered  receiving  for  a  stamp  was 
seventy-five  dollars,  though  he  had  some  in  his  collection 
which  he  wouldn't  sell,  no,  not  for  a  hundred  and  fifty  dol- 
lars! But  in  the  following  year  he  had  heard  of  a  sale  for  a 
hundred  dollars  and  had  seen  a  stamp  in  a  London  window 
priced  at  fifty  pounds.  Luxury  was  coming  to  philately;  for 
in  that  year  a  Leipzig  publisher  issued  an  album  de  luxe- 
edition  limited  to  twenty  copies— priced  at  a  hundred  and 
fifty  thalers  or  about  $112.50.  The  New  York  Times  editor 
paused  momentarily  in  his  fight  against  the  Tweed  Ring  to 
say  that  "To  some  stamps  a  value  has  been  extended  which 
seems  preposterous."  To  which  Scott  retorted  that  he  ex- 
pected to  see  the  day  when  a  single  stamp  would  sell  for 
a  thousand  dollars.  That  figure  having  been  passed,  he 
again  predicted  in  1895  that  he  would  see  a  single  stamp 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  37 

sold  for  five  thousand  dollars.  He  lived  to  see  certain  rari- 
ties sell  for  several  times  that  much. 

Nevertheless,  prices  for  many  stamps  now  considered 
rare  were  so  modest  then  that  they  take  our  breath  away. 
For  example  you  could  buy  the  three-pfennige  Saxony  1850 
unused  from  Scott  in  1869  for  half  a  dollar;  today,  the  cata- 
logue prices  for  it  are  $400  unused  and  $300  used.  Here 
are  a  few  other  comparisons  between  the  Scott  catalogue 
of  '69  and  the  "asking"  prices  today— though  it  must  be 
admitted  that  dealers  don't  always  insist  upon  catalogue 
prices  to  the  penny  at  the  present  moment. 

1869  Today 
New     Brunswick,     1851,     is 

violet,                             used $5  $300 

Nova  Scotia,  1857,  1S  vi°^ 

used $7  $275 

unused $12  $750 

Canada,     1851,     i2d     violet- 
black,                             used $3  $1,500 

unused. .  .No  price  $3,500 
Mauritius,    1847,    id    orange 

used $5  $15,000 

unused. .  .No  price  $20,000 

2d  blue    used $4  $15,000 

unused.  .  .No  price  $17,000 

To  show  the  lack  of  precise  knowledge  of  those  days, 
Scott  dates  the  Mauritius  rarities  as  1852,  but  as  he  speci- 
fies that  they  are  the  POST  OFFICE  stamps,  he  evidently 
means  the  1847*8,  as  they  are  the  only  ones  so  character- 
ized. It  was  only  a  few  years  later  that  J.  B.  Moens  of 
Belgium  was  holding  these  two  Mauritius  stamps  at  $1,250. 
One  may  logically  doubt  that  Scott  really  had  the  genuine 


38  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

stamps  in  1869.  Counterfeits  were  numerous,  dealers  were 
careless,  many  were  in  the  freshman  class  as  regards  exact 
knowledge  of  stamps,  and  in  their  eagerness  to  sell,  would 
take  a  chance. 

The  itch  to  publish  was  never  more  amazingly  displayed 
than  in  philately.  During  the  decade  from  1870  to  1879,  at 
least  108  stamp  publications,  weekly  and  monthly,  were 
founded,  and  only  seven  of  them  lasted  as  long  as  two 
years.  But  this  was  scarcely  the  beginning.  During  the 
i88o's,  no  less  than  248  new  ones  appeared,  and  with  an 
equal  high  percentage  of  anemia  and  mortality.  Among 
their  names  were  such  oddities  as  Hermes,  One  Dime,  Tiny 
Collector,  Tiny  Philatelist  and  Philatelic  Squeal.  That 
their  names  and  vital  statistics  have  been  preserved  is 
largely  due  to  the  care  of  John  K.  Tiffany,  St.  Louis  at- 
torney and  noted  collector,  who  was  as  much  interested 
in  philatelic  bibliography  as  in  stamps  themselves.  In 
1875  he  published  The  Philatelic  Library,  which  listed 
1,461  publications  of  all  sorts,  including  catalogues  and 
price  lists— and  the  first  publishing  had  been  done  less 
than  a  decade  and  a  half  before! 

Tiffany's  remarkable  collection  of  philatelic  literature, 
in  1901,  after  his  death,  was  sold  to  the  Earl  of  Crawford, 
who  was  already  building  a  collection  of  his  own,  and  who 
therefore,  when  he  died,  left  the  most  colossal  corpus  of 
such  material  in  existence.  Of  the  philatelic  periodicals, 
Crawford  wrote  in  the  great  bibliography  which  he  com- 
piled: 

I  know  of  no  branch  of  writing  in  which  there  exists 
so  great  a  number  of  actual  rarities.  Little  journals 
exist  by  the  score  whose  lives  did  not  go  beyond  a 
week,  and  whose  existence  is  known  only  by  single 


From  the  Collection  of  Etl\varcl  S.  Knapp 

The  first  exposition  to  advertise  itself  on  an  envelope  was  that 
at  New  York,  1853  (top).  The  first  known  political  propaganda 
envelope  was  that  of  Gen.  Winfield  Scott  when  campaigning 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  39 

copies.  They  are  found  in  Manuscript,  in  Hectograph, 
in  Lithography  and  typewritten  and  in  printed  form 
of  the  roughest  description,  with  illustrations  in  the 
text  very  nearly  approaching  in  ugliness  to  some  of 
the  stamps  they  are  anxious  to  describe. 

A  majority  of  these  journals  in  the  first  decade  were 
published  by  dealers,  and  were  little  more  than  periodical 
price  lists.  News  was  scarce.  Some  space  was  very  happily 
devoted  to  lambasting  each  other— always  great  fun  for  an 
editor.  They  jeered  at  each  other's  spelling,  typographical 
errors  and  errors  of  fact,  all  numerous.  If  one  editor-dealer 
got  a  supply  of  some  new  stamp  which  another  hadn't 
succeeded  in  getting,  the  second  man  more  or  less  deli- 
cately hinted  that  the  other's  stuff  was  counterfeit.  Fre- 
quently the  man  who  yelled  "Counterfeit!"  the  loudest 
was  himself  handing  out  forgeries  with  both  hands.  Libel? 
Shucks!  Neither  editors  nor  laymen  wasted  much  time  in 
libel  suits  in  those  days.  They  just  barked  "Liar!"  or  broke 
a  chair  over  the  other's  head,  and  it  was  a  more  forthright 
and  honest  way  of  settling  the  matter  than  is  the  present 
endless  devil's  dance  of  litigation,  with  its  attendant  curses 
of  perjury,  enrichment  of  lawyers  and  intimidation  of  all  of 
us  until  we  dare  not  even  voice  provable  truth  about  a 
whitewashed  crook  for  fear  of  a  libel  suit. 

The  magazines  in  most  cases  claimed  complete  separa- 
tion from  the  proprietor's  stamp  business— as  the  Mercury 
did  of  Trifet's— nevertheless,  complimentary  allusions  kept 
creeping  in,  right  under  the  editor's  nose,  such  as: 

A  more  prompt,  honest,  well-informed  and  reliable 
stamp  dealer  than  Abner  Squizzle  is  not  to  be  found. 
Collectors  or  those  who  have  stamps  to  sell  will  do 
well  to  give  him  a  trial.— Plunkville  (Ind.)  Bugle. 


40  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

Editors  often  being  youths  with  faces  only  slightly 
fuzzed,  their  magazines  were  refreshing  examples  of  inno- 
cence. One  of  them  remarked  that  he  "had  been  a  stamp 
collector  since  its  earliest  days  to  the  present  time  and  had 
continued  in  the  interim!"  On  another  page  he  mentioned 
the  "Kingdom  of  Natal"  and  the  "Empire  of  Newfound- 
land." 

Many  journals  of  the  '8o's  and  'QO'S  were  published  in 
obscure  hamlets  where  the  chance  of  getting  fresh  news 
was  almost  nil.  Even  the  best  of  them  clipped  lavishly  from 
other  publications,  and  the  "original"  stuff  gratuitously 
contributed  was  often  pretty  hackneyed.  The  story  of  Sir 
Rowland  Hill  and  the  beginning  of  cheap  postage  was 
probably  rewritten  a  thousand  times.  One  Southern  jour- 
nal, in  desperation,  ran  one  of  Will  N.  Harben's  north 
Georgia  hill-billy  novels  as  a  serial,  while  another  ran  what 
a  competitor  called  "a  trashy  detective  story."  How  literary 
standards  have  changed  since  then!  Do  Lowell,  Ho  wells 
and  Aldrich  stir  uneasily  in  their  graves  when  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  publishes  detective  stories? 

"As  soon  as  we  receive  proper  support,"  wrote  one  editor 
severely,  "we  will  enlarge."  That  was  putting  it  right  up 
to  them.  Among  some  hundreds  of  such  periodicals,  the 
smallest  we  have  seen  is  Volume  One,  Number  One 
(maybe  all  that  ever  appeared)  of  The  Stamp  Exchange, 
a  monthly  published  at  Columbus,  Indiana,  in  1897.  It  is 
a  four-page  leaflet  on  gray  paper,  the  pages  being  five  by 
six  inches  over  all  and  with  wide  margins.  The  subscription 
rate  is  announced  as  ten  cents  per  year,  advertising  rate 
five  cents  per  inch,  or  about  twenty  cents  per  page— and 
there  was  a  whole  page  of  advertising.  Another  half  page 
was  given  over  to  the  weights  of  United  States  coins.  One 
wonders  whether  the  editor  and  publisher,  Will  E.  Marsh, 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  41 

is  still  alive.  It  might  easily  be  possible,  for  we  would  guess 
his  age  at  the  time  to  have  been  not  more  than  sixteen. 

The  American  Journal  of  Philately  said  in  1870  that 
there  were  only  seven  real  stamp  dealers  in  the  United 
States.  (Did  this  include  Trifet?)  Some  started  on  a  capital 
of  fifty  to  seventy-five  cents,  doing  business  by  mail,  buying 
from  hand  to  mouth,  selling  fakes  when  they  couldn't  get 
real  stamps  or  sometimes  by  preference.  Some  started  with 
perhaps  as  much  as  fifteen  dollars,  rented  a  back  room  in 
some  shabby  old  building  and  started  business  with  a 
second-hand  chair  and  table.  Some  were  errand  boys  or 
clerks,  who  used  their  employers'  post-office  boxes  for  re- 
ceipt of  their  mail.  "Some  of  these  steal  all  the  money 
sent."  One  large  dealer  received  a  letter  from  a  boy  in 
1870,  expressing  surprise  and  gratification  at  receiving  all 
the  stamps  he  ordered,  "for  most  dealers  steal  the  boys' 
money."  "In  the  God-forgotten  and  Heaven-forsaken  city 
of  New  York,"  said  the  voice  of  the  Mercury  from  Boston, 
"as  everybody  knows,  the  whole  of  the  juvenile  dealers 
make  it  their  business  to  steal  their  stock  from  their  more 
successful  brethren."  The  fly-by-night  dealers  were  just  as 
crooked  in  buying  stamps  from  the  layman  as  in  selling 
them.  Some  of  the  better  magazines  frequently  published 
black  lists  of  "gentlemen  who  forget  to  pay  for  stamps." 

A  customer  who  sent  an  order  for  about  a  dollar  and  a 
half  to  the  Triumph  Stamp  Company  of  Erie,  Pennsyl- 
vania, specifying  that  he  wanted  genuine  stamps,  received 
in  return,  so  he  reported,  "nothing  but  the  meanest  coun- 
terfeits." When  he  complained,  the  "company"  wrote  with 
refreshing  naivete,  "We  do  not  guarantee  our  stamps  all 
genuine,  we  buy  many  of  our  stamps  from  American  deal- 
ers as  genuine  stamps,  if  they  are  not,  we  are  not  to  be 
blamed,  as  we  are  not  very  skillful  judges,  all  the  stamps 


42  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

which  we  purchase  of  Foreign  Post  Offices,  we  do  warrant 
genuine."  The  American  Journal  of  Philately  commented 
that  it  was  "doubtful  if  the  Triumph  Stamp  Company  con- 
sists of  more  than  one  small  office  boy/' 

On  May  28,  1870,  J.  W.  Scott  staged  the  first  stamp 
auction  sale  in  history  at  Clinton  Hall,  formerly  the  ill- 
omened  Astor  Place  Opera  House— Disaster  Place,  it  came 
to  be  called  after  the  riot  there  in  1849,  when  twenty-two 
were  killed  and  many  injured.  In  1872  Scott  even  went 
over  to  England  and  introduced  the  auction  at  Sotheby's 
old  stand  in  Wellington  Street.  Thereafter,  auctions  be- 
came more  and  more  frequent  on  both  sides  of  the  water. 
Many  of  them,  though  puny  affairs  by  comparison  with 
some  of  the  great  ones  of  later  years,  were  considered 
eminently  successful:  when  "the  fine  collection  of  Mr. 
Pullen,"  for  example,  sold  in  1878  for  six  hundred  dollars. 
The  first  really  big  sale  in  America  was  that  of  the  collec- 
tion of  F.  de  Coppet  by  J.  W.  Scott  and  Company  in 
1893,  which  brought  in  about  $29,000.  It  was  there  that 
Scott's  prediction  of  the  "thousand-dollar  stamp"  was 
realized,  when  Charles  B.  Corwin  of  New  York  paid  that 
much  for  a  two-cent  British  Guiana  1850.  Incidentally, 
Corwin  sold  that  stamp  four  years  later  for  seventeen  hun- 
dred dollars. 

New  zest  was  thrown  into  philately  when  the  United 
States  began  issuing  post  cards  in  1873.  They  had  been 
conceived  in  Austria  four  years  before,  and  rapidly  became 
popular  in  Europe.  A  pity  some  of  our  present-day  writers 
don't  ponder  their  incidental  history  more  carefully!  Bertita 
Harding,  in  Golden  Fleece,  her  delightful  life  sketch  of  the 
Empress  Elizabeth  of  Austria  and  her  husband,  Franz 
Joseph,  in  describing  the  guerrilla  warfare  between  Eliza- 
beth and  her  mother-in-law,  early  in  1855,  says,  "To  pen 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  43 

even  a  post  card  which  was  addressed  to  an  enemy 
amounted  to  an  ordeal."  It  would,  indeed— when  post  cards 
weren't  to  be  invented  for  another  fourteen  years!  A  year 
later,  she  had  Duke  Karl  Theodor  of  Wittelsbach  writing 
news  "in  short  jottings,  sometimes  even  on  picture  post 
cards,"  to  his  family  at  home.  Suffering  Clio!  When  the 
first  picture  post  cards  weren't  seen  until  at  least  thirty-five 
years  later! 

Well,  when  post  cards  were  proposed  in  America  during 
Grant's  presidency,  Democratic  politicians  denounced 
them  as  "the  vain  and  trifling  whim  of  a  corrupt  and  ex- 
travagant Administration  vainly  seeking  for  some  plaything 
to  amuse  the  people  with,  while  it  steals  away  their  liber- 
ties." Fears  were  expressed  that  the  cards  would  be  used 
for  "blackmailing  and  venting  personal  spleen,  as  has  been 
the  case  to  some  extent  in  England."  Some  persons  de- 
signed their  own  private  cards,  of  which  hundreds  were 
confiscated  and  sent  to  the  Dead  Letter  Office.  Many  of 
the  early  post  cards,  notably  those  of  Guatemala  and  New- 
foundland, were  gorgeous  affairs,  with  deep  rococo  borders 
on  the  address  side  and  much  other  beautiful  engraving. 
Collectors  found  much  pleasure  in  these  new  items,  and 
some  began  specializing  in  post  cards.  A  new  piano  com- 
position, "The  Post  Card  Galop,"  testified  to  their  popu- 
larity. 

Philately  became  more  and  more  integrated  with  Amer- 
ican life.  There  was  an  article  on  postage  stamps  in  the 
American  Cyclopaedia  in  1875,  and  in  1880  the  word  "phi- 
lately" found  its  way  into  Webster's  Dictionary  "Supple- 
ment of  New  Words."  In  that  same  year  a  complete 
assortment  of  the  stamps  and  stamped  envelopes  of  the 
United  States  in  use  at  the  time,  and  some  older  ones 
(reprints?),  was  placed  in  the  foundation  in  Central  Park, 


44  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

New  York,  for  the  ancient  Egyptian  obelisk  erected  by 
Thothmes  III  in  Heliopolis,  1600  B.C.,  presented  by  the 
Khedive  to  New  York  City  in  1877,  F.O.B.  Heliopolis,  so 
that  William  H.  Vanderbilt  finally  had  to  put  up  a  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars— though  why  so  much,  we  don't 
know— to  bring  it  across  the  ocean  and  set  it  up.  And  when 
the  decorously  garbed  Statue  of  Liberty  (ever  since  a 
"must"  for  the  hinterland  tourist)  was  erected  in  New 
York  Harbor  in  1883,  it  was  noised  about  that  its  sculptor, 
Bartholdi,  was  a  philatelist;  whence  New  York  surmised 
that  the  book  which  the  well-draped  libertarian  female  is 
nursing  on  one  arm  is  a  stamp  album. 

In  1884  ladies  in  America  were  covering  cups,  plates 
and  saucers  with  used  stamps  in  artistic  patterns  (fifteen 
years  later  it  was  cigar  bands),  "the  lavender  penny  and 
green  halfpenny  stamps  of  England  working  in  well  with 
the  United  States  red,"  and  covering  them  with  copal 
varnish,  which  would  stand  washing  in  soap  and  water, 
though  of  course— was  the  warning— not  in  hot  water. 
(They  had  no  Valspar  then— Advt.)  Parlor  table  tops  were 
also  covered  with  the  stamps  in  circles,  stars,  diamonds, 
interlaced  triangles  and  Greek  key  borderings.  "If  the  table 
be  round,  an  envelope  in  the  center,  stamped  and  addressed 
to  the  owner  of  the  table,  is  appropriate." 

Composers  continued  their  tributes  to  the  hobby.  The 
"Philatelical  Waltzes,"  published  in  Chicago,  were  fol- 
lowed a  few  years  later  by  the  "Postage  Polka,"  emanating 
from  Montreal.  In  1879  collectors  were  reading  John  Caldi- 
gate,  one  of  Anthony  Trollope's  later  novels,  which  was  a 
philatelic  mystery  story.  The  hero,  having  made  his  pile  in 
the  Australian  gold  diggings,  returned  to  England  and  mar- 
ried. But  some  bad  eggs  who  had  known  him  Down  Under 
also  came  back  and  tried  to  blackmail  him,  producing  a 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  45 

letter  purporting  to  have  been  mailed  by  him  from  Sydney 
to  another  wife  in  New  South  Wales.  A  little  postal  clerk 
turns  amateur  detective,  however,  proves  by  this  and  that 
that  the  postmark  is  faked,  remembers  that  the  New  South 
Wales  stamps  are  manufactured  in  England,  and  by  the 
little  letters  in  the  four  corners  of  the  stamp  proves  that  it 
did  not  come  into  use  until  two  years  after  the  letter  was 
supposed  to  have  been  mailed.  But  Trollope,  unfortunately 
for  his  story,  was  not  a  philatelist,  and  critics  quickly 
pointed  out  that  only  the  British  stamps  had  the  letters  in 
the  four  corners;  those  of  New  South  Wales  had  none. 

On  October  17,  1874,  eight  men— real  flesh-and-blood 
men  this  time,  mostly  from  Brooklyn— actually  met  in  New 
York  and  organized  the  National  Philatelic  Society.  Why 
"National"  can  only  be  explained  by  the  same  liking  for 
ostentation  which  led  a  boys'  stamp  club  of  1880  to  call 
themselves  The  Amateur  Virtuosos.  The  highfalutin  name 
indicates  that  John  J.  Casey  was  prominent  in  the  councils 
of  the  society.  In  fact,  by  1877  he  was  in  the  saddle  as  Presi- 
dent, while  R.  R.  Bogert  was  secretary.  But  Casey  still  had 
his  weakness  for  counterfeits,  and  by  1879  the  Society  had 
forced  him  out,  and  his  influence  was  ended.  Philately  was 
struggling  hard  to  free  itself  of  undesirable  elements,  and 
from  that  time  forward,  its  progress  was  slowly  but  steadily 
upward. 

The  racketeering  in  surcharges,  remainders  and  reprints 
by  certain  governments,  often  through  the  manipulation  of 
contractors,  was  increasing,  but  all  the  better  philatelists 
set  their  faces  firmly  against  it.  Counterfeiters  decreased  in 
number  but  became  more  skillful  as  the  warfare  on  them 
increased.  Philately  had  not  yet  become  an  exact  science, 
and  price  lists  in  the  '8o's  were  still  speckled  with  errors. 
Small,  unscrupulous  dealers  still  functioned,  though  fewer 


46  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

in  number.  Even  as  late  as  1892  Durbin  &  Hanes  re- 
ported that  they  had  bought  out  a  "large  company"  which 
had  been  running  page  ads  in  several  stamp  journals,  but 
whose  entire  stock  was  kept  in  a  cigar  box  under  the  own- 
er's bed;  and  to  consummate  the  deal  cost  Durbin  & 
Hanes  a  cool  Three  Dollars.  Some  magazines  as  late  as  1900 
printed  lists  of  "dead  beats,  frauds  and  cheats,"  both 
among  dealers  and  customers. 

In  1877  the  largest  stamp  collection  in  America  was  that 
of  "a  St.  Louis  gentleman  .  .  .  with  another  profession  to 
claim  the  great  part  of  his  time,"  as  the  St.  Louis  Times 
delicately  remarked,  perhaps  withholding  his  name  for  fear 
of  bringing  him  into  ridicule  and  weakening  the  belief  of 
clients  in  his  sanity  and  ability  as  an  attorney— for  the 
gentleman  was  John  K.  Tiffany.  The  Times  said  that  his 
collection  numbered  thirteen  thousand  varieties;  that  the 
most  paid  for  any  stamp  in  it  was  twenty-five  dollars;  "but 
he  has  been  offered  as  high  as  $100  for  a  single  five-cent 
stamp." 

When  in  1886  the  first  really  national  collectors'  organ- 
ization was  formed,  the  American  Philatelic  Association, 
Tiffany  was  unanimously  regarded  as  the  logical  choice  for 
president.  Rudolphus  R.  Bogert,  prominent  New  York 
dealer,  was  elected  vice-president,  and  S.  B.  Bradt,  secre- 
tary. A  little  later  it  was  found  advisable  to  change  the 
name  of  the  organization  to  American  Philatelic  Society; 
in  fact,  they  should  have  known  better  at  the  very  start, 
because  of  the  initials.  There  was  another,  a  notorious  anti- 
Catholic  (today  it  would  be  called  Fascist)  organization 
functioning  then,  known  as  the  American  Protective  Asso- 
ciation, and  at  the  mere  sound  of  the  letters  "A.P.A."  an 
Irishman  would  hit  the  first  person  within  reach. 

When  the  second  annual  convention  of  the  Association 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  47 

met  at  Chicago  in  August,  1887— it  is  interesting  to  note 
that  the  delegates  "represented  nearly  all  the  learned  pro- 
fessions, with  a  strong  dash  of  insurance  men  thrown  in"— 
the  Chicago  Morning  News  mirrored  public  opinion  by 
being  a  bit  facetious  at  their  expense: 

Most  of  the  Delegates  to  the  Convention  are  young 
men,  some  of  them  under  the  age  of  whiskers.  Their 
faces  are  cut  from  the  patterns  of  professional  people, 
and  their  skins  are  tanned  in  the  lawyer's  or  doctor's 
office  or  at  the  clerk's  desk.  President  J.  K.  Tiffany  is 
a  smooth-faced,  brown-mustached,  lawyer-like  gentle- 
man and  a  good  talker.  Secretary  Bradt  is  tall  and 
slender  and  bites  a  stripling  black  mustache.  E.  B. 
Sterling,  besides  having  the  finest  collection  of  United 
States  document  stamps  in  the  country,  has  an  aggre- 
gation of  blue-black  beard  that  is  as  rare  as  some  of 
his  stamps.  It  has  pre-empted  all  the  territory  between 
his  shirt  collar  and  cheek  bones,  and  throws  a  shadow 
of  transparent  pallor  over  the  upper  portion  of  his 
face.  The  peculiar  craze  that  makes  the  Convention 
possible  is  not  stamped  in  colors  on  the  Delegates' 
faces  or  even  sunk  in  their  features  by  dies.  They  look 
like  other  reasonable  people  who  would  not  give  face 
value  for  the  one  and  two-penny  Mauritius  stamps 
that  hundreds  of  wealthy  stamp  collectors  are  run- 
ning around  to  give  $4,000  for. 

A  rare  stamp  to  a  philatelist  is  like  the  winner  of  a 
Derby  to  a  horseman,  a  new  star  to  an  astronomer,  or 
a  ten-dollar  bill  to  a  reporter. 

Mr.  Sterling  brought  a  portion  of  his  collection  of 
Government  document  stamps  to  the  Convention 
and  exhibited  them.  Mr.  Sterling  was  formerly  a  bank 


48  THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS 

teller,  but  he  abandoned  his  business,  with  all  its  pos- 
sibilities and  Canada  only  a  few  hundred  miles  away, 
to  buy  and  sell  stamps. 

It  should  be  explained  to  the  present  generation  that 
we  had  no  extradition  arrangements  with  Canada  then, 
and  the  frequent  abscondings  of  our  bank  officials  to  the 
hospitality  of  the  Dominion  supplied  a  favorite  subject  for 
newspaper  jesting.  The  reporter  ended  by  saying  that  the 
delegates  spent  a  good  portion  of  their  time  in  looking 
over  the  collections  of  other  members  "and  worrying  over 
specimens  they  did  not  possess  and  could  not  buy." 

Some  other  Chicago  papers  were  more  respectful;  the 
Times,  for  example,  which  spoke  of  "This  unacknowledged 
but  painstaking  profession/'  and  the  Inter-Ocean,  which 
declared  that  "The  subject  matter  that  so  deeply  interests 
these  gentlemen  is  of  greater  practical  importance  than  the 
general  public  has  ever  realized." 

The  Association  held  its  first  exhibition  in  Boston  on 
August  13,  1888  (evidently  there  were  no  superstitious 
chaps  among  the  philatelists  of  the  Grover  Cleveland 
period),  and  its  second  in  the  Eden  Musee  in  New  York 
in  April,  1889.  Mention  of  it  was  sandwiched  in  among 
those  of  the  Musee's  more  popular  attractions: 

EDEN  MUSEE,  WAX  TABLEAUX,  JUST  ADDED  "THE 

LYON'S  BRIDE."  ERDELYI  NACZl' S  GYPSY  BAND.  POSTAGE 
STAMP  COLLECTION.  250.  DAY  AND  NIGHT.  THE  RUSSIANS, 
AJEEB,  THE  MYSTIFYING  CHESS  AUTOMATON.  ART  GAL- 
LERY FILLED  WITH  PAINTINGS. 

Among  the  exhibitors  were  A.  H.  E.  Burger,  still  one  of 
the  pillars  of  Nassau  Street  in  1939,  R.  R.  Bogert,  Henry 
C.  Needham,  John  W.  Scott  (himself),  E.  R.  Ackerman 


THEM  WAS  THE  DAYS  49 

and  other  notables  of  the  day.  Thereafter,  the  Association- 
later  Society— grew  rapidly  in  strength  and  influence. 

But  in  the  middle  '90*5,  when  the  panic  of  '93  had  given 
a  setback  to  business,  when  one  of  the  largest  philatelic 
concerns,  the  C.  H.  Mekeel  Stamp  and  Publishing  Com- 
pany, had  failed,  when  a  philatelic  pawnshop,  an  ugly  omen, 
had  been  established  in  New  York,  when  reprints  and 
remainders  were  flooding  the  market,  to  the  disgust  of  the 
more  ethical  collectors  and  dealers,  when  the  old-line  gen- 
eral collectors  were  becoming  irritated  by  specialization  and 
the  growing  tendency  of  nations  to  issue  commemoratives 
and  pictorials— by  the  dozen  then,  not  by  the  million,  as 
now— notes  of  pessimism  crept  into  editorial  and  organiza- 
tion councils,  and  some  began  wondering  whether  philately 
hadn't  seen  its  best  days  and  fallen  into  the  seventh  age  of 
man,  the  Sere  and  Yellow.  It  had  lasted  some  forty  years, 
they  pointed  out,  and  that  was  as  much  as  could  be  ex- 
pected of  any  fad.  But  these  gloomy  crystal-gazings  appar- 
ently fell  upon  deaf  ears,  for  by  1905  it  was  guessed  that 
there  must  be  half  a  million  stamp  collectors  in  the  United 
States;  undoubtedly  an  overestimate,  though  there  could 
be  no  denying  the  fact  that  their  number  had  grown  and 
was  continuing  to  grow  enormously. 


FROM   THE    GENERAL   TO    THE 
PARTICULAR 


F 


IOR    TWO   or    three    decades 

CHAPTER   FOUR  !  ^^          be_ 

. 

gan,  it  was  naturally  sup- 
posed that  a  real  he-collector  would  stop  at  nothing.  The 
world  was  his  field  and  all  was  fish  that  came  to  his  net. 
When  Oscar  Berger-Levrault,  publisher  of  the  first  stamp 
list,  ceased  collecting  in  1870— because  the  Franco-Prussian 
War  had  forced  him  to  remove  his  printing  and  engraving 
business,  with  its  four  hundred  employees,  from  Strasburg 
to  Nancy,  and  he  was  too  distracted  with  getting  a  start 
in  a  new  place  to  bother  with  a  hobby— he  sold  his  collec- 
tion, which  numbered  10,400  varieties.  In  September,  1861, 
he  had  had  only  673  stamps.  But  he  remarked  in  after  years 
that  in  1870  he  lacked  only  about  fifty  of  having  everything 
extant.  That  in  thirty  years  from  the  appearance  of  the 
first  stamp,  more  than  ten  thousand  varieties  had  appeared, 
was  an  ominous  sign;  it  indicated  that  the  philatelist  of 
the  future  who  tried  to  collect  all  countries  was  going  to 
have  an  increasingly  colossal  chore  on  his  hands.  Perhaps 
that  was  why  some  men  such  as  Mr.  W.  Hughes-Hughes, 
the  English  barrister  already  mentioned,  ceased  collecting 
about  that  time. 

Furthermore,  it  must  be  remembered  that  their  concep- 
tion of  the  word  "variety"  at  that  date  was  much  narrower 

So 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR      51 

than  that  of  today,  when  slight  flaws  and  differences  in  the 
same  type  and  same  issue  of  stamps,  scratches,  evidences  of 
plate-repair  work  and  so  on  serve  to  give  the  majority  of 
stamps  in  a  single  sheet  an  individuality  of  their  own  and 
are  therefore  considered  collectible.  Faint  nuances  in  the 
shades  of  ink  used  at  different  printings  on  the  same  stamp, 
the  growing  importance  of  sheet  margins,  with  their  several 
markings,  these  add  varieties  of  which  Berger-Levrault  and 
his  contemporaries  never  dreamed.  But  for  decades  there 
were  men  who  struggled  to  achieve  the  impossible,  and  a 
few  who  came  near  enough  to  be  classed  among  the  im- 
mortals of  philately. 

A  casual  sort  of  Birchin  Lane  gathering  of  collectors 
and  traders  had  begun  in  Paris  in  the  i86o's.  For  a  time  it 
met  in  the  gardens  of  the  Tuileries,  but  too  many  outsiders 
hung  around  and  got  in  the  way.  Finally  a  nook  behind 
some  Punch  and  Judy  marionette  stands  at  the  corner  of 
the  Avenues  Gabriel  and  Marigny,  opposite  the  President's 
palace  in  the  Champs  Elyse'es,  was  discovered,  and  there 
the  Bourse  transferred  itself  early  in  the  'yo's.  Ever  since, 
it  has  met  there  on  Thursday  afternoons  (a  school  holiday 
in  France)  and  all  day  Sunday— save  when  the  tax  collec- 
tor suddenly  appears,  and  then  it  vanishes  like  blown  steam; 
for  those  who  sell  there  have  for  years  sold  without  a 
license.  On  June  ist,  1939,  however,  the  law  divided  the 
gathering  into  two  groups;  one,  the  pure  amateurs,  mostly 
children  who  do  nothing  but  buy  or  trade  stamps  with 
each  other,  the  other  the  dealers,  who  must  now  pay  a 
two-hundred-fifty-franc  (about  $6.62)  license.  As  the  year's 
sales  of  all  the  sidewalk  dealers,  so  they  say,  amount  to  no 
more  than  ten  thousand  dollars,  the  license  fee  is  regarded 
as  ruinous,  and  there  is  talk  of  taking  the  exchange  indoors. 


52      FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR 

But  war  has  come  along  since  then,  and  Mars  and  the  tax 
combined  may  wreck  the  old  mart  for  good. 

Among  early  frequenters  of  the  Bourse  was  an  Italo- 
Austrian  youth  named  Phillippe  Ferrari  or  Ferrary,  who  had 
money  to  buy  anything  he  wanted;  a  slender  lad  with  Teu- 
tonic blue  eyes,  but  with  traces  of  his  Mediterranean  an- 
cestry in  his  countenance.  He  first  appeared  in  the  stamp 
shops  of  Paris  before  1870,  accompanied  by  his  mother,  the 
widowed  Duchess  de  Galliera.  The  founder  of  the  fortune 
had  been  a  Genoese  banker  who  wrought  so  well  among 
the  lira  that  when  he  died  he  left  to  his  son  a  goodly  seg- 
ment of  the  city  of  Genoa,  not  to  mention  stocks  and 
bonds  and  gold  and  frankincense  and  myrrh.  His  son,  pos- 
sessor of  so  much  wealth,  became,  in  the  normal  course  of 
things,  Duke  of  Galliera  and  Prince  of  Lucedio,  just  as  our 
American  millionaires  become  Doctors  of  Laws.  There  is  a 
pretty  story  to  the  effect  that  he  had  a  secret  "library"  to 
which  no  one  was  admitted,  and  to  which  during  his  life- 
time not  even  his  wife,  a  beautiful  Austrian,  had  a  key. 
After  his  death,  she  found  on  the  shelves  of  that  room 
some  three  hundred  volumes,  each  fastened  with  a  golden 
lock,  and  the  leaves  of  those  books  were  thousand-franc 
notes— three  million  francs  in  all;  from  which  it  would  ap- 
pear that  there  were  only  ten  leaves  to  each  volume— which 
seems  to  us  a  rather  prodigal  waste  of  golden  locks  and 
fine  bindings  and  shelf  space.  It  made  a  good  story  in  the 
days  when  governments  were  creditable  and  corporations 
sound,  but  it  leaves  us  cold  now. 

Anyhow,  the  Duke  and  Prince  had  what  it  takes,  and 
when  he  died  his  widow,  perhaps  not  liking  the  assorted 
odors  of  Genoa  and  seeking  a  better  ton,  went  right  up  to 
Paris  and  bought  the  mansion  in  the  Rue  de  Varenne 
which  had  been  built  in  1721  for  the  Marechal  de  Mont- 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR      53 

morency— not  that  cousin  of  Happy  Hooligan's  that  we 
used  to  see  in  the  Opper  cartoons— another  one.  When  the 
Duchess  died,  not  long  afterward,  she  left  the  mansion  to 
her  native  Austria,  but  her  young  son  Phillippe  was  to  have 
the  use  of  one  wing  for  life.  After  her  death,  the  youth 
became  the  adopted  son  of  Ritter  E.  la  Renotiere  von 
Kriegsfeld,  a  distinguished  Austrian  officer.  Some  years 
later  the  young  heir  decided  that  he  would  henceforth  be 
known  as  Phillippe  la  Renotiere,  but  after  a  few  years  more 
he  resumed  his  paternal  surname,  hooking  it  to  his  adopted 
name  with  the  German  "von,"  so  that  he  emerged  with 
the  curiously  jumbled  cognomen,  Phillippe  la  Renotiere 
von  Ferrary.  In  writing  letters  and  checks  for  Anglo-Saxon 
correspondents,  he  frequently  spelled  his  first  name 
"Philip,"  after  their  manner. 

His  unlimited  means  soon  made  him  the  world's  num- 
ber-one menace  to  all  other  collectors  who  craved  rarities, 
but  there  is  much  generosity  and  amiability  mellowing  the 
rivalry  of  philatelists,  and  Ferrary  was  not  hated  as  poison- 
ously  as  one  might  expect.  He  was  aided  in  his  collecting 
by  the  fact  that,  beginning  in  the  latter  iSyo's,  some  of 
the  great  British  general  collectors  began  selling  their 
stamps,  partly  because  some  of  them  were  growing  old, 
but  probably  in  part  because  some  of  them  began  to  have 
a  feeling  of  discouragement  at  the  thought  of  ever  catching 
up  with  the  swelling  flood  of  new  issues,  surcharges  and 
varieties,  some  of  which  were  being  deliberately  promoted 
by  certain  small  governments.  It  is  noticeable  that  some  of 
these  men,  after  selling  their  general  collections,  began 
again,  specializing  in  one  or  two  countries. 

In  1878,  Sir  Daniel  Cooper  sold  his  collection  to  Judge 
Philbrick-"Mr.  Philbrick,  Q.  C.,"  as  he  was  usually  called 
over  there— for  £3,000;  and  only  two  or  three  years  later, 


54     FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR 

Philbrick  sold  out  to  Ferrary  for  £8,000,  then  a  record  price. 
Laymen,  especially  in  America,  began  to  be  aghast  at  the 
madness  of  these  hobbyists.  "A  Frenchman  has  paid  an 
Englishman  $40,000  for  his  collection  of  old  postage 
stamps/'  wrote  a  New  York  editor,  speaking  of  the  Phil- 
brick-Ferrary  deal.  "The  Fool  Killer  ought  to  stand  in  the 
middle  of  the  English  Channel  and  kick  both  ways/'  But 
the  Fool  Killer  did  nothing  about  it,  and  in  1882,  Dr.  W.  E. 
Image,  another  eminent  British  collector,  sold  his  stamps 
to  Thomas  K.  Tapling  for  £3,000,  giving  Mr.  Tapling 
for  the  time  being  probably  the  world's  greatest  collec- 
tion—though before  Tapling  died  in  1891,  Ferrary  had  sur- 
passed him.  Tapling  left  his  collection  to  the  British  Mu- 
seum, which  put  many  fine  stamps  beyond  any  collector's 
reach  for  all  time.  By  1897  it  was  estimated  that  Ferrary 
had  spent  $1,250,000  on  his  collection,  and  he  had  become 
the  Colossus,  the  Rockefeller,  the  Prester  John  of  philately. 
For  forty  years  he  had  the  pick  of  all  the  great  collections 
that  came  on  the  market,  and  he  never  failed  to  take  it. 
When  a  good  stamp  fell  into  his  collection,  it  was  spoken 
of  as  having  gone  to  the  graveyard,  for  he  intended  leaving 
the  whole  thing  to  the  Imperial  Post  Museum  at  Berlin. 
Ferrary  became  embittered  at  France  and  was  naturalized 
as  a  Swiss  subject  in  1908.  When  war  broke  out  in  1914, 
he  was  in  Holland.  He  returned  to  France  early  in  1916, 
but  soon  went  thence  to  Switzerland.  When  he  tried  to 
return  to  Paris,  the  French  authorities  would  not  permit  it, 
well  knowing  his  Austrian  sympathies  and  his  grudge  at 
France.  Within  a  few  months  he  was  dead.  As  to  the 
clause  in  his  will  bequeathing  the  collection  to  the  museum 
in  Berlin,  the  French  Government— with  the  charming 
disregard  of  personal  wishes  and  rights  peculiar  to  countries 
in  a  state  of  war— just  laughed  that  off  and  seized  the  col- 


An  American  post  office  of  1860. 


From  the  Collection  of  Philip  H.  Ward,  Jr. 

A  $20,000  page— The  United  States  "August  issue/'  1861,  all 
unused:  one  of  only  about  eight  complete  sets  known.  The 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR      55 

lection.  Stanley  Gibbons,  Ltd.,  of  London,  offered  France 
twelve  million  francs  for  it,  but  all  offers  were  refused,  and 
the  collection  was  sold  at  auction  in  fourteen  sales  dis- 
tributed over  the  period  from  1921  to  1925.  Thus  the  great- 
est mass  of  stamps  in  the  universe,  including  most  of  the 
major  rarities  and  an  enormous  number  of  duplicates,  was 
broken  up,  undoubtedly  to  the  great  benefit  of  philately, 
and  passed  into  many  hands.  A  number  of  the  rarities  were 
bought  by  Arthur  Hind,  a  rich  manufacturer  of  Utica, 
N.  Y.,  who  had  to  a  certain  extent  succeeded  Tiffany  as 
America's  greatest  general  collector. 

But  neither  Ferrary  nor  Hind  endeavored  to  keep  fully 
abreast  of  the  avalanche  of  commemorative  and  pictorial 
stamps  which  rushed  forth  in  their  latter  years,  and  even 
Hind  was  to  some  extent  a  specialist.  He  had  what  has 
been  called  the  world's  greatest  collection  of  United  States 
and  Confederate  stamps,  but  there  were  other  countries 
which  he  neglected.  A  few  general  collectors,  such  as  Lord 
Camoys  of  Henley  and  Thomas  Clark  of  Edinburgh  held 
out  in  Britain  until  well  into  the  twentieth  century.  F.  W. 
Ayer,  a  young  man  of  Bangor,  Maine,  started  building  a 
great  collection  at  lightning  speed  towards  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  but  his  father  threatened  to  disin- 
herit him  if  he  didn't  stop  wasting  so  much  money,  where- 
upon he  closed  out  large  blocks  of  his  finest  stamps  to  the 
Gibbons  Company  of  London,  and  his  collection  declined 
even  more  rapidly  than  it  had  grown. 

A  writer  in  the  American  Journal  of  Philately  in  1869-70, 
signing  himself  "Cosmopolitan,"  was  a  pioneer  in  the  idea 
of  specialization.  He  suggested  the  gathering  of  Presiden- 
tial and  Congressional  franked  covers,  and  a  few  months 
later  urged  that  collectors  go  in  for  United  States  Revenues, 
then  still  untouched.  His  hint  as  to  franks  unfortunately 


56     FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR 

went  unheeded  for  many  years,  but  revenues  were  taken 
up  seriously  not  so  long  after  that. 

Very  early  in  the  history  of  philately,  the  physical  pecu- 
liarities of  and  variations  in  stamps  began  to  be  studied, 
and  as  time  went  on,  came  to  be  regarded  by  a  few  as  legiti- 
mate varieties.  "Dr.  Magnus"  (Dr.  J.  A.  Legrand,  noted 
French  pundit)  was  writing  on  watermarks  in  stamp  paper 
as  early  as  1865.  Perforations,  the  thicknesses  of  paper, 
cracked  plates  and  variations  in  the  stamps  of  a  sheet  were 
observed  by  some  collectors  in  the  'yo's,  but  the  man  who 
collected  them  as  varieties  usually  had  to  endure  some 
jeering  and  was  regarded  as  a  crank.  European  collectors 
were  pursuing  these  little  oddities  with  much  zest,  but 
what  could  you  expect  of  an  effete  continent  like  that?  A 
writer  in  the  Philatelic  Monthly  in  1880,  more  advanced 
than  many  of  his  fellows,  recommended  that  "the  Amer- 
ican school  of  philatelists"  collect  the  distinct  varieties  of 
perforation,  such  as  perforated,  rouletted  and  imperforate, 
and  instances  where  there  is  a  marked  difference  in  the 
size  of  perforations,  as  in  the  Austrian  stamps,  but  go  no 
farther.  Next,  he  suggested  collecting  stamps  both  water- 
marked and  unwatermarked,  only  the  extreme  variations 
in  paper,  such  as  very  thick  or  very  thin,  "and  distinct  varie- 
ties of  colors,  dies  and  types."  This,  he  thought,  would  be 
"extensive  enough  to  suit  the  majority  of  collectors,  and 
still  would  not  be  as  perplexing  and  multitudinous  as  the 
European  school,"  whose  attention  to  minute  details  was 
"carrying  the  thing  too  far." 

Naturally,  his  advice  was  susceptible  to  a  wide  latitude  in 
interpretation.  And  of  course  collectors  nowadays  are  carry- 
ing such  things  farther  than  any  expert  of  1880  ever 
dreamed  of  as  a  possibility;  which  doesn't  mean  that  any 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR      57 

new  collector  need  feel  that  he  must  go  in  for  such  particu- 
larity in  order  to  have  a  lot  of  fun  out  of  philately. 

Collectors  thought  more  and  more  seriously  of  paper 
and  perforations  after  1880,  and  also  began  to  accumulate 
whole  sheets.  The  rapid  multiplication  of  collectible  items 
bred  a  growing  tendency  to  specialize  during  the  next  two 
decades.  Many  went  in  strongly  for  American  stamps— 
among  them  Hiram  E.  Beats  of  Flemington,  New  Jersey, 
whose  specialties  at  one  time  and  another  were  American 
postage  and  revenues,  and  the  provisional  stamps  issued  by 
certain  postmasters  in  1845-46,  before  our  national  adhe- 
sive stamps  were  issued,  and  by  many  Southern  postmasters 
in  1861,  before  the  Confederate  Government  could  get  its 
own  new  stamps  off  the  presses. 

George  H.  Watson,  a  New  York  broker,  was  making  a 
specialty  of  post  cards  in  the  '90*5,  of  which  he  was  said  to 
have  one  of  the  finest  collections  in  existence.  W.  Sell- 
schopp  of  San  Francisco  even  concentrated  on  African  post 
cards!  And  in  New  York  City  there  was  a  post-card  society. 
Charles  B.  Corwin  was  one  of  the  earliest  in  America  to 
take  up  perforations  and  watermarks  in  a  big  way.  Mr. 
Corwin,  incidentally,  was  the  leading  spirit  in  the  organiza- 
tion in  1896  of  the  Collectors  Club  of  New  York,  the 
greatest  philatelic  society  in  this  hemisphere,  which  has 
members  from  coast  to  coast,  and  even  in  foreign  countries. 
Gilbert  E.  Jones,  one  of  the  owners  of  the  New  York 
Times,  was  a  specialist  in  unperforated  stamps,  particu- 
larly in  pairs,  of  which  he  was  said  to  have  twelve  hundred 
varieties! 

Before  the  end  of  the  century,  the  idea  of  collecting 
used  stamps  on  the  entire  envelope  had  arrived.  John  F. 
Seybold,  a  business  man  of  Syracuse,  N.  Y.,  has  been  given 
credit  for  introducing  it.  He  began  collecting  before  1870, 


58     FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR 

and  quite  early  in  his  career  developed  a  fancy  for  the 
whole  envelope.  Dealers  laughed  at  his  eccentricity  for 
years— principally  because  they  had  so  few  entire  covers  to 
offer  him— but  by  1890  they  were  beginning  to  respect  the 
notion,  for  others  had  taken  it  up.  The  stamped  envelope 
aided  in  this  trend.  At  first  and  for  many  years  collectors 
just  saved  a  square  corner  cut  out  of  such  envelopes.  Some 
dealers  in  1877  were  paying  fifteen  cents  per  hundred  for 
the  one-  and  two-centers  cut  square,  and  fifty  cents  per 
hundred  for  the  three-centers.  But  in  1885  it  was  remarked 
in  the  Philatelic  World  that  "The  collection  of  envelope 
stamps  seems  to  be  going  out  of  fashion.  .  .  .  Many  are 
taking  them  out  of  their  collections  and  getting  rid  of 
them  at  any  price.  They  either  do  not  collect  them  at  all, 
or  insist  on  having  the  entire  envelope." 

Thereafter,  collectors  began  to  see  the  historical  and 
human  interest  in  the  whole  envelope.  The  trouble  was 
that  at  the  beginning,  we  were  too  young  a  nation,  the 
stamp  was  still  too  new  a  thing,  collectors  were  still  too 
amateurish  to  be  aware  of  connotations.  But  by  1900,  the 
peeling  of  stamps  of  any  consequence  off  the  envelopes 
had  practically  ceased  to  be  done  by  any  real  collector; 
and  by  that  time,  some  had  begun  to  be  interested  in  let- 
ters of  the  ante-stamp  era;  quaint  things  of  all  sizes  and 
all  sorts  of  papers,  with  the  name  of  the  sending  office,  the 
amount  of  postage  and  the  words  "Paid"  or  "Collect" 
hand-stamped  or  scrawled  here  and  there  around  the  ad- 
dress by  the  postmasters,  sometimes  one  or  another  of 
these  things  omitted,  sometimes  other  data  added,  all  a 
haphazard,  delightful  jumble  to  puzzle  over,  and  some  mys- 
teries of  which  haven't  been  solved  to  this  day. 

Furthermore,  the  collecting  of  the  entire  cover  aided  in 
the  preservation  of  the  stamp.  In  the  nineteenth  century, 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR      59 

before  tweezers  or  glassine  had  been  thought  of,  stamps 
were  carried  in  wallets,  pocket  notebooks  and  envelopes, 
mounted,  dismounted  and  remounted  in  albums  and  ban- 
died about  by  sweaty  or  greasy  fingers  until  many  fine  old 
stamps  were  ruined  or  greatly  reduced  in  value.  Modern 
philately  is  much  better  equipped;  tweezers  take  the  place 
of  oily  epidermis,  while  the  invention  of  glassine  or  cello- 
phane has  been  a  godsend.  Loose  stamps  and  whole  covers 
are  now  carried  about  in  transparent  envelopes,  and  many 
a  rarity  retires  for  the  rest  of  its  days  to  the  security  of 
such  a  casing,  seldom  or  never  thereafter  to  be  touched  by 
human  hands.  Whole  album  leaves  in  some  of  the  finer 
collections  are  immured  in  such  coverings  and  their  seren- 
ity never  disturbed. 

Surcharges,  the  overprinting  of  stamps  with  different 
values,  colony  names,  and  so  forth,  became  numerous  be- 
tween 1880  and  1890—80  numerous,  especially  in  the 
French  colonies,  that  there  were  complaints  that  the 
French  were  racketeering  in  them  at  the  expense  of  phi- 
latelists. Old  conservatives  like  J.  W.  Scott  and  others  re- 
fused to  recognize  a  surcharge  as  a  variety  or  collectible. 
Scott  read  a  paper  denouncing  them  before  the  Brooklyn 
Philatelic  Club  in  1896  and  worked  up  so  much  feeling 
that  the  Anti-Surcharge  Association  was  formed,  with 
ninety-four  charter  members,  which  roster  increased  within 
six  months  to  235.  The  "radical"  group,  which  included 
men  like  John  N.  Luff,  later  a  great  historian  of  United 
States  stamps,  R.  R.  Bogert,  Henry  Caiman  and  others, 
refused  to  enter  the  society,  as  did  others  who  had  fine 
collections  of  surcharges. 

Scott  and  others  of  the  old  school  disapproved  for  many 
years  of  the  collection  of  perforations,  watermarks,  paper 
variations  and  other  vain  gewgaws,  and  were  advocates  of 


60     FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR 

space-filling:  that  is,  if  you  couldn't  get  a  genuine  stamp 
and  a  good  stamp  of  a  certain  kind,  you  should  fill  its  space 
in  your  album  with  a  proof  of  it,  a  reprint  (even  a  counter- 
feit, some  said,  though  letting  it  be  known  as  such),  or 
with  the  best  specimen  you  could  get,  whether  it  be  ragged, 
torn,  dirty,  greasy  or  canceled  almost  into  indistinguish- 
ability.  But  the  present-day  collector  says:  "A  real  stamp 
and  a  reasonably  good  stamp,  or  none." 

Buying  of  stamps  in  sheets  inevitably  led  to  conscious- 
ness of  the  printers'  markings  on  the  margins— the  little 
arrowhead  which  marks  the  middle  of  the  sheet,  for  ex- 
ample. The  first  thing  the  old  conservatives  knew,  younger 
and  more  rabid  fans  were  accumulating  "arrow  pairs"  of 
the  new  and  recent  stamps.  One  finds  sneers  at  this  fad  in 
the  magazines  of  1889.  Just  a  passing  fancy,  it  was  thought; 
but  ask  any  dyed-in-the-wool  collector  about  it  today! 

Producers  of  stamps  number  on  the  margin  each  plate 
from  which  sheets  of  stamps  are  printed  as  long  as  it  is 
serviceable;  then  a  new  one,  with  the  next  consecutive 
number,  is  put  into  service.  There  naturally  arose  in  the 
middle  '8o's  a  hankering  for  a  specimen  of  each  plate  num- 
ber, whence  arose  the  collection  of  plate-number  strips  or 
blocks.  Mr.  Beats  remembers  that  he  began  gathering  them 
in  1887,  when  he  was  fifteen.  The  postmaster  in  his  home 
town  would  just  tear  off  the  whole  strip  of  stamps  from  the 
edge  of  the  sheet  where  the  number  appeared  and  save  it 
for  him;  and  young  Hiram  Deats  was  one  boy  who  could 
afford  to  indulge  in  such  a  hobby.  When  the  Bureau  of 
Engraving  and  Printing  was  set  up  in  1893  an<^  *°°^  over 
the  making  of  our  stamps  from  the  private  bank-note  com- 
panies, it  began  numbering  its  stamp  plates  from  i,  and 
that  gave  added  stimulus  to  the  plate-number  fad.  How- 
ever, after  ten  years  of  it,  the  numbers  were  piling  up  so 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR     61 

that  there  was  a  slight  reaction,  a  feeling  of  uneasiness  at 
the  thought  of  trying  to  cope  with  the  situation.  The  writer 
of  the  Northwestern  Notes  in  the  Weekly  Philatelic  Era 
of  1904  remarks  that  "The  plate  number  fad  is  about  dead 
in  the  Northwest.  What's  the  sense  in  collecting  a  lot  of 
paper  with  a  figure  on  it,  which  never  has  and  never  will 
be  intended  for  postal  or  philatelical  purposes?  There  are 
enough  varieties  without  this  senseless  craze."  Which 
proves  that  no  man,  living  or  dead,  ever  has  been  or  ever 
will  be  able  to  predict  trends  in  human  fancy  and  conduct; 
and  yet  certain  nervy  chaps  go  right  on  doing  it  and  even 
get  paid  for  it— H.  G.  Wells,  for  example. 

The  plating  of  stamps  was  another  epidemic  which  ap- 
peared among  advanced  collectors  in  Europe  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  century  and  presently  spread  to  this  country. 
To  understand  it,  one  must  be  aware  that  it  is  impossible 
for  human  beings  to  make  any  two  things  precisely  alike. 
Every  stamp  on  a  sheet,  whether  there  be  one  hundred  or 
two  hundred  of  them,  will  have  its  variations,  though  they 
may  be  almost  indescribably  slight  nowadays,  from  every 
other  stamp.  In  earlier  decades,  the  variations  were  often 
more  considerable.  The  problem  is  to  identify  every  stamp 
on  the  sheet,  its  location,  if  possible  to  get  a  specimen  of 
it;  in  other  words,  to  reconstruct  the  sheet.  The  difficulty 
of  doing  this  with  some  old  stamp  issued  back  there  in  the 
1840*8  or  'jo's  may  be  faintly  imagined  by  the  uninitiated. 
And  yet  the  heart  of  the  beginner  need  not  fail  nor  his 
brain  reel  at  the  thought.  You  should  see  some  essays  at 
reconstructing  plates  of  the  Great  Britain  "Penny  Black" 
of  1840,  the  Adam  of  all  stamps,  which  we  observed  in  an 
exhibition  the  other  day,  the  work  of  three  boys,  Andrew, 
Billy  and  Jack  Heinemann  of  New  York,  aged  ten,  thirteen 
and  fifteen  respectively.  There  were  many  pairs,  a  block  of 


62      FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR 

four  and  a  number  of  covers— and  some  of  the  sheets  were 
not  far  from  completion.  What  those  boys  can  do,  any 
adult  with  brains  enough  to  balance  a  checkbook  can  do, 
provided  he  has  the  inclination,  perseverance  and  a  little 
money. 

Plating  had  begun  in  America  even  in  the  '8o's,  for  it  was 
before  1885  that  E.  Harrison  Sanford,  a  noted  collector  of 
the  period,  was  trying  to  plate  the  rare  Brattleboro  post- 
master provisional  stamp— one  of  the  most  difficult  jobs  of 
all,  though  the  original  sheet  contained  only  ten  stamps. 
The  first  Brattleboro  that  Sanford  bought  cost  him  fifty 
dollars,  and  he  bought  every  copy  that  came  on  the  market, 
nearly  always  at  a  higher  price,  until  he  had  six.  The  last 
one  cost  him  a  hundred  and  twenty-five.  He  decided  that 
his  own  buying  was  raising  the  price,  and  so  ceased  his 
attempt.  That  stamp  today  is  quoted  in  the  catalogues  at 
$2,250  if  on  the  original  cover,  or  $1,250  off  it! 

Those  who  know  say  that  the  greatest  of  the  platers 
were  Leslie  Hausberg,  a  Briton,  Charles  Lathrop  Pack  and 
Dr.  Carroll  Chase,  Americans.  All  began  before  1900  and 
continued  until  well  into  the  present  century.  All  showed 
the  tendency  of  the  times  by  specializing  in  their  collec- 
tions. Hausberg  sold  his  collection  of  Victoria,  the  southern 
Australian  colony,  to  King  George  V  for  something  like 
ten  thousand  pounds.  Pack,  remembered  by  the  lay  public 
as  a  great  forest  conservationist,  was  said  to  have  the  finest 
collection  of  British  North  American  ever  brought  together. 
He  also  collected  Cape  of  Good  Hope,  some  of  the  Aus- 
tralian colonies  and  South  American  countries.  George  V 
once  wrote  him  a  four-page  letter,  all  in  his  own  hand, 
enclosing  some  of  his  early  Victoria  stamps  and  asking  Mr. 
Pack's  help  in  plating  them. 

As  to  Dr.  Carroll  Chase,  a  Brooklyn  physician,  a  story 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR     63 

told  by  Walter  S.  Scott,  son  of  }.  W.  Scott  and  himself 
one  of  the  eminent  figures  in  philately  these  many  years 
past,  will  be  significant.  Mr.  Scott  says  that  thirty-five  or 
forty  years  ago  he  lunched  one  day  with  George  R.  Tuttle, 
a  prominent  New  York  stamp  dealer,  and  Tuttle  remarked 
in  the  course  of  the  meal,  "That  man  Chase  is  crazy;  just 
plumb  crazy." 

"What  are  the  symptoms?"  asked  Scott. 

"Why,  he's  buying  these  three-cent  U.  S.  1 851*8  at  thirty 
cents  a  hundred,"  replied  Tuttle,  "and  sitting  up  until  two 
or  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  studying  them."  The 
sequel,  Mr.  Scott  says,  that  what  with  plating,  finding  varia- 
tions and  getting  its  full  biological  history,  Chase  made  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  off  that  one  stamp.  He's  been 
retired  and  living  in  Paris  these  several  years  past,  and  no 
doubt  that  humble,  ugly  little  three-center  contributed  in 
no  small  degree  to  his  present  comfort— which  should  be 
verbum  sap  to  the  present-day  collector  or  the  layman  who 
is  looking  for  a  hobby  that  won't  be  a  total  loss. 

By  1890  some  authorities  were  declaring  that  "speciali- 
zation is  necessary  to  the  life  of  philately."  But  by  1900 
others  were  wailing  that  it  was  killing  philately;  all  this  talk 
about  thick  and  thin  papers,  watermarks,  perforations,  sur- 
charges, cracked  plates  and  such  was  scaring  possible  neo- 
phytes away.  Score  another  error  for  the  conservatives  and 
pessimists.  Specialties  have  proved  to  be  the  backbone  of 
stamp  collecting. 

It  is  entertaining,  too,  to  find  a  collector  writing  to  a 
stamp  magazine  in  1875  to  propound  the  staggering  ques- 
tion, "What  shall  we  do  when  our  collections  are  com- 
plete?" Fancy  that!  A  quarter  century  later  the  tune  was 
different.  So  many  new  issues— they  seemed  many  then!— 
were  pouring  out,  so  many  varieties  were  being  found  in  a 


64     FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR 

single  plate,  so  many  errors  and  other  rarities  were  becom- 
ing almost  unattainable  save  by  a  few,  that  some  Cassan- 
dras  were  now  wailing  that  it  would  be  impossible  ever  to 
complete  their  collections.  To  such  pessimists  Mekeel's 
Stamp  Collector  very  wisely  retorted  in  1905: 

The  word  "completeness"  ought  to  be  expunged  for 
all  time  from  the  philatelic  vocabulary.  Of  course  the 
general  collector  cannot  hope  to  attain  completeness. 
Who  wants  to?  Who  would  think  of  it  at  all,  as  a 
thing  to  be  desired,  if  the  stamp  press  did  not  con- 
tinually bewail  and  moan  over  the  fact  that  complete- 
ness is  now  impossible.  Of  course  it  is  impossible! 
Why  waste  further  words  on  the  matter? 

Why,  indeed!  One  of  Mr.  Beats'  favorite  sayings  is  "The 
fun  is  in  the  chase;  not  in  the  attainment."  What  would 
there  be  left  for  the  hobbyist  to  do  if  he  completed  his 
collection?  Life  would  become  purposeless.  Though  it  may 
never  occur  to  him,  "Excelsior"  is  always  his  motto.  There 
is  always  something  farther  ahead,  some  Ultima  Thule, 
some  purple  islet  of  perfection  never  to  be  reached,  but 
which  to  strive  for  is  the  chief  joy  of  life.  To  prove  our 
point,  take  the  sad  case  of  a  British  philatelist,  Mann,  who 
bought  the  great  collection  of  European  stamps  made  by 
M.  P.  Castle,  which,  combined  with  what  he  had  already, 
made  his  collection  so  nearly  complete  that  he  could  add 
little  or  nothing  to  it,  and  so  lost  interest  in  Europe  and 
sold  everything  to  Stanley  Gibbons,  Ltd.,  in  1906  for  £30,- 
ooo.  He  found  some  compensating  balm  thereafter,  how- 
ever, in  making  new,  great  collections  of  the  British  colo- 
nies and  other  countries. 

Arthur  Hind— whom  we  shall  speak  of  again  later— and 
J.  Insley  Blair  were  two  of  the  last  great  general  collectors 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR     65 

on  the  continent.  Both  died  not  so  long  ago.  Their  leading 
contemporaries  all  restricted  their  collections  in  some  way 
or  other.  There  was  E.  R.  Ackerman,  for  example,  New 
Jersey  congressman— usually  spoken  of  as  Senator  Acker- 
man,  because  he  had  also  served  in  the  New  Jersey  State 
Senate— who  collected  only  the  countries  he  had  visited; 
but  before  he  became  too  old  to  travel,  these  numbered 
more  than  one  hundred!  He  never  got  around  to  Australia, 
so  that  entire  continent,  several  of  the  isles  of  the  sea  and 
a  little  backwoods  state  here  and  there  did  not  appear 
among  his  stamps.  Harold  D.  Watson,  New  York  attorney, 
claims  to  be  a  general  collector  with  certain  minor  excep- 
tions. He  began  collecting  in  1879,  and  though  for  a  few 
decades,  he  says,  he  tolerated  and  included  new  political 
units  as  they  appeared,  when  it  comes  to  Fiume,  Eritrea, 
Cyrenaica,  North  Ingermanland,  Tannou  Touva,  Azerba- 
jian,  Hellandgone  and  these  other  little  upstart  Pinocchios 
of  the  present  turbulent  century,  he  just  ignores  them. 

In  the  past  three  decades,  one  frequently  finds  collec- 
tions bounded  by  the  year  1900.  The  late  Charles  Curie, 
one  of  America's  great,  would  have  only  nineteenth-century 
stamps  of  all  countries.  William  E.  Hawkins,  also  dead, 
went  a  step  farther  and  demanded  nothing  but  nineteenth- 
century  unused.  On  the  other  side  of  the  line  is  Mrs.  Caro- 
line Prentiss  Cromwell,  who  has  admittedly  the  finest 
twentieth-century  collection— all  stages,  used  and  unused, 
sheets,  blocks,  errors  and  varieties— in  existence.  But  even 
she,  disconcerted  by  the  swelling  tide  of  made-to-sell 
stamps  now  sweeping  over  the  world,  has  ceased  buying 
the  new  issues  during  the  past  two  or  three  years. 

William  Thorne  of  New  York,  a  semi-invalid,  had  a  fine 
general  collection  in  the  '8o's  and  '90*8,  but  thinking  him- 
self wearied  with  the  strain  of  pursuing  rarities,  he  sold  out. 


66     FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR 

Finding,  however,  that  his  health  declined  thereafter,  he 
began  again,  and  this  time  would  have  nothing  but  blocks 
of  four.  Many  speak  of  him  as  the  originator  of  this  type 
of  collecting.  It  was,  moreover,  the  belief  of  those  who 
knew  him  best  that  his  interest  in  stamps  prolonged  his 
life  by  many  years.  After  him,  George  H.  Worthington, 
Ohio  traction  magnate,  who  specialized  in  several  coun- 
tries, was  most  noted  for  his  blocks  of  four  and  unused 
specimens.  Of  the  Crocker  brothers  of  San  Francisco,  kins- 
men of  one  of  the  Pacific  Railroad  builders,  Henry  J.  built 
great  collections  of  Hawaii  and  Japan.  The  latter  was  lost 
in  the  mighty  earthquake  and  fire  of  1906,  but  the  Hawaiis 
had  been  taken  to  London  for  an  exhibition  and  so  es- 
caped. William  H.  Crocker  was  strong  on  America  and 
Australia.  H.  J.  Duveen  had  the  most  nearly  complete  col- 
lection of  British  Guiana  in  existence,  but  even  lacked  the 
1856  rarity,  the  unique  error  which  has  become  the  Koh-i- 
Noor  of  philately.  Henry  G.  Mandel,  long  connected  with 
the  American  Bank  Note  Company,  had,  as  a  natural  re- 
sult, a  remarkable  collection  of  proofs. 

In  an  article,  "Collecting  the  Unfashionable/'  John  N. 
Luff  in  1898  called  attention  to  "regions  unexplored"  by 
American  collectors  in  South  America,  Africa,  Asia  and  the 
Pacific— and  some  thereafter  followed  his  advice.  But  there 
were  other  and  even  more  thrilling  terrae  inoognirae  nearer 
home  which  he  failed  to  mention;  the  Indian  Territory,  for 
example,  that  strangest  political  unit  in  our  history,  of 
which  Dr.  Chase  made  such  a  remarkable  collection,  in- 
cluding many  covers  of  the  pre-stamp  era;  and  the  Texas 
Republic,  which  Christian  Dull  of  Pennsylvania  and  Harry 
M.  Konwiser  of  New  York  have  gone  into  in  a  searching 
way. 

And  thus  the  special  gradually  but  steadily  took  the  place 


FROM  GENERAL  TO  PARTICULAR     67 

of  the  general.  Today  it  has  reached  a  point  which  to  the 
fathers  of  philately  would  have  seemed  worse  than  fan- 
tastic. There  are  those  who  collect  only  air-mail  stamps, 
and  dealers  who  handle  nothing  else;  some  who  center  on 
Zeppelin-carried  covers;  others  who  go  in  for  the  thousand 
and  one  ramifications  of  the  postmark  and  cancellation 
category,  which  we  shall  survey  in  a  later  chapter.  The  new 
commemorative  and  pictorial  stamps,  irritating  as  they  are 
to  old-line  philatelists,  have  opened  up  a  vast  new  field  of 
ideas,  both  to  beginner  and  seasoned  collector.  Today  the 
only  general  collectors  are  the  kids  just  emerging  from 
rompers,  to  whom  a  stamp  from  any  part  of  the  world  is 
a  treasure— though  even  they  now  begin  specializing  at  a 
comparatively  early  age.  The  best  authorities  say  that  there 
is  not  a  serious  adult  philatelist  today  who  is  trying  for  a 
real  general  collection,  omitting  nothing.  That  has  become 
a  Jovian  feat  which  no  one  in  his  right  mind  cares  to  at- 
tempt. 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 


IHE  FIRM  of  Perkins,  Bacon 

CHAPTER  FIVE  '  ! 

&     Fetch      of      London 


Ti 


printed  England's  and  the 
world's  first  adhesive  stamps.  Curiously  enough,  the  con- 
cern was  founded  by  a  Boston  Yankee,  Jacob  Perkins,  who 
went  over  to  England  in  1819  to  compete  for  the  bank- 
note contract  of  the  Bank  of  England.  He  first  took  in  two 
partners  named  Fairman  and  Heath,  and  by  1840  had 
added  Bacon  and  Fetch.  Perkins's  daughter,  by  the  way, 
married  Bacon.  After  1852  the  firm  was  Perkins,  Bacon  & 
Company,  and  there  it  is  to  this  day.  Their  original  bid  on 
the  stamp  job,  made  in  December,  1839,  quoted  eight- 
pence  per  thousand,  provided  the  paper  was  furnished 
them.  It  finally  came  down  to  y>^d,  including  gumming 
and  plates,  which  was  possible  because  so  many  more  let- 
ters were  mailed  than  anybody  had  expected.  Next  it  was 
reduced  to  6y2d  and  then  to  4^d,  which  price  continued 
until  the  contract  expired  in  1880.  During  the  first  fifteen 
years  alone,  the  firm  supplied  three  billion  stamps  to  the 
government. 

But  worthy  competition  arose  in  the  United  States  and 
American  firms  even  found  jobs  in  the  British  colonies. 
When  the  American  Bank  Note  Company  engraved  the 
Nova  Scotia  stamp  of  1860,  bearing  the  profile  of  Queen 

68 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  69 

Victoria,  some  English  editors  generously  admitted  it  to  be 
the  world's  most  beautiful  stamp,  and  one  even  called  it 
"the  Queen  of  stamps."  The  condition  is  reversed  now,  and 
the  old  engravers  across  the  water  are  doing  on  the  whole 
rather  better  work  than  our  Bureau  of  Engraving  and 
Printing. 

Of  course  every  stamp  design  must  go  through  a  long 
process  of  preliminary  sketches  which  are  criticized  by  this, 
that  and  the  other  governmental  official  until  finally  some- 
thing is  agreed  upon  and  a  finished  drawing  and  die  made; 
then  there  are  proofs  taken  in  various  colors,  perhaps  a 
change  or  two  made  in  the  die,  perhaps  the  whole  die 
thrown  out  and  a  new  one  made,  in  some  cases  the  whole 
idea  finally  rejected  and  the  job  begun  all  over  again  with 
new  sketches.  All  these  sketches  and  proofs  are  an  impor- 
tant part  of  the  life  history  of  the  stamp,  and  the  collec- 
tion of  them,  when  possible,  is  an  interesting  and  impor- 
tant branch  of  philately.  The  Earl  of  Crawford  had  by 
1900  formed  a  magnificent  collection  of  this  sort,  tracing 
almost  every  American  stamp  design  to  its  ante-natal  stage, 
sometimes  even  to  the  first  rough  pencil  sketch.  Thereafter 
he  showed  every  stage  in  its  development;  he  followed  it 
through  its  period  of  use,  showing  the  varying  shades  of 
the  different  printings,  the  obliterations  and  changes,  the 
reissues,  reprintings  and  forgeries.  He  had  equally  fine  col- 
lections of  the  sort  for  Great  Britain  and  Italy. 

The  engravers  and  printers  in  those  private  establish- 
ments in  early  days  thought  nothing  of  striking  off  a  few 
proofs  in  the  various  colors  for  themselves,  just  as  keep- 
sakes. As  collectors  became  more  interested  in  such  items, 
the  employees  of  the  engraving  companies  were  easily  per- 
suaded to  run  off  from  the  government  dies  entrusted  to 
them  a  few  proofs  for  collector  acquaintances.  The  govern- 


7o  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

ments  became  more  rigid  in  their  demands  that  their  dies 
be  protected,  and  the  giving  away  of  proofs  in  foreign  shops 
became  rare  by  1900.  Of  course  the  United  States  Bureau 
of  Engraving  and  Printing  forbids  the  private  taking  of 
proofs,  and  how  so  many  get  into  collectors'  hands  is  a 
dark  mystery.  When  an  old  English  engraver,  Herbert 
Bourne,  died  in  1907,  collectors  found  with  anguish  that, 
faithful  to  the  government's  wishes,  he  had  destroyed  most 
of  his  old  proofs  and  essays;  but  Fred  J.  Melville,  noted 
philatelic  publicist,  was  able  to  lay  hands  upon  some  thirty 
or  forty  that  were  left. 

The  story  of  the  mechanics  of  our  first  stamp  issue  was 
told  to  a  reporter  in  1897  by  W.  T.  Silby,  then  84  years 
of  age,  who  had  been,  in  Polk's  Administration,  the  special 
agent  of  the  Post  Office  Department  sent  to  New  York  to 
superintend  the  issuing  of  our  first  two  stamps.  Cave  John- 
son was  then  Postmaster-General,  and  Rawdon,  Wright, 
Hatch  &  Edson  was  the  firm  that  produced  those  stamps 
of  1847.  The  first  order  was  for  sixty-five  thousand  dollars' 
worth  of  the  fives  and  tens.  After  the  printing,  the  plates 
were  enclosed  in  large  envelopes,  sealed  with  R.,  W.,  H. 
&  E.'s  seal  on  one  end,  and  Silby's  on  the  other,  and  the 
envelopes  deposited  in  the  New  York  Custom  House.  Be- 
fore leaving  the  city,  Silby  left  four  thousand  dollars'  worth 
of  the  stamps  with  the  New  York  Post  Office;  stopped  in 
Philadelphia  and  left  three  thousand  dollars'  worth  with 
the  postmaster  there,  and  took  the  rest  to  Washington. 
Within  a  short  time,  the  issue  was  so  nearly  exhausted  that 
a  much  larger  printing  was  ordered. 

There  were  comparatively  few  changes  made  in  the  first 
two  decades  of  our  stamps.  Now  and  then  a  postmaster- 
general  would  come  in  who  wanted  to  see  a  new  design 
produced  during  his  incumbency,  but  this  didn't  happen 


SECOND 


ISSUE, 1871 


THIRD   SERIES,  1872 


From  Philadelphia  collections,  courtesy  Philip  H.  Ward,  Jr. 

United  States  revenue  inverted  centers,  including  the  unique 
25  cent  unused,  and  (bottom  center)  the  only  known  unused 


.  «-.K.  ,V1?V:!"»» 


From  the  Collection  of  Philip  H.  Ward,  /r. 

Inverted  center  stamps  of  the  world,  including  the  Argentine 
10  pesos,  the  Bolivian  air  mail,  the  Canal  Zone  i  centesimo 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  71 

often,  and  one  idea  always  held;  the  stamps  always  pre- 
sented portraits  of  deceased  statesmen,  with  Washington's 
greatly  predominating,  and  always  on  the  three-center 
which  carried  the  ordinary  letter.  Then  in  1869  came  that 
revolutionary  series  with  pony-express  riders,  locomotives 
and  other  novelties,  some  of  them  in  two  colors.  It  de- 
lighted the  stamp  collectors,  but  upset  many  conservatives 
and  all  Democratic  editors  terribly.  One  thing  not  generally 
known  is  that  it  was  first  intended  to  use  a  picture  of  the 
surrender  of  Burgoyne  at  Saratoga  on  the  bi-colored  thirty- 
cent  stamp,  but  fear  of  hurting  British  sensibilities  arose, 
and  at  the  last  moment  this  was  eliminated  and  the  hasty 
concoction  of  eagle,  shield  and  flags— which  was  so  derided 
by  certain  critics  and  which,  when  one  color  was  inverted, 
made  a  frightful  mess— was  substituted.  The  uproar  over 
that  series  was  a  lesson  to  the  Post  Office  Department,  and 
it  didn't  stray  from  the  beaten  path  again  for  twenty-four 
years. 

Rawdon,  Wright,  Hatch  &  Edson  held  the  stamp  con- 
tract for  ten  years,  and  then  the  Continental  Bank  Note 
Company  took  over  in  1857.  From  that  time  until  1893 
the  Continental,  National  and  American  Bank  Note  Com- 
panies took  the  contract  away  from  each  other  every  few 
years.  The  American  finally  absorbed  the  Continental  and 
held  the  job  for  the  last  fourteen,  nearly  fifteen,  years  be- 
fore the  United  States  Bureau  of  Engraving  and  Printing 
undertook  the  work,  and  has  continued  to  do  it  ever  since. 

Meanwhile,  the  printing  of  stamped  envelopes  was  being 
done  by  other  companies,  and  a  curious  story  of  trade 
rivalry  in  1874  is  one  of  the  incidents  of  this  history.  The 
Reay  Company's  contract  expired  that  year,  and  when  bids 
were  received,  the  Department  awarded  the  new  contract 
to  the  lowest  bidder,  the  Plympton  Manufacturing  Com- 


72  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

pany  of  Hartford,  Connecticut.  Plymptons  had  never  be- 
fore made  stamped  envelopes,  and  to  prevent  them  from 
carrying  out  the  contract  within  the  time  specified,  the 
Reay  concern  hastily  hired  all  the  best  die  sinkers  in  the 
country,  with  the  specification  that  they  were  to  do  noth- 
ing for  a  month.  The  Plympton  Company  found  second- 
rate  engravers  to  do  the  work  and  explained  the  situation 
to  the  government.  The  latter  agreed  to  accept  such  dies  as 
they  could  make  until  better  ones  could  be  procured;  and 
thus  was  born  the  "Booby  Head"  envelope  and  other  curi- 
osities of  1874.  When  Plymptons  could  employ  the  better 
workmen  again,  many  of  the  poor  envelopes  were  called  in 
and  destroyed. 

The  Bureau  of  Engraving  and  Printing  came  near  losing 
the  stamp  contract  on  two  occasions.  Costs  rose  constantly 
during  the  first  ten  years  of  its  monopoly,  and  the  Post 
Office  began  to  wonder  whether  the  work  couldn't  be  done 
more  economically  by  private  hands.  Bids  were  requested 
in  1903,  but  only  two  bidders  responded— the  Bureau  and 
the  American  Bank  Note  Company.  The  Bureau,  taking 
advantage,  as  some  government  agencies  are  doing  now,  of 
its  exemption  from  necessity  for  showing  a  profit  or  even 
keeping  out  of  the  red,  bid  lower  than  the  Bank  Note 
Company  by  several  thousand  dollars,  admitting  that  this 
meant  working  at  a  loss,  which  must  be  made  up  by  the 
Treasury  Department;  but  it  was  pointed  out  that  it  would 
be  better  to  keep  the  work  in  the  Bureau  even  at  a  loss 
than  to  discharge  five  hundred  employees— not  that  the 
politicians  were  worrying  about  the  welfare  of  the  employ- 
ees so  greatly,  but  because  such  action  would  make  such 
glorious  campaign  material  for  the  opposition,  the  Demo- 
crats. 

That  flurry  blew  over,  but  again  in  1906  bids  were  asked, 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  73 

and  this  time  the  American  Bank  Note  Company  actually 
underbid  the  Bureau.  Headlines  in  the  newspapers  read, 
"Uncle  Sam  Loses  Stamp  Contract."  But  not  so  fast;  again 
Postmaster-General  Cortelyou  gave  the  work  to  the  Bureau, 
despite  the  fact  that  the  private  concern's  figure  meant  a 
saving  to  the  government  of  seventeen  thousand  dollars 
annually. 

These  bids  were  based  on  a  new  and  startling  idea;  that 
of  engraving  the  names  of  twenty-six  of  the  largest  cities  in 
the  country  on  the  stamps  issued  to  them,  and  surcharging 
the  names  of  the  other  six  thousand  post  offices  in  the 
country  on  their  stamps  as  they  were  ordered.  By  this 
means,  it  was  said,  the  large  cities  would  receive  credit 
which  they  were  not  now  getting  for  business  done.  The 
public  was  reminded  that  Liberia  engraved  the  names  of 
its  five  principal  towns  on  its  stamps.  But  Mexico  had  tried 
the  same  idea  and  given  it  up.  The  New  York  Sun,  how- 
ever, very  quickly  saw  "A  Bonanza  for  Uncle  Sam";  there 
would  be  ninety  thousand  new  varieties  of  stamps,  and 
though  the  face  value  of  the  whole  series  would  be  only 
$9.27,  for  a  collector  to  buy  all  the  post  offices  would  cost 
him  $55,620!  Many  collectors  saw  ruin  staring  them  in  the 
face. 

The  precanceling  of  stamps  with  the  name  of  the  city 
had  been  authorized  twenty  years  before,  with  the  over- 
printing done  by  local  printing  houses.  The  "1907  issue" 
of  cities  never  materialized,  but  not  until  1916,  when  the 
Bureau  began  precanceling  with  city  names,  was  the  idea 
finally  dropped.  In  1929  it  was  revived  again  in  a  different 
form,  when  the  Department  ordered  stamps  to  be  sur- 
charged with  state  names,  as  one  means  of  combating 
theft.  Kansas  and  Nebraska  were  the  first  states  experi- 
mented upon,  and  as  expected,  every  collector  wanted  a 


74  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

complete  set  of  all  denominations  with  those  words  "Kan- 
sas" and  "Nebraska"  overprinted  on  them.  The  scheme 
never  went  any  farther  than  those  two  states. 

The  person  who  likes  to  prowl  through  old  printing  may 
have  a  pleasant  hour  now  and  then  in  reading  the  ferocious 
criticisms  of  some  of  our  stamp  issues  of  the  past,  as  uttered 
alternately  by  philatelists  and  lay  editors.  When  John 
Wanamaker  became  Postmaster-General  under  President 
Benjamin  Harrison,  he  went  in  for  economy;  used  a 
cheaper  paper,  mostly  wood  pulp,  which  tore  readily,  espe- 
cially as  the  perforation  was  below  standard.  Other  animad- 
versions were  flung  about  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the 
A.  P.  A.  in  1890,  and  Mr.  Wanamaker's  ears  must  have 
burned  unpleasantly.  The  two-center  was  said  to  appear  in 
all  shades,  from  light  pink  to  ox-blood;  one  collector  said 
he  had  counted  twenty-five  shades.  Moreover,  it  and  all  the 
others  faded  readily.  The  American  Journal  of  Philately 
said,  "The  heads  on  the  one-  and  two-cent  stamps  are  those 
of  boobies,  and  not  of  statesmen  of  the  United  States,  as 
they  purport  to  be." 

Wanamaker  might  have  been  trying  with  that  poor  ink 
to  combat  the  washing  off  of  cancellations,  which  had 
been  going  on  ever  since  the  year  One,  and  was  especially 
pestiferous  in  the  case  of  the  revenue  stamps.  There  was 
constant  talk  in  postal  and  revenue  offices  of  trying  to  find 
"fugitive  colors";  colors  which  would  dissolve  easily— and 
yet,  darn  it,  not  too  easily!  Pale,  anemic  colors  were  pro- 
posed but  seldom  tried,  and  the  problem  remains  not  quite 
solved  to  this  day,  though  one  device  and  another,  such  as 
meter  stamping,  precancellation,  care  in  handling  larger  de- 
nominations, and  so  on,  have  greatly  reduced  its  preva- 
lence. 

The  series  of  1902,  on  the  other  hand,  was  fairly  well 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  75 

liked  by  collectors,  but  newspapers  and  art  pundits  roasted 
it  so  hotly  that  the  Post  Office  became  ashamed  of  it.  The 
design  of  the  two-cent  was  declared  ' 'inartistic  and  clumsy." 
The  New  York  Times  reported  on  Feb.  21,  1903,  that 
"Yielding  to  popular  clamor,  the  Government  is  to  retire 
the  issue  of  two-cent  stamps,  though  the  Post  Office  De- 
partment still  insists,  in  the  face  of  overwhelming  evidence, 
that  the  portrait  thereon  is  that  of  Washington  and  not  of 
Mr.  Dooley,  as  the  best  authorities  have  decided."  It  was 
also  complained  that  the  picture  gave  Washington  a  toper's 
red  nose.  Franklin's  portrait  on  the  one-cent  stamp  re- 
minded the  Times  editor  of  those  heel-less  stockings  which 
amateur  knitters  used  to  turn  out  long  ago.  Furthermore, 
it  was  "supported  on  either  side  by  two  nude  male  figures, 
probably  'writhing  on  amarinthine  asphodel'— caryatids 
which  support  nothing  unless  it  be  the  absurdity  of  the 
design.  In  miniature  they  suggest  'worms  for  bait.' "  The 
writhing,  under  these  strictures,  of  Mr.  R.  Ostrander 
Smith,  the  artist  who  designed  the  stamp,  must  have  ri- 
valed that  of  the  nude  males. 

In  that  same  year,  a  post  card  with  full-face  view  of 
President  McKinley  was  issued  by  error  from  rejected 
plates.  Only  about  five  hundred  of  these  precondemned 
cards  got  outside  of  the  Bureau  building,  and  they  were 
all  printed  with  the  address  of  a  New  York  contracting 
firm.  Perhaps  three  hundred  of  them  went  through  the 
mails,  and  copies  of  them  are  therefore  rare.  On  July  i, 
1902,  the  familiar  card  with  the  profile  of  McKinley  re- 
placed this  one. 

Mention  of  R.  O.  Smith  reminds  us  that  same  remark- 
able collections  have  been  made  of  the  source  material  of 
our  stamps.  No  nineteenth-century  collections  in  this  coun- 
try, of  course,  compare  with  that  of  the  Earl  of  Crawford, 


76  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

who  cornered  very  nearly  everything  relating  to  our  stamp 
biology  of  that  century.  But  the  Earl  did  not  live  long 
enough  to  make  a  collection  of  our  twentieth-century 
stamp  sources,  and  some  notable  efforts  have  been  made  in 
this  direction,  despite  the  rule  of  the  Bureau  of  Engraving 
and  Printing  that  everything  of  that  sort  must  remain  in  its 
vaults  forever. 

Many  of  the  items  are  easily  procurable  by  the  beginner; 
as  for  example,  a  photograph  of  the  St.  Gaudens  statue  of 
Lincoln  in  Chicago,  partly  reproduced  on  the  Lincoln  com- 
memorative stamp  of  1909,  one  of  the  John  Ericsson  Me- 
morial at  Washington  for  that  stamp  of  1926,  another  of 
the  youthful  Washington  statue  at  Braddock,  Pennsyl- 
vania, for  the  commemorative  of  the  memorable  battle  of 
1755.  For  the  Jamestown  issue  of  1907,  you  just  have  pho- 
tographic copies  made  of  the  John  Smith  and  Pocahontas 
copperplate  engravings  in  Smith's  book,  which  were  re- 
produced on  the  stamp.  Most  of  the  portraits  of  famous 
men  and  women  which  have  been  appearing  on  our  stamps 
in  recent  years  may  be  found  somewhere  in  the  form  of 
photographs  or  engravings  in  old  books,  and  they  may  be 
searched  out  and  copies  made  of  them  to  mount  along  with 
the  stamp.  There  are  other  photographs  to  gather,  too.  In 
the  hero-pair  designs  of  1935-37  vou  wm"  notice  that  on 
the  Houston-Austin  stamp,  in  addition  to  the  portraits,  you 
must  have  a  straight  front  view  of  the  Alamo;  on  the  Lee- 
Jackson,  the  south  front  view  of  Stratford  Hall,  the  old 
home  of  the  Lees;  on  the  Washington-Greene,  Mount 
Vernon;  on  the  Andrew  Jackson-Scott,  the  Hermitage,  and 
so  on. 

Photographs  of  famous  paintings  which  appear  on 
stamps  may  be  had,  too,  if  you  will  seek  for  them;  of  Trum- 
bull's  picture  of  the  surrender  of  Burgoyne  for  the  Saratoga 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  77 

stamp,  McRae's  of  Washington  at  Valley  Forge,  and  even 
the  several  paintings  used  in  our  great  Columbian  series 
of  '93  may  be  found  if  you  are  persistent  enough.  Some 
others  are  not  so  easy.  The  Trans-Mississippi  series  of  1898 
had  some  interesting  history.  Lamprecht's  painting,  "Mar- 
quette  on  the  Mississippi"  was  an  early  selection  for  one 
of  the  series,  but  for  a  long  time  the  original  painting 
couldn't  be  found.  It  was  finally  located  in  Marquette 
College,  Milwaukee,  and  used  on  the  one-cent  stamp.  For 
the  two-cent  a  photograph  called  "Farming  in  North 
Dakota"  was  selected,  a  scene  on  the  Amenia  and  Sharon 
Land  Company's  farm  at  Amenia,  N.  D.  Some  easterners 
in  government  employ  objected  that  no  farm  owner  in  the 
world  owned  such  a  collection  of  farm  machinery;  they  had 
no  conception  of  the  magnitude  of  prairie  farming.  That 
land  company  bought  a  vast  quantity  of  the  two-cent 
stamps  of  that  issue,  and  for  years  thereafter,  every  letter 
leaving  their  office  had  one  of  those  stamps  on  one  upper 
corner  and  on  the  other  a  reproduction  of  the  original  view, 
which  also  appeared  on  their  letterhead.  The  manager  told 
George  B.  Sloane  (who  was  looking  these  things  up  for 
his  column  in  Stamps)  that  another  concern  had  once 
written  to  him,  asking  how  they  might  go  about  influencing 
Washington  to  use  a  picture  from  their  business  on  a 
stamp. 

"Hardships  of  Emigration"  on  the  ten-cent  stamp  of  the 
same  series  might  prove  difficult  to  locate.  It  was  repro- 
duced from  a  painting  lent  by  the  artist,  A.  G.  Heaton,  and 
when  Mr.  Sloane  tried  to  locate  it  in  1936,  Heaton's  son 
couldn't  tell  him  where  the  painting  was;  it  had  been  sold 
after  his  father's  death  and  disappeared  from  his  ken.  For 
the  one-dollar,  "Western  Cattle  in  a  Storm,"  we  cadged  an 


78  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

etching  by  an  English  artist,  MacWhirter,  who  called  his 
picture  "The  Vanguard." 

Sloane  also  dug  up  an  interesting  bit  about  the  Panama- 
Pacific  one-center,  which  bore  a  fine  portrait  of  the  ex- 
plorer, Vasco  Nunez  de  Balboa.  The  Balboa  Motion  Pic- 
ture Company  were  a  prominent  outfit  operating  in  Cali- 
fornia at  the  time,  and  they  adopted  this  stamp  as  their 
own.  Like  the  land  company,  they  bought  an  enormous 
number,  enough  to  last  long  after  the  Post  Office  had 
ceased  issuing  them,  and  all  correspondence  leaving  the 
Balboa  office  thereafter  bore  that  stamp;  but  the  sad  sequel 
is  that  the  company  collapsed  before  its  stock  of  commem- 
orative stamps  was  used  up. 

A  publicity  man  for  the  New  York  Central  Railroad 
succeeded  in  wangling  a  picture  of  the  Empire  State  Ex- 
press into  the  two-cent  stamp  of  the  Pan-American  series 
of  1901— but  from  what  photograph?  For  a  long  time  the 
real  original  couldn't  be  found.  King  and  Johl,  in  their 
United  States  Postage  Stamps  of  the  Twentieth  Century, 
used  a  photograph  closely  resembling  the  picture  on  the 
stamp,  it  being  generally  believed  that  the  Bureau  artists 
had  just  doctored  the  design  a  bit.  But  the  seasoned  rail- 
road bugs  kept  muttering  that  the  real  picture  hadn't  been 
found  yet;  that  in  the  King-Johl  picture  the  engine  was  a 
4-4-2  job,  the  combination  car  was  all  wrong,  the  train  was 
too  nearly  head-on.  Finally  Allen  M.  Thatcher  jubilantly 
reported  in  Stamps  in  1937  that  he  had  found  the  true 
original  in  the  collection  of  railroad  photographs  of  C.  B. 
Chancy  of  New  York,  and  that  it  had  been  made  by  a 
photographer  in  Syracuse.  Perhaps  he  would  like  to  sell  a 
few  more  prints. 

The  experts  had  reason  to  suspect  that  the  train  picture 
might  have  been  altered,  for  the  Bureau  artists  frequently 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  79 

do  this.  Compare  the  photograph  for  the  Arbor  Day  stamp 
of  1932,  for  which  the  little  son  and  daughter  of  the  Di- 
rector of  the  Bureau  posed,  with  the  stamp,  and  you  will 
find  that  the  children  have  been  moved  considerably  closer 
to  the  young  tree  than  they  were  in  the  photograph.  A  still 
more  pointed  example  is  that  of  the  Washington  Inaugural 
commemorative  scene  of  1939,  taken  from  a  small  painting 
by  Alonzo  Chappell  owned  by  Oscar  T.  Barck  of  Brooklyn. 
On  the  stamp  they  have  added  a  small  table  and  the  bal- 
cony railing  which  were  not  in  the  painting,  though  the 
railing  belonged  there;  the  New  York  Historical  Society  has 
a  section  of  it  on  which  Washington's  hand  may  have 
rested  momentarily  when  he  bowed  to  the  crowd. 

But  as  for  getting  the  really  doggy  items  of  such  a  col- 
lection, the  original  sketches  and  drawings,  both  accepted 
and  rejected— and  there  are  many  rejects— the  die  proofs 
and  so  on,  this  writer  has  no  suggestions  to  make.  If  you 
can't  acquire  the  originals,  you  might  try  getting  photo- 
graphs of  them,  though  to  many,  these  are  not  entirely 
satisfying.  The  collections  of  Max  G.  Johl  and  Beverly  S. 
King,  both  dispersed  by  auction  in  New  York  in  recent 
years,  were  long  the  chief  repositories  of  these  rare  orig- 
inals. There  were  many  water-color  drawings  of  stamp  de- 
signs; in  some  cases  the  whole  series,  rejected  and  accepted, 
for  a  single  stamp,  then  the  proofs  of  the  partly  finished 
and  the  completed  die.  One  learns  from  these  collections 
that  in  1908  Whitney  Warren,  later  the  architect  of  the 
rebuilt  Louvain  Library,  made  eight  drawings— all  later  in 
King's  possession— for  a  special-delivery  stamp,  before  he 
succeeded  in  getting  one  accepted.  But  what  of  that?  No 
less  an  artist  than  Louis  Comfort  Tiffany  designed  some 
envelope  dies  in  the  early  '8o's,  and  some  of  his  drawings 
were  rejected,  too.  On  one  the  letter  "G"  wasn't  quite  com- 


8o  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

pleted,  so  that  the  word  appeared  as  POSTAGE.  Several  thou- 
sand of  the  envelopes  were  made  before  the  bad  letter  was 
discovered,  but  all  of  them  were  destroyed,  it  is  said,  save 
four  of  the  one-cent  and  seven  of  each  of  the  sizes  in  the 
two-cent. 

By  the  same  token,  for  the  Panama-Pacific  series  of  1912- 
13,  a  two-center  labeled  "Gatun  Locks"  was  engraved  and 
twenty-five  million  stamps  printed  before  it  was  discovered 
that  the  picture  didn't  represent  the  Gatun  Locks  at  all; 
one  of  those  magnificent  little  errors  which  nobody  but  a 
high  government  employee  could  commit  and  continue  to 
hold  his  job.  The  stamps  were  all  destroyed  save  three  or 
four  proofs,  and  the  wash  drawing  of  the  locks,  with  the 
autographed  OK  of  the  Postmaster-General,  bobbed  up  in 
King's  collection  some  years  later. 

Now  as  to  those  Gatun  Locks  proofs;  there  were  only 
three  known  when  it  was  discovered  a  few  years  ago  that 
another  was  in  the  possession  of  a  former  engraver  in  the 
Bureau.  A  collector,  prowling  about  a  certain  city,  ringing 
doorbells  and  asking  astonished  burghers  if  they  had  any 
old  letters  for  him  to  mull  through,  ran  across  his  home. 
The  man's  wife  called  the  collector  back  a  day  or  two  later 
by  telephone,  evidently  with  the  thought  of  selling  him 
that  proof;  but  after  an  hour  of  painful  wavering,  the 
couple  decided  against  it.  Collectors  are  still  keeping  an 
eye  on  him,  however,  and  if  or  when  .  .  . 

From  these  collections  we  learn  that  up  to  1900  the 
Government  had  no  stamp  designer  of  its  own,  but  at  that 
time  "borrowed"  for  several  years  an  artist,  R.  Ostrander 
Smith,  from  the  American  Bank  Note  Company.  Smith's 
first  work  for  the  Bureau  was  the  designing  of  the  series 
boosting  the  Pan-American  Exposition  of  1901.  One  pho- 
tograph in  the  King  collection  showed  Smith  himself  pos- 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  81 

ing  on  a  bicycle  for  a  special-delivery  stamp  design.  King 
also  had  some  two  dozen  pencil  sketches  and  wash  draw- 
ings for  stamps,  mostly  for  the  frames  surrounding  the 
vignettes  in  the  1901  and  1902  series,  all  drawn  by  Smith 
and  many  of  them  signed  by  him.  For  that  maligned  series 
of  1902,  poor  Smith  thought  he  was  doing  a  clever  and  ap- 
propriate thing  (and  so  he  was!)  in  weaving  into  the  frame 
around  each  head  something  pertinent  to  the  man  por- 
trayed; fasces  for  Webster,  sailors  for  Farragut,  a  head  of 
Justice  for  Marshall,  two  figures  holding  electric  lights— 
those  "nude,  writhing  males"  so  excoriated  by  a  Demo- 
cratic editor— for  Franklin. 

Speaking  of  tampering  with  original  photographs  or 
paintings,  one  of  the  sweetest  bits  of  "improvement"  that 
we  know  of  is  that  pretty  bunch  of  flowers  added  to  the 
Whistler  portrait  of  his  mother  on  the  Mother's  Day 
stamps.  By  the  way,  our  genial  Postmaster-General,  leading 
man  in  that  famous  philatelic  skit,  "Farley's  Follies,  or  the 
Scandals  of  1934,"  who  knew  nothing  of  philately  or  postal 
service  when  he  took  over  his  present  job,  has  now  become 
a  collector,  and  has  what  are  probably  the  two  most  valu- 
able sketches  in  existence— rough  pencil  suggestions  by 
President  F.  D.  Roosevelt  for  the  Byrd  Antarctic  stamp 
and  the  Mother's  Day  stamp— in  which  the  Whistler  por- 
trait is  said  to  be  outlined  with  great  aptitude  for  so  hasty 
an  essay  by  an  amateur. 

We  learned  from  King  and  Johl  that  the  postmaster  at 
Randolph  Field,  Texas,  made  the  drawing  which,  with 
some  slight  changes,  was  used  for  the  1932  Olympic  Games 
stamp;  that  a  Morse  Telegraph  commemorative  was  de- 
signed in  1919,  but  never  issued;  that  a  Peace  Centenary 
stamp,  with  America  and  Britain  clasping  hands  thereon, 
was  designed  in  1914  and  the  master  dies  made;  but  the 


82  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

breaking  out  of  the  World  War  would,  it  was  thought, 
have  made  the  issuing  of  a  peace  stamp  too  grimly  comic, 
so  the  project  went  no  farther.  Egged  on  by  certain  pub- 
licity-seeking editors,  the  Department  did  issue  a  Peace 
stamp  in  1918,  showing  Columbia  huddled  among  the 
flags  of  the  World  War  allies,  but  did  it  lackadaisically, 
printing  only  a  few,  and  telling  postmasters  to  sell  them 
only  to  customers  who  asked  for  them;  and  so  that  stamp 
is  little  known  now. 

In  JohFs  collection,  among  other  unique  things,  are  the 
complete  histories  of  the  Alaska- Yukon-Pacific  Exposition 
and  Hudson-Fulton  Celebration  stamps  of  1909;  that  is, 
the  drawings,  from  the  very  first  rough  sketch— there  are 
five  in  the  Alaska- Yukon-Pacific  series,  all  for  one  stamp— 
the  die  proofs  and  so  on.  The  Alaska- Yukon-Pacific  stamp 
was  first  designed  with  a  seal  posing  on  an  ice  floe,  but 
Seattle  folk  were  afraid  other  people  would  get  the  idea 
that  this  was  the  sort  of  climate  they  had  in  their  town,  and 
so  the  portrait  of  William  H.  Seward,  the  purchaser  of 
Alaska,  was  substituted  for  that  of  the  seal;  and  one  sketch 
still  shows  the  seal,  but  with  Seward's  name  lettered  under 
it.  How  interesting  it  would  have  been  if  they  had  let  it  go 
through  that  way!  After  all,  Mr.  Seward's  chin  did  look 
rather  like  a  seal's. 

In  the  two  collections,  among  so  many  other  intimate 
things  that  they  cannot  be  listed  here,  were  no  less  than  a 
dozen  accepted  drawings  with  the  autographed  approval  of 
the  Postmaster-General.  Of  course  these,  as  well  as  many 
of  the  other  items  we  have  mentioned,  are  supposed  to  re- 
main forever  in  the  files  of  the  Post  Office  Department. 
When  you  ask  a  philatelist  how  they  happened  to  stray  out 
of  it,  his  eyes  become  expressionless,  his  face  masklike,  in- 
scrutable; he  tells  you  he  doesn't  know.  It  is  like  asking  a 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  83 

political  question  of  a  stranger  in  Germany  or  Russia  or 
Italy.  Truth  of  the  matter  is  that  they  seem  to  have  crept 
out  in  ways  that  might  be  described  as  irregular;  as  one  of 
Harry  Leon  Wilson's  cowboys  once  delicately  described  it, 
"crooked,  but  not  rough."  One  has  even  heard  legends  of 
a  certain  postal  official— maybe  it  should  be  "officials";  we 
wouldn't  know  about  that— who,  when  a  philatelic  friend, 
calling  at  his  office,  wanted  to  look  at  a  certain  sketch  or 
other  item,  would  send  for  it,  and  after  a  time,  at  a  mo- 
mentary lull  in  the  conversation,  would  swing  his  chair 
around  to  the  window  and  murmur,  "What  a  beautiful 
spring  day!  And  can  that  be  a  robin  in  that  tree  yonder? 
First  I've  seen  this  year,"  and  when  he  finally  tore  his  at- 
tention away  from  the  glorious  out-of-doors  and  turned 
back  to  his  desk,  the  sketch  would  have  disappeared  and 
everybody  would  have  forgotten  all  about  it. 

Far  be  it  from  us  to  cavil  at  such  practices.  Those 
sketches  and  proofs  are  no  longer  of  any  real  value  to  the 
government,  and  at  least  one  outsider  would  rather  see 
these  interesting  mementoes  in  private  collections,  where 
they  may  give  pleasure  and  instruction  to  the  owners  and 
to  other  collectors,  than  hidden  away  forever  from  human 
eye  or  ken  in  the  dusty  archives  of  a  government  bureau, 
where  you  might  not  be  permitted  to  see  them,  even  if  you 
had  heard  of  them. 

But  after  all,  there  are  rules,  and  now  and  then  the 
wrath  of  Uncle  Sam  is  vented  upon  someone  who  violates 
them  too  flagrantly.  Once  a  considerable  batch  of  sketches 
and  proofs  were  found  to  be  missing.  They  were  traced 
through  one  functionary  and  another,  each  of  whom  had  a 
receipt  from  the  succeeding  one— all  this  was  years  before— 
until  they  reached  a  person  whom  we  shall  call  Egbert,  just 
for  a  change.  Well,  Egbert  couldn't  account  for  them,  and 


84  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

the  suspicion  was  that  he  had  sold  them.  He  insisted  that 
it  was  only  his  memory  that  was  at  fault;  he  just  couldn't, 
for  the  life  of  him,  remember  what  he  had  done  with  that 
stuff.  He  cudgeled  his  brain  over  the  problem,  until  one 
night  in  bed,  it  came  to  him  in  a  flash.  Why,  of  course! 
He  remembered  perfectly  now;  they  had  gone  into  the 
corner  stone  of  that  new  post  office  in  Washington— you 
know— the  one  whose  facade  inscriptions,  written  by  Presi- 
dent Eliot  of  Harvard,  were  corrected  by  President  Wilson 
of  Princeton  and  U.  S.  Of  course  it  was  impracticable  to 
tear  down  the  post  office  to  check  up  on  Egbert's  story,  and 
officials  didn't  think  it  worth  while,  as  they  didn't  believe 
it,  anyhow. 

A  more  serious  affair,  and  with  a  curious  sequel,  came  up 
in  1910.  In  the  previous  year  the  government  experimented 
with  a  stamp  paper  containing  more  rag  than  usual,  in  an 
effort  to  avoid  the  shrinkage  and  consequent  bad  centering 
of  perforation  which  had  long  been  a  nuisance.  The  ex- 
perimental paper  had  a  slight  gray-bluish  cast,  but  was 
found  to  be  unsatisfactory  and  was  quickly  abandoned. 
Nearly  a  million  and  a  half  each  of  the  one-  and  two- 
cent  stamps  were  printed  on  it  and  distributed,  so  these 
are  not  so  rare.  Of  the  three-,  four-,  five-,  eight-,  ten-,  thir- 
teen-, and  fifteen-centers,  Department  records  show  print- 
ing of  only  four  thousand,  and  of  the  six-cent,  fifty-two 
hundred— none  of  them  intended  for  circulation,  but 
through  error,  many  were  sent  out  to  post  offices,  and 
others  escaped  in  one  way  and  another;  some  through  the 
machination  of  a  Department  official  named  Travers.  Of 
the  threes  and  tens,  the  copies  in  circulation  were  found 
by  collectors  in  New  York;  the  sixes  appeared  in  Chicago, 
the  fifteens  in  Buffalo,  where  many  were  saved,  a  few  of 
the  fives  were  found  around  Rockford,  Illinois,  and  ten 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  85 

sheets  of  the  thirteen-cent  were  sent  to  the  post  office  at 
Saginaw,  Michigan,  it  would  seem,  nearly  three  years  after 
their  issuance,  where  most  of  them  were  sold  before  their 
presence  was  discovered.  The  four-cent  and  eight-cent  al- 
most disappeared  from  human  knowledge.  Today,  the  one- 
cent  and  two-cent  are  comparatively  cheap;  you  can  buy 
an  unused  copy  of  the  three  and  some  other  higher  values 
for  forty  dollars,  but  if  you  want  one  of  the  four-cent  or 
eight-cent  unused,  it  will  cost  you  $750;  and  a  mint  block 
of  four  of  either  of  those  denominations  will  set  you  back 
by  $3,750. 

In  March,  1910,  a  scandal  broke  in  Washington  when 
Travers,  the  Post  Office  Department  official  already  men- 
tioned, who  had  been  under  surveillance  by  inspectors 
for  some  time,  was  dismissed  and  indicted  on  a  charge  of 
slipping  some  of  those  bluish  paper  stamps  out  to  a  dealer 
in  Philadelphia  at  high  prices,  to  which  the  dealer  added 
handsome  profits.  Blocks  of  four  of  the  four-,  eight-  and 
thirteen-cent  were  known  to  have  gone  into  a  large  private 
collection  at  from  $140  to  $200  per  block.  It  was  not 
claimed  that  Travers  stole  the  stamps;  he  scrupulously  re- 
placed them  with  stamps  of  the  regular  issue;  but  he  vio- 
lated the  law  twice,  in  dealing  personally  in  unused  United 
States  stamps,  and  in  selling  them  at  more  than  face  value. 
The  indictment  against  him  covered  only  $30  worth  of 
stamps  at  face  value;  but  it  was  charged  that  he  had  sold 
them  for  $1,500.  When  his  trial  came  on,  he  pleaded  nolo 
contendere  and  agreed  to  pay  a  fifteen-hundred-dollar  fine, 
the  exact  sum  of  his  illicit  gains,  other  penalties  being 
waived. 

And  now  for  the  aftermath;  in  1937  a  P°st  Office  De- 
partment official  was  displaying  to  a  prominent  philatelist 
some  of  the  Department's  collection  of  mint  sheets,  when 


86  THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP 

at  sight  of  one,  the  collector  uttered  an  exclamation  and 
looked  more  closely.  His  practiced  eye  had  detected  what 
the  Department  itself  didn't  know;  that  it  had  complete 
sets  of  sheets  of  those  bluish-paper  stamps,  including  the 
four-cent  and  eight-cent,  which  in  sheet  form  were  sup- 
posed to  be  gone  with  the  wind.  These  sheets  had  recently 
been  found  between  the  pages  of  an  old  record  book, 
lightly  attached  in  a  spot  or  two  by  their  own  gum.  Col- 
lectors are  now  surmising  that  they  may  have  been  put 
there  by  the  unfortunate  Travers  three  decades  and  more 
ago.  The  sheets  are  estimated  by  the  wise  men  of  the  busi- 
ness to  be  worth  $250,000;  and  for  some  time  past  these 
enormously  valuable  rarities  have  been  traveling  about  the 
country  in  that  elegant  truck  with  which  Mr.  Farley  is 
spreading  the  gospel  of  philately. 

You  can't  fool  the  collectors  with  your  stamp  designs. 
Some  group  or  other  of  enthusiasts  will  study  every  one, 
seeking  its  origin,  questioning  its  integrity,  until  at  last,  if 
there  has  been  any  fakery  or  any  error,  somebody  will  be 
sure  to  point  it  out.  Collectors  discovered  from  our  Co- 
lumbian one-cent  stamp  of  1893  ^at  Columbus,  when  he 
sighted  land,  had  a  nice,  clean  shave,  but  that  when  he 
stepped  on  shore  a  few  hours  later  (see  the  two-cent)  he 
had  miraculously  grown  a  full  beard.  When  Newfoundland 
issued  a  new  series  in  1897,  ^e  ten-cent  bore  an  alleged 
picture  of  the  Matthew,  the  ship  in  which  John  Cabot  dis- 
covered that  island.  A  wag  in  Filatelic  Facts  and  Fallacies 
immediately  uncovered  a  very  interesting  historical  inci- 
dent. As  he  told  it,  when  Columbus  got  back  home,  he 
found  that  his  flagship,  the  Santa  Maria,  had  developed 
squeaks  and  rattles  and  looked  quaint  by  comparison  with 
the  new  season's  models,  so  he  sold  her  to  a  second-hand 
dealer.  The  latter  took  her  to  England  to  have  her  over- 


THE  BIOLOGY  OF  A  STAMP  87 

hauled,  and  there  sold  her  to  Cabot,  who  was  looking 
around  for  a  good  second-hand  vessel,  not  too  expensive, 
in  which  to  discover  Newfoundland.  On  reaching  New- 
foundland, he  found  the  climate  so  cold  and  damp  that  he 
cruised  down  to  New  York  for  a  change,  "where  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  American  Bank  Note  Company  took  a 
snapshot  of  the  Matthew  with  the  latest  Kodak."  In  other 
words,  the  pictures  of  Columbus's  flagship  on  our  three- 
cent  Columbian  green  and  that  of  the  "Matthew"  on  the 
one-cent  Newfoundland  1897  are  taken  from  one  and  the 
same  original. 

Here  one  may  learn  how  some  of  the  mock  pearls  of 
history  are  created  in  the  mussel  shell  of  legend  or  even  of 
jest.  That  yarn  has,  through  forty  years  of  occasional  repe- 
tition, taken  on,  to  some  minds,  the  aspect  of  established 
truth.  A  New  York  collector  solemnly  repeated  it  to  us  one 
day— minus  the  kodak— as  historical  fact. 

On  one  of  the  Philippines  stamps  there  appears  a  picture 
labeled  Pagsanjan  Falls;  but  Collector  R.  S.  Lienau  had 
only  to  take  a  second  look  at  it  before  he  began  comparing 
it  with  another  picture,  and  found  that  the  engraving  had 
really  been  made  from  a  photograph  of  Vernal  Falls  in  the 
Yosemite  Valley.  Was  this  just  an  error  or— what  is  more 
likely— just  a  substitution  because  no  good  photograph  of 
the  Philippine  waterfall  was  immediately  available? 

And  while  we're  on  the  subject  of  scenery,  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  Nicaragua's  calamitous  blunder  in  putting 
a  picture  of  its  volcano,  Momotombo,  on  some  of  its 
stamps,  really  clinched  our  decision  to  build  the  ship  canal 
through  Panama  instead  of  Nicaragua.  Many  Congressmen 
didn't  know  that  there  were  volcanoes  in  Central  America 
until  the  pro-Panama  crowd  showed  them  those  stamps. 


'COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-1 


A  THE  very  beginning  of 
11  IT  u 
stamp  collecting,  when  a 
popular  way  or  account- 
ing for  the  madness  was  the  theory  that  two  chaps  were 
doing  it  on  a  wager,  to  see  who  could  get  the  most  in  a 
given  time,  another  legend  arose  which  endured  for  dec- 
ades and  aroused  much  wonder  in  all  quarters,  until  finally 
it  developed  into  a  reality.  This  was  a  yarn  that  if  you 
would  help  somebody  to  collect  an  enormous  number  of 
used  stamps— a  million  was  the  favorite  number— they 
would  get  some  child  or  aged  person,  usually  unnamed, 
into  an  asylum,  or  perform  some  other  charitable  act.  The 
favorite  story  was  that  it  would  take  care  of  an  orphan 
somehow— get  him  into  an  institution  or  give  him  an  edu- 
cation. Another  report  was  that  famine  sufferers  in  India 
would  be  aided.  The  collecting  began  in  England  before 
1850  (another  report  says  that  Spain  was  similarly  af- 
fected), when  used  stamps  weren't  worth  even  a  penny  a 
dozen;  and  what  marketable  or  persuasive  value  a  million 
of  them  could  have,  no  one  could  figure  out. 

In  1873  someone  pointed  out  through  the  English  mis- 
cellany, Notes  and  Queries,  that  stamps  were  still  being 
collected  to  make  up  the  million  to  get  that  little  boy— 
who  by  that  time  must  be  of  full  age  and  wearing  whiskers 


"COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-"     89 

—into  an  orphan  school.  But  by  that  time  the  story  had 
begun  to  vary;  sometimes  the  charitable  folk  were  trying 
to  put  an  elderly  woman  into  an  old-people's  home,  or 
have  an  operation  performed  or  something.  Some  theorists 
nowadays  believe  that  the  early  promoters  were  washing 
off  the  postmarks  and  selling  the  stamps  again  as  new.  But 
by  1873  the  older  and  rarer  stamps  were  becoming  suffi- 
ciently valuable  to  make  the  stunt  more  plausible;  for  in  a 
million  stamps  which  kindly,  unsophisticated  folk  might 
peel  off  envelopes  new  and  old,  there  would  inevitably  be 
a  few  which  were  worth  more  than  the  average;  some  of 
them  far  more. 

New  variations  appeared.  In  1875  the  world  heard  that 
a  banker  in  Paris  had  told  a  certain  threadbare  youth  to 
pour  out  a  million  stamps  in  his  presence,  and  he  would 
get  a  college  education.  About  the  same  time  a  rumor  arose 
in  the  United  States  that  if  you  would  collect  a  million 
stamps,  you  could  "get  something"  from  the  government 
for  them.  Harold  D.  Watson,  veteran  New  York  collector, 
recalls  that  in  his  schoolboy  days,  around  1880,  the  reported 
price  was  a  thousand  dollars.  Old  John  W.  Scott  has  been 
accused  of  starting  this  gossip.  Mr.  Watson  knew  a  young 
lady,  an  assistant  in  the  public  library  in  Brooklyn,  who 
had  collected  her  million,  or  very  nearly,  found  the  thing  a 
fake,  and  gave  her  whole  lot  to  him,  greatly  enriching  him. 
The  family  of  another  boy  who  went  to  school  with  him 
had  fallen  victims  to  the  delusion,  and  now  the  boy  was 
bringing  a  pound  or  so  of  the  stamps  to  school  occasionally 
in  a  paper  bag  and  selling  them  for  a  dime.  Young  Harold 
acquired  some  of  them  and  found  them  pretty  good  buys; 
he  is  of  opinion  that  the  "unpicked  mixtures"  of  that 
period  were  far  superior  to  those  of  today. 


9o     "COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-" 

In  1877,  when  some  Briton  arose,  as  they  are  always 
doing,  demanding  to  know  the  use  of  collecting  those  mil- 
lions of  old  stamps,  a  young  lady  signing  herself  "L.  M." 
explained  in  a  letter  to  a  magazine  that  during  the  past 
summer  she  and  others  had  collected  enough  stamps  to 
"get  two  poor  girls  into  a  blind  asylum."  What  was  done 
with  the  stamps?  Why,  they  were  tied  in  packets  of  a 
hundred,  she  explained,  and  were  thus  sold  by  thousands 
"to  decorate  the  whitewashed  walls  of  houses  in  Japan." 
Just  why  the  Japanese  should  forget  their  age-long  artistry 
to  cover  their  house  walls  with  defaced  postage  stamps,  and 
how  long  any  piece  of  paper  could  be  made  to  stick  to  a 
whitewashed  wall,  are  questions  which  we  wish  we  could 
have  asked  the  young  lady.  "Last  June  we  tied  up  27,000 
little  packets,"  she  said,  each  containing  a  hundred;  and  she 
asked  that  the  stamps  continue  to  be  sent  to  the  Girls' 
Orphanage  (Miss  M.,  4  Allsop  Mews,  Dorset  Square, 
N.  W.). 

But  rooms  (not  whitewashed)  in  the  Occident  were 
actually  being  papered  with  stamps.  In  1884  it  was  reported 
that  a  Benedictine  monk  in  France  had  covered  the  walls 
of  a  room  in  his  monastery  in  highly  artistic  fashion  with 
800,000  stamps,  creating  flowers  and  vain  designs  which, 
in  our  lay  ignorance,  we  would  have  thought  unsuitable 
to  the  rigid  severity  of  a  monastery.  This  is  all  the  more 
surprising  because  certain  organizations  of  his  church  had 
long  since  begun  the  collection  of  stamps  for  charitable 
and  missionary  purposes.  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of  Lon- 
don, said  in  November,  1868: 

Thanks  to  a  public  appeal  by  Pastor  Maurach  in 
Livonia,  we  have  at  last  learned  what  becomes  of  the 
old  postage  stamps,  and  to  what  end  the  thousands  of 


"COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-"     91 

aged  and  youthful  collectors  are  in  the  habit  of  pla- 
guing our  lives  out. 

It  appears  that  the  Chinese  have  contracted  the 
habit  of  covering  their  umbrellas  and  rooms  of  houses 
with  old  European  stamps,  and  they  buy  them  by  the 
thousands  and  millions.  The  Rhenish  Mission,  which 
has  a  station  in  China,  collects  these  stamps  and  sells 
them  at  three  shillings  the  thousand. 

We  wonder  if  any  Occidental  traveler  of  the  '6o's  or 
'yo's  ever  noticed  and  set  down  on  paper  a  memorandum 
of  the  fondness  of  the  Mongolian  races  for  this  bizarre 
type  of  interior  decoration?  We  have  been  unable  to  find  it. 

The  collection  for  beneficent  purposes  grew  in  scope.  In 
the  i88o's  the  Christian  Brothers  came  into  possession  of 
a  piece  of  land  in  France,  but  had  no  money  with  which 
to  build  on  it.  With  the  aid  of  Catholics  the  world  over, 
they  gathered  thirty-five  million  stamps  and  erected  a 
school.  It  was  a  mystery  to  philatelists  how  so  much  money 
could  be  realized  from  what  they  considered  junk  stamps, 
but  the  explanation  undoubtedly  lay  in  the  occasional  rari- 
ties which  came  with  the  rest;  and  as  the  older  stamps 
steadily  grew  in  value,  the  ransacked  attics  and  trunks 
yielded  many  stamps  that  were  worth  real  money. 

Some  Protestant  clergymen  in  this  country,  not  to  be 
outdone,  launched  wholesale  stamp  gatherings  for  chari- 
table purposes  about  the  same  time,  especially  in  the  South, 
much  to  the  disgust  of  stamp  dealers  and  editors,  who 
roundly  denounced  the  Rev.  Joab  Gushing  and  one  or  two 
others  as  fakers,  seeking  personal  profit.  It  was  said  that 
they  picked  up  some  nice  Confederates  and  other  rarities, 
and  were  keenly  aware  of  their  value. 

This  sort  of  miscellaneous  gathering  had  now  begun  to 


92     "COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-" 

take  on  the  aspect  of  a  wholesale  stamp  business.  J.  E. 
Handshaw,  an  old-time  New  York  dealer  who  died  a  few 
years  ago,  and  who  wrote  his  autobiography  under  the  title 
of  Looking  Backward;  or  Fragments  from  a  Checkered 
Career  (though  a  more  humdrum  life  can  scarcely  be  im- 
agined, and  the  book  deals  almost  as  much  with  the  Smith- 
town  Branch  Methodist  Church  on  Long  Island  as  with 
philately)  tells  of  seeing  a  barrel  of  stamps  around  1880, 
and  a  year  or  two  later  he  himself  bought  a  large  box  con- 
taining, he  thought,  about  half  a  million  stamps,  from  a 
woman  for  twenty-five  dollars.  Probably  she,  too,  had  been 
a  victim  of  that  collect-a-million-and-get-a-thousand-dollars- 
from-the-government  delusion.  Several  years  later,  Hand- 
shaw  bought  twenty-five  barrels  of  stamps  at  one  time! 

In  January,  1887,  Hugo  Kuenstler,  a  young  philatelist 
working  in  his  father's  wholesale-tobacco  business  office  in 
New  York,  came  upon  a  huge  gunny  sack  full  of  stamps  in 
a  junk  shop  and  bought  it  for  seven  dollars.  Thousands  of 
the  stamps  were  done  up  in  neat  packages  of  one  hundred, 
bearing  the  names  of  persons  who  had  gathered  them,  no 
doubt  for  some  allegedly  charitable  purpose,  though  why 
it  had  gone  awry,  the  "junkie"  of  course  didn't  know. 
Kuenstler  found  hundreds  of  stamps  with  a  catalogue  value 
(1887  value,  remember)  of  a  dollar  or  more,  while  the  ones 
valued  at  less  were  as  the  sands  of  the  sea.  A  reporter  from 
the  Collector's  Ledger  who  visited  him  two  years  later, 
when  he  had  sold  or  put  into  his  albums  many  of  the  better 
stamps,  found  that  he  still  had  fifty  thousand  of  the  three- 
cent  1861  and  '68  mixed;  about  twenty  thousand  of  the 
two-cent  brown  of  1872;  many  boxes  of  the  1870  one-cent, 
two-cents  and  three-cents  grilled  and  the  six-cent  carmine; 
several  large  envelopes  full  of  the  seven-,  twelve-  and 
twenty-four-cent  1872.  There  were  sixty-five  pounds  of  the 


"COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-"     93 

three-cent  1870-72;  about  two  hundred  thousand  revenues, 
mostly  second  and  third  issues,  and  at  least  fifty  thousand 
of  the  1869  issue.  Such  were  the  pickings  of  fifty  years  ago. 

In  1892  some  of  the  young  women  in  Upper  Iowa  Uni- 
versity learned  of  the  plight  of  an  old  lady  who  had  been 
"deserted  by  friends  and  relatives/'  The  girls,  who  had 
heard  of  the  stamp  stunt,  but  didn't  yet  know  where  they 
could  sell  the  stamps,  enlisted  the  aid  of  several  Iowa  news- 
papers. The  Cedar  Rapids  Gazette  found  that  the  home 
for  aged  women  at  that  place  would  undertake  the  care  of 
the  lady  for  the  rest  of  her  days  for  three  hundred  dollars. 
Girls  and  editors  got  busy,  and  within  a  few  weeks 
the  Keokuk  Constitution-Democrat  had  gathered  34,000 
stamps;  the  Earleville  Phoenix,  40,000;  the  Des  Moines 
News,  60,000;  Walker  News,  111,000;  Cedar  Rapids  Ga- 
zette, 560,000;  while  the  college  girls  themselves  had  ac- 
cumulated 310,000  more,  making  a  grand  total  of  1,115,- 
ooo.  Bids  were  asked  for,  and  Martin  Steffan  of  Memphis, 
Mo.,  tendered  the  necessary  three  hundred  dollars.  By  the 
time  the  two  big  sugar  barrels  full  of  stamps  were  turned 
over  to  him,  135,000  more  had  come  in,  bringing  his  haul 
to  1,250,000.  Whether  he  succeeded  in  getting  his  money 
out  of  the  deal  is  not  recorded. 

Mr.  Steffan  charitably  paid  more  than  the  market  price 
for  mixtures.  New  York  dealers  around  1900  were  pay- 
ing $58  per  million  for  such  mixtures,  tying  them  in 
packets  and  selling  them  for  twenty-five  cents  per  thou- 
sand. Most  of  them  came  on  a  torn-out  or  cut-out  corner 
of  the  envelope,  and  these,  mixed  with  others  completely 
detached  from  the  cover,  were  estimated  to  weigh  about 
four  thousand  to  the  pound.  The  only  dealers  now  who 
handle  such  mixtures  are  specialists  in  that  line,  and  they 
are  few  in  number. 


94     "COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-" 

One  of  the  most  curious  bids  for  mixtures  that  we  have 
heard  of  was  that  of  a  cloth  house  in  Vienna,  which  in 
1891  offered  "parcels  of  cloth  for  gentlemen's  trousers  in 
exchange  for  old  postage  stamps."  How  the  stamps  were  to 
be  conditioned,  graded— if  at  all— and  priced,  we  cannot 
now  learn. 

Elliott  Perry,  the  genial  sage  of  Westfield,  N.  J.,  tells  of 
a  woman  who  decided  forty  years  ago  to  collect  a  million 
stamps  in  her  own  behalf;  that  is,  get  herself  into  an  old 
folks'  home,  though  she  wasn't  more  than  middle-aged.  It 
was  back  in  1905  when  Elliott,  then  a  mere  youth,  was 
living  in  Massachusetts,  that  he  heard  of  the  woman's 
project  and  called  upon  her.  The  truth  was  that  the  good 
soul  was  in  an  unpleasant  spot.  Her  economic  prop  and 
meal  ticket  was  in  a  state  prison  for  a  considerable  stretch; 
he  had  been  town  treasurer,  and  got  his  books  all  out  of 
balance  somehow.  So  his  lorn  wife  was  at  home,  only  a 
few  miles  from  the  grim  prison  walls,  in  company  with  a 
daughter  and  an  over-fat  dog  who  ate  too  many  peanuts 
for  his  own  good.  The  lady  heard  of  the  collect-a-million 
trick,  and  actually  believed  that  she  could  thereby  place 
herself  in  a  home  where  she  would  never  even  have  to  think 
about  anything  again.  She  had  gathered  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  stamps  before  she  discovered  that  the  idea  was  a 
myth,  but  by  that  time  she  had  gotten  the  habit,  so  she 
kept  right  on,  and  had  over  a  million  when  Perry  saw  her 
stock,  tied  in  packets  of  one  hundred,  with  thread,  and 
filling  a  big,  antique  chest  of  drawers  which  was  worth  far 
more  than  the  stamps. 

Perry  went  through  several  thousands  of  the  stamps,  but 
found  little  save  ones  and  twos  of  recent  vintage— not  even 
any  good  Columbians.  He  did  see  an  1869  one-center 
which  was  the  worst  off  center  he  ever  laid  eyes  on— off  in 


:.   V 


3&££ 


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(••s 


Wide  World  Photos 


it— Post  office 
Jbano,  Papal 
s,  1850. 

w— A  rush  of 

ictors    at    the 

ern    post    of- 

at    Vatican 


"COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-"     95 

two  directions,  not  more  than  half  the  design  being  on  the 
stamp,  and  it  was  canceled  with  a  curious  cabled-anchor 
killer  which  he  has  never  seen  elsewhere.  He  wished  later 
that  he  had  made  a  special  offer  for  that  stamp,  and  won- 
ders whether  it  is  in  existence  now. 

How  did  she  obtain  so  many  stamps?  Principally  from  a 
bluing  factory  near  by  which  sold  the  stuff  by  mail  in  sheets 
that  could  be  carried  in  an  envelope.  Boys  and  girls  all  over 
New  England  were  selling  the  bluing  for  them.  The  woman 
had  a  line  into  the  concern's  office;  as  Perry  remembers  it, 
the  daughter  worked  there  and  got  all  the  stamps  off  the 
incoming  mail.  Whatever  became  of  her  collection,  de- 
ponent doesn't  know,  but  no  doubt  it  was  eventually 
closed  out  to  somebody  for  a  few  paltry  dollars. 

The  Morning  Post  of  London  said  on  Nov.  3,  1898: 

M.  le  Chanoine  de  Roy,  the  head  of  the  Seminary 
at  Liege,  has  acquainted  me  with  some  of  the  mar- 
vellous results  obtained  by  the  collection  of  old  post- 
age stamps.  Since  the  movement  was  started  seven 
years  ago,  three  hundred  million  stamps  have  been  col- 
lected, which  realized  fifty  thousand  francs.  With  a 
portion  of  this  the  missionaries  established  and  thor- 
oughly organized  five  Christian  villages  on  the  Congo. 

The  collection  was  to  be  continued,  he  went  on,  until 
they  had  enough  to  build  a  cathedral  at  Leopoldville  in  the 
Congo  Free  State.  Thus  "collect-a-million"  had  by  shrewd 
planning  been  changed  from  fake  or  jest  to  reality,  and  was 
assuming  gigantic  proportions.  Thus  did  "mission  mix- 
tures" come  into  being;  but  only  in  very  recent  years  have 
they  been  made  a  business  by  the  church.  Parishioners  cut 
or  peel  stamps  by  the  billion  from  every  envelope  in  sight 


96     "COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS 

and  turn  them  over  to  the  pastors.  The  Mission  Stamp 
Bureau  of  Weston  College,  a  Jesuit  institution  in  Massa- 
chusetts, offers  by  circular  a  "Mission  Mixture  (on  paper)," 
describing  it  as  "99%  U.  S.  stamps,  of  all  denominations, 
including  commemoratives  (old  and  new),  pre-cancels,  air- 
mails, postage-dues,  etc.  In  singles,  pairs,  blocks,  coils. 
Minimum  of  paper.  Absolutely  unpicked."  The  prices  vary 
from  thirty  cents  a  pound  if  you  buy  ten  pounds  to  twenty- 
seven  cents  if  you  take  two  hundred  pounds. 

Other  Catholic  colleges  also  deal  in  mixtures,  but  the 
most  remarkable  of  these  businesses  is  that  carried  on  at  the 
Capuchin  College  at  Brookland,  just  outside  Washington. 
A  young  theological  student,  a  philatelist  himself,  founded 
it— without  capital— in  1933,  to  aid  in  financing  missionary 
work  in  Puerto  Rico.  He  wrote  to  many  Catholic  laymen's 
organizations,  to  government  officials,  churchmen  and 
priests,  former  students  of  the  college,  all  over  the  world, 
asking  for  stamps.  By  the  time  he  had  taken  orders  for  the 
priesthood,  the  business  had  grown  to  such  size  that  he  was 
put  in  charge  of  it,  and  a  year  or  so  ago  he  had  twenty- 
eight  young  men,  all  students,  working  under  him,  soaking 
the  stamps  off  the  paper,  sorting  and  grading  them.  This 
differs  from  other  mission  marts  in  that  first  grade  copies 
are  sold  by  the  piece  or  the  hundred,  while  seconds  and 
worse  are  mixed  together,  United  States  with  foreign,  and 
sold  by  the  pound.  The  mart  has  one  of  the  largest  stocks 
of  used  twentieth-century  United  States  in  existence,  not 
to  mention  much  foreign  material  and  many  mint  copies. 

Big  banks  and  business  concerns  have  so  often  been 
solicited  for  stamps  taken  from  their  correspondence  that 
many  of  them  now  make  a  business  of  selling  them.  Some 
even  grade  them  according  to  high  and  low  values;  but 
most  large  organizations  prefer  to  make  a  contract  by  the 


"COLLECT  A  MILLION  STAMPS  AND-"     97 

year  with  some  wholesaler  on  a  pound  basis,  the  corners 
of  the  envelopes  being  cut  out  by  a  boy  or  girl  who  does 
little  or  nothing  else.  The  money  received  is  by  some  con- 
cerns put  into  the  charity  fund  from  which  they  are  so 
often  called  upon  to  ladle  out  donations. 

Among  the  non-religious  mixture  dealers  is  one  in  the 
west  which  is  said  to  receive  stamps  sometimes  by  the  car- 
load. It  sells  not  only  mission  mixtures  but  government 
mixtures,  bank  mixtures  and  special  mixtures.  Its  advertis- 
ing chortles  jovially  of  "Our  Grand  Combination;  a  selec- 
tion of  all  our  best  mixtures  which  will  provide  you  with 
loads  of  fun  for  a  long  time.  $48.50  plus  postage  on  18 
pounds."  As  no  one  need  ever  expect  to  find  a  rarity  in  a 
pound  mixture,  the  fun  of  sorting  one  may  be  said  to  be 
comparable  to  that  enjoyed  by  the  old-fashioned  child 
whose  mother,  to  keep  it  occupied,  smeared  its  finger  tips 
lightly  with  molasses  and  then  gave  it  a  small  feather  to 
play  with. 


NASSAU  STREET 


BROAD  STREET  in  New  York 
begins  at  the  harbor  and 
,  ,          . 
rambles  in  good  old  casual 

Dutch  fashion  up  to  and  across  Wall  Street;  but  after  you 
pass  Wall,  you  suddenly  discover  that  you  are  no  longer  on 
Broad,  but  on  Nassau  Street.  So  then,  here  is  the  south 
end  of  Nassau,  on  Wall  alongside  the  United  States  Sub- 
Treasury,  where  once  stood  Federal  Hall,  on  whose  bal- 
cony Washington  became  our  first  President— a  scene  pic- 
tured not  so  long  ago  on  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  our 
commemorative  stamps. 

But  nobody  save  a  postman  can  tell  you  with  authority 
where  the  other  end  of  Nassau  Street  is.  It  finally  fades  out 
alongside  City  Hall  Park,  where  it  and  Park  Row  glide  into 
each  other  at  such  a  sharp  angle,  with  such  a  glomeration 
of  other  little  streets  and  such  a  typically  New  Yorkish 
jumble  of  house  numbering  that  strangers  seeking  a  par- 
ticular location  are  often  driven  to  headache  tablets  or 
strong  drink.  Here  in  a  little  triangular  island  stands  Ben- 
jamin Franklin  in  bronze,  looking  across  at  City  Hall,  with 
hands  spread  out  as  if  in  amazement  at  the  goings-on  there. 
On  the  scrap  of  sidewalk  in  front  of  him  each  week  day 
noontide  a  preacher  earnestly  exhorts  a  handful  who  gather 
and  listen  idly,  while  Franklin,  ignoring  them,  looks  over 

98 


NASSAU  STREET  99 

their  heads.  In  a  half  hour  or  so  another  preacher  replaces 
the  first;  and  later  another  comes  on.  Speakers  haven't  the 
endurance  now  that  they  had  seven  decades  ago,  when 
Disraeli  at  sixty-eight  spoke  for  three  hours  and  a  quarter 
on  one  occasion  and  held  his  audience  all  the  way. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  statue,  behind  Ben's  back,  a 
huddle  of  labor  unionists,  having  gobbled  their  lunches, 
argue  through  the  rest  of  the  noon  hour,  sometimes  falling 
into  two  or  three  squabbling  groups,  while  passers-by  stop 
to  listen,  not  that  they  are  necessarily  interested,  but  just 
because  it  offers  an  opportunity  to  kill  time.  Just  across 
Nassau  on  the  corner  of  Spruce  Street— somewhere  about 
there  once  stood  Brom  Martling's  tavern,  the  first  meeting 
place  of  the  Tammany  Society  in  1798— there  stands 
through  the  noon  hour  a  slender,  gentle  man  in  spectacles, 
with  a  package  on  the  sidewalk  beside  him,  and  holding  up 
a  small,  red  cloth-bound  book  so  that  you  may  see  its  name, 
"New  Testament,"  while  he  says  over  and  over,  "No  charge. 
Free  of  charge."  He  does  not  succeed  in  giving  away  as 
many  as  he  could  have  done  forty  years  ago. 

Old  Ben  took  his  stand  there  in  1872  because  that  little 
plexus  was  then  known  as  Printing  House  Square— and  in 
later  years,  Newspaper  Row.  There  still  stands  the  old  red- 
brick Tribune  building  with  its  Victorian  clock  tower,  the 
gilded  dome  of  the  World— whose  morgue  of  clippings,  the 
nation's  greatest,  is  still  mourned  by  historians— but  the 
Sun  building  between  them  is  gone;  the  heroic  bronze  Ger- 
man medieval  figure  in  doublet  and  cloak,  with  trumpet 
at  lips,  vanished  not  so  long  ago  from  the  top  of  the  New 
York  Herald  building,  the  smell  of  printer's  ink  has  faded 
from  the  others  and  only  ghosts  of  the  great  days  of  News- 
paper Row  remain  to  haunt  rooms  now  buzzing  with  other 
enterprises.  But  one  fancies  that  old  Ben,  our  colonial  post- 


ioo  NASSAU  STREET 

master-general,  is  still  content  there,  because  the  atmos- 
phere all  about  him  and  for  five  blocks  to  southward  on 
Nassau  Street  is  reeking  and  murmurous  with  stamps,  and 
in  vaults  near  by  are  still  preserved  letters  which  he  himself 
wrote,  as  well  as  others  from  his  friends  and  fellow  laborers 
in  the  building  of  the  nation. 

Business  in  New  York  is  queerly  regional.  Most  of  the 
old  book  shops,  for  example,  are  on  Fourth  Avenue  and 
East  Fifty-ninth  Street.  When  ladies  wish  to  buy  brass 
andirons,  candlesticks,  trays  and  other  such  junk,  they  hie 
them  down  to  Allen  Street,  on  the  lower  East  Side,  where 
the  L  trains  thunder  so  loudly  overhead  that  customer  and 
dealer  must  scream  in  each  other's  ears  or  wait  until  the 
train  has  passed.  Just  why  all  the  waste-paper  warehouses 
should  be  on  Lafayette  and  South  Streets  is  beyond  our 
poor  power  to  reason  out.  The  stamp  business  is  not  quite 
so  intensely  concentrated,  for  there  are  large  concerns  scat- 
tered here  and  there  is  midtown  office  buildings.  But  Forty- 
second  Street  between  Sixth  and  Seventh  Avenues  shows 
a  few  display  frames  of  stamps  at  almost  every  building 
entrance;  and  Nassau  Street  has,  for  nearly  three-quarters 
of  a  century,  been  New  York's  great  center  for  philatelic 
merchandising.  There,  until  recently  (when  the  store 
moved  away)  you  might  have  seen  stamps  priced  at  fifty 
and  one-hundred  dollars  under  the  glass  top  of  a  counter 
in  a  five-and-ten-cent  store— a  sight  probably  unique  in  the 
world. 

There  was  a  time,  forty  or  fifty  years  back,  when  East 
Twenty-third  Street  became  lightly  flecked  with  stamp 
shops,  John  W.  Scott's  among  them.  One  old  lady  who 
died  not  so  long  ago,  and  who  was  an  ardent  collector  in 
those  days,  lived  in  Brooklyn,  and  when  she  came  over  to 
Manhattan,  before  there  were  so  many  bridges  and  sub- 


NASSAU  STREET  101 

ways,  crossed  by  the  Twenty-third-Street  ferry.  She  hadn't 
as  much  money  to  spend  on  her  hobby  as  she  would  have 
liked,  and  to  pass  those  windows  and  wall  frames  some- 
times proved  too  much  for  her  spirit  and  power  of  resist- 
ance; so  she  was  compelled  to  avoid  temptation  by  de- 
touring  through  Twenty-second  Street.  Then  the  trend 
changed,  and  with  the  curiously  gregarious  tendency  already 
mentioned,  the  stamp  shops  followed  each  other,  one  by 
one,  back  down  town. 

Nassau  was  at  first  just  a  lane  leading  from  the  outer 
palisade  of  New  Amsterdam  at  Mr.  De  Peyster's  farm  up 
to  the  Commons,  now  City  Hall  Park;  and  it  has  never 
grown  much  wider  than  that  lane.  For  decades  in  the  pres- 
ent century  it  was  unique  in  that  no  wheeled  traffic  was 
permitted  to  move  on  it  during  the  noon  hour;  and  so 
from  twelve  to  two  P.M.  throngs  from  the  neighborhood 
strolled  to  and  fro  in  mid-street  and  gutter  as  well  as  on 
the  sidewalk,  relaxing  in  the  one  place  where  there  was 
no  fear  of  the  modern  juggernaut.  But  the  La  Guardia  ad- 
ministration, supposedly  the  champion  of  the  poor  and 
motorless,  has  changed  all  that,  and  Nassau  is  no  longer  a 
noon-hour  haven  of  rest. 

As  you  walk  north  along  its  first  few  blocks,  between 
massive  skyscrapers  reeking  with  finance  and  stocks  and 
law,  you  dip  down  from  Liberty  Street  into  a  little  hollow 
crossing  your  course,  where  three  centuries  ago  a  tiny  brook, 
dry  in  summer,  flowed  eastward  to  the  East  River;  a  hollow 
lush  with  oak  and  dogwood  and  sumach,  down  which 
meandered  't  Maagde  Paetje,  "the  Maiden's  Path,"  whose 
course  is  traced  by  present-day  Maiden  Lane,  the  street  of 
diamonds  and  gold  and  silver.  Our  street  began  to  acquire 
a  few  houses  late  in  the  seventeenth  century,  and  after  the 
English  took  over  the  colony,  was  informally  mentioned  as 


102  NASSAU  STREET 

"the  street  leading  by  the  Pye-Woman's  to  the  Commons." 
Just  around  the  corner  from  it  in  Liberty  Street  lived 
young  Captain  William  Kidd,  later  called  a  pirate.  Known 
as  Kip  Street  then,  the  name  was  changed,  later  in  the 
century,  to  Nassau,  in  honor  of  "the  Dutchman,"  King 
William  III  of  England. 

From  Maiden  Lane  northward  to  its  end,  Nassau  Street 
is,  like  many  other  portions  of  New  York,  curiously  old- 
fashioned,  its  atmosphere  mellow  with  age  and  memories. 
There  may  be  four  or  five  buildings  (none  of  them  sky- 
scrapers) in  that  stretch  erected  since  1900,  but  no  more. 
On  the  other  hand  there  are  some  which  could,  if  they 
had  memories,  recall  the  Civil  War  and,  therefore,  the 
beginning  of  the  stamp  business  in  America.  Nay,  there 
are  some  which  go  back  a  century  or  more.  You  have  only 
to  see  their  plain,  flat,  oft-painted  brick  fronts,  with  the 
simple,  square-cut  windows,  to  realize  it. 

Take  Number  88,  for  example,  five  stories  high  (though 
the  top  one  is  little  more  than  a  half  story)  and  know  that 
the  oldest  law  firm  in  New  York,  De  Witt,  Lockman  and 
De  Witt,  departed  thence  in  October,  1938,  after  having 
occupied  those  ancient  rooms,  generation  after  generation, 
for  one  hundred  and  three  years!  When  Cornelius  De 
Witt  first  hung  out  his  shingle  there  in  1835,  the  year  of 
the  Great  Fire,  Andrew  Jackson  was  President  and  the 
telegraph  still  unheard  of.  As  decades  went  by  and  the  staff 
gradually  increased,  they  gradually  took  over  the  whole 
building.  That  top  story,  only  a  little  higher  than  a  man's 
head,  was  crammed  with  ancient  letters  going  back  to  the 
pre-stamp  era,  records  and  documents,  of  which  thousands 
of  course  bore  old  revenue  stamps.  The  numerous  stamp 
dealers  in  the  building  across  the  way  at  Number  87  used 
to  look  over  there  with  dreaming  eyes  and  watering  chops 


The  Old  Dutch  Church,  New  York  City's  post  office  from 
1847  to  1^75-  Nassau  Street  at  the  right. 


A*  kl  .m?  \ 


^^f 


From  the  Collection  of  Philip  H.  Ward,  Jr. 

Onr    firef    Hi?rt    cfnmr\c '  I  'ho    TT      *v       p-    nn/1     10 


NASSAU  STREET  103 

and  try  to  picture  to  themselves  the  riches  that  lay  im- 
mured in  that  Aladdin's  Palace,  that  Cave  of  Monte  Cristo. 

And  now  comes  the  sinister  part  of  the  story,  which 
Nassau  Street— when  it  can  be  induced  to  recall  the  affair 
at  all— mutters  through  clenched  teeth.  When  the  wealthy 
attorneys  and  their  clerks,  tired  of  running  up  and  down 
stairs,  decided  to  seek  more  elegant  quarters,  there  were 
these  tons  of  old  letters  and  documents  to  be  discarded. 
Would  they  sell  the  stamps  to  any  collector  or  dealer? 
Could  all  the  pleadings  of  Nassau  Street  persuade  them 
to  let  anyone  even  so  much  as  look  at  a  few  of  the  papers? 
Positively  not!  There  are  some  vagaries  in  human  conduct 
which  one  just  cannot  explain.  Believe  it  or  not,  with  the 
supply  of  old  stamps  visibly  shrinking  before  our  very  eyes, 
they  burned  all  that  treasure!  There  are  vague  rumors  that 
a  few  dozen  stamps  were  salvaged  through  bribery  of  one 
of  the  incinerators,  but  these  are  only  whispered  behind 
the  hand  and  cannot  be  confirmed. 

No  doubt  Cornelius  De  Witt,  when  he  first  began  prac- 
ticing, used  to  step  across  the  street  for  refreshment  now 
and  then  to  the  old  Shakespeare  Tavern,  on  the  southwest 
corner  of  Fulton,  and  perhaps  get  a  whiff  of  literary  talk 
from  fellows  like  Irving  and  Paulding  and  Halleck,  who 
liked  to  hobnob  there.  When  the  tavern  was  razed,  the 
"squinting  Scotchman,"  James  Gordon  Bennett,  reared  his 
New  York  Herald  building  on  its  site;  and  on  the  night  of 
November  6th,  1860,  crowds  in  the  streets  saw  the  returns 
telling  of  the  election  of  Lincoln,  thrown  by  stereopticon 
on  the  side  of  the  building  for  the  first  time  in  history. 
Nassau  was  a  street  of  printing  and  publishing  and  engrav- 
ing then.  In  1860  the  Sun  was  just  across  the  street  from 
the  Herald,  the  Express  was  at  the  corner  of  Wall,  the 
Transcript,  Leader,  Observer  and  Times  were  all  at  other 


io4  NASSAU  STREET 

numbers  on  Nassau,  the  Illustrated  News  just  around  the 
corner  on  Fulton.  There  were  job  printers  everywhere,  a 
type  foundry  on  the  corner  of  Ann  Street  a  century  ago, 
and  in  the  same  building  the  office  of  the  New  York  Mirror, 
where  in  1844-5  Edgar  Allan  Poe  worked  and  wrote  'The 
Raven,"  reading  snatches  of  it  to  his  chums  in  Barney 
Welsh's  rum-and-beanery,  just  across  Ann  Street.  And  one 
recalls  that  F.  K.  Kimmel,  at  59  Nassau,  engraved  on  steel 
some  fine,  colored  Civil  War  patriotic  envelopes  which  are 
the  pride  of  present-day  collections. 

On  the  site  of  the  Tavern  and  of  the  Herald's  early  home 
stands  one  of  the  more  modern  buildings  of  upper  Nassau 
—though  it's  fifty  if  it's  a  day  old— the  Number  87  already 
mentioned,  a  nine-story  structure  packed  from  top  to  bot- 
tom with  just  two  sorts  of  businesses— jewelry  and  stamps. 
It  doesn't  require  very  spacious  quarters  to  house  a  pretty 
considerable  business  in  either  line.  Here  veteran  operators 
with  leather  guards  over  their  palms  start  and  stop  the 
hydraulic  elevators  by  pulling  a  cable  up  or  down— we 
hadn't  seen  one  of  the  sort  in  thirty  years.  The  place  is  an 
ant  hill  of  busyness.  Through  almost  any  opened  door  you 
may  glimpse  a  man  with  a  glass  at  his  eye,  who  may  be 
either  probing  the  integrity  of  a  diamond  or  diagnosing 
the  debility  of  a  watch  or  scrutinizing  what  looks  like  an 
infinitesimal  speck  of  dust  in  the  right-hand  numeral  of 
the  President  Taft  brown  four-center  of  1930  which  to  his 
omniscient  eye  marks  it  as  a  newly  discovered  variety;  and 
some  collector  will  gladly  buy  it  as  such  and  exhibit  it,  and 
at  stamp  shows  other  collectors  will  peer  at  it  with  pro- 
found interest  and  envy. 

Up  the  street  at  Number  116  is  another,  a  twelve-story 
building  which  never  houses  less  than  twenty  stamp  dealers 
and  sometimes  twenty-five.  Though  it  is  more  than  forty 


NASSAU  STREET  105 

years  old,  it  is  quite  modern  in  that  it  has  electric  elevators; 
for  there  are  on  Nassau  not  only  hydraulic  elevators,  but 
elevators  starting  from  the  second  story  or,  at  least,  several 
steps  above  the  street,  elevators  which  will  hold  only  three 
or  four  people,  and  some  buildings  with  no  lifts  at  all,  so 
that  you  must  toil  breathlessly  up  two  or  three  flights  of 
dusty  stairs  to  reach  certain  one-room,  often  one-man  busi- 
nesses, of  each  of  whose  existences  a  clientele  seems  to  be 
aware.  In  some  buildings  you  wander  through  narrow,  tor- 
tuous halls,  twisting  this  way  and  that  until  you  lose  all 
sense  of  direction  and  have  to  be  shown  the  way  out;  and 
in  at  least  every  other  room  there  are  stamps  (wholesale  or 
retail),  jewelry,  gauds,  engravers,  encrusters— you  can  guess 
what  they  are.  At  the  doorway  of  such  a  building,  you 
sometimes  see  a  sign,  "For  Rent.  One  light  Room.  Suitable 
for  Stamp  Dealer."  But  a  few  old  rookeries  have  lost  their 
grip.  Rows  of  dark,  silent  doors  line  their  upper  halls,  and 
in  the  stillness  the  ancient  floors  creak  eerily  under  your 
footfalls,  until  you  are  glad  to  escape  down  the  stairs  again 
to  the  cheery  bustle  of  the  street. 

It  was  natural  that  the  stamp  business  should  start  down 
there  in  the  financial  district,  where  there  was  more  money 
to  spend  on  hobbies  than  elsewhere,  and  that  Nassau 
should  become  the  street  of  stamps;  for  near  its  lower  end 
was  then  the  city  post  office,  and  at  its  upper  end  lies  City 
Hall  Park,  where  the  first  stamp  peddler  stood  in  1860, 
and  where  in  1875  a  new  post  office  was  built;  a  magnificent 
thing  of  which  the  whole  city  was  proud,  but  which  in 
another  three  or  four  decades,  when  a  new  main  office  was 
built  away  uptown,  became  just  the  City  Hall  Branch,  and 
in  its  latter  years  lost  favor  and  was  reviled  as  an  architec- 
tural disgrace.  It  was  finally  razed  in  1939  and  its  site 


io6  NASSAU  STREET 

thrown  back  into  the  park  again,  thus  completing  a  curious 
cycle. 

What  a  post  office  its  predecessor  was!  The  Middle 
Dutch  Church,  built  in  1728;  lay  in  its  grave-dotted  yard, 
bordering  Nassau  from  Cedar  to  Fulton,  and  was  a  house 
of  worship  for  more  than  a  century.  During  the  Revolution 
it  was  at  one  time  and  another  a  riding  school  for  British 
officers  and  a  wretched  prison  for  American  patriots.  Six 
decades  later  the  congregation  wanted  to  move  uptown; 
the  government  bought  the  building  and  lot  in  1845,  re- 
modeled the  church  inside,  built  a  one-story  addition  all 
around,  extending  to  the  streets,  and  there  it  was,  surely 
the  most  grotesque  post  office  in  the  world.  The  steeple 
still  stood  at  the  west  end  of  it,  but  the  bell— cast  in 
Amsterdam  in  1730  and  given  to  the  church  by  Abraham 
de  Peyster— went  with  the  congregation  uptown  and  now, 
after  two  more  moves,  still  rings  its  pleasant  call  on  Sabbath 
mornings  from  the  tower  of  the  Church  of  St.  Nicholas,  at 
Fifth  Avenue  and  Forty-eighth  Street.  Some  of  the  bodies 
were  removed  from  the  churchyard  when  the  government 
came  in,  and  some  were  not. 

Here  the  New  York  postmaster  provisional  stamps  were 
issued,  and  from  the  office  windows  were  sold  the  first 
national  stamps,  the  five-  and  ten-cent  values  of  1847.  But 
by  1868  Postmaster-General  Randall  was  describing  it  thus 
in  his  annual  report: 

It  is  patched  and  battered,  full  of  dark  corners  and 
discomforts.  The  sunlight  can  scarcely  penetrate  its 
gloomy  interior.  Gas  is  burnt  there  day  and  night, 
and  men  work  by  it.  It  is  over  an  old  graveyard,  and 
under  its  rotting  floors  lie  skulls  and  bones  and  the 
damp  mold  of  dead  men.  On  removing  the  floors  for 


NASSAU  STREET  107 

repairs  a  short  time  ago,  these  unwelcome  sights  were 
exposed  to  view.  The  building  is  unfit  for  any  use 
whatever,  and  yet  there  ...  by  gaslight,  from  night 
until  morning,  and  from  morning  until  night,  three 
hundred  men  are  at  work  and  inhale  a  poisoned  atmos- 
phere with  every  breath  they  draw.  ...  An  average 
of  nearly  thirty  men  are  sick  all  the  time  from  labor- 
ing in  that  unwholesome  place.  .  .  . 

A  picture  in  an  illustrated  weekly  of  1869  shows  the 
postmen  leaving  the  office  for  their  rounds,  and  they  are 
all  running!  Were  they  so  zealous  as  all  that,  was  the  elan 
of  the  service  so  high,  or  were  they  just  eager  to  get  out 
of  that  gaseous  charnel  house?  Speed  was  not  difficult,  for 
their  loads  were  not  irksome,  their  mail  bags  being  about 
the  size  of  a  present-day  lady's  handbag,  or  perhaps  a  brief 
case. 

John  Walter  Scott  had  opened  a  shop  at  34  Liberty 
Street,  next  door  to  the  church-post  office  when  Randall's 
report  was  written— to  be  exact,  in  1866— and  within  two 
years  he  also  had  a  place  around  at  75-77  Nassau,  which 
presently  became  his  sole  establishment;  a  stamp  store  on 
the  first  floor  and  a  printing  office  in  the  basement  where 
he  turned  out  catalogues,  albums,  portraits  of  the  world's 
rulers  and  such  good  reproductions  in  color  of  United 
States  and  foreign  stamps  for  his  American  Journal  of  Phi- 
lately that  some  competitors  and  critics  made  derogatory 
insinuations.  Another  editor,  giving  his  shop  a  nice  puff 
in  1871,  saw  buyers  "of  every  age,  enthusiastically  scanning 
the  stock,"  "three  persons  constantly  engaged  in  assorting 
and  counting  the  stamps,  and  a  cashier  behind  a  wire- 
protected  desk  busy  taking  the  fractional  currency." 

In  later  years  Scott  did  business  in  other  streets  than 


io8  NASSAU  STREET 

Nassau,  but  he  was  its  philatelic  pioneer.  With  him  really 
began  its  history  as  a  street  of  stamps.  In  1887  he  sold  his 
business  to  Gus  and  Henry  Caiman,  who  reorganized  it  as 
the  Scott  Stamp  and  Coin  Company.  But  Mr.  Scott 
couldn't  stay  out  of  stamps.  He  began  again  on  his  own 
in  1889.  The  Caimans  brought  suit  to  stop  him,  but  a  high 
court  ruled  that  a  man  cannot  sign  away  his  right  to  earn  a 
living  at  the  only  sort  of  work  he  knows.  Scott  sold  out 
again  to  J.  E.  Handshaw  in  1916,  and  served  as  librarian  of 
the  Collectors  Club  of  New  York  until  his  death  three 
years  later. 

It  is  significant  that  in  the  '90*5  the  New  York  Notes  in 
the  American  Collector  were  being  signed  with  the  nom 
de  plume,  "Nassau";  while  across  the  water,  the  Strand, 
where  dealers  congregated  until  Britons  nicknamed  it 
"Stampmonger  Lane,"  was  spoken  of  by  Americans  as  the 
Nassau  Street  of  London.  From  those  days  to  these,  de- 
spite the  development  of  big  philatelic  concerns  uptown, 
Nassau  has  remained  the  traditional  Wall  Street  of  phi- 
lately. Dealers  overflow  into  its  neighbor  streets— John, 
Fulton,  Cortlandt,  Park  Row,  even  Broadway— but  it  is 
still  the  backbone. 

But  selling  stamps  in  Nassau  Street  hasn't  always  been 
beer  and  skittles.  Edward  Stern,  a  veteran  dealer  in  the 
street,  remembers  that  when  he,  a  youngster  of  twenty- 
three,  chose  a  room  in  which  to  begin  business  in  1903, 
the  landlord  strove  to  dissuade  him,  because  half  a  dozen 
others  had  failed  in  the  stamp  business  in  that  same  room. 
Probably  it  wasn't  entirely  compassion  on  the  landlord's 
part;  he  had  just  got  tired  of  having  tenants  fold  up  on 
him,  leaving  a  lot  of  rent  unpaid.  But  Stern  persisted,  won 
his  lease  and  gladdened  the  owner's  heart  by  keeping  a 
few  jumps  ahead  of  the  sheriff. 


NASSAU  STREET  109 

One  of  the  street's  earliest  figures,  after  Scott,  and  the 
one  most  fondly  and  humorously  remembered,  is  that  of 
William  P.  Brown,  the  City  Hall  Park  pioneer,  who  was 
on  Nassau  or  just  around  the  corner  from  it,  for  more 
than  half  a  century.  Between  his  push-cart  period  and  the 
era  when  he  actually  had  a  roof  over  his  head,  he  is  said 
to  have  been  a  "satcheleer,"  or  itinerant  stamp  dealer— go- 
ing about,  picking  up  stamps  from  banks,  business  houses 
and  other  sources  and  selling  them  usually  to  dealers, 
though  privately  when  convenient— a  type  of  middleman 
which  still  flourishes.  Such  merchants  were  and  are  not 
only  urban  but  interurban.  The  journals  reported  in  1889 
that  W.  B.  Hale  of  Williamsville,  Mass.,  the  traveling 
stamp  dealer,  was  painfully  injured  by  colliding  with  a 
team  while  pedaling  his  bicycle  from  Holyoke  to  Spring- 
field, but  recovered. 

Brown  was  established  on  Nassau  as  a  coin  and  stamp 
dealer  before  1875,  and  is  further  known  to  collectors  today 
by  a  "carrier"  stamp  in  the  manner  of  those  local  express 
or  dispatch  concerns  which  functioned  very  usefully  in 
the  larger  cities  before  the  Civil  War  and  before  the  gov- 
ernment had  introduced  house-to-house  delivery.  Brown's 
service  was  announced  on  his  one-cent  stamp,  issued  in 
1876  as  "Brown's  City  Post  Stamp  Office-Nassau  St." 
and  was  garnished  with  a  picture  of  a  man  pushing  a 
wheelbarrow,  presumably  the  actual  manner  in  which  he 
handled  the  mail  at  the  start.  You  could  leave  a  letter  at 
his  store  and  he  would  take  it  to  the  Post  Office  for  a  cent, 
or  if  you  sent  out  many  letters  a  day,  he  would  pick  them 
up  and  take  them  to  the  Post  Office  upon  arrangement. 
This  branch  of  his  business  probably  did  not  last  more 
than  a  year  or  two. 

The  lore  about  Brown,  a  character  right  out  of  the  pages 


no  NASSAU  STREET 

of  Dickens,  would  make  a  monograph  all  by  itself.  Like 
many  another  queer  personality,  his  one  hand  was  stingy 
and  hard,  his  other  open  and  charitable.  In  the  last  two  or 
three  decades  of  his  life  (he  died  in  1929),  he  is  remem- 
bered as  never  wearing  an  overcoat,  even  on  the  coldest 
days,  but  coming  down  street  with  the  collar  of  his  seedy 
old  black  coat  turned  up  around  a  shirt  collar  far  from 
immaculate,  his  unkempt,  yellow-and-white  beard  blown 
about  by  the  wind  and  his  old,  worn  shoes  curling  up  at  the 
toes.  He  never  married,  else  his  wife  might  have  succeeded 
in  keeping  his  hands  and  nails  more  presentable.  He  must 
have  appeared  a  curious  figure  in  Europe  when  he  went 
over  there  on  stamp-buying  or  selling  trips,  as  he  did  occa- 
sionally. 

Some  who  bought  from  him  recall  that  he  had  albums 
in  which  his  stock  was  mounted  on  hinges,  often  in  helter- 
skelter  fashion;  a  stamp  from  Abyssinia  might  be  rubbing 
elbows  with  ones  on  either  side  from  Uruguay  and  New- 
foundland. He  had  a  habit  of  pasting  these  album  pages  or 
approval  sheets  on  his  show  window,  one  after  another,  and 
as  the  window  was  seldom  washed,  the  remaining  gum 
and  bits  of  paper,  together  with  accumulated  dust,  fin- 
ally robbed  it  even  of  translucency.  Perhaps  that  was  what 
ailed  his  battered  spectacles,  too,  for  he  would  look  over 
them  at  the  customer  and  under  them  at  the  stamps  on  the 
counter.  One  day  a  customer,  still  living,  said  to  him,  "Mr. 
Brown,  what  do  you  wear  those  glasses  for?  You  never  look 
through  'em."  Whereupon  the  old  gentleman  calmly  took 
them  off,  laid  them  on  a  shelf  behind  him,  and  continued 
the  transaction  without  them.  For  a  long  time  he  had  a 
habit  of  going  fishing  on  Jamaica  Bay  on  Thursdays,  and 
serving  a  fish  chowder,  prepared  on  the  premises,  to  cus- 
tomers and  friends  at  his  shop  on  Fridays. 


NASSAU  STREET  111 

But  this  queer  old  man  was  a  friend  to  the  friendless— 
perhaps  because  of  vivid  memories  of  the  hardships  of  his 
own  earlier  days.  He  believed  with  the  Salvation  Army 
that  a  man  may  be  down  but  never  quite  out.  The  Five 
Points  Mission,  in  the  slums  of  New  York's  lower  East 
Side,  was  his  favorite  charity,  and  he  is  said  to  have  left  his 
entire  estate  to  it  when  he  died. 

By  the  i88o's  dealers  were  coming  in  whose  names  are 
still  bywords  in  the  street  and  among  the  oldsters  of  phi- 
lately-Gremmel,  Bogert,  Albrecht,  Hunter,  the  Tuttles 
and  others.  Henry  Gremmel,  born  in  Hanover,  Germany, 
began  collecting  in  1870  at  the  age  of  eight,  and  kinsmen 
already  in  America  supplied  him  with  a  practically  com- 
plete collection  of  United  States  stamps.  In  his  school,  not 
only  many  pupils,  but  the  teacher,  too,  collected  stamps. 
Henry  had  about  three  thousand  varieties  when  his  album 
disappeared  one  day,  and  to  the  day  of  his  death  he  be- 
lieved that  his  teacher  had  stolen  it.  He  finally  came  to  this 
country  as  a  band  musician,  got  into  the  stamp  business, 
and  by  1889  was  one  of  the  fixtures  of  Nassau  Street.  R.  F. 
Albrecht  was  another  German  immigrant  who  became  one 
of  the  street's  great  dealers  and  auctioneers.  John  N.  Luff, 
American  stamp  historian,  and  Walter  S.  Scott  started  with 
him  as  clerks  in  the  '90'$.  F.  W.  Hunter,  an  attorney— and 
collector  on  the  side— took  on  more  than  forty  years  ago  a 
dark-eyed,  scared-looking  office  boy  named  Johnny  Klee- 
man,  eventually  launched  a  stamp  business  with  John  as 
partner,  and  Kleeman  has  been  in  the  street  ever  since. 

Rudolphus  R.  Bogert  has  already  been  mentioned  as  a 
pioneer  in  organizing  the  American  Philatelic  Association. 
He  was  doing  business  as  a  dealer  in  Whitelaw  Reid's  new 
New  York  Tribune  building,  at  the  upper  end  of  Nassau, 
as  early  as  1882.  His  store  was  a  semi-basement  room, 


112  NASSAU  STREET 

slightly  below  the  street  level.  Three  years  later  he  took  on 
a  sixteen-year-old  boy  named  Arthur  Tuttle,  whose  older 
brother,  George  R.  Tuttle,  was  already  in  the  business. 
Arthur  is  still  selling  stamps  in  Philadelphia;  and  a  big 
safe  which  George  acquired  from  Bogert  &  Durbin— for 
Bogert  later  took  on  a  partner— is  still  on  the  eighth  floor  of 
116  Nassau  Street,  where  George  Tuttle  used  it.  Tuttle 
died  years  ago,  and  the  safe  is  so  huge  that  the  building 
shudders  at  the  thought  of  moving  it  either  up  or  down, 
so  they  just  throw  it  in  gratis  with  any  room  on  the  eighth 
floor,  provided  some  other  stamp  dealer  isn't  already  using 
it.  Several  have  used  it  since  Turtle's  day,  and  the  fact 
that  Bogert  &  Durbin's  name  is  still  painted  across  its  brow 
doesn't  bother  anybody. 

In  1894  Bogert  hired  another  office  boy,  a  gangling, 
genial,  sandy-haired  lad  named  Percy  Doane;  and  as 
Bogert's  employee  and  successor,  Doane  has  remained  in 
that  same  building— though  now  for  many  years  on  an 
upper  floor— from  that  day  to  this.  His  office  is  one  of  the 
sights  of  New  York— a  standing  refutation  of  the  axiom 
that  order  is  Heaven's  first  law.  It  is  a  large  room,  crowded 
with  long  tables— at  least,  it  is  believed  there  are  tables 
underneath— and  wall  cases  stacked  high  with  the  accumu- 
lation of  years  in  what  Lady  Macbeth  would  call  "most 
admired  disorder."  One  might  readily  believe  that  every- 
thing had  been  shot  into  the  room  from  a  blunderbuss 
about  1876  and  never  touched  nor  dusted  since.  Behind  a 
counter  crossing  the  room  in  front  of  the  door  sits  Mr. 
Doane— a  slender,  gentle,  humorous  man  with  a  scholar's 
thin  face,  nose  glasses,  high  standing  collar  and  long  strands 
of  hair  brushed  across  his  bald  crest,  beloved  joker  and 
raconteur  to  all  the  fraternity— attending  to  present-day 
business  with  meticulous  care;  but  for  him  those  mounds 


NASSAU  STREET  113 

of  detritus  behind  him  have  acquired  a  sort  of  perpetuity,  a 
tomblike  sanctity  from  disturbance. 

On  hot  days  you  may  find  the  door  propped  open  with 
a  Scott  catalogue  or  a  dusty  package  which  was  tied  up 
about  1902.  A  dozen  years  ago,  in  a  facetious  publication  of 
the  Hot  Stove  League,  a  group  of  New  York  stampers, 
there  was  a  page  or  two  from  a  philatelic  Pepys's  Diary, 
among  the  incidents  of  which  were,  "To  Mr.  Doane's, 
where  I  did  open  the  door  and  fall  over  a  large  package, 
which  did  cause  me  much  pain  and  confusion  and  neces- 
sitated my  return  to  my  tavern." 

Friends  who  call  upon  Doane  gaze  upon  those  dusty 
mounds  with  longing  eyes,  for  they  are  confident  that  thar's 
gold  in  them  thar  hills.  Now  and  then  some  portion  of  a 
stack  falls  to  the  floor  and  he  discovers  stamps  which  he 
may  have  bought  for  a  song  ages  ago,  but  which  are  worth 
real  money  now,  and  which  he  didn't  know  he  had.  On 
two  or  three  occasions  the  building  has  threatened  to  raise 
his  rent,  whereupon  he  counters  with  a  threat  to  move. 
When  word  of  this  impasse  flashes  up  and  down  the  street 
by  grapevine  telegraph,  there  is  a  miniature  gold  rush;  a 
flock  of  dealers  and  collectors  begin  hanging  around  the 
Doane  menage  like  ghouls,  hoping  to  be  among  the  first 
to  get  a  crack  at  the  treasure  which  lies  buried  there.  Then 
landlord  and  tenant  reach  an  amicable  compromise,  and 
the  argonauts  ooze  away. 

The  Burger  brothers,  August  and  Artur,  are  two  of  the 
noted  exhibits  of  the  street.  They  have  been  in  business, 
as  this  is  written,  fifty-three  years,  and  are  now  at  their 
fourth  location,  but  always  on  Nassau,  and  have  never  lost 
their  German  dialect.  Ask  them  for  reminiscences  and  they 
tell  you  solemnly,  "We  are  going  to  write  a  book  about 
ourselfs."  Placid  and  courteous,  they  nevertheless  have  an 


n4  NASSAU  STREET 

air  of  neutrality  when  you  look  over  their  stock;  if  you 
decide  not  to  buy,  they  are  undisturbed.  Not  so  long  ago 
one  collector  met  another  who  was  looking  for  a  certain 
rare  stamp  catalogued  at  five  thousand  dollars.  He  knew 
that  the  Burgers  had  a  copy,  and  sent  the  other  man  to 
them;  but  when  they  came  to  look  for  it,  they  couldn't 
find  it.  They  were  unruffled  by  the  circumstance,  and  prom- 
ised to  search  further.  Several  months  later  they  still  hadn't 
found  it,  but  were  still  not  excited  by  its  absence.  There 
are  those  who  hint  that  maybe  Gus  and  Artur  just  didn't 
want  to  sell  that  stamp! 

Another  customer,  a  specialist  in  revenues,  went  into 
their  shop  one  day— where  he  had  often  been  before— and 
was  shown  a  whole  sheet  of  the  Trenton  Match  Company 
stamps,  issued  in  1881,  a  thing  which  he  hadn't  expected 
to  find  floating  about  the  market.  He  expressed  his  sur- 
prise. "How  long  have  you  had  it?"  he  asked. 

"We  haf  had  it,"  explained  the  brother  who  was  dis- 
playing it,  "since  we  went  in  business  in  1886." 

When  the  collector  recovered  from  his  amazement,  he 
remarked,  "Strange  that  no  one  has  bought  it  before  now." 

"I  belief  you  are  the  first  person  we  ever  showed  it  to," 
was  the  startling  reply. 

The  price  asked  seemed  much  too  high  to  the  collector. 
"I'd  like  to  have  it,"  he  admitted,  "but  that's  too  much 
money  for  me  at  present." 

"We  will  keep  it  for  you,"  was  the  offer. 

"No,  don't  do  that,"  he  protested.  "Don't  miss  a  sale  on 
my  account.  I  may  not  buy  it  at  all." 

But  some  time  later  another  collector  said  to  him,  "Say, 
I  saw  that  sheet  of  Trenton  Match  stamps  at  Burger's 
yesterday.  I  wanted  it,  but  they  said  you  had  an  option 
on  it."  The  other  had  to  call  up  the  Burgers  and  tell  them 


NASSAU  STREET  115 

emphatically  that  he  was  not  in  the  market  before  they 
would  release  it. 

The  latest  honor  that  has  been  bestowed  upon  Nassau 
Street— it  was  bound  to  come  sooner  or  later— is  a  some- 
what dubious  one.  A  specimen  of  today's  favorite  form  of 
literature,  a  murder-mystery  novel  with  the  highly  sugges- 
tive title,  Cancelled  in  Red,  has  its  scene  laid  in  the  famous 
street.  The  body  found  in  the  early  paragraphs  is  that  of 
Max  Adrian,  stamp  dealer,  whose  counterfeiting,  black- 
mailing, cheating  in  trade  and  double-crossing  have  made 
him  so  hated  in  the  philatelic  world  that  it's  a  wonder 
somebody  didn't  do  for  the  dastard  long  ago.  The  story 
follows  the  accepted  modern  formula  in  that  one  killing 
isn't  enough;  another  victim— one  of  those  suspected  of 
Adrian's  murder,  by  the  way— is  knocked  off  within  twenty- 
four  hours.  Although  the  book— published  in  1939—1$  dedi- 
cated by  the  author  to  a  prominent  Nassau  Street  stamp 
dealer,  the  street  is  a  bit  doubtful  as  to  the  propriety,  or 
rather,  the  advisability  of  putting  such  a  character  as  Max 
Adrian  on  paper.  People  might  get  notions.  ...  A  review 
of  the  book  in  a  stamp  journal  naively  begs  the  reader  not 
to  become  cynical  or  prejudiced  against  dealers  in  general 
as  a  result  of  reading  it,  for  after  all,  the  reviewer  points 
out,  it  is  only  fiction  1 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 


THERE  were  colorful  charac- 
T_-    V  J    ^  1_ 

ters  which  moved  through 
the  Nassau  Street  atmos- 
phere of  the  past  and  which  have  become  legendary;  Gin- 
nity, the  stamp  finder  of  forty  years  ago,  for  example.  In 
almost  any  group  of  old  timers  you  may  hear  a  new  story 
of  him.  He  was  a  scout,  a  prospector  with  a  nose  for  stamps 
like  a  red  setter's  for  quail.  Banks,  old  law  offices,  old  busi- 
ness archives,  family  attics— his  suavity,  persistence  and 
elegant  "front"  won  his  way  into  them  all.  A  personable 
young  man  in  his  twenties,  he  dressed  nattily,  usually  wore 
a  plug  hat  and  carried  a  cane,  an  ensemble  that  opened 
doors  to  him  which  would  have  been  closed  against  a 
plainer  man.  He  got  into  the  Philadelphia  custom  house, 
an  unprecedented  feat,  and  left  not  a  fine  revenue  or  pos- 
tage stamp  in  its  vaults.  Time  and  again  someone  has  said, 
"There's  that  old  concern,  Doodle  &  Whiffle;  been  in 
business  a  hundred  years;  ought  to  have  a  world  of  old 
stamps  in  their  files";  and  when  effort  was  made  to  pry 
into  those  old  papers,  like  as  not  it  would  be  found  that 
Ginnity  had  been  there  thirty  or  forty  years  before  and 
cleaned  out  everything. 

Ginnity  earned  money  rapidly,  but  spent  it  just  as  fast. 
He  was  a  high-pressure  rounder,  if  ever  there  was  one.  "A 

116 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    117 

short  life  and  a  merry  one"  was  his  sardonic  motto.  Per- 
haps he  was  aware  for  years  of  his  impending  fate,  for  he 
died  young— some  who  knew  him  think  at  not  more  than 
thirty.  He  came  into  New  York  one  Saturday  evening  with 
some  Baltimore  postmaster  stamps,  looked  up  Gus  Caiman, 
then  an  official  of  the  Scott  concern,  and  sold  them  to  him 
for  eight-hundred  dollars  with  the  stipulation  that  he  re- 
ceive spot  cash;  he  wanted  to  spend  it  over  the  week  end. 
It  was  long  after  banking  hours,  but  Caiman  scurried 
hither  and  thither  and  finally  raised  the  sum.  By  Monday 
morning,  Ginnity  hadn't  a  dollar  of  it  left. 

Perhaps  it  was  his  spending  needs  that  made  him  reck- 
less; perhaps  a  sort  of  what-the-hell  state  of  mind  was  born 
of  the  knowledge  that  he  hadn't  a  long  life  before  him. 
Anyhow,  he  began  trying  tricks  which  he  must  have  known 
would  be  found  out.  A  man  from  Baltimore  went  into 
Bogert  &  Durbin's  office  one  day  and  said,  "I've  come  to 
collect  for  those  stamps  your  agent  bought  from  me  the 
other  day." 

"But  we  have  no  agent,"  exclaimed  Mr.  Bogert  in  sur- 
prise. It  was  Ginnity,  of  course. 

Not  only  this,  but  he  began  counterfeiting.  The  story  is 
told  of  his  finding  an  attorney  in  Alexandria,  Virginia, 
who  had  inherited  files  of  letters  going  back  into  the  1840'$, 
the  carrier  and  postmaster  stamp  days.  Ginnity  selected  a 
number  of  them  and  said,  "Now,  may  I  take  these  over 
to  my  hotel  to  study  to-night?  I'll  bring  them  back  and 
quote  you  a  price  to-morrow." 

"Certainly,"  said  the  unsuspecting  lawyer,  and  away  went 
Ginnity.  He  had  prepared  a  counterfeit  of  the  stamp  of 
Russell  &  Company,  a  local  express  concern  which  once 
operated  in  New  York.  Selecting  certain  letters  on  which 
that  stamp  would  look  most  natural,  he  stuck  the  Russells 


n8   RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 

on  and  canceled  them  with  pen  strokes  in  the  old-fashioned 
way,  thus  greatly  increasing  the  value  of  the  letters.  Next 
morning  he  made  the  attorney  an  offer  for  the  letters  and 
it  was  accepted.  Now,  said  Ginnity,  he  would  appreciate 
it  if  the  man  of  law  would  write  a  little  paper  saying  that 
he  had  sold  these  letters  to  Ginnity,  that  they  were  genuine 
and  the  stamps  as  is,  or  words  to  that  effect.  Of  course  the 
attorney  was  glad  to  oblige,  and  he  dashed  off  the  paper, 
wholly  unaware  that  some  more  stamps,  and  forged  stamps 
at  that,  had  been  added  to  the  letters  overnight.  When  the 
counterfeits  were  detected  by  expert  eyes  some  time  later, 
the  whole  story  gradually  came  out. 

An  old-time  New  York  dealer  was  telling  me  this  story 
when  another  veteran  came  in. 

"I  was  just  telling  Mr.  Harlow  that  story  about  Ginnity 
and  the  Alexandria  lawyer/'  said  the  narrator.  "Did  he 
ever  work  off  any  of  those  Russells  on  you?" 

"No,"  replied  the  other  with  a  wry  grin,  "but  we  bought 
some  of  those  Turners  that  he  made." 

Now,  the  Turner  carrier  stamp  is  so  suspicious  a  charac- 
ter that  the  cataloguers  refuse  to  mention  it,  displaying 
even  greater  intransigence  than  an  old  work  on  zoology  of 
1759  which  describes  and  pictures  the  dragon,  but  starts 
off  by  saying,  "The  Dragon,  as  described  in  the  numerous 
Fables  and  Stories  of  several  Writers,  may  be  justly  ques- 
tioned whether  he  exists."  Forty  years  ago  the  Turner  stamp 
was  for  a  time  received  in  good  society;  but  as  nothing 
could  be  discovered  regarding  its  ancestry  or  the  history  of 
the  company  supposed  to  have  issued  it,  there  very  justly 
arose  a  question  whether  it  had  ever  existed;  and  the 
Scotch  verdict,  "Not  proven,"  stands  against  it  to  this  day. 

In  the  days  of  Bogert  &  Durbin's  ground  floor  shop  in 
the  Tribune  building,  a  bright-eyed  young  Japanese  was  a 


ROOM  918 

ml  asii 

J  ifii 


FRF 


It*  NASSAU  STRfiCT 
HlSHfSTWMCES  U  |  I 
ON  QUO  UTf  ttS  I 

ftooa  H  MT 


The  highest   a 
lowest: 

Left-Post     ofl 
near  summit  of 
Jungfrau,  Swit5 
land,    11,342   f 
above  sea  level 

Swiss  P.  O.  Depart 
ment 


uo  rd  Mu'-cond  j  I 
The  Explorers*  Club, 
Street, 
Hew  "^crk  City. 


Bahamas 


ove— An  envelope  from  the  un- 
•sea  post  ofEce  off  the  Bahamas. 

3[ht— The  undersea  post  office, 
ich  is  much  deeper  in  the  water 
in  the  picture  suggests. 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    119 

customer.  One  day  he  told  the  clerk,  Percy  Doane,  that  he 
was  going  to  a  fancy-dress  affair  as  Uncle  Sam,  and  wanted 
to  cover  his  costume  with  stamps;  used,  of  course;  he 
couldn't  afford  so  many  new  ones.  Percy  tried  to  imagine 
that  little  Oriental  countenance  with  a  bunch  of  white 
whiskers  on  the  chin  as  resembling  Uncle  Sam,  but  gave  it 
up.  He  supplied  the  stamps,  however— United  States  red 
twos  for  the  stripes  on  the  breeches,  and  ones,  which  had 
been  blue  ever  since  1870,  with  perhaps  a  few  blue  fives,  for 
the  coat,  on  which  the  customer,  with  true  Mongolian 
patience,  worked  out  white  star  designs  in  pasting  the 
stamps. 

Some  time  later  the  Japanese  came  in  very  happy.  His 
costume  had  made  a  great  hit  at  the  ball,  and  he  offered  to 
let  Bogert  &  Durbin  exhibit  it  in  their  window  if  they 
liked.  They  did  so,  and  it  quickly  attracted  the  attention 
of  another  strange  bird,  a  hard-faced  individual  destined 
to  become  one  of  the  most  famous  among  the  queer  charac- 
ters of  the  Street.  Let's  call  him  Kroog;  the  Street  will 
recall  at  once  his  real  name.  He  had  a  small  Tammany 
sinecure  which  didn't  take  too  much  of  his  time  and  very 
little  thought.  In  a  rich  dese-dem-and-dose  dialect  he  told 
the  stamp  men  that  he  knew  places  where  he  could  find 
some  old  stamps— queer  stamps— stamps  from  away  back 
and  from  foreign  countries,  maybe.  He  produced  some 
nice  old  United  States  revenues  as  a  sample.  Were  they 
interested? 

They  were,  to  the  extent  of  twelve  dollars,  and  Kroog 
promptly  went  out  and  invested  the  money  in  potent 
liquor.  That  was  only  one  of  his  flaws  as  a  stamp  hound; 
any  sale  from  five  dollars  up  meant  a  souse.  He  became  to 
a  considerable  extent  a  successor  to  Ginnity,  with  the  dif- 
ference that  he  never  went  outside  of  New  York  in  his 


120   RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 

searches,  while  Ginnity  covered  a  wide  extent  of  country. 

After  several  days  he  came  back  and  flaunted  before 
young  Doane's  glistening  eyes  five  1853  Hawaiians  which 
he  had  found  in  a  waste-paper  warehouse.  The  dealer,  he 
said,  had  bought  some  boxes  of  old  personal  letters,  which 
were  arranged  according  to  years.  These  were  from  the 
1853  box.  Oh,  yes,  there  were  boxes  for  1851  and  '52,  too; 
but  he  hadn't  looked  into  those. 

"Go  right  back  there/'  said  Doane,  his  voice  trembling, 
"and  go  through  those  '51  and  '52  boxes.  If  there  are  any 
Hawaiians  in  them,  you'll  be  surprised  at  what  we  pay  you 
for  them.  They  are  known  as  Missionary  stamps,  and 
they're  worth  real  money." 

Here  is  where  he  made  a  mistake  in  tactics.  He  should 
have  had  a  pair  of  handcuffs  ready,  should  have  attached 
himself  to  Kroog  and  ordered  him  to  lead  on  to  the  ware- 
house without  a  moment's  delay.  Instead,  he  paid  Kroog 
twenty-five  dollars  for  the  stamps  just  delivered,  and  let 
him  go.  He  hadn't  yet  learned  the  fellow's  bedeviling  weak- 
ness. 

Well,  it  was  the  usual  story.  With  that  twenty-five  dol- 
lars in  pocket,  Kroog  was  again  stricken  with  a  sense  of 
obligation  to  remove  the  curse  of  liquor  from  America  by 
decreasing  the  visible  supply.  When  he  was  finally  able  to 
stand  on  his  feet  again  and  made  his  way  to  the  paper  ware- 
house, those  other  boxes  of  envelopes  had  been  sent  to  a 
paper  mill  and  chewed  into  pulp. 

Kroog  soon  learned  that  there  were  other  dealers  in 
Nassau  Street,  and  began  doing  business  with  several  of 
them.  On  two  or  three  later  occasions  he  brought  batches 
of  old  stamps  to  a  dealer,  only  part  of  a  cache,  he  said,  and 
he  would  go  back  immediately  and  get  the  rest;  but  he 
never  did,  because  he  hadn't  paid  for  the  first  lot,  and 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    121 

somehow,  never  got  around  to  doing  so.  He  went  through 
the  files  of  the  New  York  Institution  for  the  Blind,  picked 
out  a  lot  of  their  best  stamps,  and  said  he  would  have  to 
submit  these  to  a  dealer  before  he  would  know  what  to 
pay  for  them;  he  would  return  next  day,  pay  for  them  and 
get  the  rest.  He  sold  the  stamps  in  Nassau  Street  for  a  nice 
figure  and  never  went  back  for  the  rest.  Smaller  sales  and 
larger  profits  was  his  system. 

But  he  developed  a  technic  of  his  own  with  the  "junk- 
ies," or  Italian  old-paper  warehousemen;  he  illustrated  it 
one  day  to  a  stamp  dealer  who  went  with  him  to  a  ware- 
house to  look  at  some  revenue  items.  The  paper  man 
handed  him  three  or  four  nice  old  revenue  stamps  as 
samples. 

"Junk!"  sneered  Kroog,  and  before  the  dealer's  horrified 
eyes— he  would  gladly  have  given  $10  apiece  for  the  stamps 
—Kroog  tore  them  across  petulantly  and  threw  the  frag- 
ments from  him.  "Haven't  you  got  anything  better  than 
that?" 

The  magnificent  gesture  was  worth  the  money;  thereafter 
the  junkie  was  as  clay  in  Kroog's  hands,  and  he  bought 
the  other  stamps  of  the  day's  crop  at  ridiculous  prices.  But 
some  of  the  junkies  finally  learned  the  trick  and  worked  it 
themselves.  Some  dealers  finally  came  to  going  directly  to 
the  warehouses,  and  at  times  would  be  summoned  to  come 
up  and  look  at  a  batch  of  stamps. 

"Give  you  twenty  dollars  for  the  lot,"  he  might  say. 

"Bah!"  and  the  stamps  would  be  hurled  into  the  baler, 
though  minus  Kroog's  tearing-apart  quirk.  "I  send  'em  to 
da  mill  first."  When  or  if  the  customer  went  away  without 
raising  the  ante  sufficiently,  the  stamps  would  be  rescued 
from  the  baler  and  offered  to  somebody  else. 

Kroog  had  a  rival,  old  Mr.  Newbold,  and  the  two  were 


122    RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 

bitter  enemies.  Every  dealer  dreaded  having  them  meet 
in  his  office,  for  there  were  always  loud  words  and  seeming 
jeopardy  to  furniture.  The  elderly  Mr.  Newbold  carried  a 
heavy  cane,  which  he  was  admittedly  ready  and  eager  to 
use  on  Kroog's  person.  Once  Newbold  sat  at  an  auction 
sale  with  a  roll  of  stamps  in  his  outer  coat  pocket,  and 
after  the  sale,  found  that  they  had  disappeared.  He  was 
purple  with  rage;  he  knew  the  culprit  at  once. 

"That  skunk  Kroog  was  sitting  right  behind  me!"  he 
spluttered.  Sure  enough,  when  he  was  thoroughly  cornered, 
it  was  found  that  Kroog  had  the  stamps.  They  were  re- 
turned to  Newbold  and  the  affair  was  settled— though  with 
difficulty— without  homicide. 

Newbold  did  much  scouting  outside  of  New  York.  He 
used  to  go  through  New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania,  peddling 
furs  to  individual  customers;  but  the  mangy  catskin  neck- 
pieces which  he  worked  off  on  small-town  women  were 
really  of  less  importance  than  the  old  correspondence  in 
attics  which  he  pretended  to  ask  about  in  a  casual,  oh-by- 
the-way  manner.  Once  he  halted  a  Negro  trundling  a 
wheelbarrow  load  of  old  paper  to  a  bonfire,  and  found  a 
sixpence  Canada  in  it;  and  if  you  don't  believe  one  old 
stamp  could  be  worth  the  quarter  he  paid  to  the  Negro, 
just  look  in  the  catalogue.  At  another  place  he  found  two 
old  ladies  whose  family  had  come  originally  from  Balti- 
more, and  who  admitted  having  some  old  family  corre- 
spondence with  kin  in  that  city,  running  back— oh,  fifty 
years  and  more.  Newbold  pricked  up  his  ears  and  wanted 
to  see  the  letters  at  once.  No,  they  said,  we  can't  get  at 
them  now— all  packed  away  in  trunks  in  the  attic.  Next 
time  you  come  around  .  .  . 

He  took  pains  not  to  be  too  long  in  coming  around 
again,  but  met  with  a  stunning  disappointment.  No,  they 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    123 

said,  there  were  no  stamps  worth  mentioning;  in  most 
cases  only  the  letter,  not  the  envelope,  had  been  saved; 
and  the  letters  back  in  the  pre-envelope  days,  when  they 
were  just  folded  over  and  became  their  own  envelopes, 
had  no  United  States  stamps  on  them— just  a  few  queer 
old  labels  of  one  sort  and  another;  so  they  finally  burned 
the  whole  mess;  been  wanting  to  get  it  out  of  the  way  for 
a  long  time,  anyhow,  and  make  room  for  other  things— 

With  a  pencil,  Newbold  was  sketching  as  they  talked, 
a  slender  rectangle  on  a  piece  of  paper;  he  wrote  inside  it 
as  good  an  imitation  as  he  could  achieve  of  the  famous 
signature  "James  M.  Buchanan,"  and  under  it,  "5  Cents." 

"Were  there  any  labels  like  this  on  the  letters?"  he 
asked. 

They  peered  at  it.  "Oh,  yes,  several." 

"How  many?"  he  persisted. 

They  looked  at  each  other.  Oh,  maybe  twenty  or  twenty- 
five,  they  guessed. 

"I'd  have  given  you  a  hundred  dollars  apiece  for  them," 
he  said,  solemnly.  Of  course  he  wouldn't  have,  though  he 
could  have  made  a  nice  profit  at  that;  but  his  announce- 
ment had  the  stunning  effect  he  desired.  They  were  abso- 
lutely paralyzed  for  a  moment;  then  they  melted  into  tears 
and  wept  piteously,  poor  souls,  at  the  thought  of  the  for- 
tune they  had  thrown  away;  a  horrible  example  of  the 
sort  of  folk  who,  when  they  see  a  huddle  of  something 
old,  can  think  of  nothing  but  starting  a  bonfire. 

Hen  Kilton  was  a  Nassau  Street  character  engaged  in  a 
byway  of  the  stamp  business  which  probably  many  present- 
day  philatelists  have  never  heard  of.  He  had  been  in  "Va- 
riety" in  his  youth  and  also  traveled  with  a  circus  as  "The 
Great  Egyptian  Juggler."  He  was  likewise  a  dancer  ex- 
traordinary, and  even  decades  later  was  as  light  on  his  toes 


i24   RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 

as  thistledown.  He  was  a  stamp  collector  all  the  time;  you 
may  find  his  collections  of  Nova  Scotia,  New  Brunswick 
and  other  countries  entered  in  stamp  exhibitions— though 
under  another  name— as  far  back  as  1893.  Once  when  he 
was  traveling  through  Georgia  with  the  circus,  another  per- 
former stole  some  of  his  stamps,  including  a  couple  of  fine 
U.  S.  1847*8.  Hen  had  the  man  arrested,  and  the  culprit 
engaged  a  local,  small-town  lawyer  to  defend  him. 

The  attorney  quickly  learned  from  his  client  that  Kilton 
was  a  New  England  Yankee,  and  when  Hen  had  testified, 
the  limb  of  the  law  took  over  his  cross-examination  with 
the  air  of  a  hungry  man  sitting  down  before  a  big  platter 
of  corned  beef  and  cabbage.  One  of  his  early  questions 
was,  "Mr.  Kilton,  where  were  you  born?" 

"In  Connecticut,"  replied  Hen. 

"Connecticut,"  repeated  the  lawyer,  glancing  at  the 
jury.  Another  question  or  two,  and  then— 

"That's  a  nice  watch  and  chain  you  have  there.  Where 
did  you  buy  the  watch?" 

"In  London,"  replied  Hen,  wondering  where  all  this  was 
leading. 

"And  the  chain?" 

"Got  that  in  England,  too." 

"Ah!  American  jewelry  not  good  enough  for  you,  I  sup- 
pose?" with  a  can-you-imagine-it  look  at  the  jurymen. 

"Oh,  I  wouldn't  put  it  that  way,"  protested  the  witness. 

"Now  you  say  one  of  the  stamps  stolen  from  you  was 
a— a  twelve-cent  stamp,  I  believe." 

"Yes,  sir,  twelve-cent,  1851." 

"By  eigh teen-fifty-one  you  mean—" 

"That  it  was  issued  in  1851." 

"I  see.  And  now,  whose  picture  did  it  have  on  it?" 

"Washington's." 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    125 

"And  what  color  was  that  stamp?" 

"Black,"  replied  Kilton,  as  any  philatelist  would,  think- 
ing of  the  color  of  the  ink. 

"Black,"  exclaimed  the  lawyer,  with  another  triumphant 
glance  at  the  jury. 

The  drift  of  this  questioning  was  a  mystery  to  Hen  until 
the  attorney  made  his  speech  to  the  twelve  good  men  and 
true.  Then,  after  his  preliminary  warming-up,  he  declaimed 
with  rapidly  rising  indignation,  "Gentlemen,  here  is  my 
poor  client  being  persecuted  by  a  Yankee,  born  in  Con- 
necticut, the  State  where  they  make  nutmegs  out  of  wood 
and  sell  'em,  a  man  who,  by  his  own  confession,  won't  do 
business  with  American  merchants  but  prefers  to  buy  his 
fine  gold  watches  and  everything  he  uses  in  England;  and 
this  man  comes  here  into  this  court  and  tries  to  make  this 
honorable  and  intelligent  jury  believe  that  the  picture  of 
the  immortal  George  Washington  on  a  United  States 
stamp  is  black;  that  George  Washington,  the  Father  of  his 
Country,  was  a  nigger!  Gentlemen,  I  ask  you  a  simple  ques- 
tion; can  any  dependence  whatsoever  be  put  in  the  word 
of  a  man  like  that?" 

The  jury  acquitted  the  defendant  without  leaving  their 
seats. 

Kilton  later  forsook  the  sawdust  and  the  footlights  and 
went  into  the  stamp  redemption  business.  He  found  that 
the  government  would  redeem  stamped  envelopes  or  post 
cards  on  which  addresses  or  advertising  matter  had  been 
printed  in  larger  numbers  than  the  buyer  could  use.  For 
example,  if  a  mail-order  house  had  an  ad  of  a  particular 
article  printed  on  the  back  of  ten  thousand  post  cards  and 
then  sent  out  only  9,800,  they  could  turn  the  remaining 
two  hundred  back  to  the  Post  Office,  which  would  redeem 
them  at  seventy-five  cents  per  hundred.  Or  if  a  candidate 


126   RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 

had  ten  thousand  self-addressed,  stamped  return  envelopes 
printed  for  his  campaign  and  sent  out  only  9,920,  or  a 
corporation  had  fifteen  hundred  of  the  same  printed  for 
the  return  of  proxies  for  the  annual  election  of  directors, 
when  it  had  only  1,472  stockholders,  the  Post  Office  would 
redeem  the  unused  ones  at  the  face  value  of  the  stamps 
only;  it  wouldn't  pay  for  the  envelopes. 

So  of  course  there  arose  certain  middlemen  who  made  a 
business  of  gathering  up  these  stamped  envelopes  and  cards 
and  either  selling  them  back  to  the  government  or  to  other 
users.  To  turn  them  in  to  the  Post  Office,  you  had  to  have 
a  "run"  of,  say,  ten  or  more  of  the  same  envelopes;  for  the 
idea  was  that  of  helping  out  the  large  user  who  had  over- 
bought his  needs;  not  to  be  bothered  with  paying  out  a 
few  pennies  to  anyone  who  might  pick  up  an  unused 
stamped  envelope.  And  there  must  also  be  at  least  some 
pretense  that  the  person  who  returned  the  envelopes  was  a 
representative  of  the  person  or  company  who  had  originally 
bought  them. 

Kilton  started  in  this  business  in  Chicago,  buying  the 
envelopes  and  cards  from  the  junkies  who  found  them  in 
the  waste-basket  emptyings  of  office  buildings  and  big  busi- 
ness concerns.  His  experience  in  make-up  aided  him  in  put- 
ting things  over  at  the  post  office.  He  would  appear  in  his 
ordinary  garb  and  mien  as  an  employee  of,  say,  Lyon  & 
Healy,  with  forty  or  fifty  envelopes,  get  the  money  on 
them,  go  back  home,  don  another  shirt  and  tie,  perhaps 
another  hat,  add  a  little  mustache  and  appear  at  the  win- 
dow again  as  an  office  man  from  Sears,  Roebuck  &  Com- 
pany; redeem  that  package,  vanish  and  come  back  with  a 
few  lines  delicately  sketched  on  his  face,  making  him  look 
much  older,  hair  powdered  at  his  temples  and  a  pair  of 
spectacles,  this  time  bringing  a  lot  of  proxy  envelopes  un- 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    127 

used  by  his  employers,  the  Illinois  Steel  Company.  This 
couldn't  go  on  forever  undetected.  "That  guy  needn't  think 
he's  fooling  me,"  said  the  clerk  who  usually  served  him  to 
another  one  day.  "I've  been  onto  him  for  months." 

Either  they  made  trouble  for  him  or  he  thought  the 
pickings  in  New  York  would  be  better,  for  he  finally  came 
over  to  Nassau  Street  and  built  up  a  considerable  business 
there.  The  post-office  clerks  were  more  complaisant  and 
willing  to  play  ball  with  him,  so  much  so  that  he  arranged 
to  pay  modest  commissions  to  one  or  two  of  them.  Because 
of  their  partnership,  he  could  work  in  a  few  odd  envelopes 
with  his  "run"  of  twenty  or  more  and  get  away  with  it.  He 
had  space  rented  with  a  stamp  concern  in  one  of  the  larger 
buildings  on  Nassau  Street,  and  his  confreres  recall  seeing 
his  post-office  clerk  pals  actually  dropping  in  now  and  then 
at  their  noon  hour  to  ask,  "Got  a  package  for  me  today?" 

Kilton  also  had  several  junkies  on  his  staff,  who  would 
bring  to  him  all  their  waste-basket  gleanings;  so  that  his 
place  became  a  clearing  house  for  not  only  stamped  en- 
velopes and  post  cards,  but  for  fountain  pens,  pencils  and 
other  office  supplies,  even  some  Liberty  Bonds,  and  a  gold 
tooth.  He  never  gagged  at  anything.  Back  of  his  long  table 
or  counter  was  a  big  rack  of  pigeonholes,  marked  "Prairie 
Oil  &  Gas,"  "U.  S.  Steel,"  and  other  names,  for  his  most 
common  proxy  envelopes,  into  which  he  distributed  them 
until  he  had  enough  for  a  package.  He  had  frequent  oppor- 
tunities to  buy  whole  boxes  of  envelopes  or  post  cards, 
which  he  got  by  paying  a  slightly  better  rate  than  the  Post 
Office  or  just  by  going  after  them,  which  Uncle  Sam 
wouldn't  do. 

He  began  reselling  many  of  these  to  other  concerns  or 
persons  who  weren't  squeamish  about  using  a  second-hand 
envelope.  (We  had  a  letter  from  a  stamp  dealer  not  so 


128   RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 

long  ago,  mailed  in  a  thirty-year-old  stamped  envelope,  with 
someone  else's  corner-card  scratched  out  on  it.)  Kilton 
labored  hard  to  devise  an  opaque  liquid  with  some  chalk 
and  sizing  in  it  and  of  just  the  peculiar  tint  of  post-card 
paper,  with  which  he  could  paint  over  the  ad  on  the  back 
of  a  card— and  the  address  on  the  front,  too,  if  there  was 
one— so  that  it  could  be  written  on  and  used  again.  But 
this  was  never  as  satisfactory  as  simply  pasting  a  piece  of 
paper  over  the  advertising  or  address.  Incidentally,  we  saw 
a  card  just  the  other  day  from  a  small  stamp  concern,  not 
in  New  York,  which  was  a  throwback  to  the  past;  the  old 
three-quarter-face  view  of  Jefferson  printed  in  black  which 
marked  it  as  about  forty  years  old— and  pasted  over  its  en- 
tire back  was  a  piece  of  white  paper,  on  which  was  typed 
a  simple  offer  of  a  U.  S.  1869,  twenty-four-cent  invert 
stamp  for  $870.  Holding  it  up  to  the  light,  you  saw  that 
originally  printed  on  the  card  was  a  reminder  of  "Hum- 
phrey's Homeopathic  Simples  (Aconite,  Belladonna,  Nux 
Vomica,  etc.),  Price  $1.00  per  Dozen.  Humphreys'  Homeo. 
Med.  Co.,  New  York,  January  ist,  1900."  Fancy  offering 
an  $870  stamp  on  such  a  medium! 

Well,  Hen  built  up  such  a  demand  for  his  second-hand 
envelopes  and  cards  that  he  couldn't  cover  the  addresses 
rapidly  enough  by  hand  to  supply  it.  He  had  a  friend  who 
ran  a  Tammany  free-lodging  house  for  bums  up  on  the 
Bowery,  from  which  he  was  expected  to  produce  from 
seventy-five  to  a  hundred  votes  each  election  day.  "I've  got 
a  mechanical  genius  up  there,"  he  told  Kilton,  "and  I 
believe  he  can  figure  out  a  machine  to  do  this  for  you." 

The  inventor  labored  for  months  on  the  machine,  using 
such  materials  as  he  could  lay  hands  on  at  no  cost,  and 
when  it  was  completed,  those  who  saw  it  say  that  there 
was  probably  never  anything  else  to  compare  with  it  in  the 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    129 

history  of  mechanics.  It  was  fully  twenty  feet  long,  cobbled 
together  out  of  scrap  metal  and  timber,  old  bicycle  sprocket 
chains  and  wheels,  salvaged  gear  wheels,  scale  springs, 
straps,  twine  and  hairpins;  but  when  you  fed  envelopes  in- 
to it  at  one  end,  they  came  out  at  the  other— in  a  large 
majority  of  cases— with  a  rectangle  of  paper  pasted  over  the 
addresses  on  their  fronts.  The  trouble  was  that  this  ma- 
chine glutted  the  market;  prepared  envelopes  faster  than 
Kilton  could  sell  them. 

Hen  was  perhaps  the  most  eccentric  character  ever  seen 
on  the  street.  He  never  ceased  collecting.  He  had  his  coats 
specially  made  with  a  huge  inside  pocket  on  the  right  side, 
big  enough  to  hold  a  stamp  album  of  goodly  size,  and  that 
side  of  his  coat  when  he  was  on  the  street  stuck  out  in 
front  of  him  like  a  spritsail.  Notoriously  stingy,  he  would 
often  work  through  the  noon  hour,  lunching  on  an  apple 
or  a  banana  and  a  dry  roll,  taking  bites  out  of  each  in  turn 
as  he  walked  to  and  fro,  sorting  and  distributing  his  en- 
velopes. He  would  save  parts  of  these  comestibles  and  put 
them  away  in  his  table  drawer,  where  the  mice  would  nib- 
ble them  and  roll  them  about  in  the  dust,  but  that  made 
no  difference  to  Hen. 

He  had  fearful  paroxysms  of  temper  when  something 
went  wrong,  often  kicking  a  door  furiously  and  striking 
himself  on  the  head  with  his  fists.  Once  he  was  working 
and  lunching  on  a  pint  bottle  of  milk  while  two  men 
looked  at  a  part  of  his  cover  collection— and  he  had  some 
good  ones— on  the  low  counter.  His  milk  bottle  was  on  one 
end  of  the  counter,  and  as  he  lifted  it  to  take  a  drink,  the 
bottom  of  it  fell  out  and  the  milk  gushed  in  all  directions. 

With  a  howl  of  rage,  he  smashed  the  remainder  of  the 
bottle  against  the  wall  and  scooped  up  his  covers  with 
hands  and  forearms  to  save  them  from  the  milk,  but  was 


i3o   RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 

in  so  insensate  a  fury  that  he  spun  around  in  that  graceful 
dancer's  pirouette  of  his  and  raised  them  above  his  head, 
to  throw  them  out  of  a  window.  The  two  onlookers  sprang 
to  their  feet  and  dashed  to  the  door,  hoping  to  reach  the 
street  and  grab  some  of  the  covers  before  passers-by  dis- 
covered what  they  were.  But  fortunately,  the  love  of  those 
precious  envelopes  prevailed  over  Hen's  rage;  he  lowered 
his  arms,  still  trembling,  and  the  treasures  were  saved. 

And  there  was  Sam  Singer,  the  stamp  repair  man,  who 
left  a  notable  record  in  the  stamp  business  world;  the  man 
who  could  build  a  new  stamp  out  of  fragments  so  skillfully 
that  you  couldn't  see  the  joints.  Sam  was  born  in  Przemysl 
—remember  what  a  time  we  had,  trying  to  pronounce  it 
during  the  World  War  when  the  Grand  Duke  Nicholas 
was  driving  toward  it?  It  was  in  Galicia,  a  part  of  Austria- 
Hungary  then;  goodness  knows  where  it  is  now.  Sam  rose 
to  fame  as  a  repair  man  in  Paris  in  the  '90*8,  where  he  re- 
paired for  some  of  the  very  best  people— and  caused  some 
of  them  considerable  embarrassment  in  after  years,  too.  It 
is  recalled  that  a  New  York  dealer  came  home  from  Europe 
about  1900  in  high  excitement  and  said  to  his  clerks,  "From 
now  on,  buy  every  damaged  stamp  you  can  get  hold  of,  if 
it's  a  worth-while  issue.  There  isn't  any  such  thing  as  a 
damaged  stamp  any  more.  Those  fellows  in  Paris— one  of 
'em  in  particular— are  doing  simply  marvelous  things  with 
old  stamps." 

Sam,  the  "one  in  particular,"  was  eventually  lured  to 
America,  where  he  flourished  for  many  years.  There  is 
many  a  rare  old  stamp  today,  seemingly  as  sound  as  when 
it  came  from  the  press,  but  which  once  had  a  tear  in  it, 
perhaps  halfway  across,  and  which  Sam  mended  with  such 
uncanny  skill  that  the  break  cannot  be  detected  save  with 
a  powerful  magnifying  glass.  Such  work  as  this  seems  per- 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    131 

fectiy  legitimate  to  the  present  writer;  but  when  Sam— 
always  upon  order,  of  course— built  an  apparently  sound 
stamp  out  of  the  fragments  of  two  or  three  others,  there 
began  to  be  an  odor  about  the  affair  which  was  offensive  to 
the  nostrils  of  the  more  ethical  philatelists;  and  when  he 
took  one  with  the  corner  torn  off  and  manufactured  a  new 
corner,  drawing  in  the  lithographed  or  steel  engraved  de- 
sign in  perfectly  matched  color  and  line,  reproducing  the 
perforations  and  piecing  out  the  postmark,  why,  that  was 
just  a  little  too  much! 

Great  Britain  tried  printing  stamps  for  herself  and  col- 
onies on  a  paper  with  a  chalky  surface  which  would  come 
off  very  easily,  so  that  if  one  tried  to  wash  off  the  postmark, 
the  stamp  design  would  wash  off,  too.  Once  a  rather  shady 
dealer  showed  Sam  a  certain  colonial  stamp  and  remarked 
that  if  the  date  on  that  postmark  were  so-and-so,  the  stamp 
would  be  worth  a  lot  more  to  him. 

"Let's  see  it,"  said  Sam.  He  laid  it  on  the  table  and  bent 
over  it,  scrutinizing  it,  after  his  fashion,  from  a  distance  of 
three  or  four  inches,  which  always  worried  dealers,  for  he 
had  a  hacking  cough,  and  they  didn't  know  .  .  .  Anyhow, 
after  a  minute's  study,  he  said,  "I  can  fix  it." 

And  so  he  did;  took  three  figures  of  the  date  off  that 
fragile  surface  and  substituted  three  others  so  nicely  that 
the  scars  could  be  detected  only  by  high  magnification  and 
a  suspicious  eye. 

Sam  was  a  collector  on  his  own,  and  after  he  had  been 
in  America  several  years  he  discovered  that  he  had,  through 
a  carelessness  that  was  little  short  of  criminal,  bought  two 
or  three  of  his  own  repaired  stamps  without  noticing  it 
until  some  time  afterward.  He  therefore  formed  a  habit, 
when  he  rebuilt  a  stamp,  of  inscribing  faintly  a  very  tiny 
"M"  (for  "Mended")  in  a  circle  in  a  lower  corner  of  the 


132   RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET 

back  of  the  stamp,  and  thereafter,  before  buying  a  stamp, 
he  was  always  seen  to  turn  it  over  and  look  at  its  back 
through  a  glass. 

He  did  not  always  have  to  do  this,  for  there  were  dealers 
of  the  better  class  who  would  stamp  on  the  back  of  one 
of  his  jobs,  "This  stamp  has  been  repaired";  though  even 
then  there  were  some  who  did  not  go  ahead  and  explain 
that  a  part  of  the  stamp  had  been  re-created  or  that  it  had 
been  built  from  the  fragments  of  two  or  three  others. 

There  was  another  fellow— who  it  was  will  never  be 
known— who  was  Sam's  peer  on  at  least  one  occasion.  A 
stranger  went  into  the  shop  of  John  F.  Negreen,  a  dealer 
now  dead,  in  the  early  part  of  the  century,  and  offered  a 
pair  of  the  famous  Pan-American  inverts  of  1901.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  this  was  a  two-color  series,  with  a  picture 
in  the  center  in  black  and  a  surrounding  frame  of  another 
color.  Some  sheets  of  the  two-cent  denomination  went 
through  the  press  wrong  the  second  time,  with  the  result 
that  the  vignette  of  a  railroad  train  was  upside  down,  mak- 
ing these  stamps  valuable  rarities.  Negreen  was  amazed  and 
delighted  at  sight  of  the  stamps.  He  examined  them  care- 
fully, as  he  thought,  to  make  sure  that  they  were  not  coun- 
terfeits. No,  the  engraving  was  absolutely  legitimate.  He 
questioned  the  stranger  very  straitly,  and  heard  a  plausible 
story  as  to  how  he  acquired  the  stamps.  It  was  evident  that 
the  man  knew  the  value  of  his  find,  but  after  much  hag- 
gling, Negreen  bought  the  pair  at  the  bargain  price  of  $800. 
Some  time  afterward,  when  a  buyer  put  the  stamps  under 
a  high-powered  glass,  it  was  found  that  the  vignettes  had 
simply  been  cut  from  the  centers  of  two  normal  stamps, 
turned  around  and  remounted  in  the  frames  upside  down, 
with  a  skill  so  marvelous  that  it  must  be  seen  to  be  be- 
lieved. Sam  Singer  admitted  that  he  couldn't  have  done 


RARAE  AVES  OF  THE  STREET    133 

better  himself.  But  there  were  those  who  began  to  suspect 
that  Sam  swaggered  a  little  when  he  said  it.  Was  he  in 
truth  the  real  artist?  He  never  admitted  it,  and  as  he  has 
long  since  passed  away,  the  question  will  never  be  an- 
swered. 

Is  individuality  disappearing?  We  have  no  such  colorful 
characters  in  the  philatelic  demimonde  now  as  these  of  yes- 
terday, and  undoubtedly  some  folk  are  glad  of  it.  There 
are  still  chaps  getting  their  living  precariously  from  stamps 
—the  curbstone  or  short-order  lad,  for  example,  whose  office 
is  under  his  hat,  who  knows  where  to  buy  cheap  and  sell 
high,  and  whose  aim  is  the  one-day  turnover— to  sell  before 
dinner  all  he  may  have  bought  since  breakfast.  As  just  one 
example  of  these  fellows'  clever  ideas,  they  were  selling  the 
new  thirty-cent  Atlantic  Air  Mail  stamps  of  1939  along 
Nassau  Street  at  a  ten  per  cent  discount  within  five  hours 
of  the  time  when  they  were  issued.  They  had  bought 
sheets,  stuck  several  of  the  stamps  on  first-day  covers  which 
they  could  later  sell  at  a  handsome  profit,  saved  the  plate 
number  and  arrow  blocks  of  four,  and  sold  the  few  remain- 
ing singles  at  27  cents  each,  so  as  to  clean  up  their  stock 
by  nightfall! 

There  are  still  traveling  stamp  dealers,  including  some 
who  commute  between  Europe  and  the  Americas  and  do 
a  large  business.  There  are  still  stamp  hunters  who  do  a 
bit  of  personal  searching,  but  who  for  the  most  part  buy 
through  established  contacts  with  business  houses  or  stamp- 
hounds  in  foreign  countries.  Some  of  these  are  honorable 
folk,  but  some  others— well,  one  of  them,  selling  to  a  dealer 
some  stamps  just  obtained  from  a  correspondent  abroad, 
grinned  over  war  conditions  after  his  trade  was  completed 
and  said,  "Of  course  I  ain't  gointa  pay  the  guy  for  'em/' 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 


r 


i         not  alone  the  schoolboy. 
M  1        1  M_  'L    V     .  J 

the  clerk,  the  capitalist  and 
the  chauffeur  who  collect- 
there  are  also  scholars,  devotees  of  the  arts,  priests,  and 
potentates  enlisted  in  the  great  army  of  fans.  King  George 
V  of  England  was  for  decades  perhaps  the  most  famous  of 
philatelists;  his  son,  King  Edward  VIII,  began  dabbling  in 
the  hobby  when  a  boy,  and  some  of  the  royal  dukes  were 
ardent  collectors.  Many  British  noblemen,  including  the 
Earl  of  Crawford,  already  mentioned,  have  been  thirty- 
third  degree  devotees.  And  there  were  also  such  varied 
characters  as  the  late  King  Ahmed  Fuad  of  Egypt,  the  ex- 
King  Alfonso  XIII  of  Spain,  the  present  King  Humbert 
of  Italy  and  the  Czar  Alexander  III,  who  preserved  until 
his  death  his  collection  of  birds'  eggs  and  stamps,  begun 
when  he  was  a  boy.  It  is  recalled  that  when  we  issued  our 
great  Columbian  series  in  1893,  our  ^rs^  ^S  splurge  in 
commemoratives,  one  of  the  very  early  applications  for  a 
set  came  from  the  nine-year-old  Queen  Wilhelmina  of 
Holland,  through  the  Dutch  consul  at  New  York;  and  the 
queen  is  still  at  it. 

When  in  1884  the  King  of  Siam's  youngest  brother, 
Prince  Tshanfu  Banurenhghi  Surang  Wong  Chhom-Luang 
Bannhangtwonghi  Wordate,  was  appointed  postmaster- 

134 


NOTED 
COLLECTORS 

Right 
John  K.  Tiffany 

Left 
Hiram  E.  Deats 


Right 
E.L.R.  von  Ferrary 

Left 
Arthur  Hind 


Right 
Col.E.H.R.Green 

Left 
Chas.  Lathrop 

Pack 


From  the  Collection  of  Philip  H.  Ward,  Jr. 

The  seven  United  States  inverted  center  stamps.  The  1918  air 
il   is  from   a   sheet  for  which   Col.   E.   H.   R.   Green   Daid 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    135 

general  of  his  country,  he  sent  at  once  to  Leipzig  for  a  fine 
album  and  all  the  varieties  of  stamps  that  he  could  get  hold 
of  in  one  shipment— approaching  the  subject  with  the 
sledge-hammer  technic  first  adopted  by  a  noted  American 
collector  whom  we  shall  mention  hereafter.  The  late  Queen 
Marie  of  Roumania  was  a  collector  and  passed  her  hobby 
on  to  her  son,  King  Carol;  and  princes  of  the  royal  house  of 
Japan  are  numbered  among  the  elect.  For  decades  after 
Japan  was  opened  to  the  commerce  of  the  world,  the  Jap- 
anese sold  without  stint  to  the  eager  Occidentals,  for  prices 
which  seemed  to  them  fabulous,  many  of  their  greatest  art 
treasures  and  all  of  their  old  stamps  that  could  be  found. 
Then,  becoming  Occidentalized  and  beginning  to  wear  the 
ugly  clothing  of  the  white  races,  they  also  became  hobby- 
conscious  and  developed  a  sense  of  shame  at  losing  so  many 
of  their  rarities.  So  the  twentieth  century  sees  many  of  their 
noble  and  wealthy  men  becoming  philatelists  and  collectors 
of  their  own  old  porcelains,  armor,  and  ivories. 

In  the  western  world,  General  Porfirio  Diaz,  dictator- 
president  of  Mexico  from  1884  to  1911,  is  said  to  have  had 
the  finest  collection  of  Mexico,  Central  and  South  America 
ever  assembled,  many  of  them  with  unique  association 
value;  for  it  was  long  his  custom  to  procure  panes  of  new 
issues  by  the  Latin  American  republics  and  have  them  auto- 
graphed by  their  Presidents.  He  had  fine  singles,  blocks  and 
panes  of  the  issues  of  Maximilian's  tragic  empire,  the  in- 
verted quetzals  of  Guatemala,  and  so  forth.  When  the  revo- 
lution of  1911  burst  over  his  head  he  had  to  leave  his 
stamps  behind  in  his  flight.  During  the  saturnalia  which 
usually  accompany  such  upheavals,  a  gang  of  peon  soldiers 
under  command  of  a  stripling  "captain"  invaded  Chapul- 
tepec  Castle,  broke  open  the  strong  boxes  where  the  stamps 
were  kept,  and  after  a  stupid,  uncomprehending  glance  at 


136    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

the  albums,  tossed  them  through  the  windows  and  into  a 
bonfire  below— an  act  of  vandalism  rivaling,  in  the  minds 
of  all  the  philatelists,  that  of  the  destruction  of  the  records 
of  Aztec  culture  by  Spanish  priests  nearly  four  centuries 
before. 

In  the  United  States,  our  top-ranking  collector  at  present 
is  of  course  President  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt,  who  is  par- 
ticularly interested  in  American  countries,  in  Haiti  and 
Hong  Kong.  The  last-named  specialty  he  inherited  from 
his  mother,  who  was  for  decades  a  keen  collector.  A  num- 
ber of  his  associates  in  the  Administration  are  also  col- 
lectors, with  interesting  evolvements,  as  we  shall  see  later. 
Senator  James  M.  Mead,  of  New  York,  has  probably  the 
largest  collection  of  anyone  on  Capitol  Hill.  Former  Presi- 
dent Herbert  Hoover  is  enrolled  in  the  American  Philatelic 
Society,  but  does  not  appear  to  be  very  active  in  the  hobby. 
One  might  go  on  to  mention  eminences  in  the  arts,  such 
as  Adolphe  Menjou  and  Jean  Hersholt,  film  actors;  Lauritz 
Melchior  and  Lily  Pons,  Metropolitan  Opera  singers,  Ellis 
Parker  Butler,  the  author,  and  that  waggish  scribe,  H.  Bed- 
ford-Jones, who  likes  to  use  his  brother  philatelists'  real 
names  for  characters,  not  always  lovely,  in  his  stories.  That 
of  Harry  L.  Lindquist,  editor  and  publisher,  for  example, 
has  figured  frequently  in  them,  and  in  a  quite  recent  one  he 
was  murdered.  Pitifully,  Mr.  Lindquist  has  begged  to  be  a 
hero  some  time  in  a  romance,  but  in  vain;  Bedford-Jones 
is  inexorable. 

For  reminiscences  of  King  George  V  and  dozens  of  other 
great  European  collectors,  Mr.  Charles  J.  Phillips,  long  a 
British  dealer,  but  now  a  resident  of  New  York,  is  easily 
pre-eminent.  As  head  of  the  Stanley  Gibbons  concern,  Mr. 
Phillips  was  for  years  the  chief  purveyor  of  stamps  to  the 
king,  and  used  to  visit  Buckingham  Palace  regularly  on  cer- 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    137 

tain  days  with  new  offerings,  items  he  thought  the  king 
needed  to  fill  gaps  in  his  collection— which  embraced  only 
Britain  and  colonial  possessions  and  dominions.  Soon  after 
his  arrival  at  the  palace  the  democratic  monarch,  his  face 
alight  with  pleasurable  anticipation,  would  bustle  in  with  a 
genial  ''Good  morning,  Mr.  Phillips,"  and  a  handshake, 
then,  "Sit  down.  Have  a  cigar?  Now,  what  have  we  today?" 

Although  Phillips  could  not  make  a  practice  of  intro- 
ducing just  any  American  philatelist  who  wanted  to  meet 
the  king,  whenever  there  came  one  who  had  a  really  great 
collection  or  who  was  a  high  authority,  King  George  was 
always  glad  to  meet  and  talk  shop  with  him,  to  look  at  the 
visitor's  treasures,  if  he  had  any  with  him,  and  to  display 
some  of  his  own.  Fine  stamps  were  frequently  offered  him 
as  gifts,  but  the  king  was  a  stickler  for  the  rule  that  the 
royal  family  does  not  accept  gifts  of  commercial  value, 
though  he  relaxed  it  on  rare  occasions  when  it  would  have 
been  too  unkind  not  to  do  so.  At  one  time  a  young  Ameri- 
can collector,  who  had  risen  to  eminence  in  a  short  time 
by  lavish  expenditure,  was  in  London  and  Mr.  Phillips  ar- 
ranged to  take  him  to  the  palace.  During  the  interview,  the 
talk  drifted  to  a  certain  imperforate  stamp,  and  the  king 
remarked  that  he  had  never  seen  a  genuine  one. 

"Oh,  but  I  have  several,  Your  Majesty,"  prattled  the 
collector. 

"I'm  sorry,  Mr.  A.,"  Phillips  put  in.  "If  you  have  any, 
they  are  forgeries.  Such  a  thing  as  a  real  one  doesn't  exist." 

"I  didn't  know  that,"  said  the  other,  abashed.  "I  bought 
them  from  an  American  dealer,  and  I  supposed  they  were 
all  right." 

The  end  of  the  call  came,  the  visitors  arose,  and  Mr.  A. 
thanked  the  monarch  for  his  courtesy  and  the  opportunity 
of  seeing  his  stamps.  Then  he  added,  diffidently,  "Now  it 


138    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

would  give  me  great  pleasure  if  Your  Majesty  would  accept 
a  stamp  from  me  for  your  collection,  just  as  a— a  souvenir 
of  my  call";  and  before  Phillips's  horrified  eyes,  he  handed 
the  king  one  of  those  fake  imperf orates! 

So  courteous  a  man  as  royal  George  would  not  humiliate 
a  guest  in  his  house,  and  for  so  small  a  thing;  so  he  bowed 
and  without  evincing  the  slightest  surprise  at  the  nature  of 
the  gift,  thanked  the  caller  as  heartily  as  if  he  had  given 
him  something  really  worth  while.  When  they  were  out- 
side, Phillips  turned  on  his  companion  furiously. 

"What  under  the  sun  were  you  thinking  of,"  he  de- 
manded, "to  give  the  king  that  worthless  piece  of  paper? 
I  ought  to  kick  your  stern  all  over  London." 

The  young  man  couldn't  explain  it  himself.  Just  em- 
barrassment and  confusion,  it  seemed.  Not  knowing  that 
the  stamp  was  a  fake,  he  had  put  it  in  his  pocket  before 
they  started  for  the  palace,  intending  it  as  a  gift  for  His 
Majesty.  When  he  was  saying  his  farewell,  he  suddenly  re- 
membered that  he  had  intended  making  a  presentation  of 
something  or  other;  in  his  excitement  he  momentarily  for- 
got that  Phillips  had  denounced  the  stamp  as  a  counter- 
feit, even  forgot  what  stamp  he  was  handing  out.  There 
didn't  seem  to  be  anything  that  anybody  could  do  about 
it  now,  so  nobody  did  anything.  Did  Mr.  Phillips  ever 
apologize  to  the  king  for  the  gaffe?  one  asks.  No,  he  replies, 
and  the  king  never  spoke  of  it  to  him,  either;  it  just  seems 
to  have  been  one  of  those  contretemps  so  ghastly  that  two 
gentlemen  couldn't  even  mention  it  to  one  another.  But 
the  king  evidently  didn't  hold  Phillips  accountable  for  the 
vagaries  of  his  American  customer,  for  the  incident  did  not 
disturb  their  business  relations. 

Mr.  Phillips  recalls  that  the  Prince  of  Wales,  now  the 
Duke  of  Windsor,  when  a  boy  in  his  early  teens,  frequently 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    139 

bought  stamps  out  of  his  pocket  allowance,  but  once 
gloomily  remarked  that  he  didn't  believe  he  would  ever  get 
anywhere  with  his  collecting,  because  the  "Old  Man" 
picked  up  everything  good  that  came  along. 

The  king  did  make  many  rich  purchases,  some  of  them 
in  America.  He  bought,  for  example,  the  entire  collections 
of  New  Brunswick,  Nova  Scotia  and  Newfoundland  from 
Charles  Lathrop  Pack,  then  conceded  to  be  the  most  com- 
prehensive in  existence.  But  even  royalty  can't  get  every- 
thing it  wants,  and  King  George  died  with  many  rare  old 
items  still  missing  from  his  collection.  It  is  still  kept  up  and 
perhaps  some  day  it  may  become  a  part  of  the  British 
Museum.  Sir  John  Wilson  is  its  curator  now,  and  the  pres- 
ent king  has  authorized  him  to  sell  one  of  the  many  dupli- 
cates when  there  is  a  favorable  opportunity,  and  use  the 
money  in  buying  other  stamps.  At  a  sale  in  New  York  in 
1939,  the  Estate  of  King  George  V  was  represented  by  a 
buyer.  Little  Princess  Margaret  Rose  is  carrying  on  the 
philatelic  traditions  of  the  family. 

The  legend  that  King  George  was  an  unsuccessful  bidder 
for  the  famous  British  Guiana  1856  one-cent  magenta  rarity 
at  the  Ferrary  sale  has  gained  wide  credence,  but  it  is  said 
to  be  untrue.  This  stamp,  the  world's  most  valuable  scrap 
of  paper,  the  only  one  known  of  its  kind,  is  a  shoddy- 
looking  thing,  set  up  in  type  and  printed  in  a  newspaper 
office  in  Georgetown,  the  Guiana  capital.  It  is  off  color 
through  error,  and  the  four  corners  have  been  clipped  a  bit 
for  some  reason,  which  would  reduce  the  value  of  any 
ordinary  stamp  frightfully;  but  not  so  this  rough  gem.  From 
the  time  of  its  discovery,  its  price  has  leaped  at  every  sale— 
and  each  of  its  four  changes  of  ownership  is  known.  When 
the  great  Ferrary  collection  was  dispersed  between  1921 
and  1925,  the  British  Guiana  stamps  were  the  star  perform- 


140    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

ers.  A  pair  of  the  1850  two-cent  black  on  rose— another 
crude  newspaper  job— on  an  envelope,  sold  for  more  than 
twenty  thousand  dollars,  and  a  dozen  other  items  brought 
from  one  to  five  thousand  dollars.  The  appearance  on  the 
auction  block  of  the  1856  error  was  looked  forward  to  with 
eager  anticipation.  Arthur  Hind,  the  Utica  millionaire,  who 
was  bent  on  outdoing  Ferrary  in  the  matter  of  a  stamp 
collection,  had  given  his  agent  permission  to  bid  as  high  as 
sixty  thousand  dollars  for  it,  if  necessary,  but  the  bidding 
stopped  far  short  of  that,  and  the  stamp  was  knocked  down 
to  him  for  about  $32,500  in  American  money. 

And  here  let  us  pause  to  contemplate  a  fine  example  of 
the  irony  of  events.  When  the  news  of  that  sale  was  flashed 
back  to  England,  a  man  in  his  middle  sixties  named  L. 
Vernon  Vaughn  heard  it  with  a  queer,  wistful  little  smile; 
for  half  a  century  before,  he,  then  a  boy  of  fifteen,  had 
found  that  very  stamp  on  an  old  family  letter  and  sold  it 
for  six  shillings!  He  was  interested  in  acquiring  pretty  sets 
of  new,  unused  stamps  then,  and  needing  money  with 
which  to  buy  them,  he  decided  to  sell  this  one,  as  it  was 
rather  a  poor  copy,  anyhow,  and  he  thought  he  could  easily 
find  a  better  specimen  in  the  family  attic.  The  man  to 
whom  he  sold  it  didn't  like  its  mutilated  condition,  but 
evidently  he,  too,  knew  he  was  getting  something  good,  else 
he  wouldn't  have  paid  the  boy  even  six  shillings  for  it; 
though,  says  Mr.  Vaughn,  he  "impressed  upon  me  that  he 
was  taking  a  great  risk  by  buying  it,  and  that  he  hoped  I 
should  appreciate  his  generosity."  A  few  years  later,  that 
man  sold  this  and  some  other  British  Guiana  stamps,  all 
now  great  rarities,  for  £120  to  Thomas  Ridpath  of  Liver- 
pool, who  evidently  had  in  mind  at  the  time  the  idea  of 
selling  this  1856  item  to  Ferrary,  for  he  did  so  as  soon  as 
possible,  and  therefore,  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose,  at  a 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    141 

handsome  profit,  though  we  do  not  know  the  figure.  In 
Ferrary's  collection  it  remained  for  forty-four  years. 

When  Phillips  asked  Hind  why  he  paid  such  a  fantastic 
price  for  the  stamp,  the  latter  replied  that  he  had  deter- 
mined to  buy  the  highest-priced  article  offered  at  the 
Ferrary  sales,  thinking  that  it  would  give  him  so  much  pub- 
licity that  he  would  receive  many  offers  of  rare  stamps,  in- 
cluding some  perhaps  never  before  on  the  market;  but  in 
this  hope  he  was  disappointed.  He  received  thousands  of 
letters,  but  was  able  to  buy  almost  nothing  of  any  real 
importance. 

As  for  the  king's  interest  in  this  stamp,  Bacon,  his  phil- 
atelic secretary,  told  Phillips  that  he  "didn't  want  a  cripple 
in  his  collection,"  referring  to  the  cut  corners.  When  Hind 
and  several  other  collectors  called  at  Buckingham  Palace 
during  a  philatelic  exhibition,  the  king  told  Hind  he  did 
not  begrudge  him  that  stamp,  but  that  he  had  been  inter- 
ested in  getting  a  Niger  Coast  provisional,  twenty-shillings 
on  one-shilling,  on  which  Hind  outbid  his  agent  in  the  sale. 
Hind  immediately  offered  to  present  the  stamp  to  the  king, 
but  the  latter  just  as  promptly,  though  courteously,  in- 
formed him  that  this  was  an  occasion  when  he  would  not 
relax  the  rule. 

Hind  liked  to  go  on  trips  around  the  world  with  William 
C.  Kennett,  his  philatelic  secretary,  picking  up  stamps  in 
every  country  he  visited;  buying  blocks  of  four  at  the  post 
offices,  then  visiting  the  dealers'  shops,  and  even  seeking 
attic  and  trunk  hoards.  As  told  by  Harry  Konwiser  in  the 
magazine  Stamps,  in  Samoa  they  ran  into  a  group  of  beau- 
tiful native  maidens,  all  supposed  to  be  princesses  of  the 
old  royal  blood,  who  told  them  of  a  house  on  a  hill  where 
there  were  many,  many  letters.  When  they  had  located  the 
place,  they  found  it  was  the  former  home  of  Robert  Louis 


142    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

Stevenson,  now  preserved  as  a  shrine,  where  a  crusty  care- 
taker told  them  that  there  were  no  letters  there,  and  if 
there  were,  he  wouldn't  let  strangers  look  at  them.  In 
Tonga,  warned  beforehand  of  the  king's  likings,  they  went 
to  see  him  with  bottles  of  Haig  &  Haig  under  each  arm. 
The  king  was  desolated  at  being  unable  to  supply  Mr.  Hind 
with  certain  old  stamps,  but  he  could  do  the  next  best 
thing— he  could  give  him  the  plates.  But  in  the  middle  of 
the  following  night,  the  British  Resident  awoke  Hind  from 
sleep  to  demand  the  return  of  the  plates  to  him,  saying 
that  they  weren't  the  king's  property. 

Ferrary  and  Hind  were  both  reckless  buyers,  and  paid 
little  attention  to  expert  advice.  Ferrary  gave  as  one  of  the 
reasons  why  he  never  exhibited  his  stamps  the  undoubted 
fact  that  there  was  a  dealer  tendency  to  charge  him  too  stiff 
a  price  for  a  certain  rarity  if  they  knew  he  lacked  it.  "They 
know  I  can't  refuse  to  buy  a  variety  I  haven't  got,"  he  said 
plaintively,  "and  they  take  advantage  of  me."  This  sounds 
more  plausible  than  his  other  excuse  that  he  promised  his 
mother  never  to  let  his  stamps  leave  their  home  in  the  Rue 
de  Varenne.  Phillips  once  met  him  coming  from  a  certain 
large  stamp  shop  and  chided  him,  saying,  "Why  do  you  go 
in  that  place?  You  know  they  would  just  as  lief  sell  you  a 
counterfeit  as  a  real  stamp."  To  which  Ferrary  pleaded,  "I 
know  it,  but  I  occasionally  find  some  variety  there  that  I 
want,  and  I  would  rather  buy  a  hundred  forgeries  than 
miss  that  variety  that  I  couldn't  find  elsewhere." 

Hind  was  similarly  headstrong.  He  had  a  wonderful  col- 
lection, including  probably  the  finest  assemblages  of  Spain, 
Mauritius,  United  States  and  Confederates  in  existence.  He 
had  bought  the  whole  of  the  Ferrary  collection  of  Nevis 
uncut  sheets,  of  the  Uganda  missionary  stamps,  of  the 
Indian  feudatory  states,  and  a  flock  of  Hawaiian  mission- 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    143 

aries.  He  had  corralled  the  only  known  copies  of  the  Lock- 
port  and  Boscawen  postmaster  stamps,  the  Annapolis  five- 
cent  red,  of  which  only  one  other  copy  is  known,  the 
Alexandria  five-cent  black  on  buff,  one  of  five  known 
copies;  the  New  Haven  five-cent  blue  on  buff,  one  of  two 
copies  extant  and  another  New  Haven  almost  as  rare;  the 
only  known  pair  of  the  ninety-cent  U.  S.  blue,  1861;  the 
only  known  unused  block  of  four  of  the  five-cent  red-brown 
U.  S.  1851,  which  had  come  to  him  via  the  F.  W.  Ayer 
and  Henry  Duveen  collections;  two  pairs  of  the  thirty-cent 
brownish-orange  of  1860,  and  so  many  more  rarities  that 
several  catalogues  were  required  to  list  them.  But,  lamented 
Phillips,  he  had  also  quantities  of  junk;  he  would  never 
take  advice. 

He  died  at  an  unfortunate  time  for  his  estate— in  1933, 
when  America's  spirits  and  financial  status  were  low.  His 
collection  was  appraised  by  Kennett  and  Phillips,  and  sales 
of  the  stamps  were  begun  late  in  1933;  but  the  results  were 
not  what  the  estate  had  hoped  for,  and  a  great  sale  to  be 
held  early  in  1934  was  canceled  after  some  expectant  Euro- 
pean buyers  were  already  on  the  way.  A  draft  for  $82,000 
had  been  sent  with  buying  orders  from  one  wealthy  col- 
lector across  the  water,  and  among  others  who  had  placed 
such  orders  was  King  Carol  of  Roumania,  some  of  whose 
bids  were  twenty-five  per  cent  above  catalogue  prices.  A 
British  syndicate  took  over  the  remainder  of  the  collection 
and  sold  it  in  London.  The  total  sum  realized,  says  Mr. 
Phillips,  was  $680,000,  about  sixty  per  cent  of  what  the 
stamps  had  cost  Hind.  The  British  Guiana  1856  rarity  re- 
mained in  Mrs.  Hind's  possession,  it  being  claimed  that  her 
husband  had  given  it  to  her  just  before  his  death.  In  1935, 
by  which  time  Mrs.  Hind  had  become  Mrs.  P.  Costa  Scala, 
this  stamp's  value  was  placed  at  $50,000,  but  everyone  is 


144    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

well  aware  that  with  rich  men's  bankbooks  in  their  present 
condition,  it  would  probably  not  bring  half  that  sum  if  it 
were  sold. 

Phillips  says  that  the  estate  would  have  been  $250,000 
richer  had  Hind  been  willing  to  accept  an  offer  of  $485,000 
for  his  United  States  and  Canada  stamps  which  Phillips 
procured  for  him  shortly  before  his  death.  But  Hind  held 
out  for  half  a  million,  and  there  was  no  sale.  Even  at  that, 
the  stamp  collection  was  the  most  valuable  part  of  his 
estate.  The  rest  of  the  assets  of  this  man  who  had  once  paid 
taxes  on  a  million-dollar  income  reached  a  total  of  only 
$636,450. 

With  Hind  died  the  last  of  that  great  clan  who  tried  to 
encompass  everything.  Those  who  are  left  are  all  specialists. 

F.  W.  Ayer  of  Bangor,  Maine,  who  as  a  very  young  man 
began  buying  in  a  big  way  late  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
might  have  kept  some  great  rarities  out  of  the  hands  of 
Hind  had  not  unusual  circumstances  intervened.  Among 
his  other  startling  moves,  he  bought  a  great  number  of 
complete  sets  in  sheets  of  our  Columbian  issue  of  1893  as 
a  speculation,  then  lost  his  nerve  and  traded  them  at  face 
value  to  dealers  for  rarities.  No  expense  daunted  him.  He 
once  wrote  Phillips,  then  with  the  Gibbons  concern  in 
London,  asking  him  to  come  to  Bangor  at  once  with  a  good 
assortment  of  worth-while  stamps.  They  had  a  good  laugh 
in  the  Gibbons  office  over  this  letter,  and  Phillips  wrote 
that  he  was  too  busy  to  trek  across  the  Atlantic  just  at  that 
moment.  They  had  hardly  had  time  to  turn  around  before 
five-thousand  pounds  sterling  came  by  cable  from  Ayer, 
with  a  curt  communication  whose  general  tenor  was  that  if 
this  wasn't  enough  he  would  cable  another  five  thousand. 
Money  talks  louder  than  typed  words,  and  the  cable  wasn't 
cold  before  Mr.  Phillips  was  packing  his  bag. 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    145 

But  Nemesis,  in  the  form  of  his  millionaire  Yankee  in- 
dustrialist father  was  on  Frederick's  trail.  Ayer  Senior  re- 
garded his  son's  wild  expenditure  of  money  on  stamps  as 
but  little  better  than  blowing  it  in  on  wine,  women  and 
song.  After  some  years,  an  impasse  was  reached,  and 
Phillips  received  an  anguished  letter  from  Ayer,  saying  that 
he  was  about  to  be  disinherited  for  his  philatelic  folly,  and 
would  have  to  sell  all  his  best  stamps.  He  came  over  to 
London  with  about  $750,000  worth,  arranged  with  Gibbons 
to  sell  them  at  auction,  received  an  advance  of  $25,000  on 
account  and  cabled  it  to  his  father  as  proof  of  his  sanity. 
He  thereafter  disappeared  from  the  ranks  of  the  great  col- 
lectors. 

Another  heir  who  began  collecting  even  earlier,  though 
without  the  recklessness  of  Ayer,  was  a  boy  over  in  New 
Jersey  named  Hiram  E.  Beats.  Left  an  orphan  before  his 
maturity,  he  must  have  had  some  wise  guardians,  with  per- 
haps some  philatelists  among  them.  The  New  York  Times 
of  August  6th,  1890,  reporting  the  annual  show  of  the 
A.  P.  A.,  remarked  that  "H.  E.  Deats  of  Hightstown,  N.  J., 
a  young  man  of  eighteen,  shows  a  collection  of  proofs  of 
United  States  stamps  that  his  guardians  permitted  him  to 
give  $7,000  for."  At  the  age  of  nine,  young  Deats  had  found 
on  the  floor  of  the  post  office  of  his  home  town  an  envelope 
with  a  foreign  stamp  on  it,  a  blinding  revelation  to  him. 
Until  that  moment,  it  had  never  occurred  to  him  that 
everybody  didn't  use  the  same  stamps.  He  set  about  col- 
lecting them,  and  for  three  or  four  years  supposed  himself 
the  only  stamp  collector  living.  Then  a  cousin  showed  him 
a  stamp  price-list,  and  the  gates  of  a  new  world  were 
opened. 

Before  he  was  thirty  he  had  one  of  the  three  greatest 
revenue,  match  and  medicine  stamp  collections  in  America. 


146    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

His  United  States  and  Confederate  collections  were  world 
renowned.  In  the  '90*5  he  was  Ferrar/s  chief  rival  for  Con- 
federates, his  postmaster  provisionals  of  that  short-lived  na- 
tion being  considered  the  best  of  his  time.  He  discovered 
the  unique  Boscawen  stamp  in  1894  and  sold  it  to  Ferrary, 
from  whom  it  came  back  to  Hind  for  $12,000.  He  was  like- 
wise a  philatelic  bibliographer.  In  1896  J.  W.  Scott  wrote, 
"Complete  libraries  of  all  stamp  publications  are  probably 
possessed  by  only  two  men,  Messrs.  Tiffany  and  Deats."  He 
has  touched  no  subject  to  which  he  has  not  added  knowl- 
edge. Historians  of  United  States  and  Confederate  stamps 
and  even  Sir  Edward  Bacon,  compiler  of  the  Earl  of  Craw- 
ford's catalogue,  all  make  acknowledgment  of  his  help.  He 
and  two  other  young  men,  George  Toppan  and  Alexander 
Holland  sweated  through  a  hot  summer  at  compiling  the 
"Boston  Revenue  Book,"  that  Bible  of  the  fiscal  collector. 
Deats's  career  has  been  a  record  of  making  collections  of 
this  or  that  and  selling  them.  "The  fun  is  in  the  chase/'  is 
his  favorite  saying,  and  once  attainment  has  been  realized, 
he  turns  to  something  else. 

Other  great  collectors  of  the  recent  past— Tiffany,  Cor- 
win,  Curie,  Chase,  Duveen,  Pack,  Mandel,  Worthington, 
Thorne,  Hawkins  and  Blair— have  already  been  mentioned 
in  the  chapter  on  specialization;  likewise  Mrs.  Cromwell, 
Watson  and  others  among  living  hobbyists;  and  there  are 
yet  others;  Arthur  H.  Lamborn,  the  coffee  millionaire,  for 
example,  whose  collection  of  plate  number  items,  all  in 
mint  condition,  included  almost  every  issue  from  1894  *° 
1920;  and  Theodore  E.  Steinway,  who,  when  he  was  mar- 
ried in  1913,  feared  that  his  wife  would  object  to  his  spend- 
ing so  much  money  on  stamps,  so  he  sold  all  his  British 
colonials  save  the  Australians,  his  favorite  specialty,  and 
built  a  bungalow  for  her  with  the  proceeds.  But  lo  and 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    147 

behold,  she  became  a  collector,  too,  and  later  their  four 
sons  and  two  daughters  took  up  the  hobby,  making  them 
a  unique  family.  A.  H.  Caspary,  a  New  York  broker,  is  in- 
terested in  nothing  but  rarities.  "He  won't  look  at  anything 
that  costs  less  than  ten  or  twenty  dollars,"  a  dealer  told  us. 
Naturally,  his  is  one  of  the  wonder  collections  of  the  pres- 
ent day.  Just  as  a  sample— he  has  a  block  of  six  unused 
of  the  Pleasant  Shade,  Virginia,  Confederate  postmaster 
stamp— and  a  single  one  is  catalogued  by  Scott  at  $2,000! 
Mr.  Caspary  also  has  a  single  and  a  pair.  A  pair  from  the 
Hind  collection  sold  to  Judge  Emerson  of  Providence  for 
$5,400,  and  a  pair  on  cover  is  catalogued  by  Scott  at  $6,000. 

Alfred  Lichtenstein,  another  of  the  eminent  philatelists 
of  the  present  moment,  whose  collections  of  British  North 
America,  Uruguay,  Argentina,  Mauritius,  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  and  our  western  express  franks,  to  mention  only  a 
few  of  his  specialties,  are  known  the  world  over,  has  some 
items  such  as  a  couple  of  Mauritius  stamps  on  an  envelope 
and  a  block  of  four  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  triangular 
wood  block  errors  on  a  cover,  before  which  collectors  stand 
with  uncovered  heads. 

The  Crockers,  Henry  J.  and  William  H.,  cousins  of  each 
other  and  of  the  Pacific  Railroad  magnate,  were  famous 
collectors  around  the  turn  of  the  century.  Henry  built  great 
collections  of  Hawaii  and  Japan,  and  wrote  a  monograph 
on  the  Hawaiian  Numerals.  His  Japanese  collection,  as 
already  reported,  was  destroyed  in  the  great  fire  of  1906, 
but  the  Hawaiians  were  in  an  exhibition  in  London  at  the 
time  and  so  escaped.  William's  wealth  enabled  him  to 
make  many  lucky  purchases  from  less  fortunate  folk.  A 
widowed  stamp  dealer,  known  to  and  beloved  by  all  the 
Pacific  Coast  as  "Mother"  Craig,  who  carried  on  the  col- 
lection begun  in  the  i86o's  by  her  husband— Sydney  Views, 


148    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

British  American  and  early  United  States,  including  a 
Brattleboro  and  other  rarities— fell  upon  hard  times  in 
1884,  and  sold  this  collection  to  William  Crocker  for 
$1,100.  In  1887  he  bought  another  man's  collection  of 
western  franks,  U.  S.  envelopes  and  U.  S.  and  foreign  reve- 
nues for  $850.  A  South  American  stranded  in  San  Francisco 
sold  his  fine  collection  of  that  continent  to  Crocker  for 
two  hundred  dollars. 

He  paid  a  little  more  dearly  for  the  block  of  four  twenty- 
four-cent  1869  inverts,  which  had  been  discovered  in  Liver- 
pool in  the  latter  '90*8  by  "a  mysterious  party"  known  to 
Liverpool  dealers  "only  as  the  Upside-Down  Man."  He 
sold  it  to  a  small  dealer  jokingly  called  "the  office  boys' 
friend,"  who,  in  turn,  sold  it  for  five  pounds;  a  transaction 
whose  memory,  in  the  light  of  later  transfers,  was  so  pain- 
ful that  he  could  never  bear  to  talk  about  it.  It  passed  into 
the  hands  of  William  Thorne  of  New  York.  He  sold  it, 
when  he  broke  up  his  collection,  to  a  dealer,  who  handed 
it  over  to  William  Crocker.  At  the  sale  of  Crocker's  collec- 
tion in  December,  1938,  a  New  York  dealer  bought  it  by 
ocean  telephone  for  approximately  $11,650  and  resold  it 
very  neatly  to  E.  Bradley  Martin,  Jr.,  of  New  York,  a  rising 
star  in  philately  from  what  present-day  journalese  calls  the 
"socialite"  class,  for  $25,000.  What  memories  his  name  re- 
calls!—that  Bradley  Martin  ball  in  1897,  for  example,  a 
milestone  in  the  social  history  of  Gotham.  The  present  Mr. 
Martin  seems  well  on  his  way  toward  the  ownership  of  the 
world's  most  valuable  collection.  From  that  same  Crocker 
sale  he  also  bought— with  dealers  in  between  making  nice 
profits— a  mint  block  of  the  1893  Columbian  four-cent  error 
in  blue  for  $6,000,  a  used  specimen  of  the  thirty-cent  1869 
invert  for  $4,000,  and  a  mint  copy  of  the  1901  Pan-Ameri- 
can two-cent  invert  for  $3,250. 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    149 

Incidentally,  there  are  those  who  believe  that  his  block 
of  the  twenty-four-cent  1869  invert  will  eventually  displace 
that  British  Guiana  1856  error  as  the  world's  most  valuable 
philatelic  item.  There  are  not  wanting  skeptics  who  point 
out  that  all  research  has  failed  to  find  any  governmental 
record  or  other  proof  of  the  origin  of  that  Guiana  rarity, 
and  these  whispers  have  undoubtedly  injured  its  market 
value,  probably  unjustly. 

William  Crocker  was  one  of  the  few  rich  men  apparently 
too  busy  to  give  much  time  to  his  so-called  hobby,  and  so 
did  quite  a  bit  of  his  collecting  by  wholesale  or  by  proxy. 
When  the  Gibbons  company  bought  the  first  Castle  col- 
lection of  Australians  in  1894,  Mr.  Phillips,  its  chairman, 
traveled  to  America  and  all  the  way  across  it  with  a  bag 
full  of  the  stamps  which  he  knew  Crocker  needed.  The 
banker  wanted  the  stamps,  but  he  was  just  too  busy  to  see 
Phillips,  and  so  the  latter  cooled  his  heels  around  San 
Francisco  for  several  days.  Finally  Crocker  said,  "Just  g° 
through  my  albums,  pick  out  from  your  stamps  anything 
that's  missing,  and  Fll  buy  them."  Phillips  did  so,  and 
when  he  succeeded  in  obtaining  another  audience,  he  pre- 
sented his  bill,  amounting  to  many  thousands  of  dollars. 
Crocker  at  once  gave  him  an  order  on  the  cashier  for  the 
money. 

"But  don't  you  want  to  see  the  stamps  Fve  sold  you?" 
asked  Phillips.  "Fve  mounted  them  all  separately,  so  that 
you  can  see  just  what  they  are." 

"I  haven't  time,"  said  Crocker.  "I'm  satisfied.  I  only  wish 
you  had  mounted  them  right  in  the  albums  where  they 
belong." 

Of  all  American  collectors,  none  was  so  different  or  so 
magnificent  as  the  late  Colonel  Edward  H.  R.  Green,  son 
of  Mrs.  Hetty  Green,  the  world's  most  famous  millionairess 


150    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

and  miser.  Her  penny-pinching  disposition  was  not  inher- 
ited by  her  son;  he  saw  money  as  something  to  have  fun 
with— not  in  the  way  of  riotous  living;  he  was  no  playboy— 
but  mostly  with  hobbies.  And  with  all  his  spending,  he  was 
no  Coal-Oil  Johnny;  his  fortune  was  much  larger  when  he 
died  than  when  he  inherited  it. 

He  was  middle-aged  before  he  suddenly  decided  that  he 
would  become  an  addict  to  philately.  There  are  two  stories 
told  of  his  beginning.  One  is  that  he  went  into  a  large  up- 
town stamp  house  in  New  York  and  asked  for  a  "collection 
of  stamps."  A  clerk  showed  him  an  envelope  containing 
possibly  two  hundred  mixed.  He  waved  that  aside  impa- 
tiently. "I  want  a  real  collection,"  he  said. 

The  clerks  weren't  bright  enough  to  discover  who  he 
was,  though  the  wealthy  giant  with  the  round  face  and 
lame  leg  had  been  pictured  and  written  about  often  enough, 
goodness  knows.  So  they  went  on  showing  him,  one  after 
another,  packets  of  steadily  increasing  size— five  hundred,  a 
thousand,  and  finally  perhaps  five  thousand  stamps,  with  a 
top  price  of  perhaps  fifty  or  a  hundred  dollars.  The  cus- 
tomer was  increasingly  indignant.  They  didn't  seem  to  un- 
derstand him  at  all.  He  knew  that  a  real  stamp  collection 
cost  thousands  of  dollars,  and  they  were  offering  him  junk. 
He  finally  stumped  out  of  the  place  in  disgust  and  never 
went  back. 

Another  story  is  that  he  went  into  one  of  the  uptown 
shops  and  bought  a  packet  of  a  thousand  stamps  and  an 
album,  which  he  said  was  for  the  son  of  his  laundryman. 
A  day  or  two  later  he  came  back,  asked  to  see  the  manager; 
said  that  he'd  become  interested  in  philately  after  looking 
over  those  stamps  and  decided  to  begin  collecting.  Had 
they  a  good  lot  for  him  to  begin  on?  They  had;  another 
man's  collection  in  seven  or  eight  albums  which  had  been 


Wide  World  Photos 


Senator  James  M.  Mead  of  New  York  mounts  his  stamp  col- 
lection in  various  ways. 


Wide  World  Photos 


1    •  1 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    151 

turned  over  to  the  dealer  to  be  sold.  After  some  discussion, 
the  colonel  handed  over  thirty-one  thousand-dollar  bills  in 
payment  for  the  collection,  and  took  it  away  with  him. 
Both  these  stories  are  probably  founded  on  fact. 

Later  Colonel  Green  discovered  Nassau  Street  where,  in 
the  next  few  years,  his  money  gilded  the  frame  of  life  for 
several  favored  merchants,  and  the  uptown  shops  saw  little 
of  him. 

The  colonel  was  no  fool;  once  he  got  the  hang  of  things 
he  studied  philately,  and  soon  knew  his  way  about  the 
labyrinth.  He  found  that  the  quickest  way  to  build  up  a 
collection  was  to  buy  other  men's  collections  of  which  it  is 
calculated  that  he  bought,  all  told,  about  a  hundred  and 
twenty.  He  was  also  apt  to  give  a  dealer  a  blanket  order 
to  buy  every  specimen  of  certain  stamps— Cape  of  Good 
Hope  triangles,  for  example— that  he  could  lay  hands  on. 
He  very  nearly  cornered  the  market  on  the  United  States 
stamps  that  were  overprinted  for  Guam  shortly  after  our 
acquisition  of  it.  He  probably  had  the  greatest  number  of 
duplicates  of  any  collector  in  history.  Along  about  1919-21 
when  his  enthusiasm  was  at  its  height,  he  would  close  his 
desk  in  the  old  Seaboard  National  Bank  Building  shortly 
after  three  P.M.,  call  his  chauffeur  and  say,  "Now,  George, 
let's  go  over  to  Nassau  Street."  He  had  at  various  times 
several  dealers  with  whom  he  spent  much  money,  but  these 
were  casually  selected;  and  this  brings  up  one  of  the  favor- 
ite stories  of  the  Street. 

Ordinarily  a  good-natured  man,  the  colonel  sometimes 
took  quick  offense  at  a  thoughtless  remark  or  action  of  a 
dealer  and  forsook  him  forever.  He  was  always  friendly  with 
policemen,  occasionally  stopping  to  talk  with  them.  Once 
he  came  out  of  a  stamp  shop  in  some  heat  and  told  the 
traffic  cop  on  a  near-by  corner  that  he  had  been  badly 


152    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

treated  in  that  place.  The  policeman  knew  rather  less  about 
such  business  than  he  knew  about  the  Man  in  the  Moon, 
though  he  was  vaguely  aware  that  stamps  were  sold  along 
the  street;  in  fact,  a  dealer's  frame  of  stamps  was  visible 
beside  a  doorway  from  where  they  stood. 

"Why  don't  you  try  them  guys  over  there?"  asked  the 
helpful  cop,  pointing. 

"I  will,"  said  Colonel  Green;  and  he  made  his  word  good 
by  spending  some  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  with 
that  shop  in  the  next  two  or  three  years,  even  sending  the 
head  of  the  firm  on  one  occasion  on  a  damn-the-expense 
trip  to  Russia  to  buy  a  special  collection  which  cost  him 
about  fifty  thousand  dollars. 

There  were  sometimes  two  or  three  dealers  at  once  whose 
shops  were  his  favorite  places  of  call.  At  times  he  didn't 
bother  to  tell  George  which  place  he  wished  to  visit,  and  on 
such  occasions  George  would  stop  wherever  traffic  condi- 
tions seemed  most  favorable.  A  shrewd  young  clerk  in  one 
of  the  shops— they  were  all  on  upper  floors— sometimes  car- 
ried collections  bought  by  Green  down  to  his  car,  and  he 
cultivated  the  chauffeur,  giving  him  cigarettes  and  learning 
more  of  the  colonel's  peculiarities.  He  also  heard  that 
George's  schoolboy  son  was  a  beginning  collector,  which 
gave  the  clerk  an  idea.  He  made  up  an  album  of  cheap 
stamps  out  of  his  employer's  stock,  gave  it  to  the  chauffeur, 
and  thereafter,  George  more  frequently  found  it  convenient 
to  stop  in  front  of  that  building. 

During  those  peak  years,  the  number  of  collections 
bought  by  Colonel  Green  was  fantastic.  He  might  buy  one 
of  ten  albums  today,  another  of  twenty-five  tomorrow.  If  a 
collection  had  a  few  stamps  in  it  that  he  wanted— some- 
times only  one  stamp!— and  the  dealer  showed  a  slight  re- 
luctance, as  they  naturally  came  to  do— and  who  wouldn't? 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    153 

—to  break  it,  the  colonel,  after  chaffering  a  bit  as  to  price, 
would  finally  say,  "Oh,  wrap  it  all  up."  His  big,  dark-green, 
seven-passenger  Fierce-Arrow  car— and  how  much  greener 
with  envy  it  made  other  dealers  when  they  saw  it  standing 
in  front  of  a  certain  building!— sometimes  drove  away  with 
its  rear  seating  space  piled  so  high  with  wrapped  albums 
that  the  colonel's  round,  beaming  face  could  just  peer  over 
them.  One  of  the  small,  folding  seats  in  front  of  him  was 
arranged  so  that  he  could  rest  that  bad  leg  on  it. 

How  eagerly  his  regular  dealers  listened  in  the  late  after- 
noon for  the  stump,  stump  of  that  leg  in  the  hall  outside 
the  door!  When  he  entered,  he  sat  down  with  his  side  to 
the  dealer's  long  table,  hoisted  that  and  then  the  other  leg 
to  the  table,  and  sat  thus,  examining  the  offerings.  It  was 
a  common  thing  for  him  to  write  a  check  for  from  ten  to 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars  for  an  afternoon's  purchases. 
The  biggest  single  day's  check  was  for  $77,000.  Another  of 
$72,000  was  given  in  payment  for  a  British  American  collec- 
tion, and  the  deal  was  put  through  in  fifteen  minutes. 
There  was  one  dealer  who,  if  he  spent  only  three  thousand 
or  five  thousand  dollars,  would  stamp  about  the  office  after- 
ward, cursing  him  for  a  damned  piker  and  a  tightwad. 

This  dealer,  whose  ethics  were  not  of  the  highest,  once 
had  a  collection  made  up  and  mounted  in  albums  by  his 
two  clerks,  embodying  a  lot  of  good  twentieth-century 
stamps,  in  which  the  colonel  was  particularly  interested  at 
the  time,  and  several  pounds  of  goods  which  had  been  on 
hand  for  a  long  time.  The  clerks  worked  for  days  on  the 
job.  When  the  albums  were  made  up,  they  had  put  in  so 
much  cheap  stuff  that  the  proprietor  raved,  "Junk!  I 
wouldn't  even  show  it  to  him!  Why,  there  isn't  even  five- 
thousand  dollars'  worth  of  stamps  there!" 

The  clerks  contradicted  this,  pointing  out  that  their 


154    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

catalogue  value  was  really  between  seven  and  eight  thou- 
sand dollars,  and  that  there  were  things  there  which  Green 
particularly  needed  to  fill  gaps  in  his  collection.  The  boss 
was  finally  persuaded  to  take  on  the  deal.  The  rarest,  the 
best  stuff  must  of  course  be  shown  to  the  customer,  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  other,  and  in  such  a  way  as  to  seem  casual, 
to  give  the  appearance  that  the  collection  was  all  like  that. 
It  wouldn't  do  to  put  slips  of  paper  in  the  albums  as  mark- 
ers, so  a  page  where  the  best  items  occurred  was  slightly 
bent  or  thumb-nailed  after  the  manner  of  the  gambling 
shark's  marked  cards,  and  these  albums  were  placed  on  top. 
The  dealer  would  pick  up  one  in  the  most  casual  manner 
and  say,  "Now,  for  example,"  carefully  flipping  it  open  at 
the  marked  page,  and  when  the  colonel  had  seen  a  few 
stamps  there,  "Now  take  another  album,"  and  there  would 
be  some  more  luscious  beauties. 

"Whose  collection  is  this?"  asked  the  colonel. 

"It's  a  Russian  Grand  Duke's,"  was  the  yarn.  "The 
Grand  Duke— er— Alexandrovitch.  Chased  out  of  Russia 
when  the  Bolsheviks  came  in;  went  broke  and  all  that,  you 
know." 

("He  couldn't  remember  that  name  again  to  save  his 
soul,"  muttered  one  clerk  to  another  in  the  next  room. ) 

The  "collection"  was  priced  at  $25,000,  and  the  colonel, 
after  beating  the  price  down  to  $21,000,  said,  "Wrap  it 
up,"  and  went  away,  well  pleased  with  his  bargain. 

After  all,  he  was  having  a  good  time,  he  could  afford  it, 
and  who  is  there  to  criticize  him?  He  lived  in  a  suite  in  the 
old  Waldorf-Astoria,  but  he  kept  only  some  of  his  stamps 
there.  He  had  a  house  in  Ninetieth  Street,  which  was  full 
almost  from  cellar  to  garret  with  his  stamp  and  coin  col- 
lections, and  there  he  had  a  staff  of  girls  sorting,  trying  in 
vain  to  keep  ahead  of  their  employer's  purchases,  which  he 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    155 

hoped  "some  day"  to  reassert  himself.  He  bought  the  mag- 
nificent collection  of  Joseph  Leavy,  a  lifelong  specialist  in 
Belgium,  which  had  many  re-entries  and  plate  varieties,  all 
carefully  described  on  the  pages,  with  plate  positions  de- 
termined and  noted  in  many  cases.  Green  turned  this  over 
to  one  of  the  girls,  who  removed  the  stamps  and  re- 
mounted most  of  them  in  stock  albums,  sidetracking  what 
she  regarded  as  duplicates  and  throwing  the  old  album 
pages  away,  thus  destroying  Leavy's  priceless  life  work. 

Once  he  found  that  he  had  bought  a  stamp  which  had 
been  repaired  by  having  parts  of  the  margins  added.  In  high 
dudgeon  he  hurried  around  to  the  office  of  a  big  optical 
concern. 

"I  want  a  magnifying  glass,"  said  he,  "that  will  enlarge 
a  postage  stamp  to  a  size  four  feet  square,  and  with  sharp, 
clear  definition." 

The  company  worked  for  weeks,  grinding  the  lenses  and 
building  that  device.  They  charged  him  $22,000  for  it,  but 
that  was  nothing.  The  worst  annoyance  was  that  when  it 
was  delivered  to  the  Ninetieth  Street  address  it  was  so  big 
that  the  door  frame  had  to  be  taken  out  before  they 
could  get  it  into  the  house.  The  colonel  had  a  white  porce- 
lain screen  built  into  the  wall,  and  on  that  he  would  throw 
stereopticon  enlargements  of  his  stamps  for  study. 

Colonel  Green  was  a  frequent  attendant  at  auctions,  but 
didn't  bid  as  recklessly  as  one  might  expect,  being  often 
outbid  by  others  on  single  rarities,  on  which  he  was  apt  to 
display  excellent  judgment.  Plate  number  blocks  intrigued 
him  for  some  time,  and  he  actually  enlisted  the  aid  of  the 
City  Hall  Post  Office  in  this  fad.  The  booklets  of  one-,  two- 
and  three-cent  stamps  which  we  have  been  buying  for  years 
are  shipped  out  to  the  post  offices  in  boxes;  and  at  this 
office,  clerks  would  go  through  the  boxes  for  Green  and 


156    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

sort  out  every  booklet  in  which  plate  numbers  appeared. 
At  intervals  of  a  few  days  he  would  come  around  and  buy 
the  accumulation,  paying  for  them  from  a  wallet  full  of 
new  money  carried  in  an  inside  vest  pocket.  Those  who 
knew  him  say  they  never  saw  him  have  a  soiled  bill;  if  he 
had  to  take  one  in  change,  he  got  rid  of  it  as  quickly  as 
possible.  He  is  known  to  have  bought  as  high  as  twelve 
hundred  dollars'  worth  of  the  stamp  booklets  at  once.  Then 
he  would  pass  the  evening  very  happily  in  his  Waldorf 
suite,  pulling  the  clips  out  of  the  books  with  a  pair  of  small 
tweezers  and  laying  out  about  three  blocks  of  four  of  each 
plate  number  for  himself.  The  rest  of  the  stamps  he  would 
turn  into  his  own  bank,  the  Seaboard,  next  morning  and 
get  cash  on  them. 

There  was  always  something  boyish  about  the  colonel. 
One  afternoon  he  went  into  Nassau  Street  in  great  glee 
with  an  atomizer  full  of  a  new  and  wonderfully  volatile 
liquid  which,  when  sprayed  upon  a  stamp,  would  bring  out 
the  watermark  very  clearly  for  a  few  moments,  then  evap- 
orate, leaving  the  stamp  theoretically  as  good  as  new.  He 
wasn't  at  all  interested  in  buying  stamps  that  afternoon; 
just  wanted  to  play  with  that  new  gadget.  At  his  order,  the 
annoyed  dealers  brought  forth  stamp  after  stamp  for  him 
to  spray  and  watch  delightedly  as  the  watermark  stood 
forth  and  then  slowly  faded.  He  didn't  buy  a  dime's  worth 
that  day,  and  the  dealers  hoped  he  would  never  discover 
another  such  plaything. 

He  once  commissioned  a  Nassau  Street  concern  to  pre- 
pare a  great  number  of  album  pages  for  him,  beginning 
with  Great  Britain  and  colonies,  and  allotting  only  one 
page  to  each  stamp,  on  which  it  alone  was  to  be  mounted 
in  blocks,  pairs  and  singles,  and  with  all  its  varieties.  At  a 
top  corner  of  each  page  was  to  be  lettered  the  stamp's  num- 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    157 

ber  according  to  Gibbons,  Scott  and  all  other  cataloguers 
who  might  list  it.  The  total  cost  of  the  order  ran  into  thou- 
sands of  dollars.  The  pages  were  delivered,  and  the  dealers 
heard  no  more  of  the  matter  for  a  while.  Finally  one  of 
them  asked  the  colonel  how  he  was  getting  along  with  the 
new  albums. 

"Oh,  that  idea  didn't  work  out  at  all,"  he  replied.  "In 
some  cases  I  couldn't  get  all  the  varieties  and  so  on  onto 
one  page  and— in  short,  it  was  a  mess." 

"What  did  you  do  with  the  album  pages?"  he  was  asked. 

"Threw  'em  away!" 

Colonel  Green  is  best  remembered  by  many  in  connec- 
tion with  the  famous  air-mail  bi-color  sheet  of  1918  in 
which  the  airplane  is  inverted.  A  Washington  stockbroker's 
clerk  named  W.  T.  Robey  went  to  a  branch  post  office  in 
that  city  on  the  morning  when  the  stamps  were  to  be 
issued,  but  they  had  no  sheets  that  were  well  centered.  The 
clerk  said  a  new  supply  would  be  in  about  noon,  and  when 
Robey  went  back  with  thirty  dollars  in  his  pocket,  a  sheet 
was  handed  out  to  him.  At  the  first  glance,  he  saw  that  the 
center  vignette  was  upside  down.  He  asked  the  clerk  if 
there  were  any  more  "like  this."  There  were  only  three 
more  sheets,  and  they  were  all  normal.  Robey  then  called 
the  clerk's  attention  to  the  invert,  and  the  latter  asked  him 
to  return  it,  which  Robey  of  course  refused  to  do.  In  those 
honest  days,  government  still  considered  itself  a  bit  dis- 
graced if  it  let  an  inverted  or  imperforate  sheet  get  outside 
the  Bureau  of  Engraving  and  Printing.  The  clerk  therefore 
rushed  to  a  telephone,  called  up  the  postmaster-general's 
office  and  gave  warning  of  the  error  that  was  afloat.  Robey 
and  a  fellow  clerk  dashed  about  from  one  branch  office  to 
another,  trying  to  find  more  of  the  sheets,  but  in  vain. 
Stamps  are  printed  in  sheets  of  four  hundred,  so  there  must 


158    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

have  been  at  least  three  other  panes  of  one  hundred  like 
Robey's,  but  they  have  never  appeared.  Some  gossips  be- 
lieve they  are  in  the  government's  own  stamp  collection. 
Anyhow,  the  sale  of  the  stamps  was  halted  for  two  hours  in 
New  York  and  Philadelphia  that  day  while  clerks  searched 
for  more  bad  sheets. 

Robey  at  once  received  a  bid  of  $10,000  for  the  sheet. 
He  went  to  New  York,  but  could  get  no  better  offer.  A 
man  in  Philadelphia  asked  him  to  stop  there  on  his  way 
home,  and  when  he  did  so,  asked  him  for  an  option  on  the 
sheet  at  $15,000,  in  behalf  of  a  group  being  formed  to  buy 
it.  Robey  gave  the  option,  and  next  day  had  an  offer  of 
$18,000  from  a  Washington  dealer,  but  had  to  sell  to  the 
Philadelphia  syndicate,  which  in  turn  sold  the  sheet  to 
Colonel  Green  for  $20,000. 

Certain  dealers  asked  the  colonel  to  have  compassion  on 
his  fellow  collectors,  and  he  graciously  broke  up  the  sheet, 
retaining  the  arrow  and  number  blocks  and  the  cross-line 
block  in  the  center,  as  well  as  a  few  singles.  He  sold  some 
singles  at  $150  each,  and  some  later  at  $250.  A  few  were 
lost.  At  one  time  thirteen  copies,  mostly  with  straight  edge, 
blew  off  or  fell  off  his  desk,  were  swept  up  by  a  cleaner  and 
destroyed.  And  once  when  he  was  away  from  home  and  Mrs. 
Green  wished  to  send  him  a  letter  by  air  mail,  she  found 
one  of  those  inverts  on  his  desk  and,  not  knowing  its  value, 
stuck  it  on  the  letter.  Her  husband  quickly  discovered  it, 
peeled  it  off  and  thereafter  wore  it  in  a  pendant  on  his 
watch  chain.  If  still  in  existence,  it  is  the  only  used  speci- 
men of  that  rarity! 

That  was  undoubtedly  the  highest  postage  ever  paid  on 
a  single  letter.  As  an  indication  of  what  real  stamp  rarities 
will  do  for  their  owners,  a  single  copy  of  that  stamp  was 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    159 

bought  by  Senator  Frelinghuysen  in  1932  for  $2,750,  and 
in  1939  one  was  sold  at  the  auction  of  Stephen  D.  Brown's 
collection  for  $4,100! 

The  twenty  copies  retained  by  Colonel  Green  were,  so 
it  is  reported,  in  the  cabin  of  his  yacht  when  it  sank  in 
New  Haven  harbor.  They  were  recovered,  but  in  what  con- 
dition—ah, that  is  a  secret.  Some  of  his  other  fine  stamps 
were  along  with  them.  The  colonel  became  a  radio  enthu- 
siast some  time  after  that,  built  his  own  broadcasting 
station  at  Round  Hill,  Massachusetts,  and  lost  his  interest 
in  stamps.  Shortly  before  his  death  in  1937  ^e  was  r°using 
from  his  several  years'  coldness  and  beginning  to  putter 
with  his  collection  again,  but  his  death  cut  short  all  the 
dealers'  hopes.  As  items  in  his  thirty-six-million-dollar  es- 
tate, his  stamps  were  appraised  at  $1,298,444  and  his  coins 
at  $1,240,300. 

As  this  chapter  is  written,  those  stamps  have  not  yet  been 
sold,  and  all  sorts  of  rumors  may  be  heard.  Did  those  air- 
mail inverts  sink  with  the  yacht,  get  wet  and  lose  their 
gum?  If  so,  according  to  prevailing  standards,  that  greatly 
reduces  their  value— though  there  are  mutterings  of  re- 
bellion among  collectors  whose  experience  with  unused 
stamps  has  been  so  unhappy— sticking  to  whatever  is  near 
them  in  damp  weather,  curling  up  and  cracking  in  dry- 
that  they  threaten  to  wash  the  gum  off  all  their  mint 
stamps  and  let  those  cavil  who  will.  The  late  William  E. 
Hawkins,  who  had  one  of  the  greatest  collections  of  un- 
used nineteenth-century  in  existence— it  used  to  be  told  of 
him  that  he  had  only  one  used  stamp,  a  ten-cent  1847 
bisect  on  an  envelope,  and  that  was  given  to  him— had  also 
a  cottage  on  the  New  Jersey  coast,  and  there  some  of  his 
fine  mint  sheets  and  blocks,  dampened  by  the  salt  sea  fogs, 


160    NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE 

stuck  to  album  pages  and  to  each  other  so  vexingly  that 
Hawkins  became  disgusted  and  ceased  collecting. 

"O  hateful  error,  Melancholy's  child!"  cries  Messala  in 
Shakespeare's  Julius  Caesar;  and  sixty  years  ago,  there  were 
many  who  agreed  with  him.  P.  M.  Wolsieffer,  a  veteran 
dealer,  now  dead,  used  to  tell  of  how  he  tried  to  sell  a 
nice,  well-centered  twenty-four-cent  1869  to  L.  W.  Durbin, 
a  prominent  dealer  of  the  day,  but  the  latter  refused  it. 
"Why?"  asked  Wolsieffer,  then  a  boy.  "Because,"  replied 
Durbin,  "the  printer  has  made  a  mistake  and  printed  the 
picture  upside  down."  So  young  Wolsieffer  traded  the 
stamp  to  another  boy  for  a  ten-pfennig  German.  The  mod- 
ern collector  doesn't  agree  with  Messala.  To  him,  the  error 
is  the  whipped  cream  of  philately. 

The  other  most  famous  of  our  twentieth-century  errors 
was  the  two-cent  of  the  two-color  Pan-American  series,  on 
which  the  train  was  inverted.  There  was  a  one-cent  invert 
also,  but  at  least  seven  sheets  of  this  got  into  circulation. 
There  seems  to  have  been  only  one  sheet  of  the  two-cent, 
and  this  was  bought  by  Frederick  W.  Davis,  employee  of 
a  linotype  company  in  Brooklyn.  He  presently  began  ped- 
dling a  few  of  the  stamps  on  Nassau  Street  at  five  dollars 
each,  but  dealers  were  a  little  afraid  of  them,  and  one  who 
bought  a  block  of  four  for  twenty  dollars  became  frightened 
and  gladly  sold  it  the  same  day  at  what  it  cost  him.  How 
he  would  like  to  have  it  now!  To  hear  Davis's  side  of  the 
story,  one  should  read  his  pamphlet,  "How  I  Made  a 
Fortune  on  the  Pan-American  Stamps/'  The  "fortune," 
according  to  his  own  story,  was  three-hundred  dollars;  but 
he  lists  some  of  the  things  he  bought  with  the  money— 
"highly  polished  oak  dining  table  at  Loeser's  (recently 
marked  down  from  $15  to  $10.50)  and  four  beautiful  oak 
dining  chairs  to  match  at  Abraham  &  Straus's,  one  with 


NOTABILITIES,  HUMAN  AND  INANIMATE    161 

side  arms  and  all  made  by  Sykes  of  Buffalo  for  the  round 
sum  of  $13  (regular  price  $15)"— they  were  only  part  of 
the  spoil.  Finally,  he  wrote  an  article  for  the  Brooklyn 
Eagle,  the  check  for  which  paid  for  a  trip  to  Buffalo  "on 
the  famous  Heffley  excursion."  It  is  all  delightful  reading. 


BEDTIME  STORIES 


I 


N  1886  the  New  York  World 

CHAPTER  TEN  |  ,,.  ,  .  ,  ,  . 

of  mill-end  fiction,  along  with 
its  news  and  editorials.  In  the  issue  of  May  fifth  there  was 
a  thrilling  story  about  the  narrow  escape  of  Dick  Some- 
thingorother  from  losing  his  ancestral  home,  just  as  he  had 
begun  hankering  to  get  married.  The  place  was  mortgaged 
right  up  to  the  ridge-pole,  no  less  than  a  thousand  dollars' 
incumbrance,  and  the  skinflint  who  held  the  mortgage 
wouldn't  grant  another  day's  time,  not  even  if  Dick  gave 
him  his  right  eye.  Sadly,  Dick  and  his  faithful  sweetheart 
were  going  through  some  of  his  effects  which  would  have 
to  be  removed  or  thrown  away.  They  opened  an  old  trunk 
in  the  attic;  nothing  of  value  there,  said  Dick— just  some 
old  letters  and  such.  But  his  girl,  who  was  a  stamp  collec- 
tor, suddenly  uttered  a  piercing  cry  of  joy  at  sight  of  a 
letter  from  Brattleboro,  Vermont,  away  back  in  eighteen- 
forty-something,  and  with  a  queer  little  label  on  it.  Dick 
didn't  know  what  it  was,  but  she  did.  Here  were  several 
more  from  New  Haven  which  excited  her,  several  from  St. 
Louis. 

Dick  of  course  thought  she  was  slightly  gaga;  but  she 
explained  to  him  that  when  Congress  authorized  stamps  in 
1845  but  forgot  to  have  any  printed,  the  postmasters  at 

162 


BEDTIME  STORIES  163 

New  York,  Baltimore,  Alexandria,  Providence,  New  Haven, 
Annapolis,  Millbury,  Massachusetts  and  some  other  towns 
made  stamps  of  their  own,  which  were  used  until  the  gov- 
ernment's first  stamps  came  out  in  '47;  and  these  were  now 
great  rarities.  Well,  sir,  believe  it  or  not,  they  took  those 
letters  down  to  a  stamp  dealer  in  New  York  and  got  a  cool 
$1,350  for  them  (think  how  much  more  they  could  have 
realized  if  they  had  held  onto  them  for  forty  years!),  paid 
off  the  mortgage  and  lived  happily  ever  after. 

This  motif  has  been  worked  into  many  forms,  with  and 
without  stamps.  Ben  Ames  Williams  retold  it  with  a  comic 
twist  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post  only  three  or  four  years 
ago.  The  leading  character,  a  shiftless  but  likable  Down 
East  idler,  whom  luck  always  rescues  from  his  troubles,  is 
about  to  be  turned  out  of  his  old  home  with  his  wife  when 
he  finds  a  batch  of  Hawaiian  Missionaries  in  the  attic, 
etc.,  etc. 

There  are  other  stories  resembling  these  which  are 
vouched  for  as  fact  rather  than  fiction.  There  is  the  one, 
for  example,  about  the  little  old  lady  in  London,  a  widow 
for  many  years,  living  in  a  furnished  room  in  poorer  and 
poorer  parts  of  town  until  matters  were  so  desperate  that 
she  just  didn't  know  how  she  was  going  to  pay  the  rent 
another  week  or  get  bread  to  eat.  She  seemed  to  have  sold 
everything  of  value  she  had,  but  at  last  she  thought  of 
.something  else,  though  it  didn't  seem  much  of  a  prospect. 
Her  husband— silly  boy!— had  collected  postage  stamps,  and 
she  still  had  his  collection  sentimentally  stowed  away.  She 
shed  a  few  tears  at  the  thought  of  parting  with  these  little 
tokens  which  he  loved  so  much  and  which  seemed  to  bring 
back  his  own  dear  self  so  brightly,  but  she  must  get  a  few 
shillings  or  pennies  out  of  them  if  she  could.  So  she  put  on 


164  BEDTIME  STORIES 

her  battered  little  hat  and  risked  a  coin  on  the  Tube,  and 
went  timidly  into  a  stamp  dealer's  shop  in  the  Strand. 

"I  wonder  if  you  would  care  to  buy  a  few  stamps  which 
I  have  here/'  she  said  to  a  clerk.  "They  were  my  husband's. 
...  He  has  been  dead  for  many  years.  .  .  .  Only  my  need 
for  money  has  induced  me  to  sell  them.  .  .  ." 

The  clerk  turned  over  a  few  pages,  looked  in  a  startled 
way  at  the  little  old  lady  in  her  threadbare  dress,  flipped 
over  another  page  or  two,  and  asked  if  he  might  show  the 
albums  to  the  proprietor  in  his  office.  He  took  them  into 
the  room  back  of  the  shop,  and  in  five  minutes  reappeared 
again. 

"Will  you  step  this  way,  please,  madam?"  he  asked. 

The  proprietor,  magnifying  glass  in  hand  and  an  album 
open  before  him,  rose,  bowed  and  begged  her  to  be  seated. 
He  asked  a  few  questions,  and  then,  clearing  his  throat,  he 
said,  "Madam,  I  couldn't  think  of  making  you  an  offer 
for  this  collection.  It  would  be  unfair  to  you;  it  is  too  valu- 
able. But  with  your  permission,  I  should  like  to  arrange  to 
have  it  sold  at  auction." 

He  went  on  to  explain  the  auction  machinery,  the  com- 
missions expected  and  so  on.  "In  the  meantime,"  he  con- 
cluded, "I  shall  be  glad  to  make  you  an  advance  of— well, 
shall  we  say  three-hundred  pounds?  .  .  .  John!  Get  a  glass 
of  water— quick!" 

They  laid  her  on  a  sofa  and  moistened  her  brow  and 
slapped  her  wrists  in  a  masculinely  awkward  way,  and  pres- 
ently the  old  lady  was  able  to  sit  up  and  say  she  felt  better 
now,  and  she  couldn't  imagine  what  was  the  matter  with 
her.  And  in  a  quarter-hour  she  was  on  her  way  in  a  cab 
toward  a  bank  with  some  real  cash  in  her  pocket  for  im- 
mediate needs  and  a— no,  not  a  check— a  cheque;  let's  pre- 
serve the  atmosphere— which  was  to  launch  her  on  a  new 


BEDTIME  STORIES  165 

era  of  comfort  and  security.  For  they  say  that  when  those 
stamps  were  put  up  at  auction,  they  brought  more  than 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars. 

A  pleasant  story,  that,  and  one  that  deserves  to  be  true, 
as  it  may  very  well  be.  Anyhow,  it  makes  a  good  contrast 
to  an  incident  which  took  place  in  New  York  thirty  years 
ago.  A  plasterer  who  was  an  amateur  stamp  collector  came 
to  the  shop  of  Bogert  &  Durbin  one  day  in  great  excite- 
ment. He  had  been  doing  a  job  in  the  home  of  an  old 
lady  named  Kennedy  on  lower  Fifth  Avenue,  just  above 
Washington  Square.  In  the  basement  he  had  seen  a  quan- 
tity of  old  letters,  the  correspondence  of  her  husband, 
long  since  dead.  Many  of  them  were  from  foreign  coun- 
tries—Canada especially— and  there  were  some  fine  stamps 
among  them;  he  named  a  few  which  he  had  seen.  He  had 
spoken  to  the  lady  about  the  matter,  but  he  needed  some- 
one with  cash  to  back  him  up.  Would  they— but  of  course 
they  would! 

But  when  he  returned  to  the  house,  he  found  that  dis- 
aster had  happened  in  his  absence.  Aroused  by  the  sugges- 
tion that  she  had  valuable  stamps  in  her  home,  the  lady 
decided  to  act  for  herself.  A  mere  plasterer  wouldn't  know 
what  he  was  talking  about,  and  even  if  he  did,  he  probably 
wouldn't  pay  her  much  for  the  stamps.  So,  instead  of  pro- 
ceeding slowly  and  cautiously,  she  just  called  up  a  dealer- 
how  she  obtained  his  name  we  don't  know,  but  he's  been 
dead  for  many  years,  and  it  doesn't  matter;  he  hotfooted  it 
up  to  the  house,  gave  a  hasty  look,  offered  her  fifty  dollars 
for  the  lot,  closed  the  deal  and  got  the  letters  out  of  the 
house  at  once.  She  thought  she  had  made  a  pretty  nice 
trade  until  she  saw  the  plasterer  again.  He  had  been  in- 
tending to  deal  more  fairly  with  her;  it  had  never  occurred 
to  him  that  she  would  sell  out  everything  for  fifty  dollars. 


166  BEDTIME  STORIES 

"I  could  have  given  you  that  much  myself,  out  of  my 
own  pocket,"  he  told  her.  "You  had  hundreds,  maybe 
thousands  of  dollars'  worth  of  stamps  on  those  letters."  It 
developed  that  besides  hundreds  of  stampless  covers,  there 
was  at  least  one  Canada  twelvepence— its  catalogue  price 
today  is  fifteen  hundred  dollars— more  than  a  hundred  of 
the  Canada  sixpence,  some  hundreds  of  U.  S.  1847*8,  the 
English  tuppence  1840,  sometimes  in  strips  of  six,  many 
old  Trinidad  lithographs  and  other  things  too  painful  to 
mention,  the  total  value  running  well  up  into  the  thou- 
sands. 

There  was  another  fifty-dollar  buy  still  earlier  which 
turned  out  still  better.  The  janitor  of  the  old  Mills  build- 
ing at  15  Broad  Street  in  New  York  told  a  Nassau  Street 
dealer  one  day  in  the  '90*8  that  there  was  a  loft  in  the  build- 
ing where  there  were  many  old  papers  and  envelopes  with 
stamps  on  them.  Would  the  dealer  be  willing  to  clean  out 
the  accumulation  and  give  him,  the  janitor,  a  little  tip  of— 
this  very  hesitatingly— say,  fifty  dollars?  The  dealer  went  to 
the  loft,  looked  for  about  three  minutes,  handed  fifty  dol- 
lars to  the  janitor  and  ordered  a  truck  to  move  the  stuff  to 
a  warehouse.  The  man  who  told  us  this  story  said  that  one 
of  the  partners  in  the  stamp  firm  told  him  in  1902  that 
they  had  already  sold  $25,000  worth  of  stamps  out  of  this 
lot  and  had  enough  left  to  keep  the  market  interested  for 
the  next  thirty  years.  Whether  this  is  strictly  true  or  not,  the 
fact  is  that  many  thousands  of  dollars  came  from  that  small 
investment.  This,  like  many  other  finds  of  those  days,  was 
rich  in  U.  S.  1847*8,  all  on  original  covers,  of  course,  and 
many  other  items  valuable  even  then,  but  far  more  so  now. 

There  were  two  finds  of  the  St.  Louis  postmaster  stamps 
which  were  spectacular,  each  in  its  own  way.  In  1895  a 
Negro  janitor  named  Bob  in  the  Court  House  in  Louisville, 


BEDTIME  STORIES  167 

Ky.,  was  ordered  to  destroy  a  lot  of  old  papers  which  had 
been  lying  in  a  corner  of  the  basement  since  before  any- 
body could  remember.  Bob  found  some  letters  having 
queer  labels  on  them— pictures  of  a  couple  of  bears  holding 
up  a  circular  sign  of  some  sort.  They  didn't  look  like  real 
stamps,  but  they  might  be  foreign,  for  all  he  knew,  and 
Bob  was  vaguely  aware  that  there  were  slightly  demented 
white  folks  who  collected  such  things.  Finally,  he  needed 
a  little  pocket  money— say,  fo'  bits— for  a  particular  pur- 
pose. He  picked  all  of  the  stamps  he  could  find  from  the 
waste,  and  not  knowing  how  to  go  about  marketing  them, 
offered  them  to  two  white  employees,  the  jail  turnkey  and 
another  fellow,  who,  after  some  haggling,  bought  them  at 
Bob's  price,  fifty  cents. 

They  in  turn  sold  the  stamps  to  a  saloon  keeper  who 
was  just  a  little  smarter  than  they  were  for  five  dollars, 
and  were  jubilant  over  their  thousand  per  cent  profit.  If 
they  learned  from  the  papers  that  just  three  of  the  137 
stamps  in  that  lot,  namely,  the  five-,  ten-  and  twenty-cent 
St.  Louis,  all  on  one  cover,  were  sold  not  long  afterward 
for  $4,000,  they  must  have  had  narrow  escapes  from  apo- 
plexy. What  the  saloon  keeper  made  off  the  deal  as  he 
parceled  them  out  to  stamp  dealers  we  do  not  know,  but 
the  rumor  is  that  he  rapidly  grew  wiser  as  the  deal  pro- 
gressed, and  before  long,  was  sneering  at  offers  of  $500  for 
good  copies  of  the  twenty-center.  C.  H.  Mekeel,  St.  Louis 
dealer,  quickly  heard  of  the  find,  rushed  over  to  Louisville, 
and  succeeded  in  buying  up  the  whole  lot.  Meanwhile, 
when  news  of  the  bonanza  began  to  drift  around  Louisville, 
someone  claimed  to  remember  that  some  of  that  old  paper 
from  the  basement  had  been  used  to  fill  in  under  a  new 
concrete  pavement  laid  around  the  Court  House  not  long 


168  BEDTIME  STORIES 

before,  and  there  were  enthusiasts  who  wanted  to  tear  up 
the  pavement. 

There  were  seventy-five  of  the  five-cent  stamps  in  that 
lot,  forty-six  of  the  tens  and  sixteen  of  the  twenty-cent.  The 
integrity  of  the  twenty-center  had  never  been  thoroughly 
established  until  that  moment.  Many  copies  of  the  five  and 
ten  were  known,  but  only  four  copies  of  the  twenty  had 
been  found,  and  many  authorities  did  not  believe  in  it. 
J.  B.  Moens,  Belgian  pundit,  had  declared  only  three  years 
before,  "The  twenty-cents  has  never  existed;  it  is  a  faked 
five-cents."  The  true  story,  as  now  known,  is  that  the  plate 
at  first  comprised  six  stamps,  three  fives  and  three  tens,  in 
two  vertical  columns.  The  postmaster  decided  that  a 
twenty-cent  stamp  was  needed,  but  didn't  want  to  pay  for 
a  new  plate.  So  an  engraver  battered  up  two  of  the  fives 
from  the  back  of  the  plate  with  a  hammer,  then  smoothed 
the  surface  and  engraved  a  "20"  thereon,  making  a  pretty 
crude  job.  No  wonder  the  wiseacres  distrusted  it. 

The  second  great  St.  Louis  find  occurred  in  1912,  when 
an  old  banking  concern  in  Philadelphia  cleared  out  a  vast 
accumulation  of  letters  and  papers  going  back  as  far  as  the 
eighteenth  century  and  sold  them  to  a  junk-paper  ware- 
house. Now,  just  across  the  street  there  was  a  little  corner 
tobacco  shop;  its  proprietor  knew  stamps  and  had  some- 
how learned  of  the  great  accumulation  of  old  papers  in  the 
banking  house.  He  had  tried  to  get  permission  to  go 
through  them  and  buy  what  he  found  valuable  there,  but 
in  vain.  Those  bankers,  like  the  old  Nassau  Street  law  firm, 
were  too  wise  and  too  busy  to  be  bothered  with  nuts  like 
that.  Years  passed,  and  one  day  the  tobacconist  saw  with 
horrified  eyes  a  truck  marked  "Hemingway  Paper  Stock 
Company"  back  up  to  a  side  door  and  begin  to  load  up 
with  bundles  of  old  papers.  It  was  the  noon  hour;  he  was 


BEDTIME  STORIES  169 

alone  in  the  shop— had  no  one  with  whom  to  leave  the 
business  if  he  went  over  there  to  see  about  the  matter. 
And  so  finally  the  truck  drove  off,  and  with  it  a  fortune. 
So  limited  was  the  vision  of  the  little  shopkeeper  that  it 
never  occurred  to  him  that  he  might  just  lock  up  the  store 
and  go  out  and  get  possession  of  that  load  of  paper  some- 
how. Had  he  followed  the  truck  to  the  warehouse  and  said 
to  the  manager,  "I'm  a  stamp  collector,  and  I  believe  there 
are  some  old  stamps  in  that  stuff  that  I'd  like  to  have,"  he 
might  have  bought  the  truckload  for  fifty  or  seventy-five 
dollars.  But  for  fear  of  losing  the  sale  of  two  or  three  cigars 
and  a  package  of  Bull  Durham,  he  tossed  away  a  chance  to 
acquire  stamps  and  letters  which  were  estimated  to  be 
worth  a  hundred-thousand  dollars.  And  we  wonder  what 
the  bankers  thought  when  they  heard  that! 

Hemingway,  the  paper  man,  was  not  a  philatelist,  and 
might  have  missed  finding  the  stamps  had  he  not  noticed, 
as  the  paper  was  dumped  out,  some  eighteenth-century 
letters  which  excited  his  curiosity.  He  began  looking  fur- 
ther, and  found  autograph  letters  of  Robert  Morris,  An- 
thony Wayne,  Benedict  Arnold  and  other  notables,  account 
books  of  Chaloner  and  White,  who  were  provisioners  to 
the  Continental  Army,  and  he  also  found  stamps  such  as 
he  had  never  seen  or  heard  of  before.  To  shorten  the  story, 
there  were  not  only  many  stampless  covers  and  early  United 
States  stamps,  but  there  were  twenty  of  the  twenty-cent 
St.  Louis,  seventy-nine  of  the  ten-cent  and  six  of  the  five- 
cent;  there  were  a  ten  and  a  twenty  together  on  one  cover; 
a  pair  of  the  twenty,  seven  pairs  of  the  ten,  and  three  strips 
of  three  of  the  ten. 

The  late  Herman  Toaspern,  New  York  dealer,  fondly 
remembered  by  collectors  as  "Toasty"— how  many  remem- 
ber when  Walter  Winchell's  column  announced  in  1934 


iyo  BEDTIME  STORIES 

that  "Herman  Toaspern,  famous  postage-stamp  expert,  will 
Little-Church  it  with  an  upstate  marm  named  Doris  Bur- 
dett?"— well,  Toasty,  as  might  be  expected,  knew  better 
how  to  chase  and  throttle  opportunity.  A  junk-paper  dealer, 
one  who  had  not  studied  the  philatelic  phase  of  his  busi- 
ness, cleaned  out  the  accumulation  of  a  concern  in  down- 
town New  York  some  years  ago,  but  someone  around  the 
office,  attracted  by  the  appearance  of  an  old  stamp  and 
knowing  nothing  about  its  value,  picked  it  out  of  the  mess 
and  showed  it  to  Toaspern  the  next  time  he  saw  him. 
Before  you  could  say  "philately,"  Toasty  was  at  that  com- 
pany's office,  demanding  the  name  of  the  paper  dealer; 
thence  he  rushed  to  the  Italian's  little  warehouse  on  the 
East  River,  and  learned  that  those  particular  papers  were 
in  some  bales  which  he  had  shipped  to  a  paper  mill  at 
Ogdensburg,  New  York,  several  days  before. 

Toaspern  did  not  despair.  Knowing  that  a  freight  ship- 
ment travels  at  a  very  leisurely  pace,  he  caught  the  next 
train  for  far  northern  New  York,  carrying  scarcely  more 
than  a  toothbrush;  leaped  into  a  taxicab  at  the  Ogdensburg 
station  and  authorized  the  driver  to  break  the  law  in  reach- 
ing the  mill.  He  arrived  with  his  heart  in  his  mouth,  and 
was  enormously  relieved  to  find  the  shipment  in  a  car 
standing  on  a  siding,  not  yet  unloaded.  The  mill  manager 
was  not  surprised  at  his  caller's  business;  he  had  seen  crazy 
stamp-hounds  before.  But  he  was  a  kindly  soul.  At  Toas- 
pern's  question,  he  casually  penciled  a  few  figures  on  a 
pad. 

"Oh,  say  fifty  dollars,"  he  replied. 

Toasty  handed  over  the  money  blithesomely.  He  found 
more  than  five-thousand  dollars'  worth  of  stamps  in  that 
batch  of  paper. 

Eustace  Powers,  another  veteran  New  York  stampist  who 


BEDTIME  STORIES  171 

died  recently,  once  made  a  somewhat  similar  mad  dash. 
One  morning  he  received  a  batch  of  about  a  thousand 
stamps,  all  U.  S.  old-timers,  from  a  man  in  New  Orleans, 
who  asked  him  to  quote  a  price  on  them.  At  lunch  that 
day,  he  heard  a  Nassau  Street  dealer  remark  that  he  had 
just  received  a  thousand  nice  old  stamps  from  New  Or- 
leans. In  mid-afternoon  he  heard  of  another  thousand 
which  had  come  to  town.  There  was  no  dodging  the  fact 
that  someone  in  New  Orleans  had  found  a  gold  mine  and 
was  sending  out  samples  of  the  ore.  The  result  was  that 
that  night  Powers  lay  tossing  in  a  sleeper  berth  on  a  train 
pounding  southward.  At  New  Orleans  he  found  that  the 
man  Meyers  who  had  sent  the  samples  to  him  was  a  res- 
taurant keeper,  and  the  stamps  came  from  a  friend  of  his 
named  Bill.  "BriTs  got  a  barn  full  of  the  stuff,"  said  Meyers. 
Sure  enough,  the  barn  was  nearly  full  of  boxes  of  old  let- 
ters, going  back  to  ante-stamp  days.  A  compromise  price 
of  eleven-hundred  dollars  for  the  lot  was  finally  reached, 
but  the  stamps  panned  out  several  times  that  much. 

Attorney  Harold  D.  Watson  can  make  one's  mouth 
water  with  stories  of  the  finds  that  were  possible  forty  or 
fifty  years  ago,  when  there  were  hundreds  of  old  offices  in 
our  larger  cities  still  unransacked  by  the  collecting  horde. 
Already  a  collector  of  long  standing,  when  he  became  a 
clerk  in  a  law  office  in  1893,  Mr.  Watson  says,  "the  really 
bright  days  began."  He  had  an  eye  on  every  old  law  office 
in  New  York,  many  people  gave  him  tips,  and  when  old 
papers  were  cleared  away,  he  was  right  on  the  spot.  He 
recalls  finding  three  $200  revenue  stamps  in  one  box  of 
letters  and  documents.  When  the  City  Court  was  moved 
from  one  building  to  another  about  1896,  the  clerk  who 
was  ordered  to  cull  out  and  destroy  old  papers  agreed, 
for  a  modest  sum,  to  save  the  stamps  for  the  fledgling 


172  BEDTIME  STORIES 

lawyer.  He  got  two  suit-cases  full  from  that  lot,  and  was 
always  "doing  a  land-office  business  in  disposing  of  the 
duplicates/' 

One  morning  in  1894,  wnen  ne  was  m  law  school,  he 
was  passing  the  office  door  of  Hamilton  Odell,  a  famous 
old  lawyer  and  referee,  and  saw  several  big  hampers  of  old 
papers  in  the  hall.  "Now,  listen!"  he  said  to  the  janitor 
who  was  about  to  move  them,  "there's  a  landing  up  on 
those  stairs  to  the  roof  that  nobody  uses.  What  about 
pouring  all  this  stuff  out  there?  Fve  got  to  go  through  it. 
I'll  give  you  three  dollars  and  put  the  paper  back  in  the 
baskets." 

"Don't  bother  puttin'  it  back,"  grinned  the  man.  "For 
three  dollars  I'd  murder  me  grandmother.  Jist  lave  it  on 
the  flure."  If  he  had  had  any  idea  of  the  values  that  the 
youngster  was  to  find  in  that  trash— the  1847*8,  the  1851*8, 
the  New  York  postmasters  and  other  fine  items— he  might 
have  asked  more  than  three  dollars  and  the  refilling  of  the 
baskets.  Young  Watson  missed  all  his  classes  in  law  school 
that  day,  but  the  haul  was  worth  it. 

In  those  days,  too,  small-town  and  village  post  offices 
had  many  out-of-date  stamps  in  their  stocks  which  were 
treasures  to  the  collector.  Along  in  the  '90*5  R.  R.  Bogert 
sent  a  dollar  each  at  one  time  and  another  to  some  hun- 
dreds of  postmasters  asking  each  to  send  in  return  a  sample 
of  every  stamp  he  had  on  hand.  Frequently,  samples  worth 
considerably  more  than  face  value  would  come  back,  and 
then  Bogert  would  buy  all  the  postmaster  had  of  that  item. 
As  an  instance,  he  found  in  one  office  a  two-cent  newspaper 
wrapper  of  a  certain  die  which  was  currently  worth  ten 
dollars,  and  was  able  to  buy  a  hundred  more  of  them;  a 
thousand  dollars'  worth  for  two  dollars! 

Newbold,  the  stamp  hunter  mentioned  in  an  earlier 


BEDTIME  STORIES  173 

chapter,  while  touring  the  country  "selling  furs,"  always 
canvassed  the  post  offices.  At  one  place  a  crabbed  old  post- 
master grumblingly  revealed  to  his  astonished  eyes  the 
gorgeous  1869  series,  up  to  and  including  the  thirty-cent; 
one  version  has  it  that  even  the  ninety-cent  was  there, 
though  some  cynics  consider  this  improbable.  Newbold 
forgot  for  a  moment  that  he  was  in  a  post  office  and  not  a 
stamp  shop. 

"What'll  you  take  for  them?"  he  asked. 

The  old  man  glared  in  amazement.  "Face  value,  of 
course!"  he  barked.  "Don't  think  I'm  goin'  to  sell  'em  at 
a  discount,  do  ye,  jest  because  they're  a  few  years  old?" 

Newbold  humbly  bought  all  he  had. 

There  was  an  occasional  country  postmaster  in  those 
days  who  didn't  know  the  rules,  and  was  a  great  help  to 
collectors.  Those  big,  beautiful  newspaper  and  periodical 
stamps  of  1875-95,  theoretically,  no  collector  could  own 
in  mint  condition,  because  their  sale  to  persons  other  than 
publishers  for  use  on  shipments  was  sternly  forbidden.  But 
this  writer  can  testify,  and  has  the  stamps  to  prove  it,  that 
in  his  early  youth,  a  post-office  clerk  once  sold  him  a  set  of 
them,  going  as  high  as  he  had  money  to  pay  for.  Nor  are 
postage-due  stamps  supposed  to  appear  in  albums  in  un- 
used condition,  for  they  are  not  to  be  sold  to  the  public  at 
all;  and  yet  quantities  of  them  have  been  bought  in  minor 
post  offices  not  so  very  long  ago.  A  collector  in  1897  re~ 
ported  buying  postage-dues  at  a  hamlet  in  Washington 
"with  four  houses  and  fourteen  population,"  and  as  he 
was  turning  away,  the  postmaster  said,  "Say,  I've  got  some 
other  stamps  here  maybe  you'd  like.  They've  got  a  Siwash 
on  'em,  and  they're  different  from  anything  I  ever  see"; 
and  with  that,  he  brought  forth  the  big  periodicals.  The 
absurdity  of  stocking  such  an  office  with  these  stamps  need 


174  BEDTIME  STORIES 

not  be  dwelt  upon.  The  collector  bought  all  of  them  that 
he  had  money  to  pay  for,  and  said  he  wished  he  could 
buy  more. 

"Take  all  you  want/'  said  the  postmaster.  "I'll  trust  you 
for  'em."  Another  village  postmaster,  at  the  instance  of  a 
collector,  sent  a  large  order  in  to  Washington  for  periodi- 
cals, including  some  high  values,  and  when  the  Depart- 
ment wrote  back,  inquiring  what  he  wanted  with  such  big 
stamps,  he  learned  for  the  first  time  of  the  rules  regarding 
them.  Ah,  well;  we  shall  never  see  days  like  those  again. 

Harry  M.  Konwiser  told  us  the  curious  story  of  a  stamp 
find  which  he  had  from  a  dealer  in  Newark,  New  Jersey, 
who  played  the  part  of  the  doormat  in  the  episode.  "Some- 
where in  this  country,"  said  the  dealer,  "there  is  a  chap 
who  owns  a  sheet  of  the  City  and  Suburban  Telegraph 
stamps  which  were  actually  kidded  away  from  me.  You 
know  the  item;  little  oval  design,  issued  in  the  'yo's.  There 
were  one-,  two-  and  three-cent  denominations,  and  they 
are  priced  today  at  from  forty  to  seventy-five  dollars  each, 
or  a  hundred  and  sixty-five  for  the  three  singles.  The  stamps 
were  lithographed  in  sheets  of  sixty,  imperforate,  in  six 
vertical  rows  of  ten  each,  in  this  order;  two-cent,  one-cent, 
one-cent,  two-cent,  three-cent." 

He  went  on  to  say  that  one  day  in  1919  two  boys  came 
into  his  shop  with  a  sheet  of  stamps  which  they  had  found 
on  a  city  trash  dump  on  the  "meadows"— the  great  tidal 
marshes  lying  between  Newark  and  Jersey  City.  The  sheet 
was  a  bit  soiled,  but  only  slightly  rumpled  from  its  rough 
experience  in  an  ash  wagon.  The  dealer  looked  at  it  and 
decided  that  it  was  a  reprint.  But  just  because  some  people 
will  buy  reprints,  he  offered  the  boys  fifty  cents  for  it, 
which  they  seemed  to  think  quite  adequate. 

A  customer  who  was  in  the  shop  at  the  time  began  to 


BEDTIME  STORIES  175 

chaff  the  dealer  for  having  given  even  fifty  cents  for  the 
thing.  At  this  moment  a  Newark  attorney  and  collector 
entered,  looked  at  the  sheet,  agreed  with  the  dealer  that 
it  was  a  reprint,  but  said  he  was  willing  to  pay  a  half  dollar 
for  it,  just  as  a  curiosity,  and  rescue  the  dealer  from  his 
bad  trade.  Influenced  by  his  friend's  ridicule,  the  dealer 
accepted  the  offer. 

A  few  days  later  a  collector  browsing  in  the  shop  re- 
marked to  the  merchant,  "Mr.  Replevin"— as  we  may  call 
the  lawyer— "won't  be  in  to  see  you  in  quite  some  time,  I 
fancy." 

"Why  not?" 

"Because  that  sheet  of  telegraph  stamps  you  sold  him 
for  half  a  dollar  is  in  an  auctioneer's  hands  in  New  York 
now,  and  it'll  be  on  sale  soon." 

Sure  enough,  a  few  weeks  later,  a  sheet  like  that  was  auc- 
tioned at  $925.  The  dealer  called  at  the  attorney's  office, 
but  received  only  evasive  answers.  He  engaged  a  lawyer  of 
his  own,  who  threatened  suit,  and  who  learned  that  the 
sheet  had  been  sold  ostensibly  as  the  property  of  another 
collector  who  acted  as  the  other  attorney's  dummy;  that 
the  lawyer  himself  had  actually  received  the  check  for  $925 
less  commission.  The  dealer  was  bent  on  testing  his  rights 
in  the  courts,  but  that  was  very  shortly  after  the  World 
War,  both  he  and  the  attorney  were  of  German  ancestry 
and  members  of  the  same  German  club,  and  other  club 
members  advised  him  to  forget  the  matter,  as  Germans 
were  too  unpopular  at  the  moment  to  start  airing  their 
troubles  in  public. 

A  few  years  ago,  the  Bank  for  Savings  in  New  York  was 
gathering  up  some  old  papers  and  sending  them  to  a  stor- 
age house.  A  Holmes  guard  had  been  engaged  to  watch 
the  job;  and  here  is  an  instance  of  the  universality,  the 


176  BEDTIME  STORIES 

democracy  of  stamp  collecting.  That  guard  was  a  collector, 
and  as  the  papers  were  handled,  his  eyes  followed  longingly 
the  occasional  old  stamp  which  he  saw  on  letters  and  docu- 
ments. Suddenly  he  sighted  two  which  he  could  not  let 
pass.  They  bore  stamps  of  the  United  States  City  Despatch 
Post,  a  semi-official  local  letter  delivery  concern  which 
operated  in  conjunction  with  the  New  York  post  office 
before  government  delivery  of  letters  began,  and  which 
issued  the  first  adhesive  stamps  in  the  western  hemisphere. 
The  letters  were  addressed  to  the  elegant  Philip  Hone, 
once  mayor  of  New  York,  and  president  of  the  Bank  for 
Savings  in  the  1840*8.  The  guard  took  them  to  the  present 
head  of  the  bank  and  said,  "May  I  have  these?" 

The  president  found  it  difficult  to  answer.  "These  of 
course  are  just  the  sort  of  things  we  should  like  to  keep 
ourselves,"  said  he.  But  after  a  moment's  thought,  "Here's 
what  we'll  do;  we'll  keep  one  and  give  you  the  other,  for 
calling  it  to  our  attention.  How's  that?" 

The  guard  thought  it  was  not  so  bad,  considering  .  .  . 
The  letter  he  got  was  really  a  circular,  soliciting  business 
from  Hone  for  the  Despatch,  remarking  that  "The  Pro- 
prietors are  fully  impressed  with  the  conviction  that  punc- 
tuality alone  can  secure  confidence,  if  their  arrangements 
are  such  as  to  place  it  beyond  doubt."  It  was  mailed  within 
a  month  after  the  first  issuance  of  that  first  adhesive  stamp 
on  the  continent,  and  it  would  probably  have  been  lost  to 
philately  if  a  Holmes  guard  had  not  been  a  stamp  collector. 
The  letter  is  now  in  the  collection  of  Walter  P.  Chrysler, 

Jr. 

There  are  many  other  stories  that  might  be  told;  one, 
for  example,  of  the  rumor  of  a  batch  of  New  York  post- 
master stamps  in  Beacon,  New  York,  up  the  Hudson 
among  the  mountains;  but  in  what  or  whose  house?  One 


BEDTIME  STORIES  177 

New  York  dealer  went  up  there  and  searched  the  town,  as 
he  thought,  but  couldn't  find  them,  and  another  later 
went  up  and  discovered  them  in  the  back  of  an  old  desk. 
Some  philatelists  say,  with  the  old  western  prospectors, 
"Stamps  are  where  you  find  'em,"  meaning  in  reverse  that 
they're  not  always  where  you  expect  to  find  them.  Harry 
Konwiser,  for  example,  had  the  perfectly  sound  and  logical 
notion  that  the  basement  of  that  big  old  red-brick  head- 
quarters of  the  American  Bible  Society  in  New  York, 
erected  in  1853,  ought  to  be  simply  another  Golconda  for 
stamps.  The  Society  had  existed  nearly  forty  years  before 
that,  and  probably  brought  its  older  records  over  to  the  new 
building  when  it  was  put  into  use.  There  should  be  Hawai- 
ian missionary  stamps  there  by  the  dozen.  So  Mr.  Konwiser 
procured  permission,  went  down  there  and  toiled  in  that 
gloomy  vault  for  days  on  end,  swallowed  enough  dust  to 
replace  all  that  blown  off  the  Dust  Bowl,  and  found  noth- 
ing of  consequence.  Somebody  had  perhaps  been  there 
before  him;  and  furthermore,  it  appeared  that  those  par- 
simonious missionaries  in  Hawaii  had  deadheaded  all  their 
letters  to  the  Society  by  the  hands  of  kindly  ship  captains. 
Elliott  Perry,  who  claims  to  be  the  unluckiest  fellow 
alive,  once  went  from  New  York  down  to  Salisbury,  North 
Carolina,  to  search  the  attic  of  the  former  home  of  an  old 
newspaper  editor  and  publisher  and  Confederate  soldier, 
which  was  reported  to  be  rich  in  treasure.  The  house  was 
then  inhabited  by  the  sister  of  the  departed  editor,  and 
when  Perry  and  his  guide  entered,  the  first  thing  they  saw 
in  the  hall  was  a  portrait  of  the  brother  in  uniform  on  an 
easel  draped  with  the  Confederate  flag  and  bearing  the 
legend,  "Lest  We  Forget."  Mr.  Perry,  being  from  Massa- 
chusetts, was  of  course  to  the  old  lady— who  was  totally 
and  acidly  unreconstructed— a  damyankee  of  the  lowest 


178  BEDTIME  STORIES 

type;  and  when  he  had  sweated  through  several  broiling 
summer  days  in  that  attic  without  finding  anything,  she 
was  probably  of  opinion  that  he  got  just  what  was  coming 
to  him.  Worse  still,  Elliott  once  went  all  the  way  to  Cali- 
fornia in  behalf  of  Senator  Ackerman,  on  a  hot  tip  that  an 
old  mining  company  office  should  be  full  of  Gold  Rush 
gems,  but  again  found  nothing. 

But  there  are  horror  stories  worse  than  these.  Many  of 
them  used  to  be  told  back  in  the  'QO'S.  There  was  the  one 
about  the  young  amateur  collector  who  procured  the  privi- 
lege of  going  through  some  old  letters,  with  results  only 
so-so.  There  was  one  item  which  should  have  been  a  good 
one— a  ten-cent  U.  S.  1847;  ^u^  *°  ^s  disgust,  the  sender 
of  the  letter  had  cut  it  in  two  diagonally— why,  he  couldn't 
imagine— and  stuck  it  on  that  way.  He  left  it  as  it  was;  but 
a  few  days  later  he  discovered  from  a  catalogue  that  a  stamp 
cut  like  that  was  a  legitimate  and  valuable  item,  priced  at 
forty  dollars.  He  rushed  back  to  the  house,  but  found  that 
the  lady  who  owned  the  old  letters,  her  interest  stirred  by 
his  search,  had  decided  to  collect  stamps  herself,  had  soaked 
that  split  ten-center  off  the  envelope  to  mount  in  her 
album,  and  burned  the  envelope! 

Another  story  current  fifty  years  ago  was  that  of  a  New 
Englander,  not  a  collector,  who  heard  for  the  first  time  of 
those  Brattleboro  provisional  stamps  and  their  value  to 
collectors.  Then  he  remembered  that  his  wife  had  been  a 
Brattleboro  girl  and  he  had  been  courting  her  around  1845. 
.  .  .  He  hurried  to  an  old  trunk  in  a  closet,  where  he  still 
kept  her  love  letters.  Sure  enough,  no  less  than  twenty  of 
them  carried  the  Brattleboro  stamp.  Why,  here  was  riches! 
He  took  them  downstairs,  letters  and  all,  and  put  them  on 
the  sitting-room  mantel  while  he  went  out  to  the  barn  and 
woodshed  to  do  some  chores.  When  he  came  back,  he 


BEDTIME  STORIES  179 

would  remove  the  letters  from  the  covers,  he  and  his  wife 
would  have  a  good  laugh  over  them,  and  then  he  would 
take  the  envelopes  down  town  and  mail  them  to  Boston, 
and  receive  a  check  for,  maybe,  two  thousand  dollars. 

But  while  he  was  in  the  back  yard,  his  wife  came  in 
from  a  neighbor's  house,  found  the  letters  on  the  mantel 
and  began  looking  over  them;  and  as  she  did  so,  she  began 
to  blush.  Nobody  could  have  made  her  believe  that  she 
had  ever  been  so  silly.  Why,  these  things  were  just  mush! 
She  couldn't  conceive  why  her  husband  had  brought  them 
downstairs,  but  there  was  one  thing  certain;  she  wasn't  go- 
ing to  let  him  read  them  aloud  and  make  fun  of  her  about 
them.  So  she  just  gathered  them  up,  envelopes  and  all,  and 
laid  them  on  the  coals  in  the  grate.  What  her  husband  said 
when  he  came  in  from  the  woodshed  is  not  recorded. 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 


IT  WAS  in  1800  that  the  word 
.-          ,9 
commemorative       appeared 
*  * 
in  postal  service.  In  that  year 

Great  Britain  issued  a  stamp  to  mark  the  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  penny  postage.  Since  that  time,  "commemorative"  has 
covered  a  prodigious  deal  of  governmental  Woolworthing; 
and  some  countries  go  ever  farther  and  make  a  racket  of  it. 
The  increasingly  gorgeous  pictorial  stamps  which  have  been 
pouring  forth  in  an  increasing  flood  during  the  present 
century  for  a  long  time  posed  as  commemoratives,  but 
many  of  them  have  long  since  ceased  to  make  even  that 
pretense,  and  have  become  just  little  pictures  sold  at  any- 
where from  fifteen  thousand  to  seventy  thousand  per  cent 
profit.  And  yet  they  have  their  uses,  and  they  give  pleasure 
to  many  people. 

Remember  that  although  most  of  the  early  stamps  car- 
ried portraits  or  mere  conventional  or  heraldic  designs, 
there  were  pictorials  as  early  as  1850— though  with  never 
an  idea  of  selling  them  to  collectors,  because  there  weren't 
any  collectors.  The  crudely  engraved  New  South  Wales 
series  of  that  year,  now  among  the  dearest  of  treasures  to 
many  a  collector's  heart  under  the  name  of  "Sydney 
Views,"  carried  pictures  which  a  critic  of  later  years  de- 
scribed as  "three  houses  in  a  row,  and  four  people  in  the 

180 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     181 

foreground  sitting  for  their  photographs,  one  of  them 
plainly  suffering  from  colic." 

A  few  other  countries  used  pictures— ships,  scenery,  a 
locomotive  or  two,  the  animals  and  fish  of  Canada  and 
Newfoundland— in  the  next  two  decades,  but  not  until 
1869  did  the  United  States  go  on  a  little  spree  into  pic- 
torials; and  it  is  only  necessary  to  read  the  newspapers  to 
learn  how  undignified,  even  rough  a  proceeding  this  was 
considered  to  be.  These  stamps  were  of  novel  shape— square 
—some  of  them  printed  in  two  colors,  an  unheard-of  thing 
in  this  country— and  only  three  out  of  ten  had  portraits  of 
our  great  men  on  them,  as  old  precedent  decreed— which 
rubbed  the  fur  of  not  a  few  conservative  editors  and  citi- 
zens the  wrong  way;  they  saw  no  reason  for  change.  Of  the 
three-cent  blue  with  a  locomotive  on  it,  editors  declared 
that  it  was  neither  historical,  national  nor  beautiful,  and 
only  showed  that  some  engraver  had  got  a  good  contract. 
One  editor  was  of  opinion  that  the  railway  scene  was  a 
delicate  hint  as  to  "how  some  Congressmen  make  their 
money."  "Let  the  Post  Office  folks  give  us  back  our  old 
head  of  Washington,"  was  a  typical  demand.  Even  the 
American  Journal  of  Philately  declared  that  the  shield  and 
flags  on  the  thirty-cent  blue  and  carmine  was  "the  meanest 
looking  stamp  we  have  ever  seen,  reminds  us  more  of  a 
bunch  of  rags  hung  out  of  a  junk  store  than  anything  else." 

The  three-center,  being  the  one  most  commonly  used 
for  postage,  came  in  for  the  worst  slamming:  "The  present 
miserable  experiment  in  blue,"  the  New  York  Herald 
called  it.  Editor  Bennett  went  on: 

It  is  about  time  that  some  definite  form  and  design 
of  postage  stamp  should  be  adopted,  so  that  people 
may  know  to  a  certainty  what  mucilaged  square  of 


182     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

paper  will  carry  a  letter  to  its  destination  and  what  will 
not.  .  .  .  Can  it  be  that  the  spirit  of  jobbery  so  pre- 
vails in  our  Post  Office  Department  that  we  must  have 
a  new  design  every  six  months  or  thereabouts? 

"Every  six  months"  was  just  literary  license,  for  we 
hadn't  had  a  really  new  stamp  design  in  seven  years;  not 
since  that  oversize  Jackson  head  of  1862.  The  criticism  was 
so  bitter,  however,  that  not  for  twenty-four  years  thereafter 
did  the  government  venture  to  depict  anything  but  de- 
ceased political  and  military  heroes  on  our  stamps;  an  in- 
teresting commentary  on  the  change  that  has  taken  place  in 
our  attitude.  No  doubt  there  were  many  young  collectors 
then  who  would  have  been  glad  to  have  new  and  colorful 
issues,  but  the  government  just  couldn't  afford  to  flout  the 
higher  strata  of  public  opinion. 

But  in  the  meantime  other  countries,  not  to  mention 
the  engravers  and  lithographers,  had  discovered  the  phi- 
latelist, and  were  not  only  beginning  to  issue  new  stamps 
more  and  more  frequently,  but  were  obligingly  reprinting 
old  ones  for  his  benefit.  As  early  as  1862  an  engraver  adver- 
tised in  the  Stamp  Collector's  Magazine  of  London: 

NICARAGUAN  STAMP.— Will  be  ready  in  a  week.  A 
beautiful  proof  of  the  Nicaraguan  stamp  (equal  to  the 
original)  will  be  sent  for  13  postage  stamps.  Only  75 
proofs  of  this  will  be  taken;  each  proof  will  be  num- 
bered, and  then  the  block  burnt.  An  early  application 
is  really  necessary,  25  copies  being  already  sold. 

Publicists  even  then  were  prompt  in  pointing  out  that 
such  proofs  were  little  better  than  forgeries;  that  once  in 
the  hands  of  a  collector,  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  his 
palming  them  off  as  stamps  which  had  actually  been  sold 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     183 

through  a  post-office  window,  but  never  stuck  on  a  letter. 
Non-collectors  were  unable  to  understand  the  delicate  dis- 
tinction propounded,  and  sneered  at  it,  as  they  do  yet. 

Thereafter,  small  governments  began  reprinting  obsolete 
issues  of  stamps  from  old  plates,  and  when  a  new  issue  was 
designed,  selling  the  remainders— sometimes  large— of  the 
old  issues  as  unused  specimens.  When  a  Central  or  South 
American  government  was  overthrown,  as  happened  fre- 
quently, new  stamps  were  of  course  called  for,  and  the 
remainder  of  the  old  stock  was  thrown  on  the  philatelic 
market.  Not  only  that,  but  some  governments  became  so 
depraved  that  they  engraved  new  dies  of  their  old  series, 
if  the  old  dies  had  been  lost.  The  first  stamp  of  the  Fiji 
Islands,  printed  in  a  newspaper  office  and  frankly  bearing 
its  name,  "Fiji  Times  Express,"  was  twice  thereafter  re- 
printed from  type  similarly  set.  This  is  the  sort  of  thing 
that  governments  used  to  call  "official  imitation,"  "re- 
prints," or  "proofs";  but  honest  philatelists  called  them 
little  better  than  counterfeits.  Jassy,  Roumania,  was  one 
of  the  most  barefaced  centers  of  such  forgery.  Officials 
there,  finding  a  good  market  for  the  rare  first  Roumanian 
issue  of  July,  1858,  obligingly  produced  at  different  times 
three  imitations— all  varying  in  slight  degree— of  the  54, 
81,  and  108  paras,  which  they  sold  as  genuine.  Many  had 
been  sold  before  the  fraud  was  discovered  and  advertised 
in  the  iSyc/s. 

A  collector,  writing  to  the  American  Journal  of  Philately 
in  1868,  said  that  of  an  order  of  forty  stamps  just  received 
from  a  dealer,  twenty-three  were  facsimiles  or  proofs— a  sad 
commentary  on  the  state  of  the  market  at  that  time.  In 
1875  the  American  Journal  of  Philately  published  its  "Roll 
of  Dishonor": 


184     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

Moldavia  counterfeited  the  first  two  issues  of  its 
postage  stamps  to  swindle  collectors. 

Hanover  reprinted  its  stamps  to  turn  an  honest 
penny. 

Prussia  reprinted  its  first  issue,  and  probably  real- 
ized the  magnificent  sum  of  ten  dollars  by  the  opera- 
tion. 

Spain  cancelled  the  old  stock  of  stamps  remaining 
on  hand,  and  did  a  thriving  business,  peddling  them 
out  to  collectors. 

But  in  that  same  year  the  United  States  announced  that 
it  was  prepared  to  supply  at  face  value  "specimens  of  all 
its  obsolete  issues  of  adhesive  stamps."  To  accomplish  this, 
it  had  to  engrave  new  dies  for  the  two  stamps  of  1847.  The 
difference  between  impressions  from  these  plates  and  the 
original  could  be  detected,  however,  and  there  is  no  chance 
today  of  selling  one  of  the  reprints  to  a  well-informed  and 
watchful  collector. 

The  New  York  Philatelic  Society,  as  soon  as  the  an- 
nouncement was  made,  rushed  into  print  with  a  resolution 
strongly  protesting  such  action  as  tending  to  throw  dis- 
credit upon  collections  already  formed,  and  destroying  the 
interest  of  real  collectors  in  the  hobby— all  of  which  is  as 
true  today  as  it  was  then. 

Editor  Godkin  of  the  New  York  Evening  Post  jeered  at 
the  Society  in  his  accustomed  pontifical  way,  pointing  out 
what  he  considered  the  inconsistency  of  collectors,  in  that 
"When  the  Society  can  get  the  stamps,  it  says  that  they 
are  bad."  His  opinion  was  that  the  collector  only  wanted  a 
difficult  chase  through  "the  dim  recesses  of  the  Bowery 
...  in  dusky  corners  of  Myrtle  Avenue  in  Brooklyn  .  .  . 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     185 

up  mysterious  flights  of  stairs  in  Nassau  Street."  He  there- 
fore believed  that  if,  instead  of  selling  them  openly,  the 
government  would  hide  the  reprinted  stamps  in  Arizona 
and  Maine,  distribute  them  among  "indigent  Chinamen 
in  San  Francisco  and  small  shopkeepers  in  Keokuk  and 
Galveston  and  Kalamazoo,"  the  collectors  would  "search 
for  them  with  zealous  interest."  Well,  one  must  admit 
that  he  had  something  there.  .  .  . 

The  United  States  Post  Office  Department  placed  an 
exhibit  in  the  Philadelphia  Centennial  Exposition  in  1876, 
of  which  the  editor  of  the  American  Journal  of  Philately 
wrote: 

I  am  almost  tempted  to  pass  over  it  in  silence,  as  it 
is  a  disgrace  to  the  country,  but  as  it  is  my  duty  to 
prevent  collectors  from  being  deceived,  I  will  point 
out  a  few  of  the  mistakes,  as  we  must  call  them;  a 
complete  set  of  the  adhesives  is  shown,  the  same  as 
the  Department  has  been  passing  off  on  country  school 
boys  as  stamps;  of  course  they  have  a  right  to  show 
any  rubbish  they  wish,  but  they  should  not  label  a 
page  of  counterfeit  stamps,  made  a  year  or  so  ago, 
"Engraved  and  printed  by  Rawdon,  Wright  and  Ed- 
son,"  because  it  is  well  known  that  the  firm  was  dis- 
solved about  twenty  years  ago,  and  we  believe  all  the 
members  of  it  are  dead,  but  I  suppose  the  department 
intended  to  tell  us  that  the  original  stamps  were  en- 
graved by  that  firm.  .  .  .  The  makers  of  the  1851  issue 
are  given  as  Toppan,  Carpenter,  Casilear  &  Co.;  of 
the  1869  issue,  the  National  Bank  Note  Co.;  of  the 
1870  issue,  the  Continental  Bank  Note  Co.  The  De- 
partment stamps  are  all  shown  in  proof  specimens,  the 
colors  of  which  only  approximate  those  in  use. 


i86     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

Some  of  the  stories  from  Latin  America  in  those  years 
are  delightful.  In  1877  there  was  a  postmaster-general  of 
Honduras  named  Toledo,  who  had  a  brother  who  had  held 
the  same  job  in  Guatemala  for  several  years,  and  the  two 
made  a  nice  business  of  selling  remainders.  The  Honduran 
Toledo  sent  his  brother  to  New  York  to  order  some  new 
stamps  from  the  National  Bank  Note  Company,  the  one- 
half-,  one-,  two-  and  four-reals  and  the  one-peso  being  the 
denominations  needed.  But  upon  making  inquiries  among 
dealers  as  to  the  denominations  most  popular,  he  found 
that  one  and  two  centavos  would  sell  well  to  collectors,  so 
he  added  those  to  the  order.  A  million  stamps  were  ordered, 
and  200,000  were  sent  at  once  to  the  Honduran  consul's 
office  on  Broadway,  where  they  were  placed  on  sale  to 
dealers  in  lots  at  prices  to  suit,  and  no  reasonable  offer  re- 
fused if  the  order  was  large  enough.  As  Honduras  had 
only  40,000  population  then  and  most  of  them  unable  to 
write,  it  was  clear  that  it  would  have  difficulty  in  absorbing 
the  remaining  800,000  stamps,  so  they  were  boxed  and 
shipped  in  four  lots  to  R.  Toledo  at  London,  Hamburg, 
Paris  and  Berlin.  There,  safe  from  any  revolutionary  dis- 
order which  might  break  out  at  home,  Mr.  Toledo's  agents 
could  dispose  of  them  at  figures  which  indicated  nice 
profits. 

In  1879  Gus  B.  Caiman  of  New  York  bought  a  large 
quantity  of  this  or  another  printing  from  Toledo,  and  be- 
gan selling  them  in  Europe  and  America.  He  was  soon 
joined  by  his  brother  Henry,  and  thus  a  business  in  "re- 
mainders" was  begun  whose  repercussions  are  felt  to  this 
day.  These  were  the  brothers  who  bought  out  J.  W.  Scott 
in  1886  and  organized  the  Scott  Stamp  &  Coin  Company. 
Gus  died  in  1898  and  in  1901  Henry  sold  the  company  to 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     187 

other  interests.  But  before  proceeding  further  with  their 
story,  it  is  necessary  to  mention  N.  F.  Seebeck. 

This  gentleman  first  appears  as  a  stamp  dealer  in  New 
York  before  1880;  but  the  goings-on  in  Central  America 
and  elsewhere  presently  convinced  him  that  he  was  wasting 
his  time,  so  he  went  into  the  manufacture  of  stamps  on  a 
big  scale,  with  the  proviso  that  he  was  to  have  all  the 
"remainders"  to  sell  on  his  own  account.  The  Philatelic 
Journal  of  America  said  of  him  in  June,  1889: 

Mr.  N.  F.  Seebeck,  an  old-time  stamp  speculator, 
is  the  secretary  of  the  Hamilton  Bank  Note  Company, 
and  must  thoroughly  understand  this  business,  as  he 
made  stamps  for  Dominica  (sic)  Republic  and  Boli- 
var, and  understands  the  use  of  the  cancelling  stamp, 
as  the  many  fraudulently  cancelled  specimens  of  these 
stamps  to  be  found  in  the  market  and  in  the  albums 
of  unsuspecting  collectors  will  show. 

''History  repeats  itself,"  so  collectors  will  be  looking 
for  a  nice,  big  series  of  Salvador  stamps  on  white,  blue 
and  various  colored  papers;  with  and  without  network, 
imperforated,  perforated  and  rouletted,  and  possibly  a 
nice  crop  of  surcharges  in  all  the  latest  styles  of  type; 
an  "error"  or  two  may  also  turn  up. 

Postal  cards  will  no  doubt  be  furnished  to  suit  the 
various  hues  of  complection  to  be  found  among  the 
inhabitants,  and  several  modes  of  folding  will  be  in- 
troduced. 

Altogether,  not  over  a  hundred  varieties  are  likely  to 
be  added  each  year  for  Salvador,  but  to  those  who 
deplore  this  fact,  we  can  offer  the  consoling  informa- 
tion that  a  similar  contract  has  just  been  made  with 
the  governments  of  Honduras  and  Costa  Rica. 


i88     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

The  jeer  at  the  Dominican  Republic  referred  to  the  fact 
that  the  issues  of  1879-80-81  of  that  country  were  pro- 
duced and  canceled  by  thousands  in  New  York  City  with- 
out ever  seeing  their  alleged  native  land.  Other  countries 
whose  stamps  would  be  canceled  to  your  order  in  those 
years  were  those  of  Labuan,  North  Borneo,  Bolivar  1879- 
91;  the  Liberia  picture  issues,  Spanish  colonials,  and  others. 
In  1899  it  was  said  that  there  were  more  canceled  Labuans 
on  dealers'  approval  sheets  than  the  small  post-office  force 
of  Labuan  could  cancel  in  a  lifetime. 

Mr.  Seebeck,  too,  would  obligingly  cancel  whole  sheets 
of  several  countries  for  anybody,  for  he  always  had  plenty 
of  them  on  hand.  The  contracts  which  he  began  making  in 
1889  with  Latin-American  countries  specified  that  he  was 
to  supply  each  with  an  entire  new  series  of  stamps  every 
year.  At  the  end  of  each  year  the  current  issue  was  to  be 
demonetized  and  all  the  remainders  returned  to  Seebeck— 
and  he  always  saw  to  it  that  there  were  plenty  of  them.  He 
was  to  retain  the  plates  of  all  issues. 

His  first  contract  was  with  Salvador,  and  at  the  end  of 
the  first  year,  445,000  of  the  one-centavo  and  504,000  of 
the  twos  of  that  country  were  returned  to  him.  Meanwhile, 
he  had  made  contracts  with  other  neighboring  nations; 
Honduras  and  Nicaragua  in  1890,  Ecuador  in  1892.  It  is 
known  that  his  Nicaragua  contract  gave  him  the  right  to 
make  reprints  if  he  hadn't  enough  remainders  to  satisfy 
the  market,  and  such  were  made  of  the  Nicaragua  1896-97- 
98  postage,  postage-due  and  official  stamps.  It  is  suspected 
that  he  made  reprints  of  some  of  the  other  countries,  too. 
The  postage-due  Nicaragua  stamps  of  1901  were  surcharged 
"Correos  1901."  In  1904  an  imitation  of  this  surcharge 
was  made  in  black  to  fill  a  dealer's  order.  It  was  also  later 
made  in  blue.  None  of  these  stamps  was  ever  regularly 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     189 

used.  There  were  several  "errors  of  color"  in  the  1903-4 
issue  which  never  passed  through  a  post-office  window;  just 
sample  sheets  sold  by  a  high  post-office  official  to  dealers. 
The  "essays"  are  as  the  sands  of  the  sea.  Most  surcharges 
have  variations  in  spelling,  italics  "accidentally"  used,  and 
so  on.  Of  the  official  stamps  of  1900-02,  surcharged  in 
1903,  the  catalogues  say,  "It  is  doubtful  if  any  of  them  ever 
saw  Nicaragua." 

The  result  has  been  that  to  this  day  the  unused  stamps 
of  those  countries,  jeeringly  known  as  "Seebecks,"  are 
under  suspicion,  and  some  collectors  will  not  touch  them. 
The  Seebeck  orgy  greatly  advanced  the  tendency  to  collect 
used  stamps  only  on  covers;  and  today  your  really  con- 
scientious collector  can  look  kindly  upon  such  a  stamp 
only  when  it  is  on  an  envelope  and  bearing  the  marks  of 
having  been  actually  sent  through  the  mails— and  even 
then  he  is  apt  to  be  suspicious. 

All  this  brought  about  the  organization  by  British  phi- 
latelists in  the  1890*8  of  the  Society  for  the  Suppression  of 
Speculative  Stamps— which,  by  the  way,  the  English  slur- 
ringly  called  "gumpaps."  J.  W.  Scott  organized  a  similar 
society  in  this  country;  his  nickname  for  it  was  the  Amer- 
ican Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Vice.  It  issued  a  circu- 
lar to  the  Latin-American  countries  in  1896,  as  a  result  of 
which  Ecuador,  much  perturbed,  canceled  its  contract  with 
Seebeck  in  1896,  "in  consideration  of  the  disrepute  into 
which  it  had  brought  the  postal  administration  of  that 
country."  Scott  said  that  this  action  should  "start  a  boom" 
in  the  stamps  of  Ecuador,  if  only  in  appreciation  of  the 
action  of  the  officials.  But  as  may  be  conjectured,  the  SSSS 
on  both  sides  of  the  water  died  long  ago,  drowned  in  the 
rising  flood  of  commemoratives;  for  there  were  too  many 
young,  amoral  collectors  who  cared  only  for  the  pretty 


i9o     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

stamps,  and  little  whether  they  had  ever  been  used  for 
postal  purposes. 

Early  in  the  '90*8,  Gus  Caiman  made  a  contract  to  buy 
from  Seebeck  all  his  remainders  of  the  four  countries.  Gus 
was  the  largest  buyer  in  the  United  States  of  remainders. 
Among  other  things,  he  bought  from  Guatemala  all  the 
quetzal  issues  of  1879-81  and  the  Barrios  issue  of  '86.  After 
his  death  his  brother  Henry  took  over  the  contract  with 
Seebeck,  and  when  Seebeck  died  about  1900,  Henry  bought 
everything  that  was  left  from  his  executors.  He  then  had 
about  ninety  million  unused  Central  and  South  American 
and  West  Indian  stamps.  In  1924  he  still  had  huge  num- 
bers of  the  Seebecks  left— some  sixty  million,  said  the 
American  Philatelist.  A  little  later,  when  the  number  had 
been  reduced  to  fifty-five  million,  it  was  reported  that  they 
had  been  sold  to  a  dealer  in  Lucerne. 

J.  E.  Handshaw,  the  veteran  dealer  whose  autobiography 
has  already  been  mentioned,  was  a  large  dealer  in  remain- 
ders. In  1895  he  bought  more  than  a  million  mint  Cubans, 
all  demonetized,  in  sheets  of  one  hundred,  which  made  a 
pile  six  feet  high,  and  they  cost  him  only  eleven-hundred 
dollars.  He  admits  that  they  were  not  popular  with  dealers, 
or  collectors,  "However,  I  sold  a  great  many  of  them  and 
also  traded  many  at  fair  prices."  F.  H.  Pinkham  of  New- 
market, N.  H.,  publisher  of  the  Eastern  Philatelist,  bought 
a  quantity  of  them  to  use  as  premiums  with  subscriptions. 
About  1905  Handshaw  bought  100,000  Bolivars  in  sheets 
from  Henry  Caiman  for  $5,000,  and  from  a  South  Ameri- 
can got  half  a  million  Argentine,  Paraguay,  Bolivia,  Chile, 
Peru,  etc.,  for  $4,000.  The  S.  H.  Bixby  Co.,  makers  of  shoe 
blacking,  used  Seebecks  for  some  time  as  premiums  but, 
deciding  to  end  the  practice,  Handshaw  bought  what  they 
had  left.  Later  he  picked  up  a  million  Seebeck  "errors" 


BARN  AK  w» 

Cariboo  Express, 


From  the  Collection  of  Alfred  Lichtenstein 


\ 


\ 


A  mining  town  post  office  in  gold-rush  days. 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     191 

from  Caiman,  a  million  more  from  a  Philadelphia  dealer, 
and  a  hundred-thousand  sets  of  the  two-colored  stamps  of 
the  Dominican  Republic  in  sheets. 

Seebeck  was  not  the  only  racketeer;  there  was  C.  H. 
Mekeel  of  St.  Louis,  who  swung  a  somewhat  similar  deal 
with  Mexico.  These  men  maintained  that  the  influence  of 
such  promotions  was  wholesome  and  brought  in  many 
new  collectors.  Scott  and  the  antis  were  certain  that  it 
was  killing  philately.  The  promoters  retorted  that  it  was 
the  antis  who  were  doing  the  killing.  "Frighten  off  the 
young  collector,"  said  Gus  Caiman  virtuously,  "and  what 
will  become  of  the  future  of  philately?"  Even  today  there 
are  defenders  of  Seebeck  who  claim  that  he  created  thou- 
sands of  new  collectors  by  placing  those  myriads  of  pretty 
new  stamps  within  their  reach  at  ridiculously  low  prices. 
If  that  be  true,  can  it  be  possible  that  the  governmental 
Woolworths  of  today  are  performing  a  similar  service? 

Honduras  bought  so  enormously  of  Seebecks  that  it  can- 
celed its  contract  with  him  in  1895  an(^  so  ^ew  were  usec^ 
for  postal  purposes  that  it  was  never  necessary  to  reprint 
any  of  the  issues,  and  remainders  of  those  printings  are  still 
to  be  had  at  modest  prices.  Ecuador,  on  the  other  hand, 
didn't  have  enough,  and  had  to  reprint  again  and  again  for 
philatelists.  Salvador,  meanwhile,  was  keeping  up  with  the 
Joneses,  and  by  1904  had  issued  404  stamps.  As  a  striking 
contrast,  the  plate  made  by  Perkins-Bacon,  the  great  British 
engravers,  for  St.  Helena  in  1856  was  the  only  one  from 
which  all  stamps  of  that  colony  were  printed  for  thirty- 
four  years.  Different  values  were  produced  by  surcharging. 
A  new  plate  was  finally  made  in  1890.  St.  Lucia  was  almost 
as  economical.  Surcharges,  by  the  way,  seemed  to  have 
become  a  governmental  racket  in  the  latter  '8o's.  American 
editors  claimed  that  Cochin-China,  Gabon,  Nossi-Be  and 


192     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

other  colonies    "swindled   collectors   outrageously"   with 
them. 

Another  would-be  racketeer  was  A.  N.  Ridgley,  a  former 
skating-rink  operator  in  Australia,  who  actually  closed  a 
deal  in  1887  with  the  Hawaiian  postmaster-general,  whereby 
the  latter  was  to  supply  him  with  200,000  canceled  stamps 
in  eighteen-,  twenty-five-  and  fifty-cent  and  one-dollar  de- 
nominations for  $2,000  or  one  cent  per  stamp.  As  they 
cost  the  government  less  than  a  hundredth  of  a  cent  apiece 
and  were  not  used  for  postal  purposes,  the  only  labor  in- 
volved being  in  canceling  them,  the  post  office  seemed  due 
to  make  a  nice  profit.  But  some  suspicion  arose  in  high 
places,  everybody  became  nervous,  and  the  deal  was  finally 
abrogated.  It  was  said,  however,  that  $1,465  worth  (face 
value)  of  the  stamps  was  bought  by  one  of  the  postal  clerks 
for  twenty-five  dollars,  and  $545  worth  by  another  clerk 
for  ten  dollars. 

There  were  royal  racketeers  in  those  days.  In  1892  Por- 
tugal issued  a  new  set  of  sixteen  stamps  for  herself,  and 
sixteen  values  for  each  of  her  colonies,  some  of  the  values 
having  five  deliberate  varieties.  Peter  Karageorgevich,  after 
assassinating  King  Alexander  of  Serbia  in  1903  and  making 
himself  king,  forbade  the  use  of  stamps  bearing  Alexander's 
portrait,  and  issued  a  set  of  provisional  until  new  stamps 
carrying  his  own  portrait  could  be  prepared.  Ninety  per 
cent  of  the  provisional  were  bought  by  collectors,  and 
Peter  raised  a  nice  sum  with  which  to  pay  off  his  debts  and 
start  his  reign.  The  Sultan  of  Brunei  was  another  monarch 
who  saw  the  light.  Deciding  in  1894  that  his  country 
needed  a  postal  service,  he  made  a  deal  with  his  friend,  an 
adventurer  named  Robertson,  by  which  Robertson  and 
partners  were  empowered  to  print  stamps  to  the  value  of 
$5,000,  "for  which  His  Highness  shall  not  be  required  to 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     193 

make  any  payment  in  return."  Thereafter,  His  Highness 
was  to  pay  $3,000  for  every  $5,000  worth  of  stamps,  it  be- 
ing expected  that  the  collector  demand  would  be  lessened. 
Only  the  Brunei  Government  was  to  sell  the  stamps  in  the 
country,  only  Robertson  and  partners  outside. 

The  little  pocket  republic  of  San  Marino  has  for  nearly 
half  a  century  been  one  of  the  most  notorious  of  the  racke- 
teers. Having  few  sources  of  revenue,  it  used  to  sell  titles 
of  nobility  at  reasonable  rates;  then  the  rise  of  philately 
gave  it  a  new  idea.  It  affected  worry  in  1894  lest  its  postal 
issues  become  subjects  for  speculation.  In  announcing  a 
special  issue  to  commemorate  something  or  other,  its  offi- 
cials set  forth  that  "in  order  that  collectors,  speculators 
and  merchants  shall  not  make  the  issue  rare  or  scarce," 
they  would  supply  collectors  themselves.  "From  the  fac- 
tory to  you,"  as  it  were.  This  was  the  first  national  phil- 
atelic agency,  a  sort  of  bureau  which  today  is  found  in  a 
number  of  countries,  including  the  United  States. 

Orders  to  the  amount  of  not  less  than  ten  dollars,  San 
Marino  advertised,  would  be  promptly  executed;  and  to 
every  customer  ordering  a  hundred  dollars'  worth,  his 
stamps  would  be  posted  in  a  special  five-lire  envelope  of 
which  only  2,000  copies  would  be  made,  and  which,  in 
order  to  be  valid,  must  bear  the  San  Marino  postmark. 
Here,  more  than  forty  years  ago,  are  some  of  the  outstand- 
ing features  of  governmental  merchandising  today— the 
national  sales  agency,  the  commemorative  issue,  the  de- 
liberately scarce  article.  If  the  2,000  lots  had  been  sold,  the 
state  would  have  collected  $200,000.  The  sale  fell  far  short 
of  that,  but  enough  cash  was  realized  to  build  a  new  sew- 
age system  in  the  capital. 

Meanwhile  the  nation  was  coining  money,  purely  "play- 
like"  money  to  sell  to  collectors,  for  it  never  circulated, 


194    GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

Italian  money  being  used  exclusively  in  the  country.  In 
1899,  Government  had  another  brilliant  thought;  there 
most  be  two  lands  of  stamps— one  for  postage  to  and  from 
other  countries,  the  other  for  internal  use.  As  San  Marino 
has  only  some  thirty-odd  square  miles  of  territory,  and  a 
good  walker  can  traverse  the  length  of  it  in  three  hours,  it 
may  be  imagined  that  not  many  of  these  are  ever  put  into 
actual  service;  most  of  them  go  into  collectors'  albums. 
Even  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannka  remarks  that  San 
Marino  "makes  a  considerable  income"  off  its  postage 
stamps,  and  "finds  a  fruitful  source  of  revenue  in  the  fre- 
quent changes.  .  .  .  The  only  exports  beside  postage 
stamps  are  stone  from  Mount  Tttano  .  .  .  and  the  strong 
wine  grown  on  this  volcanic  soil."  Since  1918  it  has  aver- 
aged one  new  stamp  issue  almost  every  year,  and  sometimes 
more  than  one  a  year.  Its  greatest  difficulty  is  in  finding 
subjects  to  cuiiiiiicinorale.  But  much  bigger  countries  than 
San  Marino  are  now  wrestling  with  the  same  problem. 

The  United  States  was  catching  the  infection  about  the 
same  time.  When  we  issued  our  series  of  sixteen  gay  pic- 
torial stamps  in  1893,  commemorating  the  four-hundredth 
anniversary  of  Columbia's  landing,  conservatives  thought 
it  a  latter  vulgar  theatrical-posterlike  gesture.  Senator  Wol- 
cott  of  Colorado,  ridiculing  their  large  size,  said  they  would 
make  good  chest  protectors.  Some  demanded  to  be  told 
what  need  we  bad  for  a  five-dollar  stamp;  suspicion  that 
they  were  printed  to  sell  to  collectors  began  to  rear  its 
head,  and  die  iniquity  of  selling  for  one,  two  or  five  dollars 
a  tiny  piece  of  paper  which  cost  from  six  to  nine  cents  per 
thousand  to  manufacture  and  which  performed  no  postal 
service  was  dwelt  upon.  But  the  public  liked  the  pretty 
pictures,  and  $35,000  worth  of  them  were  sold  from  the 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AXD-TENS     195 

to\m  •••  r¥l«     lli—  n.       r  __  f1_ 

*-  -     ii_.     „  •_ 
tact  tnat  w 

Zam.     A*1«^M«»    iji.    — 

Mil  /\mcns  •**  I 

rung  of  her  postage  had  factored  nothing  OB  her  stamps 
but  the  head  of  Mercury. 

_ 
•  '  —  x      * 

at 

Hi  ^jp^y  ii  i  ii>  ^ruetuCT  to 
as  worthy  a  face  in  one's  coDectiOD  is  whether  the  event 

•AMM!!  A*1      iTi  l^aiTMi      ir      ftf      .  ..ITj-^rMi  I       •m^»4MMlv**lA      t-j.       ^  «•  •  •!••.  i       "». 

IvIia'Tvfl    LOdtOV   IS  sJT  jTlliBTffair  ID3EDBDIQC  TO    vWu3Dt  US 

W 


himself,  the  writer  flfif.Mfdi  that  the  Olympic 
It  is  difficult  today  to  conceive  of  such 

Ann  MJT^  IB  180/7  came  the  first  chantv  stami>— that  of 
New  South  Wales,  a  ooepence  to  be  sold  at  a  shilling,  or 
twelve  times  its  face  value,  and  a  2}£d,  to  he  sold  at  zs6d, 
the  profits  to  be  used  in  erecting  a  tuberculosis  hospital. 
They  were  four  times  the  size  of  the  current  postage 
stamps,  and  the  penny  value,  as  the  Australian  PUbfcCit 

»A      r»l  J»«M»  •»>!••       iln*  ttm  Z\i  r»  il      C*.        M^l^H*^^^k«] 

x    ^         -        -     .  .  ^  v  >^  -    ^  - 

111 BT        7  r^ 

being  mff^^Hp^l  by  an  angeL"  Some  Ai 


seemed  to  tn^nfe  it  was  the  stamp  coflectors  of  the  wood 
who  were  being  snckered.  The  profits  were  about  Si  ^ooo^ 
which  wxxild  erect  a  considerable  building  in  those  days. 
'The  worst  of  it  is,"  said  one  writer,  "this  wiD  encourage 
others  to  do  likewise  ;  and  it  did. 

When  Newfoundland  in  1897  issued  a  s61^65  °f  fourteen 
pictorial  stamps,  publicizing  its  industries,  its  sea  and  river 
fishing,  its  caribou  and  ptarmigan  shooting.  United  States 
critics  thought  such  baDyhoo  a  most  indelicate 
But  our  own  government,  stirred  by  Ac  taste  of  lucre  ft 


196     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

the  Columbian  series,  was  already  planning  another  for 
the  Omaha  Trans-Mississippi  Exposition  year,  1898.  Upon 
hearing  of  this,  editors  and  writers  fumed  with  horror,  and 
several  sent  letters  of  protest  to  the  Postmaster-General. 
Filatelic  Facts  and  Fallacies  of  San  Francisco  said: 

Where  is  the  dignity  of  this  great  country  going  to 
when  the  postmaster-general  can  lend  the  help  of  his 
department  to  such  a  scheme?  After  this,  we  shall  not 
wonder  at  all  if  the  enterprising  managers  of  any 
county  fair  apply  to  the  post-office  department  for  the 
issue  of  a  new  set  of  stamps,  bringing  forth  the  beau- 
ties and  attractions  of  Backwoods  County. 

At  first  the  Postmaster-General  planned  only  five  values- 
one-,  two-,  five-  and  ten-cents  and  one-dollar;  but  the  idea 
grew  on  him,  and  he  added  a  four-,  an  eight-,  then  a  fifty- 
cents  and  a  two-dollar;  "putting  it  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
young  collector  and  many  others,"  raged  the  critics.  "A 
contemptible  scheme,"  and  "A  spurious  set"  were  some  of 
the  names  for  it.  One  article  was  headed,  "A  Speculative 
Issue." 

Thereafter  it  became  a  practice  to  issue  new  stamps  for 
each  exposition— and  on  other  occasions  as  well.  Buffalo 
in  1901  brought  the  Pan-American  two-color  series,  with 
three  inverts.  Meanwhile  other  countries  were  taking 
to  the  charity  surtax  idea  like  ducks  to  water.  When  the 
great  Baltimore  fire  occurred  in  1904  it  was  rumored  that 
this  country  would  issue  a  two-cent  relief  commemorative, 
to  be  sold  at  five  cents  for  the  benefit  of  the  Baltimore  city 
government;  whereupon  an  assistant  postmaster-general 
characterized  the  report  as  ridiculous.  "This  Department," 
said  he,  "is  not  in  the  business  for  its  money-making  possi- 
bilities." Ponder  that,  in  the  light  of  later  developments. 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     197 

And  so  the  great  commemorative  flood  began  and  con- 
tinues to  this  day,  rising  higher  and  higher  each  year  to 
marks  never  before  reached.  Now  only  a  few  self-respecting 
Ararats  such  as  Norway  and  Sweden  still  rear  their  snow- 
crowned  heads  above  the  waters.  John  N.  Luff,  in  the  Col- 
lectors Club  Philatelist  in  1922  wrote  that  "the  prospect  is 
favorable  for  a  decrease  in  the  output.  .  .  .  We  appear 
to  have  passed  the  height  of  the  flood  and  to  be  slowly 
returning  to  normal  conditions."  Little  did  he  know!  An 
indignant  writer  in  Mekeel's  Weekly  Stamp  News  in  1904 
said  it  was  all  right  to  buy  a  "menagerie  issue"  if  you  could 
get  it  for  a  nickel,  but  when  you  pay  more,  you  are  simply 
helping  to  support  "some  bankrupt  country  with  about 
800  inhabitants."  Still  true  as  gospel  today,  save  that  the 
bankrupt  country  may  have  from  a  hundred  and  thirty  to 
a  hundred  and  eighty  million  inhabitants.  And  that  writer 
"hadn't  seen  nothing  yet."  When  the  British  colonies  that 
same  year  brought  forth  new  issues  with  the  crown  water- 
mark in  multiple,  another  editor  considered  this  "the  last 
straw  which  will  break  the  back  of  the  philatelic  camel." 
But  that  earners  back  has  been  broken  time  and  again;  it 
has  more  lives  than  a  cat. 

All  protests  were  vain,  and  so  governments  found  a  new 
sort  of  revenue  just  dropping  into  their  hands  like  ripe 
fruit  from  a  tree.  Sometimes  stamp  hobbyists  in  high 
places  helped  the  cause  along.  An  American  philatelist  was 
for  several  years  a  financial  adviser  to  the  Haitian  govern- 
ment, and  during  that  time  Haiti's  stamp  issues  were 
numerous  and  colorful.  Then  he  took  a  similar  position 
with  the  Lion  of  the  Tribe  of  Judah,  and  soon  Abyssinia 
blossomed  out  with  many  new  stamps.  Young  nations 
quickly  caught  the  idea.  North  Ingermanland,  a  little  patch 
of  earth  between  the  Neva  and  Finland,  declared  itself 


198     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

independent  of  Russia  in  1920,  set  the  presses  going  and 
turned  out  fourteen  pictorial  stamps,  one  an  invert  now 
worth  forty  dollars,  before  Russia  noticed  its  existence  and 
squelched  it  a  few  months  later. 

Italy  fortunately  has  a  long  history  from  which  to  draw 
events  for  commemoration,  but  has  so  nearly  exhausted 
them  with  her  numerous  stamps  that  some  of  the  celebra- 
tions seem  rather  remote— the  fiftieth  anniversary  of  the 
death  of  Alessandro  Manzoni,  the  fourth  centenary  of  the 
death  of  the  Tuscan  warrior  Francesco  Ferruci,  the  cen- 
tenary of  the  Military  Medal  of  Valor,  the  two-thousandth 
anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Horace,  the  bi-millenary  of 
Augustus  Caesar— it  would  be  tedious  to  name  even  a  tenth 
of  them.  As  for  celebrities,  so  many  of  them  have  appeared 
on  stamps  that  the  supply  began  to  run  low  several  years 
ago,  and  Brazil  and  other  countries  have  been  picturing 
persons  whom  American  collectors  couldn't  find  in  any 
encyclopedia  or  other  book  of  reference.  Finally,  in  despera- 
tion, about  1937,  several  foreign  countries  suddenly  de- 
veloped an  admiration  for  the  United  States  and  began 
celebrating  the  writing  of  our  constitution  and  the  setting 
up  of  our  government.  They  are  at  it  yet.  They  are  por- 
traying our  presidents  and  other  heroes.  Literally  dozens  of 
countries  issued  series  in  honor  of  our  World's  Fair  at 
New  York  in  1939,  and  some  honored  the  San  Francisco 
Fair,  too.  The  remorseless  war  upon  the  collector's  purse 
reached  its  peak  that  summer  when  France,  which  had 
already  issued  twenty-six  stamps  for  self  and  colonies  in 
celebration  of  our  great  Fair,  announced  the  imminence 
of  a  hundred  and  forty  more  stamps.  At  that,  Theodore 
Champion,  her  great  philatelic  publicist,  who  had  stood 
by  his  native  land  through  all  her  previous  stamp  racketeer- 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     199 

ing,  gagged  and  declared  that  he  would  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  new  issue. 

An  enormous  change  has  come  over  governments  in 
the  past  three  decades,  and  over  our  own  only  since  1920. 
Time  was  when  the  collector  was  an  object  of  contempt, 
a  nuisance.  It  was  reported  from  Hungary  about  1895  that 
the  government  had  boys  employed,  tearing  off  the  mar- 
gins of  stamp  sheets,  and  no  pleading  by  collectors  was  of 
any  avail.  The  plate-number  bugs  had  made  themselves 
unpopular  in  America,  too.  In  1896  a  collector  reported 
seeing  clerks  tearing  margins  off  sheets  in  the  New  York 
post  office.  An  outrage  was  reported  from  Newport,  Rhode 
Island,  in  1884,  where  the  postmaster  refused  to  pick  out 
an  assortment  of  envelopes  for  a  dealer  when  he  found 
that  they  were  wanted  for  collectors.  "If  you  want  them 
for  business  purposes,"  said  he,  'Til  get  them  for  you;  but 
if  for  collectors,  I  can't  bother  with  them."  On  the  other 
hand,  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  reported  practically  ideal 
conditions  in  1903;  "We  are  fortunate  in  having  most 
obliging  clerks  at  the  stamp  window.  Both  Mr.  Connor  and 
Mr.  Gaffney,  the  cashier,  are  very  kind  in  assisting  collec- 
tors to  obtain  well-centered  specimens,  etc."  But  what  a 
different  story  in  the  larger  cities! 

By  1890  the  Post  Office  had  decided  that  foreign  stamps, 
used  or  unused,  received  from  Europe,  must  pay  the  regu- 
lar twenty-five  per  cent  duty  as  printed  matter;  and  instead 
of  figuring  this  on  the  cost  of  producing  the  stamps,  which 
the  collectors  would  have  agreed  to,  they  laid  the  duty 
on  the  invoice  value.  Philatelists  sometimes  arranged  with 
foreign  correspondents  to  affix  several  high  value  stamps 
to  a  letter,  just  to  make  a  collector's  piece.  In  1891  Govern- 
ment ruled  that  if  more  than  enough  stamps  were  affixed 
to  pay  the  postage,  the  receiver  must  pay  the  duty  on  the 


200     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

extra  stamps.  In  one  case,  sixty-five  cents  was  the  penalty 
on  one  letter  entering  at  New  York.  Such  envelopes  were 
actually  seized,  the  addressees  being  permitted  to  remove 
the  contents,  and  the  covers  released  only  upon  payment 
of  duty.  But  after  some  years  of  battling  by  the  stamp 
fraternity,  stamps  were  placed  upon  the  free  list  in  1897. 
This,  however,  will  give  a  hint  of  the  intransigent  attitude 
of  the  government  at  the  time. 

It  was  when  the  Columbian  series  of  1893  appeared  that 
Uncle  Sam  first  began  to  show  touchiness  about  the  re- 
production of  his  stamps  in  books  and  periodicals.  During 
more  than  two  decades  of  the  twentieth  century,  our  limita- 
tions in  this  regard  were  the  most  rigid  in  the  world,  due 
to  the  stubbornness  of  an  iron-headed  chief  of  the  secret 
service  named  Moran.  In  1909  a  law  was  passed  which 
made  the  mere  possession  of  a  reproduction  of  a  stamp  a 
criminal  offense.  Only  a  portion  of  the  outer  frame  of  one 
of  our  stamp  designs  could  be  legally  reproduced.  Even 
foreign  stamps,  even— and  here  was  the  height  of  absurdity 
—even  old  express  and  carrier  stamps  of  our  distant  past, 
never  used  by  the  Post  Office,  must  be  mutilated  when 
pictured. 

Of  course  you  might  not  have  in  your  possession  a  for- 
eign publication  which  pictured  United  States  stamps.  No 
homes  nor  business  offices  were  searched  to  discover  such 
publications,  but  probably  they  would  have  been  if  Moran 
had  had  his  way.  Periodicals  illustrating  our  stamps  fre- 
quently slipped  into  this  country  because  the  Post  Office 
hadn't  time  to  examine  them  all;  but  books,  in  the  later 
years  of  Moran's  reign,  seldom  did.  Persons  have  ordered 
such  books  from  abroad  quite  innocently,  paid  for  them, 
and  never  seen  them.  Upon  inquiring  at  the  New  York  post 
office,  they  would  eventually  learn  that  "We  destroy  such 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     201 

books  as  that;  they're  illegal."  Russia  itself  could  have  been 
no  more  summary.  But  what  a  change  there  has  been  since 
a  stamp  collector,  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt,  came  into  the 
Presidency!  Our  country  now  joins  others  which  have  long 
had  an  intelligent  attitude  in  such  matters,  and  so  far,  no 
one  has  yet  cut  a  picture  of  a  stamp  out  of  a  catalogue, 
pasted  it  on  a  letter  and  tried  to  send  it  through  the  mail. 

George  B.  Sloane  remarks  upon  the  vast  difference  in 
the  attitude  of  the  Post  Office  twenty  years  ago  and  now. 
Twenty-five  years  ago,  if  you,  a  youthful  collector,  went  to 
the  stamp  window  of  a  city  post  office  such  as  New  York 
and  asked  for  one  of  the  new  ten-cent  stamps,  requesting 
that  it  be  well  centered,  the  clerk  would  "Gr-r-r-r-r"  at  you 
like  a  wolf  in  a  steel  trap,  making  some  snarling  remark 
about  "collectors"  in  a  tone  indicating  that  they  were  of 
an  order  rather  lower  than  cockroaches;  and  other  custom- 
ers lined  up  behind  you  would  stare  at  you  as  at  some  un- 
usual mental  case.  And  oftentimes  you  had  to  take  your 
stamp  as  was.  The  result  was  that  boy  collectors  usually 
waited  in  a  corner  of  the  post  office  until  there  were  no 
other  customers  at  the  window  and  then  approached  tim- 
idly, hoping  that  the  clerk  wouldn't  be  too  vicious.  Of 
course  this  wouldn't  happen  in  the  average  small-town  post 
office,  as  we  ourselves  can  testify.  Courtesy  and  sympathy 
have  always  been  more  common  there  than  in  the  great 
city.  But  there  was  no  official  support  from  Washington 
for  any  such  courtesy.  For  more  than  half  a  century  Uncle 
Sam  was  as  stupid  in  his  attitude  toward  collectors  as  were 
the  railroad  executives  in  their  discourtesy  toward  people 
who  were  fascinated  by  locomotives,  never  realizing  that 
such  folk  were  potentially  their  best  friends. 

But  how  different  it  is  today!  Sir  Philatelist  is  top  dog 
now,  and  Uncle  Sam,  beaming  and  rubbing  his  hands,  says, 


202     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

"What  will  you  have  today,  Sir  or  Madame?  I  am  at  your 
service."  The  New  York  postmaster  sends  out  word  that 
children  who  want  new  stamps  or  first-day  covers  from 
anywhere  will  be  taken  care  of  just  as  if  they  were  in  a 
kindergarten.  Extra  forces  of  clerks  are  rushed  to  the  places 
where  first-day  sales  take  place,  in  the  effort  to  give  good 
service;  stamps  are  lightly  canceled,  so  as  not  to  spoil  their 
appearance,  the  name  of  the  town  and  the  cachet  are  so 
clearly  and  carefully  stamped  that  they  might  almost  have 
been  done  on  a  printing  press.  A  group  of  people  who 
spend  millions  of  dollars  yearly,  paying  many  times  their 
intrinsic  value  for  little  pictures  printed  by  the  government 
and  not  demanding  postal  service  in  return,  is  well  worth 
cultivating;  but  it  required  the  coming  of  a  philatelist  Presi- 
dent to  the  White  House  finally  to  drill  the  fact  deeply 
into  the  iron  skulls  of  Department  officials. 

And  yet,  with  all  this  service,  collectors  are  not  satisfied. 
The  little  post  office  at  Cooperstown,  New  York,  had  to 
handle  600,000  baseball  centenary  stamps  on  a  date  in 
1939,  most  of  them  on  first-day  covers,  requiring  a  special 
force,  who  worked  several  days,  yet  postmarked  every  cover 
with  the  traditional  first-day  date,  even  though  some  went 
out  several  days  later.  And  yet  there  were  collectors  who 
raged  because  some  of  these  letters  were  delayed  a  week.  At 
least  one  wrote  an  indignant  letter  to  a  stamp  magazine 
about  it,  and  was  still  more  furious  because  his  letter  wasn't 
printed.  If  he  could  only  realize  what  fine  service  he  is 
getting  from  the  Post  Office,  by  contrast  with  what  his 
fathers  and  predecessors  had  to  suffer,  he  might  give  thanks 
instead  of  excoriating. 

These  business-return  envelopes  with  a  row  of  bars  or 
stripes  down  one  end,  like  an  old-time  oarsman's  jersey, 
sent  you  by  concerns  which  want  something  from  you;  do 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     203 

you  laymen  know  how  the  postage  on  them  is  paid  when 
you  send  one  of  them  back?  Well,  it's  done  by  means  of 
postage-due  stamps.  When  a  batch  of  them  comes  into  a 
post  office,  directed  to  the  Universal  Whirligig  Company, 
they  are  counted  and  the  postman  takes  canceled  postage- 
due  stamps  equal  to  the  sum  owing  on  them  to  the  Uni- 
versal office,  along  with  the  letters.  He  is  charged  with  the 
stamps  and  must  collect  the  cash  from  the  Universal  Com- 
pany to  cover  them.  Postage-due  stamps  are  of  course  an 
object  of  desire  by  collectors,  and  naturally,  the  one-,  two- 
and  three-cent  ones  are  most  common,  as  they  are  found  on 
many  letters.  Hence  the  clerk  in  the  Universal  office,  if  he 
handles  this  business  or  is  in  touch  with  collectors  who  will 
buy  the  stamps,  asks  the  postman  to  bring  him  stamps  of 
unusual  values,  and  to  ask  the  office  to  cancel  them  lightly; 
thus  he  has  a  readily  salable  article.  A  New  Yorker  was  noti- 
fied recently  that  a  package  addressed  to  him  was  found  to 
have  writing  in  it,  and  was  asked  to  call  and  pay  the  excess 
postage.  When  he  found  the  proper  window,  a  pleasant 
little  lady  said,  "Now,  what  denomination  of  postage-due 
stamps  would  you  prefer?"  and  then  smilingly,  when  he 
hesitated,  'The  one-half  cents  are  uncommon."  So  he 
chose  the  one-halfs,  she  canceled  them  lightly  and  passed 
them  out.  Try  to  fancy  that  happening  in  1910! 

It  is  a  fact  that,  in  order  to  get  high  denominations  of 
postage-due  stamps,  canceled,  collectors  in  recent  years 
have  been  known  to  wrap  up  a  brick  and  mail  it  to  them- 
selves, explaining  the  gag  to  a  genial  clerk,  telling  him  just 
what  denominations  of  stamps  they  wanted,  and  adding, 
"And  light  cancellations,  please." 

The  Government  Philatelic  Agency  at  Washington, 
which  has  become  an  enormous  business,  is  another  service 
brought  about  by  the  presence  of  a  philatelist  in  high  posi- 


204     GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS 

tion.  It  was  founded  in  Harding's  administration,  in  1921, 
at  the  instance  of  Second  Assistant  Postmaster-General  W. 
Irving  Glover,  whose  wife  was  a  collector.  Its  first  fiscal 
year's  sales  were  only  $20,906.50,  but  the  second  year's 
jumped  to  $105,317.03  and  the  third  year's  to  $129,646.51. 
Thence  it  rose  steadily  to  $302,619.54  for  the  year  ending 
June  30,  1933.  Then  the  avalanche  of  new  commemora- 
tives  under  the  Roosevelt  administration  brought  it  up 
with  a  leap  to  $811,723.00,  and  in  the  next  year,  1934-35, 
it  reached  its  peak  with  sales  of  $2,340,484.02.  Since 
then  it  has  almost  steadily  declined,  and  with  the  year  end- 
ing June  30,  1939,  the  figures  came  down  to  $1,312,016.48. 
Efforts  are  now  being  made  to  boost  business  with  the  phil- 
atelic truck  which  tours  the  country  with  a  full  exhibit  of 
our  national  stamps  from  the  beginning  until  now,  and 
which  undoubtedly  lures  some  new  devotees  into  the 
hobby. 

Another  idea  for  increasing  sales  is  being  worked  hard  in 
the  frantic  designing  of  new  series  and  new  single  stamps. 
The  celebrity  series  of  thirty-five  stamps  which  is  being  pre- 
pared as  these  words  are  written  is  as  nothing  compared  to 
the  list  of  more  than  two  hundred  more  or  less  noteworthy 
men  and  women  whom  a  contributor  to  Stamps  proposed 
in  1935  as  philatelic  honorees  "to  advance  American  cul- 
ture." This  writer  omitted  the  name  of  O.  O.  Mclntyre, 
the  columnist,  which  was  demanded  on  a  stamp  by  a  later 
publicist,  and  we  are  surprised  not  to  see  him  among  the 
new  stamps  pending.  Perhaps  if  Mr.  Farley  remains  in 
power  long  enough,  we  may  yet  see  portraits  of  Dick 
Harlow,  Joe  Louis,  Eddie  Guest,  Joe  Di  Maggio,  Charlie 
McCarthy,  Greta  Garbo,  Father  Coughlin,  Father  Town- 
send,  Father  Divine,  yes,  and  even  Mr.  Farley's  own  on 
our  postage  stamps. 


GOVERNMENTAL  FIVE-AND-TENS     205 

Meanwhile,  foreign  governments  continue  to  exploit  us 
for  all  they  are  worth.  All  through  the  summer  of  1939 
many  of  them  maintained  stamp  shops  in  their  buildings 
at  the  New  York  World's  Fair,  where  stamps  intended 
solely  for  collectors  and  not  for  postal  purposes  were  sold 
over  the  counter.  Iceland  has  made  a  contract  with  a  store 
in  New  York  for  the  exclusive  handling  of  her  new  stamp 
issues.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  some  Icelandic  agent  does  not 
become  overenthusiastic,  as  did  an  agent  of  the  Amundsen 
North  Pole  Flight  in  1924,  who  sold  exclusive  American 
rights  to  department  stores  and  stamp  dealers  here,  there 
and  everywhere. 

The  newest  startling  story  of  the  exploitation  of  collec- 
tors comes  in  the  autumn  of  1939.  Brazil  has  just  had  five 
million  of  a  set  of  four  stamps— ponder  that  figure,  five 
million— printed,  of  which  four  million  are  not  to  see  Brazil 
at  all,  but  have  been  placed  in  her  consul's  office  in  New 
York.  One  million  have  been  sent  to  Brazil,  where  one 
hundred  sets  of  four  will  be  delivered  to  certain  of  the 
larger  post  offices,  with  the  specification  that  only  one  set 
be  sold  to  a  customer.  The  rest  will  be  sold  right  from  the 
factory  to  the  collector. 

These  words  are  written  at  the  close  of  1939,  which  has 
seen  the  issue  of  the  largest  number  of  commemoratives  on 
record.  Already  three  hundred  new  stamps  are  known  to 
be  planned  for  1940,  and  experts  estimate  that  the  number 
will  rise  to  two  thousand  before  the  year  is  over.  The  motto 
of  the  governmental  hucksters  seems  to  be,  "All  the  traffic 
will  bear,  and  then  some." 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 


THE    COUNTERFEITER 
i_-          r     •  i-o 

his  nefarious  work  in  1840, 
within  a  few  months  after 

Britain  issued  the  first  adhesive  stamp,  though  Rowland 
Hill,  when  he  saw  the  imitation  of  the  penny  black,  de- 
clared it  "a  miserable  thing,  and  could  not  possibly  deceive 
anybody  but  the  most  stupid  and  ignorant."  The  first  for- 
geries made  were  to  be  sold  for  postage  purposes.  One  of 
the  cleverest  of  all  time  was  not  discovered  until  twenty- 
six  years  afterward.  In  1898  it  was  found  that  a  counterfeit 
of  the  one-shilling  green  had  been  sold  at  the  Stock  Ex- 
change Telegraph  Office  in  London  for  several  months  in 
1872-73. 

When  collecting  got  into  its  stride,  forgeries  of  the  more 
uncommon  stamps  were  stealthily  turned  out  for  philate- 
lists. The  cheat  and  the  fakir  always  spring  into  action  under 
such  circumstances,  and  in  the  case  of  philately,  individual 
fakirs  were  followed  by  national  ones.  Reproductions  of 
those  early  Mauritius,  Hawaii,  Russia,  and  British  Guiana 
rarities  crept  into  the  market  and  threw  the  whole  collect- 
ing fraternity  into  an  uproar.  Fortunately  for  later  genera- 
tions, experts  were  able  to  identify  and  denounce  the  fakes. 
Even  as  early  as  1863,  an  Englishman  found  it  necessary 
to  write  a  pamphlet  on  Postage  Stamp  Forgeries. 

206 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     207 

Later  on,  still  more  brilliant  ideas  were  originated.  Al- 
leged stamps  of  Ecuador  and  Guatemala  were  on  sale  be- 
fore those  countries  had  even  begun  to  issue  stamps.  Im- 
aginary countries— Capacua,  Bateke  and  Nova  Potuca,  for 
example— were  invented,  years  before  Anthony  Hope's 
Ruritania  and  George  Barr  McCutcheon's  Graustark  got 
into  print;  small  communities  such  as  the  old  Greek  mon- 
astery on  Mount  Athos,  Moresnet  on  the  lower  Rhine,  an 
obscure  province  in  Sumatra  and  bleak,  lonely  places  like 
Kerguelen  Island,  Torres  Straits,  Clipperton  Island  and 
glacial  Spitsbergen  and  Franz  Josef  Land  in  the  Arctic, 
none  of  which  ever  issued  stamps,  were  represented  as 
doing  so,  and  there  were  the  prettily  engraved  stamps  to 
prove  it.  Thousands  were  sold  before  the  cheats  were  ex- 
posed. Many  of  these  were  traced  to  "A  nest  of  thieves 
fabricating  frauds  in  Paris."  Fake  five-cent  and  eight-cent 
stamps  supposed  to  have  been  issued  by  the  Mormon  col- 
ony of  Utah  in  1852  were  among  our  own  contributions. 

You  couldn't  fool  present-day  collectors  as  easily  as  that. 
They  watch  their  catalogues  and  periodicals,  they  know 
their  geography  and  history.  They  are  glibly  familiar  with 
little  stamp-issuing  countries,  provinces  and  dependencies 
which  most  folk  have  never  heard  of.  Go  out  today  and 
ask  the  first  five  hundred  theoretically  educated  people  you 
meet  what  and  where  Nossi-Be  is— or  Inhambane— or  Inini 
—or  Bhore— or  Oltre  Giuba;  and  the  probabilities  are  that 
no  one  save  some  of  the  philatelists— who  will  inevitably  be 
found  among  the  five  hundred— can  tell  you  whether  they 
are  political  units  or  chemical  elements  or  heathen  gods. 
Thus  stamp  collecting  teaches  geography  and  political  his- 
tory. 

Even  some  eminent  stamp  concerns  did  not  escape  ac- 
cusation. The  American  Journal  of  Philately  said  in  1869 


208     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 

that  "Alfred  Smith  &  Company  must  have  sold  enough  of 
the  Guatemala  humbug  to  have  turned  in  a  considerable 
revenue  to  the  concocter."  By  1870  the  Journal  and  several 
such  journals  in  Europe  were  printing  every  month  re- 
markably accurate  pictures  of  stamps  in  colors.  Other  pub- 
lishers and  dealers  would  ask  permission  of  these  magazines 
to  buy  or  borrow  a  few  electrotypes  to  illustrate  a  price  list. 
With  these,  actual  counterfeits  were  turned  out,  gummed, 
perforated  and  sold.  In  1876  it  was  declared  that  "Probably 
never  in  the  history  of  philately  in  America  were  there  as 
many  counterfeits  in  circulation  as  at  the  present  day."  To 
guard  against  them  "A  Middle  Aged  Collector,"  advised  in 
a  magazine  article,  "Make  it  a  positive  rule  to  put  no  stamp 
into  your  album  until  you  have  devoted  at  least  five  min- 
utes to  a  careful  study  of  it."  But  this  tedious  process  was 
evidently  too  exhausting  to  many  collectors,  and  they  con- 
tinued to  stud  their  collections  with  paste  diamonds. 

Other  countries,  too,  were  having  their  troubles  with 
forgery— not  only  collectors,  but  governments.  In  Colombia 
the  pest  was  so  virulent  that  for  a  time  no  stamps  could 
be  affixed  to  letters  save  by  the  post-office  clerks.  You  just 
handed  your  money  and  letter  in  at  the  window,  and  the 
clerk  did  the  rest.  And  there  was  a  story  from  Spain  of 
certain  parties  who  covered  a  stamp  with  a  colorless  some- 
thing or  other,  no  more  stable  than  paraffine.  The  addressee 
washed  this  coating  off  and  with  it  the  cancellation;  peeled 
the  stamp  off  the  envelope,  recoated  it  with  the  stuff  and 
used  it  again.  It  was  asserted  that  long  correspondences 
were  thus  carried  on  with  only  one  stamp  doing  all  the 
work. 

Some  small  dealers  announced  that  "We  guarantee  every 
stamp  we  sell,"  to  which  editorial  critics  retorted  that  their 
guarantees  weren't  worth  the  snap  of  a  finger.  Of  a  couple 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     209 

of  sheets  sent  out  by  the  "Eagle  Stamp  Company,"  a 
Pennsylvania  concern,  with  the  notation  printed  thereon, 
"We  do  not  need  to  warrant  our  stamps— they  warrant 
themselves,"  the  Philatelic  Monthly  commented,  "And  yet 
every  stamp  on  the  two  sheets  was  a  rank  counterfeit."  Edi- 
tors frequently  pointed  out  other  unscrupulous  dealers  by 
name;  "So-and-so  of  Boston  is  an  individual  to  whom  col- 
lectors had  better  not  trust  their  cash."  Philately  certainly 
needed  a  Better  Business  Bureau  in  those  post-bellum 
years,  when  many  phases  of  life  showed  the  degrading 
effect  which  war  always  leaves  in  its  wake. 

Counterfeiters  were  pikers  in  those  days;  stamps  were 
being  forged  with  a  market  value  as  low  as  one  cent!  Of 
course  rarities  were  favorite  game.  In  1873  the  American 
Journal  of  Philately  warned  "the  tyro"  to  have  nothing  to 
do  with  Reunion  stamps  unless  they  were  certified  by  a 
competent  authority.  "The  originals  are  so  very  rare  that 
you  may  as  well  make  up  your  minds  you  will  never  be 
able  to  obtain  them."  A  Philadelphia-Camden  gang  headed 
by  a  man  named  Petroni  was  rounded  up  in  1875,  tried  for 
forging  foreign  stamps  and  convicted,  but  received  sus- 
pended sentences  because  it  was  the  first  case  of  the  sort 
and  because  there  was  a  slight  flaw  in  the  indictment! 
Petroni  said  he  had  sought  legal  advice  before  going  into 
the  business  and  had  been  assured  that  it  would  not  be  a 
violation  of  any  statute.  One  finds  in  the  report  of  this  trial 
plenty  of  the  legal  hocus-pocus  so  familiar  to  us  all,  such  as 
the  argument  of  Petroni's  counsel  that  no  evidence  had 
been  introduced  to  show  that  there  were  in  existence  such 
countries  as  Nicaragua  and  British  Guiana.  In  1877  a  forgery 
of  the  whole  Mexican  series  of  1875  appeared.  The  Ameri- 
can Journal  of  Philately  said  that  report  was  that  "the  block 
has  been  engraved  by  one  Beyer,  a  well-grown  boy  who 


210     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 

sells  counterfeit  stamps  under  the  name  of  the  Atlas  Stamp 
Co/' 

It  will  by  this  time  be  apparent  to  most  moderns  that 
the  honest  dealers,  editors  and  experts  of  those  days  had 
their  hands  full  in  the  battle  against  chicanery.  In  the  early 
'90*5  some  prominent  British  dealers  were  rubber-stamping 
a  guarantee  on  the  back  of  every  stamp  they  sold.  The 
battle  was  fought  right  bravely  and  shrewdly,  and  with  the 
honesty  and  care  of  those  who  have  come  later,  even  to  the 
present  day,  added  to  theirs,  there  is  now  no  valid  reason 
why  any  collector  should  buy  a  bogus  stamp. 

Some  of  the  most  picturesque  characters  in  philately  are 
found  among  the  forgers  of  the  later  nineteenth  century. 
There  were  many  notorious  ones  in  Europe,  but  we  have 
space  to  mention  only  those  remarkable  partners,  Alfred 
Benjamin  and  Julian  Hippolyte  Sarpy,  who  operated  in 
London.  They  actually  had  the  nerve  at  one  time  to  print 
and  circulate  a  business  card,  reading,  "BENJAMIN  &  SARPY, 
Dealers  in  all  kinds  of  Facsimiles,  Faked  Surcharges  and 
Fiscal  Postals,  i  CULLUM  STREET,  LONDON,  E.G.  Fakes  of  all 
descriptions  supplied  on  the  shortest  notice." 

Fred  J.  Melville  in  The  Stamp  Lover  tells  of  a  visit  of 
Ferrary  to  their  shop,  when,  after  salutations,  this  conver- 
sation ensued: 

Ferrary:  Have  you  got  anything  for  me? 

Sarpy  (after  contemplation):  I  think  we  have;  a 
Straits  Settlements  inverted  surcharge.  (Pause,  then 
raising  his  voice).  I  say,  Ben,  haven't  we  got  an  in- 
verted surcharge  Straits?  Here's  Mr.  Ferrary  wants  to 
see  it. 

Ben  (from  behind  the  arras) :  I  think  we  'ave,  Sarp. 
I'll  just  'ave  a  look. 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     211 

A  few  minutes  later  the  stamp  was  passed  out  to 
Sarpy,  shown  to  Ferrary,  who  kept  it. 

Sarpy:  Didn't  we  have  another  of  those,  with  double 
surcharge,  one  inverted? 

Ben  (still  behind) :  So  we  did.  Now  where  is  it?  (A 
brief  delay  while  Ben  gets  to  work  and  the  variety  is 
produced.) 

On  one  such  occasion  Ferrary,  it  is  said,  accidentally 
touched  the  surcharge  with  his  finger  and  it  smeared.  There 
was  some  discussion  about  this,  but  the  great  collector,  so 
Benjamin  affirmed,  accepted  it.  Sometimes  we  think 
Ferrary  must  have  been  just  a  little  dumb. 

This  precious  pair  were  finally  convicted  in  1892  and 
given  short  prison  terms  "with  hard  labour,"  on  the  charge 
that,  as  a  philatelic  witness  described  it  to  the  court,  they 
"took  a  Sydney  View,  cleaned  it,  postmarked  it,  and  turned 
it  into  a  New  Zealand  fiscal/'  This  was  a  deep,  dark  mys- 
tery to  the  judge  until  explained  in  plain  language.  Another 
forger,  a  Dr.  Assmus,  was  given  three  years,  so  Mr.  Melville 
tells  us,  probably  because  the  judge  was  more  greatly 
shocked  by  the  turning  of  the  queen's  head  upside  down 
on  a  colonial  stamp  than  by  the  other  forgeries,  which 
didn't  seem  to  impress  him  seriously. 

In  America  the  most  notorious  and  impudent  forger  of 
the  period  was  S.  Allan  Taylor,  who  founded  this  nation's 
first  stamp  journal  at  Albany  in  1864,  and  thereafter  op- 
erated mostly  in  Boston.  He  was  often  known  as  "Just-as- 
good  Taylor,"  because  of  his  open  insistence  that  for  the 
purposes  of  collectors,  his  forgeries  were  "just  as  good"  as 
the  real  stamps.  He  described  himself  as  "a  gentleman  of 
flexible  conscience  and  speculative  disposition."  Late  in  his 
career  he  once  remarked,  "In  the  early  days  all  dealers  sold 


212     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 

imitations;  some  of  them  have  changed  their  methods,  I 
have  not."  Taylor  in  his  earlier  days  worked  hand  in  hand 
with  F.  Trifet  of  Boston,  and  in  1867  had  the  nerve  to 
advertise  in  Trifet's  magazine,  his  "Hamburg  Local  or 
Boten  stamps;  These  are  not  of  the  spurious  New  York 
manufacture." 

Taylor  often  privately  expressed  his  opinion  that  stamp 
collectors  were  damned  fools,  and  there  are  those  even  at 
this  day  who  excuse  him  on  the  ground  that,  when  pinned 
down,  he  would  not  claim  that  his  stamps  were  genuine; 
that  if  collectors  were  asses  enough  to  buy  his  imitation 
stamps,  he  had  a  right  to  make  and  sell  them.  Once  when 
Walter  S.  Scott  was  a  very  young  man  he  was  commis- 
sioned to  go  to  Boston  and  buy  a  pair  of  Canada  twelve- 
pence  stamps  at  an  auction,  paying  as  high  as  twelve-hun- 
dred dollars,  if  necessary.  There  he  saw  Taylor,  who  was 
saddened  at  the  thought  of  a  fine  young  man  like  Walter 
drifting  into  the  stamp  business.  "Why  does  your  father 
let  you  do  it,"  he  demanded,  "when  you  might  turn  your 
talents  to  something  so  much  more  worth  while?  The  idea 
of  coming  up  here  to  pay  twelve-hundred  dollars  for  a 
couple  of  little  scraps  of  paper.  It's  criminal  insanity!" 

He  seemed  quite  sincere  in  his  denunciation.  But  col- 
lectors by  that  time  were  becoming  too  wise  to  buy  his 
imitations,  and  in  his  later  years— he  died  somewhere 
around  1906-7— he  was  a  platform  man  on  the  Boston  Ele- 
vated line. 

There  are  stamps  once  rated  high  which  later  fell  under 
suspicion  and  declined  enormously  in  value.  There  are  whis- 
pers today  about  two  of  the  world's  unique  stamps  which 
have  sold  for  enormous  figures— skepticism  because  their 
life  history  cannot  be  authenticated;  and  yet  they  may  be 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     213 

as  genuine  as  an  ear  of  Indiana  corn.  But  Ferrary  bought 
from  C.  H.  Mekeel  of  St.  Louis  in  the  '90*5  a  unique  al- 
leged St.  Louis  local  stamp,  "City  Dispatch  2  cents,"  black 
on  blue  paper,  on  a  valentine  letter,  postmarked  Feb.  14, 
1851  and  addressed  to  "Miss  F.  Wood.  At  Mo.  Hotel,  St. 
Louis,  Mo./'  in  payment  for  which  Ferrary  wrote  a  char- 
acteristic check— just  penned  the  whole  thing  on  a  piece  of 
blank  paper: 

Iselin  &  Co.,  Bankers,  New  York. 

Pay  Mr.  Mekeel  of  St.  Louis 

Twenty-four  hundred  and  thirty-five  dollars  $2435.00 
Philip  Renotiere  Ferrary 

But  at  a  Ferrary  sale  in  1922  this  stamp  had  fallen  from 
its  high  estate  and  brought  only  £17  los,  because  its  gen- 
uineness was  under  suspicion. 

There  are  national  governments,  great  and  small,  today, 
unblushingly  working  Taylor's  just-as-good  idea  for  all  it  is 
worth  though  they  do  not  offer  their  shoddy  wares  as  hon- 
estly as  Taylor  did.  Instead,  the  pretense  is  kept  up  that 
these  are  stamps  sincerely  intended  for  postal  purposes. 
Mexico,  Nicaragua  and  some  other  countries  have  been 
doing  this  ever  since  the  days  of  Seebeck.  The  deliberately 
scarce  item  is  a  favorite  stunt.  Bolivia  has  issued  as  few  as 
twenty-five  of  a  single  stamp.  Of  the  sixteen  Mexican  items 
of  1915  surcharged  on  stamps  of  1903,  it  is  said  that  only 
five  denominations  were  purchasable  at  the  post  office,  and 
certain  values  were  printed  in  lots  of  only  from  six  to  fifty 
copies,  which  were  handed  to  a  favored  few.  A  surcharged 
series  of  1916  was  blatantly  speculative;  small  quantities  of 
each  value  were  sold  at  post  offices,  but  subsequently  could 
be  bought  only  from  government  officials  or  their  agents, 
at  advanced  prices.  In  1929  a  small  lot  of  stamps  in  several 


214     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 

varieties,  printed  in  colors  different  from  those  of  the  regu- 
lar stamps,  was  offered  at  the  post  office. 

The  stern  dicta  of  the  two  great  cataloguers  on  either 
side  of  the  Atlantic  stand  between  such  fakery  and  the 
collector's  purse,  if  the  latter  will  only  listen  to  them. 
Gibbons  refuses  to  recognize  souvenir  stamps.  Scott  will 
not  recognize  them  unless  they  have  been  offered  to  the 
public  regularly  through  post  offices  for  a  reasonable  length 
of  time.  He  who  collects  may  read  such  notes  as  this  in  the 
Standard  Catalogue  under  Cuba:  "The  so-called  Artists 
and  Authors  set  of  17  varieties  of  postage,  4  airpost  and  2 
special  delivery  stamps  was  on  sale  at  post  offices  that  day 
only.  We  do  not  recognize  them  as  having  been  issued 
primarily  for  postage  purposes."  In  the  same  catalogue, 
under  a  reproduction  of  an  Italian  stamp  picturing  "Christ 
Among  His  Disciples,"  a  suavely  factual  bit  of  irony  in- 
forms the  reader  that  this  "unnecessary"  issue  was  sold  al- 
most entirely  to  speculators. 

When  New  South  Wales  issued  that  tuberculosis  hos- 
pital stamp  in  1897  she  launched  a  most  pernicious  idea. 
The  single  stamp  or  series  of  stamps  sold  at  an  increased 
price— two,  three,  five,  and  in  the  case  of  the  Austrian  mu- 
sicians' series,  ten  times  face  value— for  the  benefit  of  this 
or  that  charity  or  welfare  work,  society  or  private  enter- 
prise, sometimes  almost  unblushingly  for  the  government 
itself,  has  become  a  commonplace.  D'Annunzio's  adven- 
ture at  Fiume,  and  indeed,  the  brief  existence  of  Fiume  as 
a  state  was  admittedly  financed  largely  by  stamps,  as  were 
likewise  the  stunts  of  Zeligowsky  and  Korfanty  in  Lithuania 
and  Upper  Silesia  just  after  the  World  War.  Little  states 
like  Lithuania  and  Latvia  have  almost  worked  the  gift  horse 
to  death.  In  Italy  no  end  of  such  organizations  as  the  Na- 
tional Institute  Figli  del  Littorio  and  the  Dante  Alighieri 


Photos  from  U.  S.  Post  Office  Department 

Above— The  "smallest  post  office,"  Searsburg,  Vermont:  the 

type  eliminated  by  thousands  by  Rural  Free  Delivery. 
Below— A    very    early    R.F.D.    wagon,    which    operated    in 


in  the  USTTED 
120  000  »«  AnnuMy;  w 


VAN  AMBURGH  &  CO. 


A  XT> 

PULL  SIZE. 


A  few  oddities  from  Edward  H.  Knapp's  collection  of  adver- 
tising and  propaganda  envelopes. 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     215 

Society  (at  least  twice)  have  benefited  by  special  stamps. 
There  may  be  communist  collectors  who  through  purchases 
of  certain  stamps  have,  knowingly  or  unknowingly,  aided 
the  Benevolent  Fund  of  the  Black  Shirts.  In  the  island  of 
St.  Kitts  in  1923  a  stamp  was  issued  to  enable  the  army 
officers  to  buy  land  and  lay  out  a  cricket  field.  The  Belgian 
Congo  recently  issued  stamps  to  promote  the  building  of  a 
zoo,  and  Germany  has  issued  them  regularly  for  the  fur- 
therance of  certain  favored  horse  races. 

It  has  not  been  so  many  months  ago  that  a  man  with  a 
Spanish  accent  appeared  among  the  dealers  of  New  York 
City  peddling  the  stamps  of  a  Central  American  country; 
its  name  is  not  mentioned  here  because  there  are  honest 
philatelists  down  there  who  are  already  sufficiently  humili- 
ated by  the  total  absence  of  ethic  from  their  government's 
postal  doings.  This  traveling  salesman  would  accept  face 
value,  or  if  the  dealer  was  hard-boiled,  he  would  shade  the 
price  a  bit. 

"Where  do  you  come  in?"  he  was  asked  by  one  dealer. 

"Oh,  I  wouldn't  handle  them,  of  course,"  he  replied 
frankly,  "unless  I  got  full  commission.  But  my  government 
is  willing  to  give  whatever  is  necessary  to  sell  the  stamps 
in  the  United  States."  The  dealer  to  whom  he  was  talking 
knew  that  twenty  per  cent  is  the  ordinary  share  for  such 
fellows. 

One  day  not  so  many  eons  ago  a  swarthy,  pompous  gen- 
tleman entered  the  office  of  an  official  of  a  large  company 
in  New  York  which  deals  in  stamps  and  philatelic  supplies. 
He  was  followed  by  a  somewhat  younger,  obsequious  bru- 
net  person,  no  doubt  his  secretary,  who  was  carrying  a  par- 
cel. It  was  revealed  that  the  big  man  was  the  ex-dictator  of 
a  Latin  American  country  who  had— like  many  tropical  dic- 
tators, sooner  or  later— been  suddenly  compelled,  for  his 


216     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 

health's  sake,  to  leave  the  hot,  sultry  climate  of  his  native 
land,  taking  with  him  only  a  few  bits  of  portable  property, 
including  not  so  much  treasury  cash  as  he  could  have  de- 
sired. 

The  secretary  opened  the  package  which  he  carried  and 
began  taking  out  sheet  after  sheet  of  new  stamps,  of  a 
variety  which  the  stamp  dealer  had  never  before  seen.  It 
presently  came  out— though  in  much  more  suave  and  deli- 
cate language  than  we  can  muster— that  the  president, 
aware  of  the  world  passion  for  philately,  and  foreseeing  that 
he  would,  at  some  time  in  the  near  future,  be  called  upon 
to  hit  the  trail  running,  had  grabbed  the  whole  issue  of  that 
particular  stamp,  thinking  thereby  to  create  a  rarity  and 
pick  up  some  easy  money  after  he  reached  the  States  by 
doling  them  out  in  limited  quantities  at  premium  prices. 

The  country  which  has  gone  into  the  business  in  a  really 
big  way  is  Russia.  The  Soviet  Philatelic  Association  of  that 
country— a  government  bureau,  of  course— is  an  absolute 
monopoly,  and  one  of  the  blandest  of  the  world's  rackets. 
There  are  no  other  stamp  dealers  in  Russia;  you  can't  even 
swap  a  single  stamp  inside  the  boundaries.  Beautiful  new 
issues  pour  from  the  presses  frequently,  and  the  bureau  ad- 
vertises them  in  philatelic  magazines  of  other  countries.  If 
you  wish  to  buy  them,  you  must  pay  in  terms  of  gold  rubles 
—not  paper  rubles.  Many  of  the  varieties  are  never  seen  on 
either  letter  or  package,  but  if  you  desire  used  specimens, 
the  bureau  will  sell  them  to  you,  canceled  in  the  most 
natural  way,  and  assure  you  that  their  virtue  is  above  ques- 
tion. For  these  reasons,  the  stamps  of  the  U.S.S.R.  are,  by 
wise  philatelists— somewhat  as  the  wholesale  produce  mar- 
ket says  of  parsnips  or  old  hens  on  a  day  when  they  aren't 
selling  well— they  are  "neglected." 

The  Soviet  also  seems  to  be  supporting  Tannou  Touva, 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     217 

a  puppet  state  in  Asia,  largely  through  the  sale  of  its  color- 
ful postage  stamps,  of  which  new  designs  appear  every  few 
months. 

The  putting  on  sale  of  a  stamp  for  only  two  or  three 
days,  or  three  hours,  has  resulted  in  some  interesting  scenes. 
When  Cuba  offered  her  Air  Train  stamp  in  June,  1935, 
for  example,  only  35,000  were  printed,  and  only  13,000 
were  available  in  Havana.  They  were  on  sale  throughout 
the  island  at  seven-thirty  A.M.  Crowds  were  in  line  in  the 
cities  at  daybreak  to  buy  them,  and  some  camped  over- 
night. As  much  as  five  dollars  was  offered  for  places  in 
the  line.  When  the  windows  were  opened,  there  was  a 
near  riot.  Speculation  began  immediately,  and  within  a 
few  minutes,  prices  rose  to  five  dollars  per  pair.  In  Egypt, 
in  1926,  when  the  Port  Fouad  stamp  was  sold  in  much 
more  limited  quantity,  at  that  post  office  only,  a  mob  of 
five  thousand  nearly  wrecked  the  office  and  trampled  two 
men  underfoot.  The  police,  made  aware  of  the  value  of 
philatelic  rarities,  would  drive  the  crowd  back  now  and 
then  and  buy  a  few  more  stamps  for  themselves. 

Once  when  one  of  these  stamp  sales  was  to  go  on  in 
Mexico,  a  smart  Yankee  hired  some  peons  to  stand  in  line 
for  him.  As  each  person  might  purchase  only  a  very  limited 
quantity,  he  employed  a  considerable  number,  had  them  at 
the  head  of  the  line  before  daybreak  and  gave  each  of  them 
a  modest  sum  with  which  to  buy  stamps.  But  before  the 
sale  began  he  went  away  briefly  on  an  errand.  As  soon  as 
his  back  was  turned,  certain  conscienceless  persons  ap- 
proached the  peons  and  offered  them  very  attractive  prices 
for  their  places  in  line.  As  the  figures  were  much  higher 
than  their  original  employer  had  promised  them,  they  saw 
no  reason  in  the  world  why  they  should  not  sell  out;  so  sell 
they  did,  and,  not  troubling  to  look  up  their  first  boss  and 


218     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 

return  his  stamp  money,  they  faded  into  the  landscape,  all 
independently  wealthy. 

For  several  years  an  organization  flourished  in  the  West 
Indies— a  sociedad,  they  call  it— which  had  a  colossal  phil- 
atelic idea.  It  wanted  every  nation  on  the  western  conti- 
nent to  put  on  sale  for  two  weeks  each  year  until  1945  a 
special  stamp  or  series  of  stamps  for  its  benefit.  It  signed 
up  some  Latin-American  nations,  but  did  not  land  the 
United  States.  With  the  proceeds— what  was  left,  that  is, 
after  paying  the  overhead— the  society  would  "secure  the 
custody  of,  restore  and  care  for  any  monuments  erected  to 
Columbus  and  the  other  discoverers  of  America."  For  years 
it  was  publicly  stated  that  this  society  intended  building 
with  its  increment  a  forty-million-dollar  lighthouse  in  mem- 
ory of  Columbus;  but  it  finally  denied  this  and  said  that 
the  lighthouse,  which  will  doubtless  be  built  of  jasper  and 
chalcedony  and  sardonyx  and  chrysoprase,  will  be  the  work 
of  another  organization. 

Airplane  flights  have  been  a  favorite  method  of  exploit- 
ing the  collector.  From  the  time  of  Harry  Hawker's  flight 
across  the  Atlantic  in  1919,  the  fad  has  frequently  been 
thus  used.  Some  of  these  covers  have  brought  fancy  prices 
in  after  years;  one  carried  by  De  Pinedo  in  1927  has  sold 
for  as  much  as  thirty-five  hundred  dollars.  When  Darius 
and  Girenas  planned  a  flight  from  New  York  to  Lithuania 
in  1933,  their  airplane  propeller  was  in  hock  for  repairs,  and 
as  there  seemed  no  other  way  to  get  it  out,  they  announced 
that  they  would  get  up  a  cachet  and  carry  letters.  As  both 
of  the  poor  fellows  were  killed  in  landing  on  the  other  side, 
it  was  an  unfortunate  idea. 

One  scheme  was  that  originated  by  a  pilot  who  wished 
to  fly  from  Minnesota  to  London,  but  lacked  some  of  the 
equipment  for  the  job,  including  the  minor  item  of  a  plane. 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     219 

The  captain,  as  he  was  of  course  called,  just  as  a  county- 
fair  balloon  aeronaut  used  always  to  be  a  "professor,"  was 
a  good  promoter.  He  organized  Aerial  World  Tours,  Inc., 
and  persuaded  the  Newfoundland  Government— for  a 
promised  consideration  of  $80,000— to  permit  his  company 
to  print  400,000  so-called  air-mail  stamps  of  one  dollar  face 
value,  which  were  to  be  canceled  by  the  St.  John's  post  office 
when  he  took  flight  from  there.  The  promoters,  however, 
were  to  sell  these  stamps  to  collectors,  and  as  will  be  appar- 
ent even  to  a  beginner  in  mathematics,  at  four-hundred  per 
cent  profit. 

After  being  printed  in  the  United  States,  the  stamps 
were  delivered  to  Newfoundland,  and  the  promoters,  rais- 
ing $5,000  advance  money  somehow,  drew  twenty-five  thou- 
sand of  them,  which  they  began  selling  to  philatelists.  They 
proposed  to  pick  up  some  extra  money  in  various  ways.  In 
addition  to  the  dollar  charge  for  the  stamps,  there  was  a 
handling  fee  of  ten  cents  per  order,  plus  postage  and  regis- 
tration. Covers  could  be  registered  for  an  additional  fifty 
cents,  though  the  regular  mail  charge  was  ten  cents.  For  a 
further  payment  of  fifty  cents  the  envelope  would  be  auto- 
graphed by  the  crew.  But  the  company  would  not  guaran- 
tee delivery  of  any  covers. 

Philatelic  editors  on  both  sides  of  the  ocean  raised  such 
a  storm  of  denunciation  that  the  scheme  was  killed  in  its 
infancy.  The  Standard  cataloguers  having  indicated  that 
they  would  refuse  to  recognize  the  stamp,  the  buying  of 
them  almost  ceased.  A  group  of  persons,  mostly  dealers, 
who  had  been  stuck  with  large  blocks  of  them,  organized 
a  committee  and  tried  strenuously  to  work  them  off.  But  it 
was  of  no  use;  Scotts  refused  to  countenance  the  stamp, 
and  finally  the  Newfoundland  Government  repudiated  the 
whole  deal. 


220     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 

Speaking  of  synthetic  rarities,  when  Harry  Richman, 
night-club  and  radio  performer,  and  Richard  Merrill 
planned  their  airplane  hop  from  New  York  to  London  in 
1936,  they  announced  that  they  would  carry  only  five  let- 
ters, which  were  to  be  postmarked  in  Brooklyn  and  back- 
stamped  in  London;  the  asking  price  of  the  covers  was  to 
be  a  thousand  dollars  apiece.  When  the  Mexican  aviator 
Sarabia  flew  to  New  York  in  1939,  his  government  issued 
only  twenty-one  hundred  of  a  special  stamp,  of  which  four 
hundred  were  sent  to  the  Universal  Postal  Union,  after  the 
usual  custom;  Sarabia  received  a  thousand— some  reports 
said  he  sold  them  for  one-hundred  dollars  apiece,  though 
he  claimed  that  he  received  only  from  thirty  to  forty  dol- 
lars—three hundred  went  to  Mexico's  Philatelic  Agency,  to 
be  sold  for  as  much  as  the  market  would  stand,  and  four 
hundred  were  sold  by  lottery;  none  through  the  post  office. 
The  Mexican  Philatelic  Society  protested  in  vain  against 
such  skullduggery.  Some  leading  New  York  dealers  in  air- 
mail stamps  refused  to  handle  this  one,  but  one  depart- 
ment store  succeeded  in  corralling  nearly  a  hundred  copies 
from  various  sources,  and  they  sold  like  hot  cakes  to  collec- 
tors at  $29.50  before  the  flight  took  place. 

Among  the  Mexican  stamps  of  1935,  the  Standard  Cata- 
logue has  this  to  say  of  one:  "We  do  not  recognize  the 
variety  created  by  overprinting  No.  975  with  the  words, 
'Vuelo  de  Amelia  Earhart,  1935,'  as  a  stamp  issued  for  pos- 
tal purposes/'  Only  780  of  these  stamps  were  issued,  of 
which  480  went  to  the  Universal  Postal  Union,  ten  were 
given  to  diplomats,  thirty  were  sold  to  members  of  phila- 
telic societies  in  New  York  City,  ten— count  them— ten  were 
sold  to  the  public  at  face  value  by  lottery,  and  250  went  to 
Mr.  Putnam,  Miss  Earhart's  husband,  who  had  supplied 
the  die  and  the  violet  ink  for  the  overprinting.  Miss  Earhart 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     221 

had  not  been  sworn  in  as  a  United  States  pilot,  and  as  she 
did  not  deliver  the  mail  to  this  government  at  our  border, 
but  carried  it  all  the  way  to  Newark,  the  post  office  there 
refused  to  receive  it.  Considerable  pressure  was  brought 
upon  the  Standard  cataloguers  to  induce  them  to  recognize 
the  stamp,  but  in  vain.  Foreign  governments  under  the 
same  circumstances  have  sometimes  threatened  all  sorts  of 
things  if  their  stamps  were  not  given  a  clean  bill  of  health; 
threats  which  are  never  carried  out. 

These  aviators  become  huffy  sometimes  when  people 
don't  come  across.  When  De  Pinedo  made  his  world  flight 
in  1925,  he  was  given  ninety-three  letters  at  Calcutta  to  be 
carried  to  Melbourne.  All  carried  a  beautiful  cachet  with 
map  of  India  and  airplane,  and  the  words,  'Italian  World 
Air  Flight."  De  Pinedo  had  autographed  all  the  covers  ac- 
cording to  request  when  he  demanded  that  the  Calcutta 
folk  pay  over  twenty  rupees  per  cover  for  Italian  charities. 
They  declined  to  do  this.  He  accordingly  delivered  the 
letters  to  the  Italian  consulate  at  Melbourne  with  his  auto- 
graph cut  from  each,  and  they  were  returned  to  the  senders 
without  passing  through  the  mails,  so  that  they  had  no 
philatelic  value. 

Rocket  flights  have  taken  many  a  dollar  from  collectors. 
Every  now  and  then  some  promoter  tries  one,  and  the 
philatelists  always  help  him  out.  The  rockets  never  get  any- 
where, but  that  doesn't  seem  to  matter.  In  a  flight  "from 
New  York  to  New  Jersey"  at  Greenwood  Lake  in  1935,  the 
first  rocket  was  prudently  launched  very  close  to  the  State 
line,  soared  about  a  hundred  feet  through  the  air  and  slid 
across  the  line  on  the  ice.  The  second  did  only  slightly 
better.  There  were  4,800  letters  and  1,850  post  cards  in  the 
rockets,  on  which  enthusiasts  had  stuck  seventy-five-cent 
and  fifty-cent  special  stamps,  in  addition  to  the  United 


222     TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS 

States  stamps  necessary  to  carry  the  missives  back  to  their 
owners.  In  a  stunt  on  the  Texas  Mexican  border  in  1936, 
advertised  as  'The  First  Complete  International  Rocket 
Flight  in  the  World/'  one  of  the  missiles  actually  did  suc- 
ceed in  getting  across  the  little  creek  there  known  as  the 
Rio  Grande.  Another  attempt  in  Cuba  in  1939  was  even 
less  successful;  the  rockets  just  fizzed  and  wouldn't  fly. 

Of  course  there  are  elaborate  cachets  prepared  for  these 
events.  The  cachet,  in  company  with  the  first-day  cover,  is 
a  favorite  fad  just  now.  Anybody  can  promote  one.  If  you 
wish  to  "sponsor"  a  cachet  for  the  dedication  of  the  Odd 
Fellows  Hall  at  Squab  Center  or  the  fiftieth  anniversary  of 
the  building  of  Peleg  Pringle's  cider  mill  at  the  Corners, 
you  have  only  to  announce  it  in  a  stamp  magazine,  and 
hundreds  of  collectors  will  send  you  money  for  the  covers. 
We  read  that  "So  and  so  will  have  a  surprise  cachet  for  the 
end  of  April  or  beginning  of  May,"  and  no  doubt  many 
collectors  send  stamps  for  they  don't  know  what.  The 
cachets  of  the  Seth  Parker  World  Cruise  brought  in  a  nice 
bit  of  money  toward  paying  the  expenses  of  the  trip.  Re- 
cently some  disgusted  anti-cachet  collector  produced  a 
cachet  reading,  "Hooey,  Baloney,  Bunk,"  as  a  nose-thumb- 
ing gesture  at  the  whole  business. 

The  humiliating  episode  in  our  own  country  in  1934, 
when  Postmaster-General  Farley  deliberately  set  about  cre- 
ating rarities  for  Administration  philatelists,  from  the  Presi- 
dent on  down,  and  for  other  favored  insiders  by  distribut- 
ing to  them  unperforated  sheets  of  new  commemorative 
stamps,  the  naive  revelation  of  the  scheme  by  one  of  the 
insiders  who  sent  his  sheet,  insured  for  $20,000— and  how 
dumb  those  insurance  men  were!— to  New  York  to  be  sold, 
the  fearful  row  that  arose  in  the  philatelic  world  and  then 
in  Congress  over  the  matter,  the  final  capitulation  of  the 


TREASONS,  STRATAGEMS  AND  SPOILS     223 

Postmaster-General— after  blandly  denying  for  weeks  that 
any  such  sheets  existed,  his  eventual  issuance,  under  pres- 
sure, of  imperforate  sheets  for  everybody,  so  that  the  value 
of  the  insiders'  haul  was  ruined,  all  this  constitutes  another 
highly  significant  incident  in  the  revelation  of  the  prevalent 
governmental  ethics  of  the  times.  Incidentally,  Mr.  Farley's 
is  the  first  postal  administration  in  our  history  in  which  the 
Postmaster-General's  name  has  appeared  on  the  margins 
of  stamp  sheets— which  also  has  its  significance. 


'-NOR  CUSTOM  STALE  HER  INFINITE 
VARIETY" 


HENRY  BISHOPP,  to  whom 
^1_  T>    -U    1. 

the    British    posts    were 
farmed  in  1660,  is  said  to 

have  devised  the  first  stamped  postmark— a  small  circle 
with  two  letters  above,  denoting  the  month,  and  below,  the 
day  of  the  month.  William  Dockwra  who,  under  govern- 
ment license,  organized  an  excellent  local  postage  system 
in  London  in  1680,  had  two  postmarks— a  triangular  design 
containing  the  words,  "Penny  Post  Paid,"  and  a  heart  with 
"Mor."  (morning)  or  "Af."  (afternoon)  and  a  figure  sig- 
nifying the  hour  at  which  the  missive  was  mailed. 

In  the  eighteenth  century  there  came  to  be  other  stamps 
-"Paid,"  "Free"  (on  franked  mail),  and  eventually,  the 
name  of  the  sending  town  and  the  date.  From  Bishopp's 
time  until  about  1825  all  these  stamps  were  cut  on  wood; 
then  steel  stamps  came  into  use  and  continued  into  the 
twentieth  century. 

One  of  the  curious  stamps  first  used  by  our  own  young 
government  is  a  little  circle  containing  the  date— the  day 
of  the  month  above,  and  name  of  month,  expressed  by 
two  letters,  below.  And  here  we  find  that  the  Fathers  of 
the  Republic  were  so  chuck-full  of  classical  learning  that 
they  must  needs  print  their  capital  J's  as  Fs  and  their  U's 

224 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 


225 


as  V's  in  the  ancient  Roman  fashion.  Thus  when  you  see 
a  stamp  with  "23"  over  "IV,"  the  lower  letters  appear  to 
be  the  Roman  way  of  writing  "4,"  but  not  so;  it  is  the  ab- 
breviation for  June  23d.  The  twelve  months  are  thus  indi- 
cated: IA,  FE,  MR,  AP,  MY,  IV,  IY,  AV,  SE,  OC,  NO,  and  DE. 

The  names  of  the  sending  office,  printed  in  a  straight 
line,  began  to  appear  in  the  early  days  of  our  posts,  but  only 
for  the  largest  cities.  New  York,  with  the  "New"  above  the 


DOCKWRA'3    POSTMARKS. 
('•  Th*  Pntent  State  of  London,"  1081.) 


"York,"  appears  to  have  been  the  first  form;  but  very 
shortly  the  two  words  were  put  on  the  same  line,  and  pres- 
ently the  date  was  added,  "NEW  YORK  august*  12."  For 
decades  afterward,  however,  small  towns  and  villages  had  to 
get  along  with  no  postmark  save  a  written  one.  By  the 
beginning  of  John  Adams's  administration,  the  straight- 
line  postmark  was  giving  way  to  the  circular  one  which, 
with  slight  variations  as  to  size  and  internal  arrangement 
of  lettering,  became  universal  and  has  so  remained  to  this 
day.  True,  Philadelphia,  always  quaint,  long  used  an  oc- 
tagonal postmark,  and  there  were  ovals  and  half  ovals  with 
one  side  perfectly  flat,  but  the  circle  finally  displaced  them 
all.  We  find  the  seat  of  government  mentioned  in  these 
early  postmarks  as  WASH.  CITY— a  few  years  later  with  the 
Washington  spelled  in  full  or  the  rearrangement,  City  of 
Washington.  Not  for  more  than  half  a  century  could  they 


226  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

quite  make  up  their  minds  to  drop  the  word  "City"  from 
the  name  and  just  let  the  D.  C.  explain  it. 

The  early  die  cutters  did  a  lot  of  curious  abbreviating  to 
save  themselves  work.  An  Indianapolis  postmark  of  1827, 
for  example,  mentions  the  town  as  INDP  IN,  while  Florida 
was  sometimes  cut  to  FLO.  They  had  many  varying  ideas 
as  to  abbreviation  too:  Ore.  Ter.  or  O.T.,  Col.  T.  or  C.T., 
etc.,  while  the  Indian  Territory  was  variously  written,  Ind. 
Terr.,  Ind.  Ter.,  Ind.T.,  I.T.,  and  a  few  other  ways.  (Inci- 
dentally, I.T.  in  mid-nineteenth  century  might  also  mean 
either  Iowa  Territory  or  Idaho  Territory.)  The  variety  of 
these  markings,  the  history  and  human  interest  stories  that 
lie  back  of  them  challenge  the  curiosity  and  the  collecting 
instinct  of  any  human  being  who  has  even  the  beginnings 
of  either  of  those  attributes.  Trace  the  history  of  Florida, 
for  example  from  its  Spanish  days,  when  it  was  divided  into 
East  and  West  Florida— see  the  postmarks,  "E.  Flo."  and 
"W.Flo."  Next,  as  a  United  States  territory,  the  circular 
postmarks,  stamped  in  black,  red  or  blue,  name  it  as  "Fl. 
T."  or  "F.  Ty."  Thence  through  its  career  as  a  State  in 
both  Union  and  Confederacy,  the  story  goes  on. 

The  abstract  cancellation  or  "killer,"  as  the  modern  col- 
lector calls  it— we  see  it  today  usually  as  a  group  of  parallel 
lines,  straight  or  wavy,  flowing  from  the  postmark  across 
the  face  of  the  stamp— was  devised  when  England  invented 
the  first  postage  stamp.  That  first  British  cancellation  die 
was  a  sort  of  hollow,  double-outlined  four-leaf  clover,  cut 
in  wood,  and  cost  each  post  office  a  shilling.  The  idea  was 
carried  over  to  this  country  soon  after  we  began  using 
postage  stamps,  though  even  to  this  day  many  small  post 
offices  cancel  the  stamp  only  with  the  town-and-date  post- 
mark. But  no  sooner  had  we  begun  using  a  separate  killer 
than  the  exuberant  American  fancy  began  to  play  with  its 


SKoo 

FLY 


usafc 


Courtesy  of  "Stamps" 

CURIOUS  HOME-MADE  CANCELLATIONS  MADE  BY  POSTMASTERS 

IN  THE  l86o?S  AND  'yC/S.  NOTE  THE  SEEMINGLY  MEANINGLESS 

ONES  IN  BOTTOM  ROWS 


228  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

possibilities,  and  within  three  decades  had  produced  the 
wildest  crop  of  postal  markings  ever  seen  in  any  country. 

The  postmaster  at  first  cut  or  had  the  stamp  cut  out  of 
wood.  And  then  some  chap  discovered  that  a  bottle  cork 
was  the  easiest  thing  of  all  on  which  to  carve  a  design.  The 
possibilities  for  fun  with  a  nice,  new  cork  and  a  sharp  knife 
were  so  vast  and  varied  that  a  rapid  decline  in  the  whittling 
of  wooden  sticks  was  noted  among  Yankee  postmasters. 

One  of  the  very  early  rarities  among  our  cancellations  is 
a  circle  with  a  lyre  inside  it,  found  on  a  stamp  of  1847;  but 
the  stamp  was  peeled  off  the  envelope  ages  ago,  and  no  one 
now  can  tell  where  the  letter  was  mailed  or  find  any  record 
of  the  town  which  used  such  a  canceler.  The  Gold  Rush 
and  subsequent  postalization  of  the  Pacific  Coast  brought 
some  curious  canceling  designs,  notably  the  kicking  mule 
of  Goleta,  California.  But  after  all,  was  that  any  worse  than 
the  fat  pig  with  which  Sandisfield,  Massachusetts,  was  can- 
celing its  letters  in  1861? 

Those  early  canceling  inks  weren't  entirely  waterproof 
and  a  tendency  developed  to  wash  the  stamp  and  use  it 
again.  The  troubles  of  the  Post  Office  were  complicated  by 
the  practice,  which  became  widespread  during  the  Civil 
War,  of  using  stamps  in  small  quantities  as  currency— for 
buying  cigars  or  other  small  items,  and  even  for  paying 
street-car  or  bus  fares.  Oftentimes,  when  a  passenger 
boarded  a  vehicle  in  the  rain  and  fished  out  from  a  vest 
pocket  two  or  three  stamps  already  stuck  together  from 
dampness,  a  hot  argument  would  arise  between  him  and 
conductor  or  driver  as  to  whether  his  currency  was  passable. 
They  were  fingered,  stuffed  into  pockets  and  rumpled 
until  they  finally  "become  so  defaced/'  wrote  Postmaster- 
General  Creswell  in  1870,  "as  to  be  inapplicable  to  legiti- 
mate use  for  the  payment  of  postage;  and  evil-disposed 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY  229 

persons  have  availed  themselves  of  the  opportunity  thus 
afforded"  of  slipping  old  washed  or  lightly  canceled  stamps 
into  circulation  as  currency.  Mr.  Creswell  was  therefore 
seeking  some  way  of  canceling  a  stamp  which  would  render 
it  forever  useless  thereafter.  One  measure  that  he  favored 
was  the  prohibiting  of  the  removal  of  canceled  stamps  for 
any  purpose  whatsoever  from  the  paper  to  which  they  were 
attached.  In  view  of  the  later  appreciation  of  covers  rather 
than  the  detached  stamp,  he  was  really  offering  collectors 
a  boon,  though  they  didn't  realize  it  at  the  time.  But  Con- 
gress wouldn't  act  upon  his  suggestion,  so  that  was  out. 

All  sorts  of  schemes  for  defacing  the  stamps  otherwise 
than  by  ink  had  been  and  were  constantly  being  proposed. 
In  1862  the  Post  Office  tried  out  a  device  which  cut  the 
stamp  in  two,  but  such  a  dolorous  outcry  was  raised,  espe- 
cially by  the  growing  army  of  collectors,  that  this  was  aban- 
doned. Other  cutting  and  scarifying  ideas  were  tried  during 
the  next  three  years.  A  curious  cancellation  has  been  found 
on  two  stamps  only  of  Hawaii,  the  one-cent  purple  of 
1864-71  and  the  two-cent  brown  of  1875—3  double  circle 
with  three  tiny  circles  inside  it,  these  three  being  sharp- 
edged  punches  on  the  metal  die  which  cut  the  paper  and 
carried  the  ink  into  the  fibers.  Some  philatelists  have  sur- 
mised that  this  die  was  made  for  use  in  the  United  States, 
but  rejected  by  the  Post  Office  Department. 

In  1863  a  Mr.  R.  P.  Sawyer  announced  that  he  had  a 
new  and  unbeatable  method.  He  calculated  the  annual  loss 
to  the  government  by  the  washing  of  stamps  to  be  ten 
million  dollars— a  rather  astronomical  sum  for  those  days. 
He  could  save  all  this  by  his  new  method,  which  did  not 
cut  the  stamps  or  the  envelope,  and  would  cancel  twenty- 
five  letters  in  the  time  of  one  by  the  existing  system.  It  was 
unwashable,  and  best  of  all,  canceled  each  stamp  in  a  dif- 


230  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

ferent  way.  The  system  was  the  last  word,  the  ne  plus  ultra. 
"No  improvement,"  said  he  modestly,  "can  be  made  in  the 
invention,  the  subject  being  exhausted."  But  we  cannot 
learn  the  nature  of  his  wondrous  device,  and  it  is  lost  to 
the  world  now,  for  the  government  never  adopted  it. 

Creswell  thought  the  simplest  plan  of  defacement  would 
be  to  gum  only  half  the  stamp,  so  that  the  other  half  might 
be  torn  off  as  a  cancellation— a  plan  already  tried  in  France. 
(He  forgot  the  uproar  over  the  mutilation  of  1862.)  In  his 
1870  report  he  listed  a  number  of  the  schemes  proposed 
to  the  Department  by  earnest  individuals  who  thought  they 
had  solved  the  problem.  Among  the  funniest  was  the  one 
he  called  Number  six,  whose  proponent  said,  "Let  the  de- 
facing clerk  place  the  letter  upon  some  suitable  support, 
and  a  single  stroke  with  a  rasp  or  coarse  file  will  obliterate 
the  stamp  beyond  restoration."  And  the  envelope,  too,  he 
might  have  added,  and  probably  a  portion  of  the  letter. 
Number  seven's  suggestion  was  the  perforation  of  two  or 
three  stamps  at  once  by  an  electric  battery.  Number  eight's 
was  "A  thread  to  underlie  the  stamp;  the  thread  to  pro- 
trude below  the  stamp  sufficiently  far  to  allow  of  its  being 
grasped  by  the  fingers  and  ripped  up  through  the  stamp." 

Number  thirteen  proposed  "a  very  simple  apparatus,  con- 
sisting of  only  one  cutter,  two  springs,  three  gears  for  driv- 
ing flywheels,  and  four  flywheels  for  driving  three  or  more 
circular  saws,  to  scratch  off  the  surface  of  the  stamp."  To 
which  a  New  York  editor  retorted  dryly,  "There  are  sev- 
eral of  these  defacement  machines  very  profitably  em- 
ployed at  the  present  time  in  sawing  up  boards."  Number 
fourteen  believed  that  stamps  might  be  branded  like  cattle. 
"A  small  lamp  should  be  kept  burning,  in  which  to  heat 
the  brand,"  and  thus,  he  asserted,  a  man  could  deface  a 
stamp  in  twenty  seconds  or  even  four  per  minute.  Clerks 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY  231 

with  hammer  cancelers  were  even  then  defacing  from  150 
to  160  per  minute. 

An  idea  was  already  in  operation  at  the  time,  having  been 
introduced  in  1867— the  grill,  as  it  is  called  now,  which  con- 
sisted in  embossing  or  pitting  the  stamp  with  rows  of  tiny 
dots  supposed  to  let  the  ink  into  the  fiber  and  prevent 
washing.  On  the  first  stamp  given  the  treatment,  the  three- 
cent  red,  the  grilling  covered  the  entire  stamp;  then  it  ap- 
peared as  a  smaller  rectangle,  and  as  years  went  on,  with 
all  sorts  of  variations,  sometimes  being  found  in  the  corners 
of  the  stamp,  sometimes  at  top  or  bottom,  and  again  on 
one  side  or  the  other.  The  grill  ended  in  1873. 

Dozens  of  inventors  actually  patented  their  devices 
hoping  to  sell  them  to  the  government.  There  were  ideas 
for  not  only  punching  holes,  but  for  cutting  a  V-shaped 
notch  in  the  edge  of  the  stamp.  One  of  these  geniuses 
wrote  that  "The  most  effective  means  of  canceling  postage 
stamps  is  to  remove  a  portion  of  the  stamp  by  a  punch." 
But  "This  has  not  heretofore  been  successfully  accom- 
plished without  cutting  the  contents  of  the  envelope."  So 
he  would  slit  his  envelope  near  the  stamp,  in  order  that  the 
postal  clerk  might  insert  a  "suitable  flat  instrument"  and 
thus  protect  the  contents  of  the  letter  while  punching. 

Patent  No.  101,604  proposed  pasting  a  perforated  sheet 
of  paper  on  this  tissue,  then  printing  the  design  on  the 
perforated  sheet  so  that  the  printing  would  be  partly  on 
that  sheet  and  partly  on  the  thin  tissue.  Anyone  trying  to 
remove  the  stamp  would  tear  the  tissue  and  ruin  the  de- 
sign. A  slightly  similar  idea  was  that  of  the  double-paper 
stamps  of  1873,  which  were  issued  in  one-,  two-,  three-,  six-, 
ten-  and  thirty-cent  denominations.  They  were  made  of 
two  layers  of  paper,  the  top  one  thin  and  soft,  through 
which  both  printing  and  canceling  ink  would  thoroughly 


232  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

penetrate,  and  any  attempt  to  remove  the  postmark  would 
wreck  the  stamp.  Between  January  first,  and  April  15,  1875, 
twenty-eight  million  of  these  stamps  were  issued.  Then 
they  were  withdrawn,  because  of  complaints  from  post- 
masters that  the  upper,  thin  paper  shrank  and  cracked,  and 
that  the  stamps  would  not  pack  well,  causing  loss  of  time 
and  waste  in  stock  returned  to  the  Department.  These 
stamps  may  be  frequently  found  in  the  two-cent  and  three- 
cent  varieties  today;  the  others  are  very  scarce. 

In  1877  another  idea  was  actively  tried— a  three-cent 
stamp  produced  by  the  Continental  Bank  Note  Company, 
with  a  design  cut  clean  through  the  paper— a  sort  of  wheel 
made  of  eight  capital  LFs,  all  with  the  open  ends  turned 
in  towards  the  axis;  the  idea  being  that  any  attempt  to 
remove  the  stamp  whole  from  the  envelope  would  be  fu- 
tile. Less  than  ten  thousand  of  these  stamps  were  issued, 
all  being  sold  at  the  Washington  post  office.  As  they  could 
not  easily  be  detached  from  the  envelope,  and  as  scarcely 
any  collectors  then  were  saving  the  whole  cover,  these 
stamps  are  naturally  rare  today. 

It  was  after  the  Civil  War  that  the  rage  for  bizarre  can- 
cellations reached  its  height.  Thinking  up  new  designs  and 
carving  them  on  the  ends  of  corks  became  a  favorite  pas- 
time for  postmasters.  Geometric  designs,  stars,  shields, 
acorns,  flowers,  leaves,  trees,  three-  and  four-leaved  clovers, 
Latin,  Greek  and  Maltese  crosses,  barrels,  boots  and  shoes, 
comic  and  grotesque  faces  by  the  hundred,  skull-and-cross- 
bones,  whole  animals  and  fowls  or  just  the  heads,  "OK," 
"PO,"  "u  s  GOVT,"  "NORTH,"  "WEST,"  not  to  mention  letters 
of  the  alphabet,  one,  two  or  three  at  a  time;  these  are  only 
the  beginning  of  the  story. 

Chicago  in  1873  was  using  a  billiard  table,  and  making 
attempts  at  picturing  a  locomotive,  some  of  them  unbe- 


Courtesy  of  "Stamps" 

GROTESQUE  HOME-MADE  CANCELLATIONS  OF  THE  l86o*S  AND 

'yo's.  NOTE  KU  KLUX  KLAN  "KILLER"  USED  AT  SMALL  TOWN 

IN  PENNSYLVANIA 


234  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

lievably  crude;  on  another  a  man  smoking  a  pipe  is  found; 
another,  just  the  pipe  itself  with  smoke  artistically  rising. 
Here  is  a  star-and-crescent,  here  (always  in  black  silhou- 
ette) a  cat  humping  its  back,  the  business  end  of  a  pitch- 
fork, a  man  thumbing  his  nose,  a  man  with  a  pack  on  his 
back.  Brattleboro  and  Meriden  each  pictured  the  devil  with 
his  pitchfork.  The  postmaster  at  Waterbury,  the  watch  and 
clock  town,  outdid  everybody  around  1870  and  for  years 
afterward  in  the  wild  play  of  his  fancy,  and  his  display  of 
folk  art  has  given  him  enduring  fame  in  philately.  He  pic- 
tured nearly  everything  already  mentioned,  and  among  his 
scores  of  novelties  were  bees  of  various  types,  the  head  of 
an  old  woman  in  a  sunbonnet,  a  mortar  and  pestle,  a  beer 
stein,  an  old  congress  gaiter,  a  pumpkin  and  a  running  chick 
with  wildly  flapping  wings  which  was  one  of  the  hits  of 
the  era.  There  was  a  minstrel  song,  "Shoo  Fly,"  which  was 
very  popular  in  the  latter  '6o's,  and  which  found  its  way 
into  cancellations,  in  one  case  as  a  crude  representation  of 
a  shoe  and  a  fly.  The  other  fellow  having  beaten  him  to 
this  clever  conception,  Waterbury  just  cut  the  words, 
"Shoo  Fly"  on  a  cork  and  used  that  for  a  while.  The  word 
"HAYES"  probably  used  during  the  Presidential  campaign  of 
1876,  also  emanates  from  Waterbury. 

Often  cancellations  were  highly  personal.  One  presents 
the  postmaster's  name,  Frank  Lyon,  and  an  animal  believed 
to  be  the  gentleman's  namesake.  Such  words  as  "HARRY," 
"BEAR,"  "DAY"  and  "HUB"  are  not  always  explainable  now. 
Postmasters'  lodge  emblems  are  numerous.  Sidney  F. 
Barrett  of  New  York  has  a  remarkable  collection  of  Ma- 
sonic cancellations,  including  the  familiar  square  and  com- 
pass in  many  versions  and  all  sorts  of  situations.  The  Sigma 
Chi  fraternity  was  evidently  pretty  influential  in  Asbury 
(later  De  Pauw)  University  between  1861  and  1870,  for  a 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY  235 

2X  postmark  is  found  on  many  covers  from  Greencastle, 
Indiana,  during  that  period. 

Railroads  and  steamboat  lines  had  their  own  postmarks 
made  in  wood  or  metal;  the  railroad  with  its  own  name,  the 
water  line— whose  mail  service  was  at  first  purely  a  private 
affair— with  the  name  of  the  boat,  sometimes  its  picture 
also,  sometimes  with  the  captain's  name  added.  These  are 
made  the  subjects  of  some  fine  collections,  and  even  the 
historian  may  learn  things  from  them  not  readily  found 
elsewhere.  There  is  an  undoubtedly  genuine  envelope  with 
the  postmark  of  a  little  short-line  railroad  in  far  northern 
New  York,  which  Edward  Hungerford,  the  great  railroad 
historian— who  was  born  up  there  and  knows  that  region 
as  he  knows  the  back  of  his  hand— could  scarcely  bring 
himself  to  believe  had  ever  operated,  even  when  he  saw 
the  postmark.  And  we  learn  that  there  was  even  a  little 
steamer  carrying  mail  the  sixteen-mile  length  of  Skaneateles 
Lake  in  New  York  in  1848;  for  here  is  a  letter  from  Glen 
Haven  at  the  head  of  the  lake,  postmarked  by  Skaneateles 
at  the  other  end,  also  stamped  "Steamboat"  and  "7,"  which 
shows  that  the  boat  got  its  customary  two  cents  for  carrying 
the  missive,  just  like  an  ocean  steamer. 

What  a  rare  field  for  collecting  there  is  in  the  ocean  mail 
cancellations  from  the  earliest  times  to  these.  What  stories 
lie  back  of  those  postmarks-"Ship  letter,"  "Paquebot," 
"Posted  on  Board,"  "Posted  on  High  Seas,"  "United  States 
Sea  P.O.,"  "Southampton  Ship  Letter."  What  romance 
and  history  and  tragedy  in  the  mail  carried  by  ships  to  and 
from  California  during  the  Gold  Rush  and  for  twenty  years 
thereafter,  until  the  Pacific  Railroad  days;  first  around  the 
Horn,  then  by  muleback  across  Panama,  then  by  Panama 
Railroad,  sometimes— in  the  wars  between  Commodore 
Variderbilt,  Garrison  and  Ramsey-Carmack— across  Nica- 


236  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

ragua  or  Tehuantepec,  with  echoes  from  the  guns  of 
William  Walker,  the  "gray-eyed  man  of  destiny,"  sounding 
overtones  above  the  rest. 

J.  Murray  Bartels  of  New  York  discovered  a  number  of 
years  ago  that  special  types  of  cancellations  were  used  by 
the  New  York  City  post  office  between  1871  and  1876  on 
mail  sent  to  foreign  countries,  and  he  began  collecting 
them.  Others  followed  his  lead.  These  markings  embrace  a 
vast  assortment  of  the  most  intricate  and  beautiful  cancel- 
ing designs  in  all  philatelic  history.  The  great  majority  are 
round;  a  rim  encircling  stars  of  myriad  sorts,  wheels,  geo- 
metric designs  and  what  may  only  be  described  as  con- 
ventionalized flowers  of  many  petals— these  in  addition  to 
a  few  odd  ideas.  There  were  so  many  that  each  design 
could  have  been  in  use  only  briefly.  Edwin  Milliken,  an- 
other collector  of  them,  thinks  that  more  than  half  of 
them  existed  only  a  few  days.  Somebody  in  the  New 
York  post  office  in  those  days  actually  out-Waterburied 
Waterbury  in  his  industry,  though  in  a  more  artistic  way. 
Of  some  of  the  rarest  patterns,  only  one  or  two  copies  are 
known.  In  addition  to  the  cancellations,  there  were  numer- 
ous other  stampings  to  gladden  the  collector's  heart;  post- 
marks of  the  numerous  transferring  cities  and  ports,  "Paid 
All,"  "Sufficiently  Paid,"  "Insufficiently  Paid,"  "Paid  All 
via  England  and  Ostend"  and  numerous  others.  When 
the  face  of  the  envelope  was  covered  with  them,  they 
turned  it  over  and  continued  the  story  on  its  back. 

Another  field  for  the  collector  is  the  street-car  cancella- 
tion. The  first  street-car  mail  line  was  probably  the  Third 
Avenue  cable  line  in  New  York,  on  which  white-painted 
mail  cars  began  running  in  1895  from  the  main  post  office, 
delivering  mail  to  its  branch  offices  along  the  line  uptown. 
Later,  in  many  cities,  the  street  car  became  a  real  railway 


Courtesy  /.  Murray  Bartels 

A   FEW   OF   THE   BEAUTIFUL   CANCELLATIONS   USED   ON   SHIP 
MAIL  OUT  OF  NEW  YORK,  1871-76 


238  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

post  office  and  so  continued  for  thirty  years  and  more.  As 
it  neared  a  corner  mail  box,  a  clerk  jumped  off,  emptied 
the  box  into  a  pouch  which  he  carried,  this  in  about  thirty 
seconds,  and  boarded  the  car  again,  which  did  not  stop 
running.  Clerks  in  the  car  sorted  the  mail,  stamped  it  with 
a  postmark  reading  "RPO"  with  the  name  of  the  line,  just 
as  on  a  railway  car,  bagged  and  put  it  off  at  sub-stations  or 
the  main  office. 

Cancellations  and  postmarks  were  usually  stamped  in 
black  ink,  but  not  always.  Charles  F.  Gramm,  of  Plainfield, 
N.  J.,  great  specialist  in  this  line,  shows  you  page  after  page 
in  his  albums  of  stamps  all  canceled  in  blue— or  red— or 
purple.  He  shows  you  pages  of  varied  shields,  others  of 
hearts,  often  pierced  by  arrows.  You  learn  from  his  albums 
that  the  Japanese  caught  the  infection,  too;  here  they  are- 
grotesque  masks,  death's  heads,  demons.  The  fantastic  can- 
cellations were  forbidden  by  our  Post  Office  Department 
in  the  latter  '70*5,  but  some  of  them  have  come  back  again 
in  recent  years. 

August  Anderberg  of  San  Francisco  has  discovered  a 
most  intriguing  branch  of  collecting  in  the  postmarks  of 
towns  whose  names  have  been  changed!  You  must  have 
a  specimen  of  the  postmark  both  before  and  after,  you  see. 
So  far,  Mr.  Anderberg  has  confined  his  activities  to  Europe, 
and  with  territories  being  snatched  back  and  forth  as  they 
are  these  days,  he  has  his  hands  full,  as  may  be  imagined. 
Not  only  war,  but  the  recent  upsurges  of  nationalism  have 
accounted  for  many  changes.  Some  famous  ones  of  course 
come  to  mind  at  once;  Kristiania,  Norway,  changed  to 
Oslo;  Constantinople  to  Istanbul;  Angora  to  Ankara;  Pekin 
to  Peiping;  Petersburg  (the  Russian  never  called  it  St. 
Petersburg)  to  Petrograd  to  Leningrad;  Queenstown  to 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY  239 

Cobh;  Prague  (Prag)  to  Praha;  Lemberg  to  Lwow  or  Lvoff 
—spell  it  any  way  you  like. 

Ireland,  as  might  be  expected,  has  gone  off  the  deep  end 
in  digging  up  old  Gaelic  jawbreakers.  Letters  from  Dublin 
are  now  postmarked  Baile  Atha  Cliath;  Limerick  has  be- 
come Luimneach  and  Tipperary  is  Tiobraid  Arann— at 
least,  until  common  sense  returns  to  government.  No  end 
of  confusion  has  resulted.  The  Chamber  of  Commerce  of 
Bray,  a  seaside  resort,  complained  that  the  town  was  losing 
its  tourist  trade  because  no  one  recognized  it  under  its  new 
name,  Bri  Chualann.  Kemal  Pasha  was  equally  absurd  in 
rooting  out  long-historic  names  such  as  Smyrna  (now 
Izmir)  and  Adrianople,  which  has  become  Edirne. 

Sometimes  local  citizens  rise  up  so  vehemently  against 
a  change  that  they  succeed  in  nullifying  it;  as  when  the 
citizens  of  Trondhjem  in  Norway  boiled  over  in  1930  at 
the  government's  decree  that— in  the  campaign  to  "elimi- 
nate Danish  influences  from  place  names"— this  large  city 
should  hereafter  be  known  as  Nidaros,  the  name  of  an 
ancient  settlement  in  the  vicinity.  This  would  be  like  saying 
to  Cincinnati,  "Hereafter,  your  name  is  Losantiville."  The 
hardy  Norsemen  made  such  a  hubbub  that  their  govern- 
ment, to  save  face,  compromised  on  Trondheim,  and  this 
was  accepted.  H.  L.  Lindquist  of  New  York,  a  specialist  in 
the  philately  of  his  native  Norway,  lists  in  his  magazine, 
Stamps,  dozens  of  changes  which  have  taken  place  in 
small-town  names  of  that  country— Indre  Holmedal  to 
Bygstad;  Kinn  to  Floro;  Bolso  to  Kleive;  Mortensnaes  to 
Nyborg,  but,  thank  goodness,  they  didn't  change  the  name 
of  Aaa.  We  like  that  best  of  any  of  the  world's  place  names, 
because  of  its  simplicity.  We  don't  know  how  they  pro- 
nounce it,  unless  it's  what  you  say  when  the  throat  specialist 


240  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

pries  your  mouth  open  and  asks  to  see  your  vocal  cords 
wiggle. 

The  rise  and  fall  of  favorite  comrades  is  pictured  in 
comic  fashion  in  post-office  name  changes  in  Soviet  Rus- 
sia. Leningrad  still  holds,  but  if  the  Bolshevik  regime  is 
overthrown,  just  watch  that  name  crash!  A  garrison  town 
near  Leningrad  was  in  Czarist  days  known  as  Gatchina. 
After  the  revolution  it  became  Trotzk  in  honor  of  Comrade 
Trotzky;  but  when  it  was  discovered  that  Trotzky  was  a 
felon  of  the  lowest  order,  the  town  became  Krasnogvardeisk 
—City  of  the  Red  Guard.  Similarly,  Elizabethgrad  was  re- 
named Zinovievsk,  honoring  one  of  the  Fathers  of  the 
Soviet;  but  when  Zinoviev  took  a  hand  in  the  private  liqui- 
dation of  Sergei  Kirov,  Soviet  boss  in  Leningrad,  the  town 
changed  names  again,  this  time  to  Kirovo,  in  honor  of  the 
victim. 

Some  towns,  such  as  Dorpat  in  Esthonia,  have  had  four 
changes  of  name  under  different  regimes,  and  many  have 
had  three  in  the  past  few  decades.  The  German  name  Pres- 
burg,  for  example,  became  Pozsony  under  Hungarian  rule 
and  Bratislava  when  the  Slavs  took  it  over;  Neusohl  under 
the  same  regimes  became,  first,  Beszterczebanya  and  then 
Banska  Bystrica;  Weisskirchen  changed  to  Fehertemplon 
and  then  to  Bela  Crkva,  all  three  names  meaning  White- 
church;  Karlsburg  in  German  became  Gyula  Fehervar  in 
Hungarian,  and  Alba  Julia  when  Roumania  took  it  from 
Hungary.  The  capital  of  Roumania  has  suffered  no  less 
than  five  changes  in  spelling.  Now  that  Russia  and  Ger- 
many are  on  the  loose  again,  Mr.  Anderberg  is  doubtless 
working  nights,  for  scores  of  names  are  being  altered  once 
more— sometimes  for  the  worse,  sometimes— from  the 
American  point  of  view— for  the  better.  We  deplore  the 
Nazi  seizure  of  Poland,  but  when  they  change  the  name  of 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY  241 

Bydgoszcz  back  to  Bromburg,  we  are  with  them.  As  we 
write  this,  the  papers  tell  us  that  II  Duce  has  decided  that 
the  names  of  no  less  than  thirty-two  towns  in  northwestern 
Italy  sound  too  Frenchy  and  so  is  replacing  them  with 
good,  honest  Italian  words. 

Mr.  Anderberg  hasn't  yet  gone  into  United  States  towns 
whose  names  have  been  changed,  but  we  hope  someone 
will  do  it  soon,  for  here  is  a  vast  and  fallow  field.  Think 
of  the  California  gold  camps  which  grew  ashamed  of  their 
first  rowdy  names,  jestingly  coined  by  red-shirted  forty- 
niners,  and  sought  something  more  refined.  Jamestown,  for 
example,  sounded  ever  so  much  better  than  Jimtown; 
Fiddletown  dolled  itself  up  as  Oneida;  Rabbit  Creek  Dig- 
gings blossomed  out  as  La  Porte;  Wash  had  a  classicist 
citizen  who  rechristened  it  Clio;  Mud  Springs  became 
Eldorado  overnight;  Poor  Man's  Flat  turned  into  Windsor, 
McCarthysville  into  Saratoga,  and  so  on.  There  have  been 
many  changes  quite  as  complete  in  other  states,  too. 

There  have  been  some  amazing  metamorphoses  of  place 
names  in  America.  There  was  a  hamlet  down  in  the  Loui- 
siana Territory,  near  the  Ouachita  River,  which  the  early 
French  settlers  named  Chemin  Couvert.  The  Americans 
who  came  later,  when  the  village  was  in  the  Territory  of 
Arkansas,  had  difficulty  with  the  pronunciation;  Smack 
Cover  was  as  near  as  they  could  get,  and  so  the  name  of 
the  post  office  began  to  be  spelled.  But  the  Post  Office 
Department  has  always  had  a  yearning  for  shorter,  one- 
word  names,  and  so  in  1870  the  name  became  Smackover, 
one  well  remembered  in  the  annals  of  petroleum.  Similarly, 
the  Department  shortened  Tenallytown,  near  Washington, 
to  Tenley.  Many  changes  were  quite  logical.  In  Indiana, 
as  an  instance,  were  two  towns  named  respectively  Harden- 
burg  and  Hardinsburg;  their  mail  was  always  getting  mixed, 


242  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

so  Hardenburg  was  renamed  Hay  den.  By  another  process, 
that  of  lazy  spelling,  Belle  Aire,  La.,  gradually  decayed 
through  Bellaire  and  Bellair  to  Belair. 

What  an  interesting  collection  this  would  be!  Go  back 
and  see  the  waverings  of  the  Post  Office  over  whether  to 
spell  it  Beverly  or  Beverley,  Waverly  or  Waverley,  Belvi- 
dere  or  Belvedere,  whether  to  put  an  "i"  or  an  "a"  before 
the  final  "cola"  in  Apalachicola.  Palatka  was  once  Pilatka, 
Cleveland,  Ohio,  was  Cleaveland,  according  to  the  post- 
marks, back  in  the  1830*8.  In  1864-65,  Fond  du  Lac's  name 
appeared  on  the  postmarks  as  Fon  du  Lac.  Towns  like 
Lambertsville  and  Johnsonsburg  have  had  the  appendix  "s" 
removed  from  their  middles.  Dozens  of  places  once  had  a 
now  abandoned  "City"  tacked  on  behind— Denver  City, 
Boise  City,  Shasta  City— no  telling  how  many  more.  How 
many  covers  can  be  found  now  that  were  pounded  by  the 
old  hand  postmarkers  in  the  once  booming  ghost  towns  of 
Colorado,  Idaho,  Montana,  Nevada  and  California?  The 
east  has  its  ghost  towns,  too— Greenwood  Iron  Works  in 
New  York,  among  many  others. 

Which  recalls  the  fact  that  there  are  those  who  "collect 
states"  that  is,  strive  to  get  a  cover  postmarked  at  every 
post  office,  living  or  dead,  in  a  certain  state.  One  man  col- 
lects Michigan,  another,  Vermont,  another,  Long  Island, 
another,  New  Jersey  north  of  the  Raritan.  When  you  re- 
member that  thousands  of  small,  crossroads  post  offices 
were  abolished  by  the  coming  of  rural  free  delivery,  this 
collection  assumes  the  proportions  of  a  task  rather  than 
a  chore.  One  recalls  four  little  post  offices  within  a  radius 
of  eight  miles,  two  of  which  vanished  when  the  first  RFD 
came  trotting  out  in  a  buggy,  while  the  other  two  dis- 
appeared a  few  years  later  when  the  automobile  more  than 
doubled  the  length  of  the  route.  And  letters  from  some  of 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY  243 

those  little  post  offices  were  scarce,  even  when  they  were  in 
existence.  Post  offices  are  still  being  discontinued  every 
month,  and  there  are  those  who  make  a  business  of  obtain- 
ing nicely  canceled  covers  from  them  just  before  they  close, 
so  that  collectors  in  this  line  may  not  have  to  search  too 
hard. 

Which  reminds  us  again  that  the  RFD  drivers  began  to 
sort  and  cancel  their  mail,  just  like  railway  mail  clerks,  and 
George  W.  Bye  of  Rutledge,  Pennsylvania,  has  a  collection 
of  more  than  sixteen  hundred  varied  RFD  covers,  showing 
many  kinds  of  their  postmark  stamps;  sometimes  just  RFD 
with  the  name  of  the  town,  sometimes  RFD  Postal  Wagon, 
again  with  the  name  of  the  town  and  RFD  No.  6  under- 
neath. On  some  covers  the  number  of  the  route  is  written 
in  with  a  pen.  Brinkleyville,  N.  G,  and  Model,  Tenn.,  had 
pictures  of  the  RFD  covered  spring  wagon  and  horse  on 
their  canceling  stamps.  All  colors  of  ink  were  used,  the 
driver  apparently  following  his  own  taste. 

The  United  States  Board  on  Geographic  Names  created 
by  President  Harrison  in  1890  made  some  drastic  changes. 
If  you  will  look  back  to  mid-nineteenth  century,  you  will 
find  a  terminal  "h"  on  many  such  names  as  Chambers- 
burgh,  Ogdensburgh,  and  Petersburgh.  The  Board  in  1900 
amputated  all  these  "h's,"  and  also  the  "ugh"  from  bor- 
ough, so  that  Middlesborough,  Ky.,  like  others  of  that  ilk, 
became  Middlesboro.  But  Pittsburgh,  like  Trondhjem, 
arose  in  wrath  and  demanded  its  "h"  back,  and  it  alone, 
among  American  cities,  was  big  enough  to  win  the  argu- 
ment with  the  government.  The  Board  around  the  turn  of 
the  century  also  knocked  out  many  "c's"  and  replaced  them 
with  "k's"— among  others,  the  one  in  Tuscaloosa.  The  citi- 
zens took  it  meekly  for  a  while,  but  finally  began  a  steady 
pressure  to  get  that  "c"  back,  and  succeeded.  But  mean- 


244  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

while,  a  new  courthouse  had  been  built,  and  it  still  has  the 
name  "Tuskaloosa  County"  carved  on  its  fagade,  though 
the  post  office  has  long  been  postmarking  letters  "Tusca- 
loosa." 

What  stories  some  of  these  old  postmarks  tell  of  great 
moments  of  the  past!  Fancy  the  thrills  in  looking  now  and 
then,  as  A.  J.  H.  Richardson  does,  at  a  cover  in  one's  col- 
lection mailed  in  Paris  late  in  the  Reign  of  Terror,  when 
heads  were  still  falling  at  the  word  of  Robespierre  and  St. 
Just  and  Fouquier-Tinville;  a  letter  bearing  the  frank  of 
the  Comite  de  Salut  Public  (Committee  of  Public  Safety), 
dated,  "i4th  Germinal,  Year  2"  that  is,  April  3d,  1794, 
just  nine  days  after  the  execution  of  Hebert  and  only  two 
days  before  Desmoulins  and  the  giant  Danton  went  to  the 
guillotine! 

Or,  in  one's  own  country,  there  was  Dr.  Chase's  Indian 
Territory  collection,  with  its  postmarks  from  the  Cherokee, 
Choctaw,  Chickasaw  and  Seminole  Nations,  a  valuable  and 
unique  historical  exhibit.  Or  Harry  Konwiser's  Texas  Re- 
public collection,  with  its  franks  of  President  Sam  Houston 
and  General  Winfield  Scott,  its  cancellations  by  the  post 
office  of  the  agent  of  the  Texas  Republic  in  New  Orleans, 
the  only  instance  in  history  of  a  foreign  country's  having  a 
post  office  on  United  States  soil.  Here  we  find  that  a  letter 
of  1841  from  Tuscaloosa,  Ala.,  to  Montgomery,  Texas, 
cost  eighteen  and  three-quarter  cents  postage  from  the 
sending  point  to  New  Orleans,  and  a  dollar-fifty  the  rest  of 
the  way! 

But  for  strange  odysseys  of  mail,  one  must  look  at  the 
early  days  of  British  Columbia's  history,  when  it  had  no 
direct  connection  with  the  Canadian  colonies  further  east- 
ward. Here  is  an  envelope  of  1857  literally  covered  with 
markings.  It  traveled  from  London  to  New  York  and  from 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY  245 

New  York  to  Colon  by  ships— postmarks  telling  the  story— 
across  the  Isthmus  by  rail,  thence  by  ship  to  San  Francisco 
and  by  another  to  Portland,  Oregon;  from  Portland  went 
to  Steilacoom  by  stage  and  from  Steilacoom  to  Victoria  by 
Hudson  Bay  courier  boat,  probably  manned  by  Indians.  It 
took  three  months  to  complete  the  journey. 

Alfred  Lichtenstein's  great  collection  of  British  Colum- 
bia is  full  of  things  like  that,  the  stuff  of  which  novels  are 
made.  For  years,  all  mail  from  England  or  eastern  Canada 
to  British  Columbia  or  vice  versa  had  to  pass  through  the 
United  States  and  carry  some  United  States  stamps,  in 
addition  to  those  of  the  other  countries.  There  were  the 
expressmen,  too,  operating  up  to  the  mines  in  British  Co- 
lumbia, who  might  add  their  hand  stamps  to  the  rest. 
United  States  stamps  actually  came  to  be  sold  at  the  post 
office  in  Victoria;  but  sometimes  they  ran  out  of  stock, 
and  cash  had  to  be  sent  with  the  letter  to  the  British  consul 
in  San  Francisco,  who  would  buy  and  affix  the  United 
States  stamps.  So  complicated  was  the  matter  of  postage 
that  sample  envelopes  were  prepared,  showing  just  what 
had  to  be  done,  and  Mr.  Lichtenstein  has  one  in  his  collec- 
tion, with  the  printed  slip  still  inside,  saying,  "To  secure 
dispatch,  a  letter  from  British  Columbia  for  England 
should  be  enclosed  in  an  envelope  stamped  in  this  manner." 

But  still  queerer  sometimes  was  the  fact  that  a  letter 
from  our  Washington  Territory  traveled  through  British 
Columbia.  In  the  Lichtenstein  collection  we  see  one  which 
went  from  Olympia  via  Victoria,  perhaps  because  of  some 
convenient  boat-sailing  to  San  Francisco,  and  so  to  Lon- 
don. Another  comes  back  from  London,  via  Panama  and 
San  Francisco  to  Victoria,  and  the  addressee  is  at  "Steila- 
coom, Washington  Territory,  Oregon!" 

A  few  years  ago  the  pre-canceled  stamp  appeared,  and 


246  HER  INFINITE  VARIETY 

presently  some  of  the  younger  collectors  became  interested. 
Then  came  letters  stamped  by  printed  permit  and  by 
meter  machine,  and  the  circle  of  fans  widened.  Cancella- 
tions became  an  advertising  medium,  and  another  enor- 
mous new  field  was  thrown  open.  Monographs  had  been 
written  on  these  slogan  cancellations,  catalogues  of  them 
have  been  compiled.  We  believe  we  have  seen  the  first  ad- 
vertising cancellation— though  it  is  not  a  cancellation— in 
postal  history,  in  the  collection  of  George  B.  Sloane  of 
New  York.  It  is  an  ax  head  stamped  on  a  letter  of  1833, 
mailed  at  Collinsville,  Conn.,  seat  of  the  Collins  ax  fac- 
tory for  generations.  It  is  not  a  cancellation,  for  there  were 
no  stamps  for  it  to  deface;  but  it  was  nevertheless  an  ad- 
vertisement, just  as  much  as  the  present-day  turkey  can- 
cellation of  Cuero,  Texas,  the  Yale  bulldog  of  New  Haven, 
the  copper  smelter  of  Clarkdale,  Arizona,  and  the  bucking 
bronco  of  Prescott. 

Today,  every  country  in  the  world  is  ballyhooing  through 
its  postmarks— "Visit  Sunny  Australia,"  "Haitian  Coffee  is 
Best,"  "Buy  Cuban  Sugar,"  "Buy  Irish  Goods,"  "Baden- 
Baden  Sells  Cheaply,"  "Come  to  Bermuda,  the  Isles  of 
Rest,"  "Buy  Siam  Rice,"  "Holiday  this  Year  in  Canada," 
"Nice  ses  Alpes  Perfumees  et  sa  Cote  Fleurie,"  "Drive 
Oregon  Highways,"  "Come  to  Atlanta  Dogwood  Festival," 
"Green  asparagus  for  Flavor,"  "Hello!  I  am  from  Holly, 
Michigan,"  "Visit  Corpus  Christi,"  "Visit  Mobile's  Azalea 
Trail,"  "Eat  Meat,  Quality  Up,  Prices  Down,"  "By  All 
Means,  live  Electrically,"  "Eat  Bananas,  Always  Good,  Al- 
ways Available,"  '"Own  a  Canary,"  "It  takes  Needles  to 
Make  Shirts."  There  are  thousands  of  them  and  new  ones 
are  appearing  all  the  time.  Recreation,  efficiency,  social 
welfare,  government,  what  not,  are  being  "sold"  through 
cancellations:  "It  pays  to  play,"  "Justice  for  Genius," 


HER  INFINITE  VARIETY  247 

"Prompt  Payment  will  help  Lower  Taxes,"  "Your  Tax 
Dollar  gives  you  Security,  Health,  Protection,  Education, 
Recreation."  One  of  the  noteworthy  things  is  that  can- 
cellations are  being  made  the  medium  for  a  world-wide 
campaign  for  safe  automobile  driving:  "Drive  Carefully, 
Save  Lives,"  "Safety  or  Sudden  Death?"  "The  Higher  the 
Speed,  the  Worse  the  Accident,"  "There  can  be  no  excuse 
for  Bad  Driving,"  "Courtesy  Prevents  Accidents,"  "U.  S. 
Auto  Toll  is  3000  Deaths  every  Month.  Stop  Killing!" 
"Cautious  Drivers  are  Always  Survivors,"  "Drive  Carefully, 
Accidents  Must  Stop."  Whether  it  is  doing  any  good  or 
not,  the  Post  Office  keeps  hammering. 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 


'o  SOONER  was  the  postal 

CHAPTER   FOURTEEN      |\      I  -  j     i_ 

service   created   by   gov- 


N 


ernments  in  Europe  in 
the  seventeenth  century  than  kings,  nobles,  counselors  and 
legislators  began  to  say,  "Now,  look  here!  We  can't  be 
expected  to  pay  this— what  do  you  call  it?— postage,  on 
anything.  That  would  be  too  absurd!  Look  who  we  are." 
And  so  they  didn't  pay  any  postage;  and  thus  it  has  been 
from  that  day  to  this,  even  in  the  democracies. 

It  is  true  that  when  England  first  set  up  a  national  postal 
system  in  1660  there  were  high-minded  men  who  objected 
on  principle  to  a  franking  privilege,  even  for  themselves. 
Of  course  it  was  understood  that  the  monarch  and  all  his 
cousins  and  his  uncles  and  his  aunts  must  have  their  mail 
carried  free;  that  was  already  being  done  by  such  haphazard 
posts  as  were  then  raggedly  functioning.  And  of  course  the 
king's  ministers,  some  of  whom  actually  did  most  of  his 
thinking  for  him— they  ought  to  be  favored,  too.  But  when 
a  franking  clause  for  members  of  Commons  was  inserted 
in  the  Parliamentary  bill  of  1660— which  created  a  na- 
tional post  for  England— Sir  Heneage  Finch  opposed  it, 
calling  it  "a  poor,  mendicant  proviso,  and  below  the  honor 
of  the  House."  The  Speaker,  Sir  Harbottle  Grimstone, 
refused  for  some  time  to  put  the  question,  saying  that  he 

248 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     249 

felt  ashamed  of  it.  (Does  any  American  Congressman  blush 
now  as  he  franks  a  campaign  document?)  But  a  large 
majority  of  the  Commons  were  already  eager  for  a  taste 
of  the  gravy,  and  when  the  bill  was  put  to  vote,  it  was 
carried  by  a  huge  majority.  Commons  had  erred,  however, 
in  making  no  provision  for  noblemen's  letters,  and  so,  when 
the  bill  reached  the  Lords,  it  was  of  course  thrown  out. 
This  made  it  necessary  for  the  two  Houses  to  get  together 
on  the  subject,  and  presently  the  bill  emerged  with  both 
Lords  and  Commons  on  the  free  list. 

So  enthusiastically  did  the  fortunate  frank  holders  take 
advantage  of  the  privilege  that  within  a  few  years  one  finds 
bales  of  clothing,  cases  of  bacon  and  hams,  kegs  and  bar- 
rels of  liquor,  hunting  dogs,  even  "two  servant  maids  going 
as  laundresses  to  my  Lord  Ambassador  Methuen"  and  "Dr. 
Crichton  carrying  with  him  a  cow  and  divers  other  necessi- 
ties." And  as  for  letters,  a  member  of  Parliament  would 
write  his  name  on  a  sheet  of  letter  paper  for  anybody  who 
had  a  pull  or  was  of  the  right  political  complexion  or 
properly  introduced,  and  the  wonder  is  that  any  postage 
was  paid  at  all.  In  Smollett's  Humphrey  Clinker,  published 
in  1771,  Mrs.  Winifred  Jenkins,  a  maid,  begins  a  letter  to 
her  chum,  Mary  Jones,  with  "Lady  Griskin's  butler,  Mr. 
Crumb,  having  got  Squire  Barton  to  frank  me  a  kiver,  I 
would  not  neglect  to  let  you  know  how  it  is  with  me  and 
the  rest  of  the  family,"  which  proves  that  the  word  "cover" 
was  being  used  a  century  and  a  half  ago  somewhat  as  phi- 
latelists use  it  now.  Again  and  again  Jenkins  naively  begins, 
"Having  got  a  frank,  I  now  return  your  favor." 

It  was  therefore  quite  natural  that  when  our  Conti- 
nental Congress  began  to  sit  in  1775  it  was  not  long  before 
it  had  bestowed  the  franking  privilege  upon  its  own  mem- 
bers. In  1782  the  favor  was  granted  to  the  signers  of  the 


250     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

Declaration  of  Independence,  the  commander  in  chief  of 
the  armies  and  several  heads  of  army  departments,  and 
the  heads  of  the  Departments  of  War,  Finance  and  For- 
eign Affairs.  After  the  present  government  was  set  up,  it 
was  given  to  the  Presidents  for  life,  the  Vice-Presidents, 
cabinet  members,  Congressmen,  and  gradually  to  all  the 
brass  hats  in  the  various  government  departments  as  well 
as  the  army  and  navy. 

But  as  it  was  extended  to  more  and  more  government 
functionaries,  it  became  a  burden.  In  the  first  few  years  of 
the  republic  even  political  privilegees  were  pretty  decent 
in  their  use  of  the  frank,  but  later  newcomers  quickly  real- 
ized its  infinite  possibilities.  A  New  Jersey  Congressman 
in  Jackson's  administration  rode  his  horse  down  to  Wash- 
ington when  Congress  opened,  and  franked  it  back  home, 
the  animal  trotting  all  the  way  behind  the  mail  coach. 
Whether  he  expected  the  Post  Office  Department  to  feed 
it  en  route  we  cannot  discover.  This  gives  a  hint  as  to  why 
Old  Hickory  disliked  the  whole  system.  He  pointed  out  in 
1834,  when  he  was  President,  that  the  Post  Office  had  lost 
a  hundred-thousand  dollars  in  a  year,  largely  because  of 
franking,  and  urged— but  in  vain— that  the  practice  be 
curbed. 

England  in  1840  gave  us  an  object  lesson  in  honesty. 
With  the  introduction  of  penny  postage,  Parliament  totally 
abolished  all  franking— whiff!— just  like  that.  But  our  Con- 
gressmen were  not  quite  big  enough  for  such  action.  In 
1844-45  they  made  some  feeble  gesture  toward  "correct- 
ing" the  evil,  but  by  that  time  the  age  of  pie  and  plums 
and  gravy  had  a  strong  hold  upon  us,  and  no  real  progress 
could  be  made.  In  fact,  the  progress  was  in  the  other  direc- 
tion. Within  a  few  years  Congressmen  were  sending  boxes 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     251 

and  trunks  by  mail,  franking  their  laundry  home  to  be 
washed,  scribbling  or  rubber-stamping  their  names  on 
whole  packs  of  envelopes  for  constituents. 


Cartoon  from  Harper's  Weekly,  j  860 

CONGRESSMAN  (WHO  FRANKS  HIS  LAUNDRY  HOME  TO  WISCON- 
SIN AND  HAS  IT  DONE  CHEAPLY):  "SEVEN  COTTON  SHIRTS, 
THREE  FLANNEL,  SIX  PAIRS  OF  SOCKS,  ONE  COLLAR,  FIVE 
POCKET-HANDKERCHIEFS,  THREE  PAIR  OF  DRAWERS,  TWO  LINEN 

COATS— THAT'S  ALL,  i  GUESS;  AND  AS  THE  MAIL'S  JUST  CLOSING, 

THAT  MUST  DO  FOR  TODAY." 

The  franking  of  the  heavy  freight  and  baggage  was 
brought  to  an  end  on  July  i,  1870,  but  that  of  purely  politi- 
cal letters  and  propaganda  continues  to  this  day.  Not  only 
are  the  assessment  and  collection  of  political  contributions 
and  orders  to  vote  this  way  or  that  promulgated  by  mail, 


252     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

but  all  sorts  of  private  matters  of  the  privilegees.  The  writer 
of  these  lines  received  a  request  from  the  dean  of  a  great, 
richly  endowed  state  university  in  1933  for  the  gift  of  one 
of  his  books  for  the  university  library— one  of  those  gimme 
letters  with  which  authors  are  continually  pestered— and 
it  was  franked  in  an  envelope  of  the  National  Recovery 
Administration— "Penalty  for  private  use,  $300." 

A  frequent  writer  for  the  American  Journal  of  Philately 
who  signed  his  articles  as  "Cosmopolitan/'  suggested  in 
1869  that  the  collection  of  franks  would  make  an  interest- 
ing new  branch  of  philately.  Whether  he  took  his  own  ad- 
vice we  do  not  know,  but  the  fact  is  that  almost  nobody  else 
did  for  forty  years  and  more  afterward;  in  fact,  nobody  went 
in  for  it  seriously  until  well  into  the  twentieth  century,  and 
even  today  good  collections  of  franks  are  few.  The  neglect 
of  it  during  those  intervening  decades  has  caused  us  to 
lose  many  valuable  specimens— some  of  them  in  those  holo- 
causts put  on  by  a  certain  type  of  mind  dominated  by  the 
notion  that  anything  old,  anything  that  accumulates  in 
attic  or  cellar,  ought  to  be  burned  and  gotten  out  of  exist- 
ence. It  has  also  caused  us  to  lose  the  autograph  franks  of 
some  Presidents  who  served  in  the  period  from  the  'yo's 
onward;  for  in  1873  stamps  were  issued  to  the  various  gov- 
ernment departments,  including  the  executive,  each  in  its 
own  design,  with  which  to  post  letters  at  the  regular  rates; 
so  from  that  day  it  was  no  longer  necessary  for  President 
Grant  to  autograph  his  envelopes.  The  stamps  were  super- 
seded in  1877  by  the  present  "penalty  envelope/'  A  Presi- 
dent might  still  frank  a  letter  by  writing  his  name  on  the 
corner,  but  this  became  less  and  less  common.  Twentieth- 
century  Presidents  haven't  been  doing  it  at  all  save  rarely 
in  these  latter  years  for  collectors. 

Two  of  the  greatest  collections  of  franks  are  those  of 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     253 

Edward  Stern  of  New  York  and  Philip  H.  Ward,  Jr.,  of 
Philadelphia.  Both  are  finer  essays  in  a  certain  fixed  cate- 
gory than  you  may  find  in  most  historical  societies.  Mr. 
Ward  seems  to  have  started  it  first.  He  began  collecting 
autographs— just  any  big-name  autographs— when  he  was  a 
boy  of  eight  or  nine,  living  in  Washington.  Those  were 
Spanish  War  and  Philippine  pacification  days,  and  he  in- 
gratiated himself  with  newspapermen  and  government 
officials  who  helped  him  to  get  many  war-hero  autographs, 
including  that  of  Aguinaldo,  the  rebel  leader.  Along  with 
the  correspondents  he  even  got  into  the  White  House, 
which  wasn't  so  hard  to  do  in  those  days  as  now,  and 
wangled  President  McKinley's  autograph  and  Mrs.— but 
well  tell  that  later. 

In  fact,  from  what  he  says,  life  must  have  been  pretty 
jolly  for  a  boy  in  Washington  then,  who  knew  his  way 
around  and  had  a  little  nerve.  Why,  you  could  even  go 
into  the  State,  War  and  Navy  Building,  just  across  from 
the  White  House— or  'most  any  other  government  building 
—and  make  the  rounds  of  the  offices,  saying,  "Mister,  kin 
I  have  a  few  rubber  bands?"  until  finally  you  had  your 
pockets  full,  enough  to  make  a  rubber  ball.  You  started 
with  a  bottle-cork  for  a  center  and  just  snapped  the  bands 
on  around  it  until  the  ball  was  as  big  as  you  liked  (some 
boys  had  them  larger  than  baseballs);  and  Mr.  Ward  as- 
sures us  that  they  would  bounce  yards  higher  than  any- 
thing you  can  buy  in  the  stores  now.  Or  when  the  need 
arose,  you  went  into  an  office  and  said,  "Mr.  Smith,  you 
got  a  pencil  to  spare?"  and  there  was  your  nice,  new,  un- 
sharpened  pencil.  Great  days,  those  were. 

Anyhow,  little  Phil  Ward  soon  found  that  autographed 
letters  were  more  valuable  than  mere  signatures  on  a  piece 
of  paper,  and  he  began  gunning  for  letters.  Among  others, 


254     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

he  solicited  former  President  Cleveland,  then  living  at 
Princeton,  and  received  from  him  a  charming  little  note, 
all  written  in  Cleveland's  small,  angular  script: 

Princeton,  Jan.  5,  1900. 
MASTER  PHILIP  H.  WARD,  JR. 
MY  DEAR  BOY: 

I  am  not  sure  that  a  letter  written  and  signed  by 
me  will  add  to  the  value  of  your  collection.  I  am,  how- 
ever, rather  partial  to  boys,  and  quite  apt  to  do  what 
they  ask  of  me. 

Yours  truly, 

GROVER  CLEVELAND. 

Sixteen  years  afterward,  when  it  was  too  late,  Mr.  Ward 
used  to  kick  himself  around  the  block  because  it  hadn't 
occurred  to  him  to  ask  the  statesman  to  frank  the  letter. 
But  a  collection  of  Presidential  franks  was  something  he 
had  never  heard  of;  in  fact,  there  wasn't  any  such  thing 
then.  Ward  caught  the  idea  when  he  ran  across  an  envelope 
franked  by  President  Lincoln  while  he  was  shopping  for 
autographed  letters  in  1916.  Already  a  stamp  collector  of 
long  standing,  he  said  to  himself  at  once,  Why  not  a  col- 
lection of  these?  And  so  it  began.  Mr.  Stern  took  it  up  a 
few  years  later,  and  by  his  tardiness  missed  getting  franks 
of  Woodrow  Wilson  and  Theodore  Roosevelt,  which 
Ward  has. 

Both  these  collections  have  franks  of  Presidents'  widows, 
as  well  as  Presidents;  for  from  Martha  Washington's  time 
to  the  present  it  has  been  the  custom  for  Congress  to  grant 
the  frank  to  the  widow  of  a  former  President.  But  Stern 
also  goes  after  Vice-Presidents,  all  cabinet  members  from 
the  earliest  times,  signers  of  the  Declaration  and  members 
of  the  Continental  Congress.  He  quails,  however,  before 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     255 

the  thought  of  trying  to  collect  the  members  of  Congress 
since  the  setting  up  of  the  republic.  Getting  the  hundreds 
of  cabinet  officers  is  tough  enough,  what  with  thirty  or 
forty  of  them  sometimes  in  one  eight-year  Presidency.  Jack- 
son, for  example,  had  in  fairly  rapid  succession  seven  or 
eight  Secretaries  of  the  Treasury. 

Mr.  Stern  also  collects  Presidents  at  all  stages  of  their 
careers;  for  a  President  must  come  up  through  an  ascending 
scale  of  political  offices  or  from  the  army  after  a  war;  navy 
men,  apparently,  are  not  eligible.  So,  if  you  like  to  toil  at 
that  sort  of  thing,  you  begin  collecting  him  when  he  first 
received  the  frank,  that  is,  as  a  member  of  the  national 
House  of  Representatives,  Auditor  or  Register  of  the  Treas- 
ury, Comptroller  of  the  Currency  or  some  other  political 
primer  grade;  then— if  he  went  through  those  stages— as 
Senator,  cabinet  member  (all  capacities),  Vice-President. 
Timothy  Pickering,  for  example,  was  Postmaster-General, 
Secretary  of  War  and  Secretary  of  State  under  Washington 
and  Secretary  of  State  under  John  Adams;  and  if  you  are  a 
real  thirty-third  degree  collector  of  franks,  you  will  get  him 
under  all  circumstances.  If  he  was  a  military  hero,  he  would 
have  had  the  frank  in  peace  time  as  Adjutant  General, 
Commissary  General,  Quartermaster  General,  real  General; 
in  war  time,  at  much  lower  rank.  Mr.  Stern  has  one  of 
Zachary  Taylor,  "on  service/'  while  a  mere  lieutenant- 
colonel.  Lincoln  also  had  the  distinction,  unique  among 
Presidents,  of  having  been  postmaster— at  New  Salem,  111., 
1833-36;  and  postmasters  in  those  days  had  the  franking 
privilege.  Years  ago  there  was  a  letter-sheet,  franked  thus 
by  Lincoln,  in  the  hands  of  a  New  York  collector;  but  it 
passed  out  of  his  possession,  and  philatelists  do  not  know 
where  it  is  now. 


256     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

Finally,  you  collect  the  frank  of  the  President  after  he 
has  retired;  for  he  has  the  privilege  to  the  end  of  his  days; 
and  in  the  case  of  John  Quincy  Adams  there  is  another 
stage,  for  he  went  back  into  Congress  after  leaving  the 
Presidency.  So  did  Andrew  Johnson,  but  by  that  time  the 
inscribed  frank  was  no  longer  necessary. 

Of  some  Presidents  these  collectors  have  several  franked 
covers.  Mr.  Stern's  picture  of  John  Adams's  career  is  par- 
ticularly noteworthy,  for  of  our  second  President  he  has 
no  less  than  eight  franks,  covering  fifty  years  of  his  lifetime 
—two  as  signer  of  the  Declaration  and  member  of  the 
Continental  Congress,  four  while  President  and  two  after 
retirement;  the  first  dated  1776,  shortly  after  he  had  signed 
the  Declaration,  the  last  only  four  months  before  his  death, 
when  he  was  ninety  years  old,  and  when  his  poor,  palsied 
old  signature  was  almost  illegible.  For  some  years  before 
this,  someone  else  had  been  writing  the  letters,  Mr.  Adams 
contributing  only  the  signature  within  and  the  frank  with- 
out. 

At  last  accounts,  Mr.  Stern  had  four  franks  of  Washing- 
ton—two while  President,  and  two  after  retirement,  in  1798 
and  1799,  all  addressed  in  his  own  hand.  Some  who  have 
not  gone  into  the  matter  might  think  that  Washington's 
franks  would  be  the  most  costly  of  all.  But  not  so;  price  is 
usually  fixed  by  scarcity.  Washington  was  a  voluminous 
and  tireless  correspondent,  and  today  we  can  scarcely  com- 
prehend how  he  found  time  and  energy  to  do  all  the  writ- 
ing he  did.  Mr.  Stern  says  that  the  franks  of  at  least  six 
other  ante-i873  Presidents  while  in  office  are  rarer  than 
Washington's;  namely,  those  of  William  Henry  Harrison 
(who  lived  only  one  month  after  inauguration  and  was 
ill  a  part  of  that  time,  making  his  frank  the  scarcest  of  all), 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     257 

next,  Lincoln's,  then  in  the  order  named,  Zachary  Taylor, 
Andrew  Johnson  and  James  Monroe.  Franks  by  most  of 
these  while  in  other  capacities  are  not  so  rare. 

Mr.  Ward  has  the  only  frank  of  William  Henry  Harri- 
son while  President  that  the  author  has  heard  of.  It  is 
dated  March  loth,  1841,  just  six  days  after  he  took  the 
oath.  Stern  so  far  has  had  to  be  content  with  a  frank  of 
Harrison  as  a  Congressman.  Lincoln's  frank  is  rare  because 
in  his  administration,  for  the  first  time,  the  President's 
secretary  was  by  law  given  the  right  to  frank  the  Execu- 
tive's mail;  and  Lincoln  was  too  much  occupied  with  the 
cares  of  the  war  to  spend  time  in  addressing  and  franking 
many  envelopes.  These  now  began  to  be  printed  with 
"From  the  President  of  the  United  States"  near  the  top, 
then  a  space,  and  the  word,  "Secretary,"  over  which  in 
Lincoln's  time  one  usually  found  the  signature,  "Jno.  G. 
Nicolay"  or  "John  Hay."  A  variant  of  this  envelope  had 
the  words,  "Executive  Mansion"  above  the  "Secretary."  In 
Grant's  time  came  the  envelope  with  a  printed  address  to 
the  Secretary  of  State  or  other  department  head,  and  up 
in  the  corner  in  plain  Roman  type,  "From  the  President." 

Envelopes  were  introduced  into  the  United  States  in 
1842  as  "the  latest  European  novelty";  at  first  with  un- 
gummed  flaps,  though  Yankee  ingenuity  soon  added  that. 
They  were  not  liked  at  first— were  considered  a  freakish 
fad  which  wouldn't  last.  Stationers  wouldn't  push  their 
sale,  fearing  that  the  trade  in  wax  and  seals  would  be  in- 
jured. For  a  long  time  the  use  of  envelopes  in  private 
correspondence  was  considered  as  showing  a  lack  of  respect 
to  the  addressee. 

So  up  to  1842  all  letters,  and  for  some  time  thereafter 
many  letters,  were  just  written  on  one  side  of  a  sheet  of 


258     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

paper  which  was  then  folded  over  so  as  to  enclose  the 
writing,  and  the  edges  sealed  with  wax  or  wafers.  There- 
fore, the  person  who  has  a  Presidential  frank  dated  before 
1845  or  '50  is  apt  to  have  the  whole  letter  of  the  great  man 
as  well.  Some  will  be  interested  in  those  bearing  upon 
political  or  governmental  subjects;  but  most  of  us  turn 
quite  as  eagerly  to  the  ones  which  deal  with  private  and 
family  affairs,  the  minutiae  which  comprise  so  large  a  part 
of  the  mosaic  of  life.  For  example,  one  of  Mr.  Stern's  letters 
from  Washington,  while  the  national  capital  was  at  Phila- 
delphia, written  to  his  overseer  at  Mount  Vernon,  reveals 
anxiety  over  the  following  summer's  mint  juleps: 

My  letter  of  yesterday's  date,  was  closed,  and  sent 
to  the  Post  Office,  before  it  occurred  to  me,  to  enquire 
whether  you  have  taken  advantage  of  the  present  frost 
to  store  the  House  with  Ice.  Do  not  neglect  to  have 
it  well  filled,  and  well  pounded,  as  it  is  filling.— Ice, 
put  in  whilst  the  weather  is  intensely  cold,  keeps  better 
than  that  which  is  taken  up  in  more  moderate  weather 
—and  still  more  so,  than  that,  which  is  in  a  state  of 
dissolution— But  if  you  have  not  already  embraced  the 
present  spell,  you  must  take  such  as  you  can  get,  or 
you  will  probably  get  none,  as  it  is  not  likely,  that 
there  will  be  a  hard  freezing  spell,  after  the  middle 
of  this  month. 

I  am— Yr.  friend  &c. 

G.  WASHINGTON. 

A  frank  of  Washington  in  Mr.  Ward's  collection  covers 
a  letter  written  by  Tobias  Lear,  his  private  secretary  after 
the  President's  retirement,  and  shows  us  how,  in  those 
days,  you  read  your  newspapers  and  magazines  first  and 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     259 

paid  for  them  afterward.  The  letter  is  addressed  to  Colonel 
Biddle,  Washington's  banker  at  Philadelphia: 

DR.  SIR: 

General  Washington  requests  you  will  be  so  good  as 
to  pay  Mr.  Fenno's  account  for  Newspapers  which 
have  been  furnished  him,  whenever  the  same  shall  be 
presented,  and  charge  it  to  the  General's  account. 
With  very  great  esteem 
I  am  dear  Sir 
Your  most  Obt  Servt 

TOBIAS  LEAR. 

Mr.  Stern  has  a  letter  of  Jefferson's  to  a  functionary  at 
Monticello,  specifying  the  disposition  of  a  check  for  $360 
which  he  encloses,  and  warning  that  some  other  bills  must 
wait,  for  he  can  send  no  more  money  next  month,  "no 
matter  how  pressing  the  demands  may  be.  I  shall  be  glad 
to  hear,"  he  goes  on,  "how  my  horse's  lameness  is,  and 
your  progress  at  the  milldam.  When  that  is  done,  Maddox 
must  begin  his  work  &  will  want  attendance.  I  presume  by 
that  time  you  will  have  the  other  waggon  from  Bedford," 
and  so  on. 

A  pleasant  little  letter  from  President  Madison  to  his 
mother  is  one  of  Stern's  treasures: 

MY  DEAR  MOTHER: 

Sister  Rose  informs  me  that  you  wish  a  remittance 
of  $400.  I  enclose  a  check  in  favor  of  Capt.  Eddows 
who  will  save  you  all  trouble  by  endorsing  and  nego- 
tiating it.  I  presume  he  will  be  able  to  convert  it  into 
cash  readily  on  the  usual  terms. 

Dolly  is  again  pretty  well.  She  has  been  several  times 
latterly  &  for  some  continuance,  much  otherwise,  more 


z6o     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

than  once  seriously  sick.  We  learn  with  great  pleasure 
that  your  health  has  been  but  little  affected  through- 
out the  winter,  and  hope  this  will  find  it  remaining 

good. 

Yr.  Affc.  son, 

J.  MADISON. 

Feb.  25,  1816. 

Individual  forms  of  franking  are  interesting.  While 
Washington  was  in  the  army  he  added  "Public  Service" 
to  his  signature  in  addressing  governmental  officials.  Evi- 
dently he  didn't  relish  that  word,  "Free,"  and  in  earlier 
years  never  used  it  in  franking,  as  so  many  others  did. 
Franklin  playfully  welded  it  into  his  signature,  "B.  Free 
Franklin."  While  President,  Washington  merely  wrote 
"President  U.  S."  in  the  lower  left  hand  corner  of  the  let- 
ter. After  his  retirement  he  wrote  "Free.  G.  Washington" 
or  with  the  variant  of  his  signature,  "G  Washington," 
though  sometimes  instead  of  "Free"  he  wrote  "By  Post." 

One  finds  Franklin  addressing  a  letter  to  "Mrs.  Frank- 
lin, Philadelphia,"  in  perfect  confidence  that  the  signature 
in  the  lower  corner  would  tell  the  Post  Office  which  Mrs. 
Franklin  was  meant.  John  Adams,  with  equal  nonchalance, 
addressed  letters  to  "Mrs.  Adams,  Quincy,"  blandly  assum- 
ing that  that  was  the  only  Quincy  in  the  nation.  True,  it  is 
probably  the  only  one  called  by  the  natives  "Quinzy,"  as  if 
it  were  a  disease.  On  one  occasion,  however,  old  John  did 
condescend  to  give  the  Post  Office  a  tip,  naming  it  as 
"Quincy,  near  Boston." 

The  postal  service  was  expected  to  be  very  intelligent 
and  alert  in  those  days.  One  of  Washington's  letters  in  his 
later  years  is  addressed  just  to  "Maj.  Harrison,  Loudoun 
County."  Undoubtedly  the  major  was  a  big  enough  man 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     261 

to  warrant  such  confidence.  But  a  man  who  wrote  to  Jef- 
ferson and  gave  his  address  as  just  "Richmond"  was  less 
prominent,  and  the  great  democrat  was  much  puzzled  over 
where  to  send  the  reply.  He  might  have  exclaimed  with 
Richard  III,  "I  think  there  be  six  Richmonds  in  the  field," 
had  he  not  found  upon  investigation  that  there  were  al- 
ready fifteen  Richmonds  in  the  United  States.  After  much 
study  of  the  letter,  he  decided  that  it  had  probably  come 
from  Richmond,  Vermont,  and  so  directed  his  reply  there. 
But  he  had  guessed  wrong.  The  addressee  was  "not  known" 
there,  and  notwithstanding  Jefferson's  frank  in  the  corner,  a 
stamped  notation  on  it  shows  that  the  letter  was  sent  by 
the  automata  who  drew  salaries  as  postal  functionaries  to 
the  Dead  Letter  Office,  from  which  it  finally  limped  back 
to  the  sage  of  Monticello. 

Funny  little  incidents  come  to  light  as  one  pores  over 
a  collection  like  this.  President  Pierce  (1853-57)  was  once 
vacationing  in  Bermuda  and,  writing  a  letter  to  a  friend 
back  in  the  States,  just  wrote  his  name  in  the  upper  corner 
from  force  of  habit  and  dropped  the  missive  into  a  mail 
box.  Back  it  came  from  the  Post  Office.  Sorry;  Mr.  Pierce's 
mere  autograph  might  have  considerable  postal  influence 
in  the  United  States,  but  the  laws  seemed  to  prevent  its 
having  any  potency  in  a  British  colony.  So  the  President 
stuck  a  portrait  of  Queen  Victoria  over  his  signature  and 
sent  it  back  to  the  Post  Office,  perhaps  with  his  face  as  red 
as  on  that  day  when  he  and  Mrs.  Pierce  and  a  lady  guest, 
driving  on  the  Virginia  side  of  the  Potomac,  came  to  a  toll 
gate  and  found  that  neither  the  President  nor  the  ladies 
nor  the  coachman  had  one  solitary  sixpence  in  pocket  with 
which  to  pay  toll. 

Years  after  President  Tyler  retired  from  the  Presidency- 
it  was  in  1858,  to  be  exact— an  admirer  wrote  to  him,  ask- 


262     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

ing  for  his  autograph,  enclosing  a  self-addressed,  stamped 
envelope— as  everyone  should  when  asking  authors,  et  al., 
for  favors— either  forgetting  or  being  unaware  that  ex-Presi- 
dents have  the  frank.  Mr.  Tyler  was  aware  of  it,  however, 
and  when  he  very  courteously  replied  from  Sherwood 
Forest,  his  country  estate— you  may  see  it  today,  down  on 
the  Virginia  Peninsula— he  carefully  steamed  the  stamp 
off— its  serrate  mark  is  still  there  on  the  envelope  in  the 
Stern  collection,  as  plain  as  can  be— wrote  his  frank, 
"J.  Tyler,"  across  the  former  place  of  the  stamp  and  sent 
the  letter  on.  Now,  whether  Mr.  Tyler  thought  the  man 
would  be  still  more  gratified  by  having  a  frank  from  him, 
or  whether  he  just  wanted  that  three-cent  stamp,  is  a  ques- 
tion that  can  never  be  settled. 

Mr.  Stern,  by  the  way,  has  more  than  twenty  of  Tyler's 
franks— most  of  them  on  letters  addressed  to  kinsmen  and 
in-laws. 

One  finds  Presidents  and  former  Presidents  before  1850 
writing  upon  all  sorts  of  paper;  and  of  course,  as  explained, 
the  letter-sheet  became  also  the  envelope.  Not  only  white 
of  various  grades,  but  queer  grays,  yellows,  browns— some 
of  it  palpably  off  a  shopkeeper's  counter— blue,  green  and 
what  not.  A  letter  of  President  Van  Buren  is  written  on  a 
deep-green  sheet,  while  one  of  John  Adams  when  he  was 
President,  addressed  to  Benjamin  Stoddart,  Secretary  of 
the  Navy,  is  scrivened  upon  honest  brown  wrapping  paper. 

How  many  of  the  earlier  Presidents  used  just  the  single 
initial  in  franking!— J.  Adams,  M.  Van  Buren,  J.  Tyler, 
Z.  Taylor,  M.  Fillmore,  A.  Lincoln.  Jefferson  signed  "Th. 
Jefferson,  Pr.  U.S."  John  Quincy  Adams  used  only  the 
initials  of  his  Christian  names,  and  his  "J"  looks  so  much 
like  an  "I"  that  one  is  reminded  of  a  popular,  semi-scien- 
tific indoor  sport  of  today.  J.  K.  Polk's  tiny  signature  winds 


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A  page  from  Philip  H.  Ward,  Jr/s,  album  of  presidential 
franks.  He  mounts  stamps  which  have  carried  the  president's 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     263 

up  in  a  little  paraph  like  a  coil  spring.  Pierce  signed  in 
three  ways— Franklin  (rarest),  Frank.,  or  Frank0.  Johnson 
was  the  only  one  to  sign  in  retirement,  "Andrew  Johnson, 
Ex  Pres  U  S."  It  is  noticeable  that  Lincoln's  franks  and 
the  signatures  to  the  great  majority  of  his  letters  read 
"A  Lincoln,"  while  in  state  papers,  proclamations,  and  offi- 
cial writings  he  wrote  the  "Abraham"  in  full.  Old  John 
Adams,  with  characteristic  bullheadedness,  usually  plumped 
his  signature  down  almost  in  the  middle  of  the  cover,  a  little 
below  the  center,  where  it  was  mixed  in  with  the  address. 
General  Taylor  seems  to  have  franked  some  envelopes 
ahead  of  time  and  left  them  with  his  secretary,  for  at  least 
one  has  been  seen  lately,  unused. 

With  the  autograph  frank  rendered  no  longer  necessary 
in  Grant's  latter  years,  only  the  White  House  envelope 
being  needed  to  carry  the  Presidential  mail  free,  there 
came  an  hiatus,  dreadful  to  present-day  collectors,  when 
franks  practically  vanished  from  the  political  scene.  You 
may  find  plenty  of  franks  of  Hayes  and  Garfield  as  mem- 
bers of  Congress,  but  try  to  find  one  of  either  as  President! 
Benjamin  Harrison  and  McKinley  entered  Congress  too 
late  to  use  the  personal  frank,  and  Cleveland  held  no  office 
before  the  Presidency  which  entitled  him  to  the  privilege. 
A  Long  Island  collector,  Sidney  A.  Hessel,  has  a  frank  of 
President  Arthur  which  is  probably  unique,  and  one  of 
Theodore  Roosevelt  which  is  almost  as  rare.  Ward  also  has 
Roosevelt.  Stern  has  him  as  Vice-President,  but  not  as 
President. 

By  that  time  the  autograph  and  stamp  collectors  were 
swinging  into  action.  Ward,  then  a  youth,  though  he  had 
actually  begun  his  frank  collection,  induced  his  friend, 
Senator  Philander  Knox,  to  obtain  President  Taft's  frank, 
and  it  appears  in  the  Ward  collection  on  an  envelope  ad- 


264     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

dressed  to  Knox.  Mr.  Ward  next  went  after  President 
Wilson  and  wrought  upon  him  for  more  than  two  years 
before  attaining  success.  When  you  ask  a  twentieth-century 
President  for  his  frank,  he— or  more  likely,  his  secretary— 
doesn't  as  a  rule  know  what  you  mean,  and  is  apt  just  to 
have  an  ordinary  White  House  envelope  addressed  and 
sent  to  you. 

President  Wilson  was  offish,  and  seemed  to  suspect  that 
Ward  wanted  the  frank  for  some  commercial  purpose. 
Finally,  Mr.  Ward  sent  his  collection  of  franks,  as  far  as 
it  had  gone  then,  down  for  the  President's  inspection. 
When  it  came  back,  try  to  imagine  the  collector's  joy  when 
he  found  with  it  an  envelope  which  had  duly  gone  through 
the  mail  at  Washington,  addressed  to  Secretary  of  War 
Baker,  bearing  the  President's  frank  and  addressed  in  the 
small  type  and  greenish-black  ribbon  peculiar  to  Mr.  Wil- 
son's own  personal  machine,  so  it  would  appear  that  he 
even  tapped  out  the  address  with  his  own  fingers.  Mr. 
Ward  assumes  that  the  President  looked  over  his  collection 
with  Secretary  Baker,  and  observing  that  Taft's  franked 
letter  was  addressed  to  a  cabinet  officer,  decided  to  follow 
his  example. 

Incidentally,  Mr.  Stern  also  has  Taft  as  Chief  Justice. 
Later  Presidents  have  obliged  the  collectors  upon  request, 
though  the  present  one  is  said  to  be  very  difficult. 

After  Washington  died,  the  desire  to  honor  him  was  so 
great  that  a  proposal  was  made,  among  others,  to  extend 
the  franking  privilege  to  his  widow,  and  this  was  done  by 
Congress  on  April  3,  1800.  This  set  a  precedent,  and  ever 
afterward  the  privilege  was  extended  to  the  wives  who  sur- 
vived Presidents  or  former  Presidents.  No  blanket  law  to 
this  effect  has  ever  been  enacted,  a  special  Act  of  Congress 
being  required  in  each  case.  But  for  generations,  Congress 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     265 

waited  dignifiedly  for  each  widow  to  ask  for  the  privilege— 
which  she  usually  did  immediately— before  granting  it.  Two 
widows  of  earlier  days  refused  to  ask  it— Julia  Gardiner, 
second  wife  of  President  Tyler,  daughter  of  a  proud  New 
York  family  whose  manorial  domain,  Gardiner's  Island,  at 
the  east  end  of  Long  Island,  has  been  in  the  family  for  300 
years— and  Eliza  McCray  Johnson,  whose  feeling  toward 
the  legislative  body  which  had  tried  to  unseat  her  husband 
was  apparently  such  that  she  could  ask  no  favors  of  it. 

No  collector,  so  far  as  we  know,  has  ever  succeeded  in 
laying  hands  on  a  franked  letter  of  Martha  Washington, 
but  there  are  fine  specimens  of  Dolly  Madison's  corre- 
spondence, franked  in  characteristically  original,  business- 
like fashion,  "Free.  D.  P.  Madison."  An  interesting  pecu- 
liarity of  her  signature  is  the  straight,  horizontal,  basic  line 
with  which  each  letter  is  joined  to  the  succeeding  one, 
so  that  the  writing  looks  almost  as  if  a  ruled  line  had  been 
drawn  along  the  base,  giving  it  the  strong  individuality 
which  might  be  expected  from  the  hand  of  one  of  the 
finest,  most  original  personalities  among  the  ladies  of  the 
White  House. 

Mrs.  John  Quincy  Adams  also  used  only  initials  in  frank- 
ing— "L.  C.  Adams."  Her  letter  in  the  Stern  collection  is 
addressed  to  the  scholar-orator,  Edward  Everett,  whose 
florid  two-hour  address  at  Gettysburg  so  overshadowed 
Lincoln's  that  some  of  the  newspapers  merely  remarked 
that  "The  President  also  spoke  a  few  words."  Most  earlier 
widows  did  not  write  or  indicate  by  an  initial  their  maiden 
names,  as  is  done  now,  but  just  wrote  in  many  instances, 
Anna  Harrison,  Sarah  Polk  or  Mary  Lincoln— though  Mr. 
Stern  has  also  a  cover  franked  "Mrs.  J.  K.  Polk,"  and  Lin- 
coln's widow  sometimes  signed,  "Mrs.  A.  Lincoln"  or  just 
"Mrs.  Lincoln."  The  simple  "Grace  Coolidge"  shows  a 


266     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

return  to  the  earlier  style,  though  with  Mrs.  Benjamin 
Harrison  came  the  fashion  of  signing  the  name  in  full- 
Mary  Lord  Harrison,  Edith  Boiling  Wilson,  Florence  Kling 
Harding. 

The  rare  franks  of  Ida  Saxton  McKinley  are  a  curious 
study— the  writing  almost  microscopic  in  its  smallness,  an 
uncertain  scrawl  crowded  against  the  upper  edge  of  the 
envelope.  Mrs.  McKinley  was  in  such  feeble  health  that 
she  could  scarcely  hold  a  pen  and  therefore  seldom  franked 
a  letter,  preferring  to  use  stamps  instead.  In  this  connec- 
tion Mr.  Ward  tells  an  interesting  incident,  already  hinted 
at.  When  he  was  an  insistent  autograph  hunter,  aged  ten, 
he  got  into  the  White  House  during  the  McKinley  admin- 
istration, and  found  there  Mrs.  Grant,  the  General's  widow, 
calling  on  Mrs.  McKinley.  Mrs.  Grant  gave  him  her  auto- 
graph at  once,  but  Mrs.  McKinley  would  only  promise  to 
send  him  hers  by  mail.  Within  two  or  three  days  there 
came  a  photograph  of  the  McKinley  home  at  Canton,  with 
inset  portraits  of  the  President  and  his  wife— probably  a 
campaign  picture— and  her  name  inscribed  across  the  bot- 
tom; but  she  hadn't  written  it.  It  had  plainly  been  done 
by  the  faithful  husband,  that  great  exemplar  of  wedded 
love  and  loyalty,  who  took  every  possible  care  and  burden 
off  her  frail  shoulders. 

Which  reminds  us  that  George  B.  Sloane  of  New  York 
has  an  envelope  of  Mrs.  Harding's,  sent  out  during  her 
last  illness,  in  fact,  only  two  weeks  before  she  died  in 
1924,  and  bearing  the  unique  wording,  "Private  Frank, 
Florence  Kling  Harding,"  written  by  another  hand  than 
her  own.  The  post  office  at  Marion  was  evidently  aware 
of  the  circumstances  and  passed  the  letter  through.  Mr. 
Sloane  also  has  a  franked  letter  of  Mrs.  Grant's  which 
proves  that  the  receiving  post  office  either  did  not  know 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     267 

who  Julia  D.  Grant  was  or  had  never  heard  of  the  franking 
privilege,  for  it  stuck  a  postage-due  stamp  on  the  envelope 
and  made  the  recipient  pay  up. 

Mrs.  Theodore  Roosevelt's  franks  are  not  hard  to  obtain, 
for  she  writes  many  letters  and  uses  the  frank  extensively. 
When  she  sends  a  check  down  to  her  butcher  or  grocer  in 
Oyster  Bay,  he  opens  the  letter  carefully,  for  he  has  a 
salable  article  there.  In  these  cases  she  always  writes  her 
name  "Edith  K.  Roosevelt";  but  finding  that  on  certain 
rare  occasions  she  has  written  it  "Edith  C.  Roosevelt"— 
her  name  before  marriage  was  Edith  Kermit  Carow— the 
alert  Mr.  Stern  wrote  to  her,  asking  if  he  might  not  have 
a  cover  franked  with  the  "C,"  to  which  she  retorted  that 
she  franked  that  way  only  when  writing  to  her  own  per- 
sonal friends.  Speaking  of  little  eccentricities- 
Mrs.  Woodrow  Wilson  is  in  bad  standing  among  collec- 
tors, for  she  is  the  first  President's  widow  to  obtain  the 
right  to  have  a  rubber  stamp  facsimile  of  her  signature 
made  for  franking  her  letters,  and  that  isn't  considered 
cricket.  Collectors  complain  that  when  you  send  a  self- 
addressed  envelope  to  her,  asking  for  the  little  boon,  some- 
times she  ignores  the  request,  sometimes  the  cover  comes 
back  with  that  damned  rubber  stamp  on  it,  maybe  put 
there  by  her  secretary— who  knows?  It  just  isn't  nice,  that's 
all!  Some  collectors  are  even  beginning  to  doubt  that  Mr. 
Wilson  was  the  great  statesman  he  was  supposed  to  be. 

In  the  present  century,  widows  never  ask  for  the  frank, 
and  Congress  has  fallen  into  the  habit  of  granting  it  un- 
asked. But  it  took  the  lawmakers  some  time  to  get  the 
notion,  for  Mrs.  Benjamin  Harrison,  who  proudly  though 
privately  declared  that  she  wanted  nothing  from  the  gov- 
ernment, neither  frank  nor  pension,  stamped  her  letters 
for  eight  years  before  Congress  granted  her  the  privilege. 


268     LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR 

It  was  given  to  her  and  Mrs.  Cleveland  on  the  same  day 
in  1909,  and  they  have  now  used  it  for  thirty  years.  Inci- 
dentally, it  may  be  pointed  out  that  the  latter  must  of 
course  be  collected  both  as  Mrs.  Cleveland  and  Mrs.  Fol- 
som. 

Several  widows  of  Presidents  have  long  outlived  their 
husbands.  Mrs.  Madison  had  the  use  of  the  frank  for  thir- 
teen years,  Mrs.  Lincoln  for  more  than  sixteen,  Mrs.  Grant 
nearly  seventeen,  Mrs.  William  Henry  Harrison— though 
in  such  poor  health  that  she  did  not  go  to  Washington 
during  her  husband's  brief  span  of  office,  and  consequently 
never  presided  in  the  White  House— had  it  for  twenty- 
three  and  a  half  years,  and  Mrs.  Polk— tall,  stately,  brunette 
intellectual  who  was  not  only  a  social  queen  in  the  White 
House,  but  the  only  President's  wife  who  was  also  his  secre- 
tary—lost her  husband  immediately  after  the  end  of  his 
single  term,  and  for  forty-one  years  and  seven  months 
thereafter  franked  her  letters  from  the  old  mansion  on 
Capitol  Hill  in  Nashville,  dying  at  last  in  1891,  a  relic  of 
another  age. 

Collections  such  as  those  of  Messers  Ward  and  Stem 
are  real  museum  pieces.  The  title  pages  and  the  data  on 
each  subject  are  beautifully  hand-lettered  and  decorated. 
In  the  Stern  collection,  a  portrait  of  the  President  or  widow, 
either  one  of  those  fine  old  steel  engravings  of  the  past 
or  a  photograph,  is  on  the  upper  part  of  the  page,  with  the 
franked  letter  below  it.  In  the  Ward  albums  the  portraits 
and  franks  are  on  alternate  pages;  while  underneath  the 
frank  are  mounted  some  of  our  stamps  bearing  the  portrait 
of  this  particular  President,  made  from  the  official  or  au- 
thorized portrait  which,  until  the  recent  "Presidential 
series"  came  out,  usually  prevailed  in  stamp  making. 

Can  anyone  present  identify  Ralph  Izard?  Or  Jonathan 


LETTERS  FROM  THE  GROUND  FLOOR     269 

Blanchard  or  John  E.  Howard  or  Nicholas  Van  Dyke  or 
Alexander  White?  Well,  they  were  all  members  of  the 
Continental  Congress,  and  Mr.  Stern  has  their  franks,  as 
well  as  those  of  many  of  their  fellow  members— not  to 
mention  signers  of  the  Declaration,  and  in  later  periods, 
Vice-Presidents,  cabinet  members  by  the  hundred,  army 
officers  and  other  functionaries  of  government  too  numer- 
ous to  catalogue. 

Away  back  in  pre-stamp  days,  before  1845,  all  the  post- 
masters in  the  country  had  the  privilege  of  not  only  send- 
ing letters  free,  but  receiving  them  free,  too— for  you  could 
send  letters  C.O.D.  then— and  right  lavishly  some  of  them 
used  it.  If  you  wrote  a  letter  to  a  postmaster,  you  just 
tossed  it  into  the  mail  with  no  thought  of  expense,  either 
to  yourself  or  anyone  else.  If  away  from  home,  the  post- 
master could  frank  his  mail  just  the  same.  J.  W.  Long- 
necker  of  Hartford,  who  collects  these  franks  of  Connecti- 
cut postmasters,  says  that  he  has  followed  Zolman  Wild- 
man,  postmaster  at  Danbury  around  1813-1828,  on  a  long 
journey  all  through  the  South,  just  by  letters  he  wrote  back 
home— sometimes  franking  them  "Free,  Z.  Wildman,  P  M 
of  Danbury,  Conn.,"  sometimes  just  with  his  name.  It  is 
interesting  to  speculate  upon  how  many  impostors  may 
have  gone  about  the  country,  representing  themselves  as 
postmasters  and  sending  mail  free. 

A  postmaster  at  Canandaigua,  N.  Y.,  once  made  a  nice 
thing  out  of  his  franking  privilege.  He  was  dismissed  in 
1829  for  running  a  lottery  and  using  his  frank  to  promote 
it.  In  one  year  he  had  sent  3,080  free  letters  and  received 
1,397,  all  with  regard  to  his  lottery  business  alone! 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 


>NGUES  in  trees,  books  in 

CHAPTER   FIFTEEN  ^  ,         , 

the  running  brooks,  ser- 


'IT- (01 

1  * 

JL    m 


mons  m  stones  —these 
can  all  be  found  in  stamps,  too,  just  as  in  the  scenery  of 
the  Forest  of  Arden  in  Rosalind's  time,  and  collectors  are 
finding  new  ones  every  year.  The  seemingly  endless  flood 
of  pictorial  stamps  which  most  of  the  countries  of  the 
world  are  pouring  upon  us  now—  celebrities,  living,  dead 
and  legendary,  historical  and  perhaps-historical  events, 
scenery,  industry,  science,  animals,  human  types  and  what 
not—  has  one  virtue,  at  least;  it  has  supplied  subjects  for 
scores  of  new  stamp  collections—  not  by  countries,  but  by 
other  categories,  all  of  them  charming  to  look  upon,  and 
many  with  very  interesting  and  informative  connotations. 
The  pleasure  found  in  assembling  them  is  enhanced  by 
their  physical  beauty. 

And  here,  for  the  first  proposal  of  such  a  hobby,  we  must 
go  back  once  more  to  1869,  when  the  Stamp  Collectors' 
Magazine  of  London  suggested  collections  of  postage-stamp 
portraits  alone—  for  many  stamps  had  already  been  issued 
without  portraits.  Strange  how  many  suggestions  were 
made  in  that  year  which  were  absolutely  novel,  which  were 
not  accepted  at  once,  but  which  collectors  took  up  long 
afterward! 

270 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST   271 

One  of  the  most  elaborate  and  most  famous  collections 
of  this  sort  is  that  of  Theodore  E.  Steinway  on  the  subject 
of  music.  A  study  of  his  collection  will  show  how  the 
enthusiast  leaves  no  stone  unturned  in  his  search  for  some- 
thing pertinent  to  his  subject;  sometimes  pulling  in  by  the 
ears  something  which  to  the  lay  eye  appears  to  be  a  little  off 
genus,  but  no  matter.  A  perfectly  legal  example  of  this 
meticulous  care  in  Steinway's  collection  is  a  view  of  the 
study  of  Camilo  Castelo  Branco,  the  Portuguese  novelist, 
on  Portugal's  series  of  1925  in  his  honor,  for  a  prominent 
item  of  the  furniture  is  a  piano.  In  somewhat  similar  vein, 
our  two-cent  George  Rogers  Clark  centenary  is  included 
because  it  shows  the  rolling  of  drums  at  the  surrender  of 
Fort  Sackville.  It  took  a  watchful  eye  to  see  the  implication 
in  the  Barbados  stamp  picturing  Britannia  driving  a  team 
of  sea  horses,  which  of  course  illustrates  the  song,  "Britan- 
nia Rules  the  Waves,"  and  another  of  Germany,  with  an 
eagle  frowning  across  the  Rhineland— "The  Watch  on  the 
Rhine"  of  course.  Laymen  may  wonder  at  the  Russian 
stamp  honoring  Pushkin,  the  novelist,  until  reminded  that 
from  his  works  were  drawn  the  librettos  of  no  less  than  five 
great  operas— Boris  Godunofl,  Le  Coq  d' Or,  Eugen  Onegfn, 
Pique  Dame  and  Russian  and  Ludmilla. 

Numerous  are  the  stamps  issued  in  memory  of  com- 
posers. One  of  the  handsomest  pages  in  Mr.  Steinway's 
album  contains  the  series  of  oversized  charity  stamps  issued 
by  Austria  in  1922,  bearing  portraits  of  seven  great  creators 
of  music  of  the  past  who  made  their  homes  in  the  then 
gay  and  liberal  Vienna.  Under  each  stamp  is  drawn  two 
or  three  bars  of  music  from  one  of  the  particular  com- 
poser's best-loved  works;  under  Beethoven,  for  example,  a 
bit  of  the  "Moonlight  Sonata";  under  Schubert,  the  "Un- 
finished Symphony";  Johann  Strauss,  "The  Beautiful  Blue 


272      THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 

Danube";  Bruckner,  his  "Third  Symphony";  Mozart,  "Alia 
Turca";  Haydn,  a  sonata;  Hugo  Wolf,  the  song,  "Secrecy." 
Topping  it  all,  most  appropriately,  is  the  thousand-kroner 
stamp  bearing  the  distant  view  of  Vienna,  long  the  musical 
capital  of  the  world. 

On  another  page,  the  Czechoslovak  stamps  honoring 
Smetana  and  Dvorak  have  bars  respectively  from  The  Bar- 
tered Bride  and  the  "New  World  Symphony."  In  similar 
fashion,  the  German  stamps  commemorating  Bach  show 
"Passacaglia,"  and  Handel,  the  popular  "Largo";  under  Po- 
land's Paderewski  is  drawn  a  fragment  of  the  famous 
"Minuet,"  under  Chopin  one  of  his  polonaises;  with 
France's  Berlioz  in  The  Damnation  of  Faust,  with  Italy's 
Pergolesi  is  La  Serva  Padrone  and  Spontini,  La  Vestale; 
Hungary's  Liszt,  a  piano  sonata;  and  so  it  goes. 

There  is  another  page  devoted  to  Liszt;  the  zof  Hungary 
stamp  of  1934  bearing  his  portrait  has  underneath  it  some 
bars  of  the  popular  "Liebestraum,"  and  below  that  is  an 
autographed  letter  written  by  Liszt  from  Weimar  in  1881 
to  William  Steinway,  introducing  a  pupil  who  wished  to 
buy  a  piano  from  the  manufacturer.  Elsewhere  there  is  an 
autographed  letter  from  Richard  Wagner  to  the  same  Mr. 
Steinway,  written  at  Bayreuth  in  1875,  complimenting  his 
piano;  and  there  is  also  the  title  page,  all  inscribed  in 
Wagner's  own  hand,  of  a  "Grand  Festival  March,"  which 
he  wrote  in  1876  for  the  "Opening  of  the  Centennial  Cele- 
bration of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  of  the  United 
States  of  North  America."  Why  do  we  never  hear  that 
march  nowadays? 

Germany,  as  may  be  expected,  has  paid  lavish  tribute 
to  Wagner  with  a  scene  from  each  of  ten  of  his  greatest 
operas  in  one  series,  in  another  with  Nibelungen  scenes 
only. 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST   273 

A  specimen  of  the  1919  Paderewski  stamp  of  Poland 
stands  alone  on  one  album  page,  with  the  slashing  signa- 
ture of  the  great  pianist-premier  across  it.  In  1934  Czecho- 
slovakia issued  sheets  of  stamps,  marking  the  centenary 
of  the  Czech  national  anthem,  framed  above  and  below 
by  bars  of  music  from  the  song,  and  the  sheet  in  the  Stein- 
way  collection  is  autographed  by  President  Benes.  Brazil 
in  like  fashion  issued  in  1936  sheets  on  the  hundredth 
anniversary  of  the  birth  of  her  composer,  Antonio  Carlos 
Gomes,  the  frame  containing  passages  from  his  opera,  II 
Guarany,  perhaps  the  greatest  music  that  Brazil  has  yet 
produced.  Many  small  countries  honor  their  own  com- 
posers, some  not  widely  known  elsewhere;  among  them 
Switzerland,  which  reminds  us  of  Hans  Georg  Nageli  and 
his  song  so  long  beloved  in  the  old  beer  halls  and  universi- 
ties, "Life  Let  Us  Cherish."  When  Queen  Liliuokalani  of 
Hawaii  placed  her  portrait  on  her  country's  stamps,  she 
had  no  thought  of  immortalizing  herself  as  a  composer,  but 
one  of  them  is  in  the  Steinway  collection  because  she 
wrote  that  wistful  and  famous  Auf  Wiedersehen  of  the 
Pacific,  "Aloha  Oe,"  said  to  have  been  inspired  by  seeing 
her  sister,  Princess  Likelike,  bidding  farewell  to  her  lover. 

Venezuela  remembered  her  great  pianist,  Teresa  Car- 
reno,  in  1938,  on  the  occasion  of  the  removal  of  her  re- 
mains from  New  York,  where  she  died  in  1917,  to  her 
native  land.  Italy  brought  out  two  Stradivarius  stamps  in 
1937,  one  of  them  a  reproduction  of  Hamman's  famous 
painting,  showing  the  master  thoughtfully  gazing  down 
upon  one  of  his  finished  violins.  France  eulogized  Rouget 
de  Tlsle  and  his  "Marseillaise"  with  at  least  three  stamps. 
Bellini  must  be  a  favorite  composer  of  Premier  Mussolini's, 
for  Italy  has  produced  a  whole  series  of  stamps  in  his  honor. 

The  musical  instruments  pictured  on  stamps  are  legion. 


274      THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 

Several  countries  show  the  old-time  post  horn;  some  have 
heralds  with  trumpets,  on  others,  military  or  boy-scout 
scenes  include  bugles  and  drums.  Ireland  of  course  has  its 
harp,  Russia  a  whole  collection  of  stringed  instruments, 
Esthonia  an  ancient  bard  with  his  harp,  Ukraine  a  Cos- 
sack strumming  a  guitar,  Tripoli  the  native  flageolet  and 
bagpipe,  Peru  a  man  sitting  beside  his  llama,  playing  the 
quena;  France  a  Muse  with  lyre;  Italy  Pan  playing  his  pipes; 
Czechoslovakia,  a  baby  being  soothed  by  a  violin  lullaby; 
Abyssinia,  the  Empress  Waizeri  Zauditu  entertained  by  a 
woman  with  a  guitar,  North  Ingermanland,  two  peasants 
doing  a  duet  on  the  zither.  Even  the  lyre  bird  of  Australia 
is  not  inapposite.  The  Belgian  Congo  introduces  savage 
music— tom-toms,  drums,  flutes  and  curious  stringed  instru- 
ments. 

Bells  are  brought  in  as  musical  instruments,  which  gives 
opportunity  to  include  the  many  stamps  carrying  pictures 
of  famous  campaniles  and  cathedral  towers,  the  bells  of 
the  Kremlin,  the  same  which  rang  for  the  coronation  of 
Boris  Godunoff  in  1 598,  and  finally,  our  own  Liberty  Bell. 
Even  in  cancellations  and  cachets,  music  plays  a  part.  Lyres 
have  been  mentioned  as  among  the  old  cork-cut  cancella- 
tions of  the  nineteenth  century  in  our  own  country.  The 
Wagner  festival  at  Bayreuth  always  brings  a  portrait  of 
Wagner  on  the  postmark.  A  German  cancellation  of  1935 
shows  a  bar  of  triumphant  music,  "Deutsch  ist  die  Saar." 
The  Saxon  Sangerfest  of  1935  at  Leipzig  portrays  an  old 
chorister  in  his  robe.  On  others  marking  current  Festspiels, 
Liederfests  or  Sangerbundfests  there  are  pictures  of  instru- 
ments, composers  and  so  on.  Even  the  Steinway,  N.  Y., 
post  office  (now  in  New  York  City)  has  had  two  cancella- 
tions picturing  a  piano. 

An  album  such  as  this  is  a  promoter  of  knowledge,  for 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST   275 

it  compels  research  such  as  some  of  us  would  not  willingly 
undertake  otherwise,  and  not  the  least  attractive  feature 
of  it  is  the  information  so  acquired,  carefully  lettered  on 
the  pages. 

Mrs.  Hugh  M.  Clark's  album  of  fashions  is  another  no- 
table one.  The  fashion  plates  include  those  of  both  men 
and  women,  ranging  through  the  whole  gamut  of  clothing 
down  to  practically  none  at  all;  in  fact,  the  latest  styles  in 
loin  cloths  are  shown  on  stamps  of  Raratonga,  Congo, 
Mexico,  French  Guiana  and  French  Oceanica.  Congo  and 
Ruanda  natives,  who  occupy  more  than  two  pages,  appar- 
ently spend  the  least  on  clothing.  A  considerable  portion 
of  the  style  show  deals  with  peasant  costumes.  Germany 
pictures  ten  peasant  women,  bust  or  half  length,  from  East 
Prussia,  Silesia,  the  Rhineland,  Lower  Saxony,  Furmark, 
the  Black  Forest,  Hesse,  Upper  Bavaria,  Friesland  and 
Franconia.  Austria  in  1934  issued  a  series  showing  the  cos- 
tumes, two  or  more  each,  of  Salzburg,  Tyrol,  Steiermark, 
Vorarlberg,  Upper  Austria,  Vienna,  and  the  military  ser- 
vice. Turkey,  Hungary,  Ireland,  France,  Russia,  Estonia  and 
others  also  illustrate  their  distinctive  folk  garb. 

Even  in  the  dress  of  the  townsfolk  of  Mexico  and  Peru, 
the  old  Spanish  influence  is  still  apparent.  The  sarongs  of 
the  East  Indies  and  Indo-China  are  here;  the  pictures  of 
Greek  patriots  in  the  war  for  independence  show  charac- 
teristic features  of  costume,  headdress  and  hair  ornaments. 
There  are  two  pages  of  fine  coiffures,  including  those  of 
the  Princesses  of  Luxembourg  and  Liechtenstein,  Queen 
Astrid  of  Belgium,  Queen  Wilhelmina  of  Holland,  Anita 
Garibaldi  and  a  Turkish  typist.  On  another  page  are  Afri- 
can jungle  headdresses,  both  men's  and  women's.  Switzer- 
land exhibits  the  headgear  of  a  nurse  and  a  nun,  likewise 
hats  from  Basle,  Lucerne,  Appenzell,  Geneva,  Valais,  and 


276      THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 

Graubunden.  There  are  pages  of  athletic  wear  from  all 
parts  of  the  world;  a  series  of  costumes  of  utility  by  Ger- 
many, including  those  of  a  business  man,  blacksmith, 
mason,  miner,  farmer,  stonecutter,  judge,  etc. 

Under  men's  fashions  of  bygone  eras  are  found  noted 
characters  in  Austria  and  Curasao  during  the  seventeenth 
century,  sixteenth-century  Brazil  and  the  British  Guiana 
ninety-six-cent  stamp  which  portrays  Sir  Walter  Raleigh. 
A  page  of  beards  includes  that  of  the  cantankerous  Edwin 
M.  Stanton  on  the  seven-cent  United  States  1873,  Chris- 
topher Columbus  and  Valdivia  on  Chilean  stamps,  the 
magnificent  lambrequin  of  old  King  Leopold  II  of  Belgium, 
General  Maximo  Gomez  of  Cuba,  and  several  others  of 
lesser  fame.  There  are  mustachios,  from  Jan  Sobieski  on 
an  Austrian  commemorative,  on  down,  and  burnsides— 
how  the  present  generation  ever  fell  into  the  habit  of  call- 
ing them  sideburns  is  a  dark  mystery— of  which  those  of 
Emperor  Franz  Josef  of  Austria  are  easily  tops.  A  page  of 
Austrian  monarchs  and  musicians  of  the  eighteenth  century 
gives  us  some  fashion  hints  as  to  wigs  and  perukes. 

Not  distantly  related  to  this  are  the  collections  by  others 
of  women  of  the  world;  and  when  you  consider  that 
"women"  includes  all  queens  and  princesses— some  dog- 
matists even  construe  it  as  including  the  thousand  and  one 
portraits  of  Queen  Victoria— it  becomes  quite  a  catalogue. 
Any  stamp  in  which  a  woman  appears  in  a  group  is  apt  to 
be  considered  eligible.  Others  collect  children  of  the  world, 
but  Mrs.  Edith  Adams  Brown  of  New  York  subdivides  this 
idea  and  collects  only  the  royal  children. 

Apparently  the  first  instance  of  this  sort  was  the  appear- 
ance of  Edward  VII  of  England  as  the  Prince  of  Wales  in 
his  latter  teens  on  the  seventeen-center  of  New  Brunswick, 
1860;  the  same  portrait  being  used  by  Newfoundland  in 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST   277 

1868.  Next  came  the  baby  pictures  of  Alfonso  XIII  on  the 
stamps  of  Spain  and  her  colonies  in  1889,  followed  by 
young  Queen  Wilhelmina  of  Holland  in  1891.  A  charm- 
ing portrait  of  Edward  VIII  as  a  curly-haired  baby  was 
used  by  Newfoundland  in  1898;  and  the  same  country  put 
forth  a  royal  family  issue  in  1911,  on  which  appeared  all 
the  children  of  George  V,  including  Prince  John,  who  died 
in  1919.  In  1931  and  again  in  1938  Princess  Elizabeth  was 
on  a  Newfoundland  stamp,  and  in  1939  she  and  her  sister, 
Margaret  Rose,  appeared  on  one  of  the  stamps  of  the  royal 
visit  issue  of  Canada. 

Montenegro  in  1910  recalled  the  past  by  picturing  its 
King,  Nicholas  I,  in  his  youth.  Roumania  showed  the  boy 
King  Michael  in  1928  before  he  was  displaced  by  his  father. 
Liechtenstein  in  1929  had  an  exquisite  child  portrait  of 
Prince  Francis  I,  and  young  King  Peter  was  seen  on  the 
stamps  of  Jugoslavia  in  1933.  Luxembourg  has  a  whole  gal- 
lery of  comely  children— two  princes  and  three  princesses— 
and  it  is  hard  to  tell  which  is  prettiest,  some  of  these  or 
the  Belgian  child-welfare  stamp  of  1935  on  which  are  the 
three  royal  youngsters,  Baudoin,  Albert  and  Josephine 
Charlotte.  Egypt  pictured  King  Farouk  in  1929  at  the  age 
of  ten,  and  in  1937  on  his  eighteenth  birthday.  Even  his 
royal  wedding  stamp  is  eligible  for  this  collection,  for  his 
bride  portrayed  there  is  only  seventeen.  And  finally,  Mrs. 
Brown  has  included  a  boy  picture  of  Lenin  which  appeared 
on  a  stamp  of  Russia,  and  he  came  so  near  being  a  king 
that  it  is  not  wildly  inappropriate. 

Lloyd  Heath,  one  of  the  librarians  of  the  Collectors  Club 
of  New  York,  making  a  talk  on  philately  before  the  Men's 
Club  of  his  church  in  White  Plains,  remarked  that  prac- 
tically any  subject  could  be  illustrated  by  one  of  these 
special  collections.  The  minister  of  the  church  thereupon 


278      THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 

plumped  the  challenge  at  him,  ''What  about  the  Bible?" 
It  rather  threw  Heath  on  his  beam  ends  for  a  moment, 
but  he  rallied,  accepted  the  gage  and  promised  to  prove 
his  point  at  an  early  date.  He  found  that  many  of  the 
places  mentioned  in  the  Bible  appear  on  stamps  of  the 
Near  East;  many  views  of  Damascus  and  Antioch,  also  the 
Euphrates  River  on  the  stamps  of  Syria;  Jerusalem,  the  Sea 
of  Galilee,  and  the  Tomb  of  Rachel,  on  Palestine,  Mount 
Ararat  on  Armenia,  Tyre  and  the  famous  cedars  on  Leba- 
non. Portugal  attempted  to  portray  the  Angel  Gabriel, 
Abyssinia  essayed  pictures  of  King  Solomon's  throne  and 
the  Lion  of  the  Tribe  of  Judah.  Several  countries  show 
Jesus,  several  the  Madonna  and  Child.  Belgium  has  a 
graphic  representation  of  the  Archangel  Michael's  battle 
with  Satan  (Rev.  VII,  7).  The  Saar  pictures  two  famous 
Biblical  stories,  The  Good  Samaritan  and  the  Widow's 
Mite.  Germany  on  a  series  of  four  charity  stamps  illustrated 
four  of  Christ's  injunctions  to  service:  feeding  the  hungry, 
relieving  the  thirsty,  clothing  the  naked  and  healing  the 
sick. 

Greece  has  pictures  of  Athens,  as  well  as  of  St.  Paul 
preaching  on  Mars  Hill.  Malta  makes  quite  a  feature  of 
Paul,  because  of  his  shipwreck  there:  a  portrait  of  him,  a 
picture  of  him  shaking  off  the  viper,  and  also  of  the  ship- 
wreck, though  critics  complain  of  this  that  it  shows  two 
women  in  the  water  who  are  not  in  the  story,  and  whose 
coiffures  seem  undisturbed  by  their  violent  experience. 
There  is  a  fine  picture  of  a  peasant  sowing  by  hand  on  an 
Armenian  stamp  (as  well  as  on  others),  which  illustrates 
the  parable  of  the  sower;  and  Armenia  also  shows  a  woman 
at  a  well,  who  might  be  the  one  to  whom  Christ  talked. 
Italy,  on  its  so-called  Propaganda  of  the  Faith  issue  of 
1923,  has  a  fine  picture  of  Christ  among  His  Disciples. 


* 


MflWiftPtH  AJ 

8ELGIQUE-8ELQI6 


Stamps  Jent  by  Scott  Stamp  and  Coin  Co. 

Suggestions  for  five  sorts  of  specialized  stamp  collections  which 
cost  little.  Reading  downward,  birds,  bridges,  children,  artists, 


w  of 

>s  T.  Dye's 
i-painted 
lopes  auto- 
hed  by 
d  rulers. 


<Mr.J. 


ABOVE  -KIHC 
AND  QUEEN  EU 
OF  EN£LAh 
LEFT- KING 
OF  SWEDEN, 
CROWN  PRW 
PRINCESS  LC 
BELOW-  GR 
DUCHESS  CHA 
OF  LUXEMB 


'-  KING-  PETER    OF 
LAVIA:      AT   BOTTOM, 
Z.HRISTIAN   OF  DENMARK 


Mr.   J awe  si  T.    Dye 

K.Y.    Museum  of    Science   &  Induwt 

50  Rockefeller  Plaza 

New  York.   n.y_ 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST   279 

Picturing  or  symbolizing  the  Ten  Commandments  is  a 
tougher  assignment,  but  these  collectors  attempt  it.  Any 
pictures  of  savage  idols  or  the  ancient  Greek  gods,  for 
example,  would  cover  the  first  two  Commandments;  our 
Mother's  Day  stamp  illustrates  "honor  thy  father  and  thy 
mother."  Heath  chose  the  slaying  of  St.  Olav  on  a  Norway 
stamp  as  a  connotation  of  "Thou  shalt  not  kill."  For  "Re- 
member the  Sabbath  day,  to  keep  it  holy,"  there  were 
stamps  made  to  order— those  which  Belgium  used  to  issue 
with  a  little  extension  at  the  bottom  on  which  was  printed 
in  French  and  Flemish,  "Do  not  deliver  on  Sunday."  Bel- 
gium delivers  mail  seven  days  in  the  week,  but  if  you  or 
your  correspondent  considered  this  a  violation  of  the  Bibli- 
cal injunction,  or  there  was  any  other  reason,  you  just  left 
that  tab  on  the  stamp.  Otherwise  you  tore  it  off— it  was 
perforated  for  the  purpose— before  affixing  the  stamp  to  the 
letter.  The  Seventh  Commandment— well— this  is  rather  a 
delicate  subject,  but  we  observe  that  a  lady  collector  in  the 
same  line  thinks  she  has  pictured  this  admonition  very 
aptly  with  one  of  the  Goya  nudes,  though  we  cannot  be- 
lieve that  Mr.  Heath  used  this  example  before  his  church 
club. 

Even  pictures  of  the  stars,  clouds,  lightning  and  rain- 
bows are  taken  as  having  a  relation  to  passages  in  the  Bible, 
and  ancient  musical  instruments  are  like  those  to  which 
even  Old  Testament  kings  danced  and  made  merry. 

Heath  soon  found  himself  locally  famous;  other  churches 
in  the  New  York  district  and  even  Rotary  Clubs  wanted 
to  hear  the  talk.  Word  of  it  spread  through  the  country, 
and  he  received  fan  mail.  A  clergyman  in  far-away  British 
Columbia  wrote  him,  "This  isn't  a  stamp,  but  it  has  a  bear- 
ing upon  the  Fourth  Commandment";  and  he  enclosed  an 


280      THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 

envelope  with  a  cancellation  "Observe  the  Sabbath"  which 
Canada  used  for  some  time. 

Others  such  as  Burnes  Solomon  of  Brooklyn,  Mrs.  Edith 
Adams  Brown  of  New  York  and  John  J.  Gelbach  of  Phila- 
delphia, broaden  this  category  to  religions  in  general,  which 
includes  what  we  call  the  pagan  creeds.  It  also  includes 
the  Catholic  calendar  of  saints,  most  of  whom  the  Protes- 
tants do  not  recognize.  Here  are  old  temples  and  statues  of 
the  gods  and  goddesses  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome.  Both 
these  countries  show  the  chariot  of  the  sun,  and  ancient 
veneration  of  that  great  orb  is  indicated  by  the  pictures  of 
it  on  stamps  of  Persia,  Peru,  India,  the  Philippines  and 
Uruguay;  Mexico  has  the  Pyramid  of  the  Sun;  Egypt,  the 
eye  of  Ra  the  Sun-god.  Old  Egypt  also  displays  its  pyramids 
and  gigantic  statues,  Persia  a  conception  of  Ahura  Mazda, 
the  lord  of  light  and  wisdom;  Mexico,  of  Tlaloc,  the  god 
of  water,  the  French  Indies  of  Brahma;  Nepal  of  Siva, 
while  French  Oceanica  and  the  New  Hebrides  display  na- 
tive idols.  Of  course  the  pictures  of  Mercury  the  Messenger, 
an  early  symbol  of  the  post,  are  numberless.  Argentina  uses 
a  picture  of  the  famous  border  statue,  the  Christ  of  the 
Andes,  and  France  the  smiling  angel  of  Reims  Cathedral. 

There  are  collections  dealing  with  saints  alone— and  how 
many  of  them  are  on  stamps!— not  only  the  Biblical  ones 
already  mentioned,  but  Publius  of  Malta,  Martin  of  Tours 
(dividing  his  cloak  with  the  beggar),  Wenceslaus,  Olav, 
Ursula,  Elizabeth  of  Hungary,  Stephen,  Gisela,  Cyril, 
Laszlo,  Emery,  Joan  of  Arc,  Benedict,  Rose  of  Lima  and 
many  others.  Italy  has  a  whole  series  on  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi,  and  both  she  and  Portugal  have  series  on  St.  An- 
thony of  Padua,  while  Portugal  has  another  on  St.  Anthony 
of  Lisbon;  and  there  is  also  Italy's  series  on  the  monastery 
of  Monte  Cassino,  which  brings  in  its  founder,  St.  Bene- 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST      281 

diet.  Cyprus  shows  the  discovery  of  the  tomb  of  St.  Barna- 
bas. 

A  collection  of  religions  naturally  includes  all  churches, 
cathedrals,  chapels,  temples,  mosques  and  shrines,  and 
these  are  by  some  enthusiasts  collected  separately.  Prob- 
ably the  most  superbly  mounted  of  all  these  is  that  of 
Henry  Wood  Salisbury  of  Brooklyn,  who  calls  it  "Houses 
of  God."  Each  album  page  is  framed  in  a  Gothic  arch  of 
blue  and  gold,  with  circular  ornaments  in  the  upper  corners 
like  the  rose  windows  in  a  cathedral,  intricately  designed 
in  all  the  rich  colors  of  stained  glass,  while  a  much  larger 
and  still  more  gorgeous  one  is  painted  just  under  the  center 
of  the  arch.  Each  stamp  has  a  rectangular  frame  of  black 
and  gold  painted  behind  it,  the  black  forming  the  outer 
border,  the  gold  next  the  stamp  to  set  off  its  bright  colors. 

Here  Christian  and  non-Christian  houses  of  worship 
have  an  equal  part— the  ruins  of  the  ancient  temples  of 
classic  mythology,  Shinto,  Buddhist  and  the  two  great 
Catholic  sects  of  today,  for  Protestant  temples  are  almost 
non-existent  on  stamps.  Belgium  pictures  St.  Gudule's 
Cathedral  at  Brussels,  Sts.  Rombaut,  Baron  and  Wandu, 
churches  at  Bruges  and  Dinant,  and  two  views  of  Orval 
Abbey.  Italy  has  the  monasteries  already  mentioned,  like- 
wise all  the  greater  churches  of  Rome,  and  the  Pope  open- 
ing and  closing  the  Holy  Door.  The  Netherlands  shows 
Gouda  Church  and  a  church  ship;  Roumania  presents 
Alba  Julia  Cathedral  and  King  Charles  at  the  shrine  of  St. 
Nicholas  in  1904;  Lebanon,  the  great  temples  of  Baalbek; 
Nicaragua,  its  Leon  Cathedral;  Palestine,  the  Mosque  of 
Omar;  Spain,  the  Mosque  of  the  Moors  at  Cordoba;  Mon- 
aco, St.  Devote;  Norway,  Trondhjem  Cathedral;  Estonia, 
the  nunnery  of  St.  Brigitta.  Panama  shows  its  old  churches 
on  three  stamps.  Mexico  honors  Christian  and  pagan  alike 


282      THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 

with  the  Cathedral  of  Mexico  and  Mayan  temples.  Even 
North  Ingermanland  brought  forth  the  ruins  of  an  ancient 
church. 

Overlapping  this  at  some  points,  and  yet  a  distinct  cate- 
gory, is  the  archaeological  colection  of  Miss  Cornelia  C. 
Ward  of  New  York.  Here  again  are  scores  of  stamps  cover- 
ing not  only  temples  but  other  ruins  in  old  Rome  and 
Greece,  in  Baalbek;  Mexico's  pyramids,  Aztec  and  Mayan 
relics,  similar  wonders  of  Guatemala,  Honduras  and  British 
Honduras;  Peru's  reminders  of  the  Incas;  in  Bolivia  the 
marvels  of  Tiahuanico  and  in  Armenia,  of  Ani.  Here  are 
some  thirty  stamps  of  Egypt,  picturing  her  pyramids,  the 
Sphinx,  rock  temples,  colossi,  the  ruins  of  Karnak,  and 
ancient  statuary.  The  crumbling  handiwork  of  Imperial 
Rome  is  found  also  in  the  stamps  of  Fiume,  France  (that 
great  aqueduct,  the  Pont  du  Card),  Algeria,  Libya,  Tunisia 
and  Tripolitana;  of  the  Greeks  in  Crete,  Cyprus,  Cyrenaica 
and  Eritrea.  Among  the  great  cities  of  ancient  history 
whose  glory  departed  two  millennia  and  more  ago,  Ctesi- 
phon  is  in  Iraq,  Bosra  in  Syria  and  Persepolis  in  Persia. 
Malta  has  some  megalithic  ruins.  In  the  Far  East,  China 
pictures  the  Temple  of  Heaven  and  the  Great  Wall,  Man- 
chukuo  an  old  pagoda  and  a  mausoleum  at  Mukden, 
Ceylon  the  Temple  of  the  Tooth  of  Buddha,  Indo-China 
that  mighty  mystery,  Ankor-Vat.  If  you  wish  to  include  the 
early  Middle  Ages,  France,  Spain  and  other  countries  will 
have  entries;  and  finally,  in  our  own  land,  there  is  that  fine 
view  of  the  Mesa  Verde  cliff  dwellings  in  our  National 
Parks  series. 

Dr.  Otho  C.  Hudson  is  one  of  several  who  have  slightly 
varying  collections  dealing  with  medicine,  surgery  and 
health.  Health,  by  the  way,  is  every  year  boosted  as  a  good 
idea  on  stamps  by  New  Zealand.  New  South  Wales  in  1897 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST   283 

issued  two  stamps  combining  Queen  Victoria's  jubilee  cele- 
bration with  the  fight  against  tuberculosis,  it  being  the  first 
country  to  take  such  action.  Since  then,  anti-tuberculosis 
societies  in  many  countries  have  been  aided  by  stamps. 
More  than  twenty  countries  have  thus  honored  the  Red 
Cross;  charity  and  child  welfare  issues  have  appeared  in 
twenty-five  more.  Single  stamps  or  whole  issues  picturing 
hospitals  and  their  functioning  have  been  issued  by  such 
far-flung  countries  as  Norway,  Roumania,  Luxembourg, 
Guatemala  and  the  Belgian  Congo.  Peru  and  Lebanon 
show  medical  colleges,  the  Middle  Congo  a  Pasteur  insti- 
tute. Luxembourg  pictures  a  consultation  of  surgeons  in  an 
operating  room,  and  again,  a  scientist  examining  a  culture 
under  a  microscope.  Egypt  in  1928  had  a  Medical  Congress 
issue,  Roumania  in  '32  the  Ninth  Annual  Congress  on  the 
History  of  Medicine,  Poland  in  1927  the  Fourth  Interna- 
tional Congress  of  Military  Medicine  and  Pharmacy. 

Among  personages,  China  has  honored  Dr.  Sun  Yat  Sen; 
Cuba,  Dr.  Charles  }.  Finlay;  France,  Pasteur  and  M.  Berthe- 
lot;  Germany,  Dr.  Gustav  Nachtigall;  Dahomey,  Dr.  N. 
Eugene  Balay;  Lithuania,  Dr.  Jonas  Basanavicius;  the  Canal 
Zone,  Dr.  Gorgas.  Austria  had  a  whole  series  of  physicians. 
As  for  nurses,  Edith  Cavell  appears  on  a  Canadian  stamp, 
Queen  Marie  on  Roumania.  Congo  in  1931  portrayed  a 
witch  doctor,  and  Hudson  even  includes  the  "Lagoon  of 
the  Marvelous  Cure"  in  Peru.  Latvia  has  "Mercy"  assisting 
wounded  soldiers,  Hungary,  St.  Elizabeth  ministering  to 
sick  children,  the  Saar  from  1926  to  '31  ran  general  medical 
subjects  for  special  charities.  With  the  calm  detachment  of 
a  physician,  Dr.  Hudson  considers  death  scenes,  such  as 
those  of  St.  Francis,  St.  Benedict  and  St.  Anthony,  as  ap- 
propriate to  a  medical  collection.  And  these  items  so  rap- 
idly sketched  are  only  the  beginning  of  the  story. 


284      THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 

Close  alongside  this  is  the  general  subject  of  science, 
which  includes  many  other  things  than  medicine  and  chem- 
istry, though  each  of  the  other  branches  are  specially  col- 
lected. Here,  among  the  portraits  one  finds,  in  addition  to 
the  medical  and  chemical  scientists  already  mentioned, 
such  people  as  Copernicus  (Poland),  Popoff  (Russia), 
Volta  (Italy)  and  the  Curies  (France  and  colonies).  En- 
gineers collect  stamps  covering  all  engineering  structures, 
and  there  are  so  many  bridges  on  stamps  of  the  world  that 
many  collectors,  both  lay  and  scientific,  have  fine  albums 
of  bridges  alone.  A  few  collectors  just  go  in  for  buildings— 
of  which  there  are  many  on  stamps  other  than  churches 
and  hospitals.  And  not  only  are  portraits  of  scientists 
sought  for,  but  there  are  those  who  feel  impelled  to  collect 
philosophers,  artists,  authors,  musicians  or  journalists.  Post- 
master-General Farley  is  hastening  to  do  something  in  be- 
half of  these  folk  as  we  write. 

Incidentally,  there  is  even  one  man,  Kasper  E.  Bruck- 
mann  of  Chicago,  who  collects  foreign  stamps  picturing 
Americans— United  States  Americans,  he  means.  One  re- 
calls that  as  far  back  as  1909  Brazil,  on  the  occasion  of  a 
Pan-American  Congress,  placed  a  portrait  of  Washington 
on  a  stamp.  Since  then,  several  others  have  done  so;  in 
fact,  our  recent  sesquicentennial  has  been  commemorated 
as  ardently  by  some  other  countries  as  by  ourselves.  Lind- 
bergh has  been  honored  by  several  more.  In  1928  Paraguay 
portrayed  President  Hayes  and  a  town  down  there  which 
was  named  for  him  in  memory  of  his  settlement  of  the 
Chaco  boundary  dispute  with  Bolivia  fifty  years  ago.  In 
similar  fashion,  Brazil  has  just  laureled  President  Cleveland 
for  settling  her  boundary  dispute  with  Argentina  in  1895. 
President  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt  is  appearing  on  foreign 
stamps  now,  and  Panama  has  honored  all  our  canal  build- 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST   285 

ers,  including  Presidents  Theodore  Roosevelt  and  Wilson 
and  William  H.  Taft,  Secretary  of  War  when  the  project 
began.  Nicaragua  issued  a  series  for  Will  Rogers  in  grati- 
tude for  his  aid  in  her  time  of  trouble.  Turkey  placed  Jane 
Addams  and  Mrs.  Carrie  Chapman  Catt  among  its  "Fa- 
mous Women."  Pictures  of  the  Capitol  at  Washington 
and  our  World's  Fair  buildings  at  San  Francisco  have  been 
far  more  numerous  on  foreign  stamps  during  1939  than 
they  ever  were  on  our  own.  There  are  many  group  pictures 
including  Indians  and  others  which  come  into  this  cate- 
gory. 

The  familiar  stamps  of  France  which  began  issuing  in 
1876  and  continued  for  many  years  thereafter  have  a  globe 
almost  concealed  behind  the  numerals  and  the  hands  of 
the  standing  figures.  This  was  the  first  of  the  map  stamps 
which  have  since  become  so  numerous.  Belgium  had  a  pair 
of  little  globes  in  the  corners  of  the  twenty-five-cent  stamp 
of  1884;  then  Colombia  used  a  map  of  the  Isthmus  of 
Panama  in  1887.  Canada's  beautiful  three-colored  map  of 
the  British  dominions  in  1898  is  a  milestone  in  this  depart- 
ment. Another  was  the  Dominican  Republic's  of  1900, 
showing  the  whole  island,  with  its  own  country  almost 
covering  it  and  Haiti  only  a  nail-paring  along  the  western 
edge.  But  the  storm  that  arose  over  this  was  outclassed  by 
the  later  uproars  when  Honduras  and  Nicaragua  each  is- 
sued map  stamps  claiming  the  same  province;  in  fact,  war 
was  narrowly  averted.  Thus  the  album  pages  of  a  map  col- 
lection are  spiced  with  lively  history,  amusing  and  exciting. 
Several  maps  have  appeared  on  our  own  stamps— on  the 
Louisiana  Territory  series  of  1904,  Jamestown  in  1907,  the 
Oregon  Territory  Centennial  of  1936,  the  Northwest  Ter- 
ritory Sesquicentennial  of  1937.  Of  course  globes  of  all 
sorts  must  be  included,  and  they  are  numerous. 


z86      THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST 

The  food  and  drink  of  the  world  is  an  intriguing  subject. 
Nearly  a  dozen  countries  of  Latin  America  and  Africa  pic- 
ture their  coffee  culture,  the  tree  and  the  berries.  As  many 
more  present  scenes  of  sugar  production.  Three  advertise 
their  cocoa  and  no  less  than  ten  their  fish— and  this  in- 
cludes Newfoundland's  seal  and  the  Falkland  Islands 
whale,  which  aren't  really  fish  and  not  universally  eaten, 
though  we've  seen  whale  steaks  sold  in  New  York.  Five 
countries  have  sheep  on  their  stamps,  six  have  cattle,  three 
have  bears,  and  seven,  deer  or  caribou.  Tannou  Touva,  the 
little  pseudo-nation  maintained  in  Asia  by  the  Soviet,  prin- 
cipally for  stamp-issuing  purposes,  is  in  all  four  animal  cate- 
gories. France  publicizes  its  champagne,  Samoa  its  kava, 
Jamaica  its  cassava,  Liberia  its  pineapples,  Cuba  its  man- 
goes, Colombia  its  bananas,  Ecuador  and  the  Cayman 
Islands  their  turtles,  Tannou  Touva  its  capercaillie  and 
Newfoundland  its  ptarmigan.  The  Philippines  and  Ceylon 
have  splendid  views  of  mountain-side  rice  terraces.  Some 
collectors  include  the  iguana  and  other  big  lizards  of  Ecua- 
dor and  New  Zealand,  on  the  general  theory  that  some 
people  will  eat  anything. 

All  these  fruiting  trees  and  plants  enter  into  Mary  K. 
Piercy's  Garden  in  Stamps;  likewise  the  many  countries 
showing  palm  trees;  Canada's  maple  leaf;  Germany's  oak 
stump  of  1919  with  the  new  shoots  symbolizing  the  new 
Germany  and  its  hope  for  the  future  (alas,  that  there  were 
no  real  prophets  in  Germany  then!);  the  Charter  Oak  on 
our  Connecticut  issue,  the  rice  and  indigo  on  our  Charles- 
ton stamp,  the  tobacco  on  our  Jamestown.  The  many  trees 
on  our  National  Parks  series  are  considered  eligible.  Liberia 
displays  its  cedars,  Mozambique  its  hemp  and  cotton, 
Japan,  conventionalized  chrysanthemums. 

And  there  is  the  world's  work,  which  includes  all  the 


THE  PAGEANTRY  OF  THE  POST   287 

agriculture,  fishing,  sugar-making  and  fruit-gathering  just 
mentioned,  as  well  as  tree-felling  (as  on  a  Cameroun 
stamp),  paper-making  (Newfoundland),  pottery  (Ruanda), 
mining  (Newfoundland,  Saar),  cotton-planting  (Egypt), 
cotton-spinning  (Liberia),  gold-washing  (French  Guiana), 
basket-making  (Belgian  Congo),  gold-mining  (New  Zea- 
land), and  the  first  shipment  of  frozen  mutton  from  New 
Zealand.  Transportation  forms  the  greater  portion  of  this 
genus,  but  is  also  a  subject  for  special  collection,  and  is 
again  subdivided  into  railroads,  ships,  airplanes,  Zeppelins, 
yes,  even  automobiles  and  busses. 

A  Swedish  enthusiast,  Frederick  Arsenius,  collects  por- 
traits, painstakingly  adding  the  biography  of  every  person 
whose  postage  picture  he  has.  The  trouble  he  must  encoun- 
ter in  gathering  the  life  sketches  of  some  persons  who  have 
been  dug  out  of  obscurity  by  some  countries  in  recent  years 
to  supply  subjects  for  new  stamp  issues  is  probably  what 
deters  many  others  from  attempting  such  a  collection. 

Again  the  infinite  variety!  Our  commemoratives  supply 
material  for  a  pleasant  tour  of  the  United  States;  and  you 
may  extend  it  to  foreign  countries  as  far  as  you  like.  One 
woman  goes  in  for  fishing  scenes;  some  for  naught  but  his- 
torical scenes.  Sculpture  is  a  large  subject,  and  heraldic  de- 
signs on  stamps  is  another  important  classification.  Three 
or  four  people  we  know  of  collect  just  waterfalls;  animals 
and  birds  there  are  in  infinite  variety  (one  man  wants  only 
elephants);  two  women  specialize  in  purple  stamps;  others 
in  black  ones.  You  may  find  most  of  these  fans  and  perhaps 
some  others,  too,  in  the  Philatelic  Bluebook,  which  the 
author  likes  to  pore  over  because  he  occasionally  finds  in  it 
such  things  as  the  address  of  J.  Mohammed,  Lot  2,  Sandy 
Babb  Street,  Kitty  Village,  E.  C.,  Demerara,  British  Gui- 
ana, S.  A. 


LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS 


I  HE    INGENIOUS    brain    of 

CHAPTER  SIXTEEN  |       lt~  Vl_       „   .. 

Cosmopolitan,   the  anon- 


T: 


ymous  writer  in  the  Amer- 
ican Journal  of  Philately,  made  another  of  those  sugges- 
tions in  1869  in  which  he  seemed  to  have  been  entirely 
original— namely,  that  collectors  turn  their  attention  to 
revenue  stamps.  "It  would  be  impossible,  almost,  to  find 
designs  of  greater  beauty  and  variety  than  at  present  exist," 
he  said.  "Produce  me,  if  possible,  a  more  beautiful  or  better 
executed  stamp  of  any  country  than  our  $3,000  manifest 
or  charter  party."  After  getting  the  general  revenues,  he  sug- 
gested going  on  to  match,  playing-card,  and  shoe  stamps, 
then  to  medicines.  Collectors  did  follow  his  suggestion  as 
to  general  revenue  stamps,  but  not  a  great  many  became 
interested  in  the  proprietary  match  and  medicines  until 
after  they  had  ceased  to  be  issued  in  the  early  '8o's,  with 
the  result  that  some  have  never  been  found  to  this  day. 

There  was  one  class  of  stamps  to  which  "Cosmopolitan" 
made  no  reference,  but  which  now  claims  a  number  of 
devotees— our  stamped  paper  of  the  eighteenth  and  early 
nineteenth  centuries,  our  first  fiscals.  These  begin  with  a 
Massachusetts  tax  on  newspapers  in  1755— quaint  designs 
embossed  in  the  paper  without  color.  That  of  the  half- 
penny shows  the  device  of  a  bird;  the  tuppence  has  the 

288 


LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS     289 

Sacred  Codfish;  the  threepence  a  pine  tree  and  the  four- 
pence  a  schooner  in  sail,  with  the  motto  in  a  ring  around 
it:  "Steady,  Steady."  The  British  stamp  tax  of  1765  on 
paper,  documents,  almanacs,  etc.,  which  caused  such  a  fuss 
in  this  country  and  brought  the  Revolution  a  step  nearer, 
also  the  Tea  Party  stamps  of  the  same  year,  are  items  which 
no  collector  can  overlook.  The  United  States  began  in  1791 
issuing  "supervisor  stamps"  for  certain  ports,  and  in  1797 
stamps  for  legal  documents.  Another  issue  appeared  in 
1800.  All  these  continued  to  be  embossed  and  colorless. 
The  War  of  1812  brought  on  more  stamp  taxes,  including 
$12  to  $15  for  retail  liquor  dealers  in  the  country,  and  $20 
to  $25  in  the  city.  Virginia  issued  state  stamped  paper  (for 
documents)  in  1813,  and  other  states  took  it  up  later.  After 
the  Civil  War,  New  York  City,  Philadelphia,  Boston  and 
St.  Louis  had  stamps  of  their  own  in  color  for  documents. 
Among  the  few  notable  collections  of  the  earlier  stamped 
paper  are  those  of  Morton  D.  Joyce  of  New  York,  Colin 
McR.  Makepeace  of  Providence,  and  H.  E.  Beats,  the  vet- 
eran but  still  youthful  Jerseyite,  who  has  been  through  prac- 
tically every  other  branch  of  American  collecting  and  now 
likes  to  remark  that  he  is  interested  in  nothing  later  than 
1816. 

E.  B.  Sterling  of  Trenton,  New  Jersey,  who  left  a  bank 
to  go  into  the  stamp  business,  was  a  pioneer  in  promoting 
the  collecting  of  this  old  stamped  paper,  and  included  it  in 
the  first  American  catalogue  of  revenue  stamps,  which  he 
issued  in  1888,  embellished  with  a  frontispiece  portrait  of 
himself,  with  his  magnificent  beard— parted  just  below  the 
chin  to  give  a  good  view  of  the  big  cameo  pin  in  his  Ascot 
tie— sweeping  this  way  and  that  in  two  long,  undulant  ban- 
ners to  his  armpits.  Mr.  Sterling  that  year  sold  to  the  youth- 
ful Hiram  Beats  the  already  celebrated  Carpenter  and 


290     LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS 

Goodall  collections  of  revenue  stamp  proofs  for  $7,000, 
which  excited  awe  at  the  time  as  a  record-breaking  private 
sale  in  American  annals. 

In  1890  the  Messers  Sterling  and  Beats  embarked  on 
another  enterprise  hitherto  unprecedented;  they  bought 
from  the  Treasury  Department  no  less  than  ten  carloads  of 
old  papers;  the  figure  has  hitherto  been  given  as  eight,  but 
Mr.  Deats  assures  me  in  black  and  white  that  it  was  ten. 
Their  chief  object  was  liquor  stamps  and  coupons  of  a  par- 
ticular type,  but  they  also  found  others,  including  many 
fine  departmental  stamps  in  twenty-four-,  thirty-  and 
ninety-cent  denominations  on  official  letters.  The  stuff  was 
shipped  to  New  Jersey,  storage  space  rented,  and  a  staff  of 
helpers  toiled  for  two  years  on  it.  In  addition  to  the  twine 
salvaged  from  the  mass,  the  promoters  had  to  buy  another 
ton  of  it  with  which  to  tie  up  the  waste  for  shipment  to 
paper  mills.  They  didn't  quite  come  out  even  on  the  specu- 
lation, as  Mr.  Deats  admits  with  a  rather  wry  grin. 

But  one  of  the  reasons  why  they  didn't  was  this:  the 
Treasury  sent  two  observers  up  to  watch  the  sorting  and 
see  that  the  buyers  didn't  get  away  with  any  skullduggery. 
Before  the  job  was  completed,  they  seized  a  quantity  of 
the  material,  including  some  desirable  stamps,  and  took  it 
back  to  Washington,  alleging  that  it  was  too  recent  to  be 
permitted  to  escape  from  the  records— it  had  got  into  the 
waste  inadvertently.  But  nothing  was  said  about  any  refund 
of  money  to  Messers  Sterling  and  Deats  for  the  seized  ma- 
terial. Those  two  gentlemen  filed  suit,  and  the  case  is  in 
the  United  States  Court  of  Claims  to  this  day— nearly  fifty 
years  later.  Which  goes  to  prove  that  in  dealing  with  the 
Government— as  the  Government  itself  tries  to  point  out 
to  criminals— You  Can't  Win. 

Such  costly  governmental  fun  as  war  must  always  be  paid 


LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS     291 

for  by  the  citizen;  so  the  Civil  War  was  scarcely  a  year 
under  way  when  the  United  States  Treasury  planned  a 
series  of  stamp  taxes,  some  of  which  endured  for  two  dec- 
ades and  more  thereafter,  and  which  produced,  as  "Cosmo- 
politan" remarked,  some  of  the  most  interesting  and  beau- 
tiful stamps  in  history.  In  August,  1862,  the  Commissioner 
of  Internal  Revenue,  George  S.  Boutwell,  closed  a  contract 
with  Butler  &  Carpenter,  engravers  and  printers  of  Phila- 
delphia, to  produce  revenue  stamps  for  the  government  at 
the  rate  of  thirteen  cents  per  thousand.  But  the  commis- 
sioner had  overestimated  most  appallingly  the  number  of 
stamps  that  would  be  required  yearly,  with  the  result  that 
for  years  Butler  and  Carpenter  wrangled  with  the  Depart- 
ment, demanding  new  contracts  at  higher  rates  and  indem- 
nity for  past  losses— some  of  which  they  obtained,  and  some 
of  which  they  didn't.  Anybody  who  has  had  any  experience 
knows  that  the  government  is  the  worst  of  debtors,  unless 
the  creditor  has  a  personal  pull  somewhere.  Finally,  in 
1875,  when  Butler  and  Carpenter  were  receiving  twenty- 
three  cents  per  thousand  for  the  work,  the  National  Bank 
Note  Company  snatched  it  away  from  them  with  a  bid  of 
nine  cents  per  thousand,  and  continued  to  do  it  until  the 
Bureau  of  Engraving  and  Printing  took  it  over  in  1880. 

When  they  first  began  the  work,  in  the  fall  and  winter 
of  1862,  Butler  &  Carpenter  couldn't  get  the  stamps  per- 
forated fast  enough,  and  at  Boutweirs  request,  many  sheets 
were  delivered  to  the  Revenue  Office  imperforate— whereby 
some  nice  varieties  ensued.  That  first  issue  covered  all  sorts 
of  legal  and  business  documents,  telegrams,  playing  cards, 
photographs,  medicines,  matches,  perfumery,  cosmetics, 
and  by  1866,  some  canned  goods— meats,  fish,  shellfish, 
fruits,  vegetables,  sauces,  syrups,  prepared  mustard,  jams 
and  jellies  and  pickles  in  glass.  In  the  following  year  canned 


292     LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS 

and  preserved  meats,  shellfish,  fruits,  vegetables  and  pickles 
were  exempted.  Liquors  and  tobacco  were  already  being 
taxed. 

In  the  first  issue,  the  imagination  of  the  government 
went  no  higher  than  a  $200  stamp.  In  the  second  issue,  it 
rose  to  the  height  of  a  $500  token  in  three  colors— red, 
black  and  green— of  which,  in  three  years,  204  copies  had 
been  sold.  This  issue  came  about  largely  because  of  the 
washing  of  cancellations  from  stamps  which  had  been  going 
on.  The  second  issue,  begun  in  1871,  was  printed  on  a 
"chameleon"  paper,  which  would  turn  all  sorts  of  colors  at 
the  touch  of  acid  or  alkali,  making  washing  very  difficult. 
Moreover,  the  printers  were  ordered  to  use  "fugitive,  sol- 
uble inks,"  and  a  herringbone  cancellation  which  cut  into 
the  paper  was  introduced,  which  reduced  the  washing  haz- 
ard to  the  lowest  possible  minimum. 

In  the  third  issue,  which  began  late  in  1871,  Uncle  Sam 
made  his  most  magnificent  fiscal  gesture  in  this  genre— a 
$5,000  stamp  which  was  designed  for  printing  in  black, 
green  and  orange.  The  plates  were  made  and  proofs  taken, 
but  the  stamp  was  never  issued.  A  letter  from  Joseph  R. 
Carpenter  (now  in  sole  charge  of  the  printing  business,  his 
partner,  Mr.  Butler,  having  died  in  1868)  written  July  14, 
1872,  is  significant:  "I  send  you  the  $5,000  stamp  approved 
in  the  colors  in  which  it  is  to  be  printed  in  case  we  have 
an  order  for  this  stamp— a  very  improbable  contingency." 

Some  time  ago  Joseph  L.  Bopeley,  a  revenue-stamp  col- 
lector of  London,  Ohio,  wrote  to  George  B.  Sloane,  col- 
umnist in  Stamps,  that  there  could  scarcely  have  been  any 
possible  use  for  so  large  a  stamp  in  the  1870*8.  He  figured 
that  it  would  take  a  $5,000,000  mortgage  or  bill  of  sale,  a 
$2,500,000  conveyance,  a  $1,999,800  lease,  to  require  such 
a  tax,  all  transactions  larger  than  were  likely  to  take  place 


LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS     293 

in  that  era.  He  had  seen  a  $1,000,000  trustees'  mortgage 
for  bondholders  of  that  period,  with  a  thousand  dollars  in 
stamps  affixed,  but  nothing  larger.  Mr.  Sloane  agreed,  but 
rejoined  that  the  big  stamp  would  be  useful  at  times  to 
present-day  giants  of  finance.  He  had  handled  in  recent 
years  a  certificate  of  stock  transfer  of  several  large  corpora- 
tions in  a  holding  company,  which  bore  forty  copies  of  the 
thousand-dollar  stamp  of  the  issue  of  1917,  and  several 
hundred  dollars  more  in  odd  values,  aggregating  nearly 
$41,000  in  total  tax. 

The  only  time  in  history  when  anybody  ever  got  a  dis- 
count from  the  government  on  anything  came  during  these 
stamp  issues.  For  several  years  there  was  a  discount,  or  more 
properly  a  premium  given  on  purchases  of  more  than  $500 
worth  of  stamps.  The  rate  was  changed  whimsically  every 
little  while.  When  it  was  at  its  peak,  ten  per  cent:  if  you 
bought  $600  worth  of  stamps,  you  received  $660  worth,  for 
the  premium  was  always  paid  in  stamps,  not  cash.  This 
opened  the  way  to  stamp  brokers,  who  gave  smaller  dis- 
counts on  smaller  amounts.  A  circular  of  the  time  quotes 
one  per  cent  discount  on  $15  purchases;  two  per  cent  on 
$30;  three  per  cent  on  $50;  four  per  cent  on  $100  and  over. 

Scarcely  had  the  printing  of  the  proprietary  stamps  for 
patent  medicines  begun  than  certain  manufacturers  began 
to  question  whether  they  couldn't  have  distinctive  stamps 
with  their  own  design  or  trademark  on  them.  The  first  to 
propose  this  seems  to  have  been  Dr.  Herrick,  who  made 
pills  and  plasters  for  man  and  condition  powders  for  beast. 
His  request  was  granted,  and  on  October  15,  1862,  Car- 
penter wrote  to  him,  "Your  stamp  will  be  the  first  proprie- 
tary die  printed;  and  in  this  respect,  you  will  enjoy  an  ad- 
vantage over  your  equally  afflicted  brethren  in  the  trade." 
Herrick's  stamp,  like  others  at  the  beginning,  was  of  about 


294     LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS 

the  size  of  a  two-cent  revenue  stamp;  but  within  a  short 
time,  imaginations  expanded,  stamps  became  larger  and  of 
all  shapes  and  sizes.  Frequently  the  stamp  was  incorporated 
in  the  design  of  the  wrapper  of  bottle  or  pill  box.  They 
became  beautiful  examples  of  the  engraver's  art,  with 
whorls  and  flourishes  and  solemn  portraits  of  the  benevo- 
lent, whiskered  gentlemen  who  sold  drug-flavored  alcohol 
and  powerful  clean-out  pills,  guaranteed  to  make  a  new 
being  of  you,  whether  in  earth  or  heaven,  if  you  took 
enough  of  them. 

But  though  you  could  incorporate  your  stamp  design  in 
your  wrapper— in  fact,  sometimes,  almost  the  whole  wrap- 
per was  a  stamp— that  was  as  far  as  you  could  go.  In  1874 
the  Government  seized  and  destroyed  ten  thousand  alma- 
nacs of  a  patent-medicine  concern  because  the  cover  bore- 
probably  quite  innocently— a  facsimile  of  its  stamp.  But 
there  was  a  match  concern  which  forged  a  stamp  and  had 
to  go  out  of  business.  For  the  match  makers  had  taken  to 
the  private  design  idea,  too,  and  their  stamps  were  many 
and  various.  Many  of  them  are  rare  or  unknown  today, 
because  the  business  was  feeble  and  short-lived. 

That  there  were  collectors  of  these  private  stamps  even 
in  1874  is  revealed  by  a  letter  in  the  American  Journal  of 
Philately,  in  which  the  writer  says  that  the  match  stamp 
of  John  J.  Macklin  of  Covington,  Kentucky,  is  one  of  the 
greatest  of  rarities.  He  found  one  in  possession  of  a  small 
boy,  glued  tightly  in  a  book  and  very  dirty.  He  bought  the 
boy's  whole  book  for  $10,  boiled  the  Macklin  stamp  in 
soap  and  water  for  ten  minutes  and  it  came  out  fairly  clean. 
It  was  rare  because  Macklin  had  tried  to  use  a  phototype 
stamp  not  made  by  Butler  &  Carpenter,  which  was  against 
the  rules.  When  this  was  made  clear  to  him,  he  said  that 


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A  page  from  Henry  W.  Holcombe's  albums  of  match  and 
medicine  stamps:  this  showing  not  only  the  stamp  but  an 
original  match  package  of  the  iSvo's,  and  some  of  the  actual 


LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS     295 

he  couldn't  afford  a  private  die  and  went  back  to  using  the 
regular  government  stamp. 

Messers  Beats  and  Sterling  bought  the  office  records, 
proofs  and  associated  material  still  owned  by  Mr.  Carpenter 
in  his  old  age,  and  the  information  thus  obtained  was  of 
much  value  in  preparing  the  Boston  Revenue  Book.  Among 
other  things  there  was  a  sheet  of  the  sixty-cent  orange  and 
black  revenue,  third  issue,  with  the  central  medallion  in- 
verted, which  was  such  a  treasure  that  Mr.  Beats  had  it 
framed  and  it  hung  on  the  wall  of  his  home  for  years. 
Beats,  too,  fell  heir  to  the  greatest  nugget  of  all— Butler 
&  Carpenter's  order  book,  covering  the  whole  period  of 
their  stamp  contract,  1862  to  1875.  Here  the  orders  were 
entered  with  special  instructions,  usually  with  the  approved 
sketch  or  a  proof  or  both  alongside  the  entry.  It  contains 
more  than  two  hundred  such  originals,  the  majority  of 
them  unique,  and  interesting  little  supplementary  notes  as 
to  the  designing:  "Vignette  head  of  Mr.  Scheetz.  Style  is 
subject  to  artist's  taste."  "The  ends  to  be  lightly  filled  in 
with  scrollwork.  Be  careful  to  give  the  same  expression  to 
face." 

Here  is  the  only  known  proof  in  any  form  of  the  six-cent 
orange  proprietary,  the  last  stamp  of  the  first  revenue  issue, 
which  was  created  because  of  the  irate  complaint  of  Charles 
Osgood  and  Company,  a  Connecticut  medicine  concern, 
that  there  were  many  companies  selling  a  $1.50  article  (the 
tax  was  four  cents  per  dollar),  yet  no  six-cent  stamp  for 
their  use.  Osgoods  couldn't  afford  a  private  die,  they  said, 
so  this  stamp  was  turned  out,  for  use  largely  on  their  "India 
Cholagogue,"  a  malaria  nostrum  sold  largely  in  the  South; 
and  as  there  were  few  stamp  collectors  down  there  in  1871, 
this  stamp  even  in  used  condition  is  very  rare;  for  it  was 


296     LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS 

replaced,  after  four  and  a  half  months,  by  a  two-color  six- 
center. 

Here  is  also  the  die  proof  of  the  Thomas  E.  Wilson  four- 
cent  black,  the  rarest  of  the  medicine  stamps;  rare,  so  it  is 
said,  because  Dr.  Wilson  had  a  partner  whom  he  ignored 
in  ordering  the  stamps,  and  had  his  own  facsimile  signa- 
ture placed  on  them,  as  if  he  were  the  whole  works.  When 
they  were  delivered  and  the  partner  saw  them,  he  flew  into 
a  rage,  seized  them  and  threw  them  into  the  fire,  destroying 
all  save  a  few  which  the  Doctor  managed  to  clutch. 

Medicine  stamps  do  not  roam  at  large  today  in  any  quan- 
tity. The  most  fun  for  collectors  is  to  go  still-hunting  for 
them  among  old  village  drug  stores,  where  some  bottles  or 
packages  have  stood  on  dusty  shelves  for  forty,  fifty,  sixty 
years,  until  the  liquids  have  half  evaporated,  the  salves  have 
dried  into  thin,  hard  cakes,  the  pills  shrunken  or  crumbled 
apart.  Some  druggists  have  forgotten  that  they  have  the  old 
stuff.  Some  good-natured  old  fellows,  if  they  like  the  col- 
lector's looks,  tell  him  just  to  rummage  around  in  the 
nooks  and  corners  and  see  what  he  can  find.  Not  many 
village  dealers  seem  to  realize  that  the  stamps  have  any 
value.  Some  donate  the  packages  to  the  collector,  others 
will  accept  a  half  or  a  quarter  of  the  selling  price,  yet  others 
demand  the  full  figure,  no  matter  if  it's  a  dollar  or  a  dollar 
and  a  half,  and  won't  abate  a  cent.  And  incredible  as  it  may 
seem,  even  an  old  package  of  matches  of  sixty  years  ago  is 
on  rare  occasions  still  found  in  some  little,  out-of-the-way 
New  England  store  or  other  unpromising  nook. 

After  acquiring  the  package,  there  may  be  hours  of  fun 
in  getting  the  stamp  loose  from  bottle  or  box  without  mu- 
tilating it.  If  it  is  on  a  wrapper,  the  latter  must  be  slowly 
and  carefully  unsealed  and  opened  out,  cleaned,  and  it  and 
the  stamp  ironed  flat,  ready  for  album  mounting.  The  bot- 


LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS     297 

tie,  usually  with  name  of  medicine  or  manufacturer  blown 
in  the  side,  is  a  collectible  article;  often  the  philatelist  has 
a  friend  who  collects  old  American  bottles,  and  the  two 
work  hand  in  hand. 

Henry  W.  Holcombe  of  New  York,  whose  match-  and 
medicine-stamp  collection  is  one  of  the  most  fascinating 
things  we  have  ever  seen,  can  show  you  all  the  different 
types  of  match  boxes  and  packages;  flat,  rectangular  boxes 
of  wood  or  pasteboard,  cylindrical  wooden  affairs  roughly 
turned  on  a  lathe,  heavy  paper  packages  similar  to  cigarette 
packages  of  today.  When  such  a  paper  package  was  made 
up,  its  base  was  touched  to  liquid  mucilage,  then  to  sand, 
and  when  it  dried,  there  was  your  match-scratching  surface. 
Some  of  the  old  matches  were  nearly  twice  as  long  as  those 
we  use  now.  You  may  see  everything  save  the  heavy  wooden 
boxes  on  Mr.  Holcombe's  album  pages,  even  samples  of  the 
matches  being  glued  there.  There  is  always  a  photograph  of 
the  package  as  it  appeared  in  the  store,  and  below  that,  the 
package  itself,  opened  and  mounted  on  the  page. 

Lettered  on  the  pages  is  practically  all  the  information 
worth  while  about  the  various  manufacturers.  Actually,  his- 
tories of  the  patent-medicine  and  match  businesses  could 
almost  be  written  from  these  albums.  Here  one  gets  a  pic- 
ture of  little  known  phases  of  American  industrial  and 
social  history.  Ambitious  amateurs  started  little  match  fac- 
tories in  town  or  country  with  only  a  few  dollars  capital, 
often  with  only  the  vaguest  notions  of  formulae  for  making 
the  match  heads.  Sometimes  these  beginners  produced 
matches  so  sensitive,  so  easily  ignited  that  they  couldn't  be 
shipped;  sometimes  the  compound  took  too  long  to  dry. 
To  obtain  the  services  of  an  experienced  man  from  a  larger 
factory  was  a  rare  boon.  At  these  small  factories  there  might 
be  only  two  or  three  supervising  adults;  the  workers  would 


298     LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS 

be  mostly  boys  and  girls.  The  paper  or  pasteboard  packages, 
meanwhile,  would  be  produced  at  piecework  rates  in  the 
neighbors'  homes.  There  was  one  small  factory,  that  of  Ives 
&  Judd,  which  was  located  in  Rag  Hollow,  a  little  cleft 
in  the  Connecticut  hills— Mr.  Holcombe  draws  a  miniature 
fragment  of  a  map  on  his  page  to  show  you  just  where  it 
was.  On  another  page  may  be  mounted  one  of  the  "combs" 
of  matches,  just  a  thin  piece  of  wood,  only  partly  split 
apart,  and  the  split  ends  dipped;  when  you  needed  a  match, 
you  just  broke  it  off  the  comb.  Other  manufacturers  made 
up  their  matches  in  square  blocks,  likewise  only  partly  split 
off. 

Some  of  the  little  match  concerns  have  never  been  lo- 
cated, and  less  than  ten  years  ago  there  were  still  a  half 
dozen  of  the  medicine  men  whose  history  wasn't  known, 
but  Mr.  Holcombe  tells  us  that  practically  the  last  one  has 
now  been  driven  to  earth.  His  research  upon  them  is  tire- 
less, never  slackening.  His  albums  are  dotted  thickly  with 
their  collateral  material— advertising  pamphlets  and  cards, 
envelopes,  letters,  recipe  books,  bills  and  invoices.  He  re- 
veals curious  stories,  such  as  that  of  the  Reverend  Edward 
A.  Wilson— was  he  a  preacher,  after  all?— who  in  the  latter 
i86o's  was  running  ads,  purely  in  the  interest  of  humanity, 
in  such  magazines  as  Harper's  and  Leslie's  Weeklies,  telling 
how  he  had  once  been  given  up  to  die  with  consumption, 
but  that  he  had  been  cured  by  a  marvelous  prescription, 
which  he  in  turn  would  send  free  to  any  sufferer  who  would 
just  write  to  him  and  ask  for  it.  But  when  you  received  the 
prescription  from  him,  you  found  that  there  was  one  in- 
gredient which  you  had  to  buy  from  a  man  named  William 
}.  Minshull  in  New  York.  How  was  anyone  to  know  that 
Minshull  was  the  Reverend  Wilson's  partner?  The  ingredi- 
ent was  rather  expensive,  too.  Finally,  in  1871  Wilson  had 


LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS     299 

to  come  out  in  the  open,  and  a  stamp  for  "Rev.  E.  A. 
Wilson's  Remedy,  Wm.  J.  Minshull,  Agent,"  was  designed. 
All  this  time,  Wilson  had  been  writing  from  Williams- 
burg,  N.  Y.,  a  suburb  which  is  now  part  of  Brooklyn;  but 
in  1872  he  suddenly  disappeared  from  the  correspondence 
and  from  the  directory;  and  although  Holcombe,  with  his 
usual  patience,  has  searched  almost  every  city  directory  in 
the  country  through  the  years  that  followed,  he  has  never 
found  any  further  trace  of  him.  Did  he  just  evaporate,  or 
had  he  ever  existed?  His  remedy  continued  to  be  sold,  at 
least  until  1882. 

There  are  other  curious  stamps  of  those  years  which  are 
collected  by  the  more  ardent  enthusiasts;  lock  seal  stamps, 
for  example;  the  brass  cotton  tax  stamps  of  the  '6o's,  just 
an  embossed  brass  tab  with  a  long,  tapering  point  to  stick 
into  the  bale  of  cotton;  hydrometer  stamps— the  hydrom- 
eter is  an  instrument  for  determining  the  specific  gravity 
and  purity  of  certain  liquids,  and  was  used  mostly  on 
liquors— which,  at  the  one  factory  in  New  York  which 
made  them,  were  glued  into  the  glass  bulb  at  the  end  of 
the  instrument,  as  proof  that  it  had  been  government- 
inspected  and  approved;  beer  stamps— nothing  in  all  rev- 
enue history  has  produced  anything  so  uniformly  gorgeous 
and  brilliant  with  fancy  designing  and  engine  turning  as  the 
beer  stamps  of  those  days.  Don't  ask  us  how  to  obtain 
them,  for  we  don't  know.  Mr.  Holcombe  might  tell  if  he 
would.  And  there  were  private  tobacco  stamps  which  began 
to  issue  about  1878,  printed  on  the  wrappers,  which  were 
usually  tin  foil.  By  1882  it  was  said  that  there  were  three- 
hundred  of  these  tin-foil  tobacco  stamps.  Most  of  them 
have  vanished  entirely  now. 

The  Spanish  War  of  1898  of  course  brought  another 


3oo     LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS 

crop  of  revenues,  including— at  the  start— the  first  sur- 
charges in  our  history,  just  the  letters  "I  R"  on  the  two- 
cent  postage  stamp.  From  that  day  to  this,  special  taxes  and 
tax  stamps  have  never  ceased  to  be  with  us.  It  makes  one's 
head  swim  to  look  over  a  catalogue  of  those  in  force  in 
recent  years,  and  most  of  them  still  with  us— not  only  na- 
tional, but  state  imposts— food,  liquor,  tobacco  products, 
oils  and  gasoline,  oleomargarine,  cereal  beverages,  playing 
cards,  malt,  mechanical  games,  secured  debts,  hunting  li- 
censes, those  potato  stamps  of  1936  which  the  government 
peddled  about  the  philatelic  market  after  the  potato-stamp 
experiment  collapsed;  inspection  stamps  of  a  thousand  sorts 
—inspection  of  liquors,  of  oil  and  gasoline,  of  peat,  humus 
and  untreated  phosphates,  live-stock  remedies,  paint,  var- 
nish and  stains,  feedstuffs  and  cereal  seeds,  milk,  bedding, 
egg  classification— but  why  be  tiresome?  And  then  there  are 
—but  there's  no  use  in  reminding  the  citizen  unnecessarily 
of  his  taxes.  .  .  . 

Here  is  another  byway  which  you  may  never  have  heard 
of.  Back  in  the  iSyo's  and  '8o's,  if  you  patented  an  article 
and  licensed  some  concern  to  manufacture  it,  you  sold 
them  royalty  stamps  of  your  own  design,  one  of  which  they 
must  attach  to  every  article  made  under  your  patent.  These 
stamps  are  not,  of  course,  of  government  issue,  but  they  are 
collectors'  items  and  interesting  as  revealing  what  curious 
things  were  patented  and  used  sixty  years  ago.  Collars,  for 
example;  about  the  only  sort  of  detachable  collar  a  man 
could  buy  then  was  made  of  paper.  You  wore  it  until  it 
collapsed,  then  threw  it  away.  Women's  hats  were  pat- 
ented, overalls,  even  men's  clothing— an  adjustable  waist 
feature,  a  new  idea  for  buttoning  trousers;  likewise  the 
saddle-seam  boot,  the  dirt-excluder  shoe,  a  patent  plow 


LUCIFERS  AND  LIVER  REGULATORS     301 

shoe,  the  ventilating  waterproof  shoe  and  others.  If  you 
applied  American  quilted  wire  soles  to  your  shoes  or  put 
them  together  with  Oliver's  waxed  shoe  pegs,  you  had  to 
buy  royalty  stamps.  There  were  other  articles  besides,  all 
listed  in  the  pamphlet  which  Holcombe  has  compiled  on 
the  subject. 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 


THERE  are  a  thousand  rami- 
£        j.'  £  U-1     i.    1 

fications    of    philately;    a 
thousand    byways    which 

are  as  pleasant  to  those  whose  feet  wander  there  as  any  or- 
thodox collection  of  postage  stamps.  Undoubtedly  the 
most  important  of  them  all  is  air  mail  in  its  various 
branches.  There  are  exclusive  air-mail  dealers,  air-mail  cata- 
logues, even  crash  catalogues;  for  air-mail  collectors  of 
course  want  envelopes  which  have  been  through  disasters 
of  one  sort  and  another,  and  some  persons  specialize  in 
them,  to  the  exclusion  of  other  air-mail  items.  An  envelope 
with  its  edges  burned  and  a  sticker  from  the  Post  Office 
Department,  notifying  the  addressee  that  this  letter  had 
passed  through  a  disaster  in  the  Pennsylvania  mountains,  in 
which  the  pilot  and  seven  or  eight  passengers  were  killed,  is 
a  souvenir  with  more  sorts  of  value  than  one.  The  collector 
who  has  a  damaged  envelope  from  the  crash  at  Alhambra, 
California,  December  22,  1930— when  but  little  more  than 
a  third  of  the  1,445  pounds  of  mail  was  saved— an  envelope 
with  burned  lower  edge  and  end  and  a  spot  of  blood  near 
the  address,  has  a  rare  treasure  indeed! 

These  letters,  when  badly  damaged,  are  forwarded  to  the 
addressee  in  a  special  large  envelope— christened  "ambu- 
lance cover"  by  Seymour  Dunbar,  noted  transportation  his- 

302 


Above— Back  of  an  envelope  from  Lundy  Island,  with  its 
curious  local  stamps. 


Mayor's  Office,  Phllada,,  August  !7th,  1814 

CHILD   STOLEN! 

$20.000  REWARD 

Will  be  Paid  for  the  Recovery  of 

CHARLES  BREW&TER  ROSS, 


And  the  Arrest  and  Convietioi 


Itietors 


'LEASE  TACK  THIS  UP 

IN  SOME 

Conspicuous 


The  accompanying  Photograph  is  a  fokff  Ikeness  of  said  boy.  He  w 
four  years  ola  in  Msiy  last,  and  his  description  on  .July  1st,  1874,  when 
j  was  stolen,  was  as  follows :  Light  flaxen  hair  worn  curled,  (it  may  be  c 
|  short,)  brown  or  hazel  eyes,  clear  light  skin,  round  full  face,  dimples 
|  checks  and  chin,  fresh  color;  small  fat  hands  and  feet,  well  formed  bo< 
I  carriage  erect,  no  marks  except  those  made  by  vaccination  on  the  ar 
I  He  is  bashful  with  strangers  and  has  a  habit  of  patting  his  arm  before  1 
j  eyes  when  in  their  presence,  he  becomes  familiar  after  short  aeqtiai: 
|  ance.  He  talks  plainly  and  could  tell  his  name  and  those  of  his  paren 

brothers  and  sisters,  and  where  he  lived. 
!      He  was  dressed  in  broad-brimmed  unbleached  Panama  hat,  fancy  bra 
black  ribbon,  nobinding_;  brown  linen  kilt  suit  with  short  box  pleat 
skirt,  blue  and  white  striped  stock irgs  and  laced  shoes. 
Be  may  h«  dressed  as  a  girl  or  otherwise  disguised. 
This  Child  was  stolen  from  Washington  Lane,  German  town,  by  fr 
men  in  a  failing-top  buggy,  drawn  by  a  dark  bay  horse  on  July  1st,  187' 


KENNARB  H.  JONES, 

Chief  of  Poli\ 


From  the  Collection  of  George  B.  SJoane 


Left— A   tiny 
ter  (natural 
which     esca 
from  Paris  by 
loon    during 
German   siegi 
1871. 


-One  of 
letters 
rolled 
the  bed 
Seine 
aris  in  a 
all  during 
erman 
n  1871. 


^\% 


B "  ^ 


V 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  303 

torian  and  air-mail  hobbyist— and  these  envelopes,  too,  are 
subjects  for  collection.  It  was  Dunbar,  by  the  way,  who  re- 
marked in  Stamps  in  1933  that  the  "good  will  flight"  of 
Lindbergh  to  Latin  America  in  1927  was  "the  inspiration 
and  motive  cause  of  more  diversified  philatelic  items  in  the 
shape  of  different  postage  stamps,  envelopes,  post  cards 
and  cachets  than  any  other  famous  figure  of  history,  per- 
haps excepting  George  Washington." 

If  you  wish  to  go  back  right  to  the  root  of  things,  of 
course  you  must  get  one  of  the  special  messages  on  pelure 
paper  sent  by  balloon  in  1850  to  Sir  John  Franklin,  who 
was  then  lost  in  the  Arctic;  but  it  may  cost  you  what  is 
laughingly  called  a  pretty  penny  to  wrench  this  rare  item 
away  from  somebody  else.  Next  you  must  get  envelopes 
sent  out  by  balloon  from  Paris  and  Metz  while  they  were 
besieged  by  the  German  armies  in  1870-71.  The  ones  from 
Metz,  tiny  ones  on  thin  tissue  carried  out  by  small  balloons 
mostly  of  paper,  have  neither  postage  stamp  nor  sending 
cachet,  and  only  rarely  have  they  a  receiving  cachet;  so  they 
must  be  well  authenticated  and  are  very  rare.  Then  there 
are  the  miniature  newspapers  sent  out  from  Paris  by  bal- 
loon, sometimes  with  colored  maps  of  Paris  and  environs 
printed  on  thin  tissue;  also  the  microscopic  film  carried 
into  Paris  by  pigeons.  Dr.  H.  E.  Radasch  of  Philadelphia 
and  Norman  Serphos  of  New  York  have  wonderful  collec- 
tions of  this  material,  including  telegrams,  both  private  and 
military.  There  are  other  such  collections,  of  course;  it  must 
be  remembered  that  when  we  mention  a  particular  one,  it 
is  usually  because  we  have  seen  that  one  and  mention  that 
one  either  as  typical  or  as  one  of  the  finest  of  its  kind. 

There  was  a  balloon  flight  from  St.  Louis  in  1859,  when 
the  American  Express  Company  forwarded  a  bag  of  mail 
intended  for  New  York  City.  The  balloon  came  so  near 


304          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

falling  into  Lake  Ontario  that  the  aeronaut  threw  out  all 
his  ballast,  including  the  mail  bag,  into  the  lake,  and  him- 
self managed  to  reach  shore  safely.  The  mail  bag  was 
washed  up  on  shore  a  few  days  later  and  the  letters,  little 
the  worse  for  wear,  were  forwarded  to  New  York;  but  none 
are  now  known  to  survive.  There  was  another  balloon  flight 
in  1877,  this  time  from  Nashville,  for  which  a  five-cent 
stamp  was  engraved,  bearing  the  picture  of  a  buffalo  and 
the  words,  "Balloon  Post."  In  1897  and  '98  there  were 
flights  in  Germany,  from  Leipzig  and  Munich,  with  a 
cachet  for  each.  Others  followed  in  England  and  elsewhere 
during  the  next  ten  years.  In  1897  a  pigeon  post  was  started 
between  Great  Barrier  Island  and  Auckland,  New  Zealand, 
about  sixty-five  miles,  and  in  the  following  year  a  triangular 
stamp  was  designed,  which  is  now  a  philatelic  treasure.  A 
little  later,  one  of  these  stamps  was  overprinted  for  service 
between  Marotiri  and  Auckland. 

Finally,  in  1908,  an  airplane  carried  some  mail  between 
Rome  and  Turin,  via  Milan— covers  now  exceedingly  rare. 
In  1909  Glenn  Curtiss,  barnstorming  in  Italy  in  one  of  the 
crude  biplanes  with  which  the  Wright  brothers  were  then 
experimenting  in  France,  took  Gabriele  d'Annunzio  up  one 
day  and  planted  the  germ  of  flying  enthusiasm  in  the  soul 
of  the  poet-dramatist.  Curtiss  also  had  some  post  cards 
made  with  a  picture  of  the  plane  and  his  own  portrait 
thereon,  and  carried  some  of  them,  duly  postmarked,  on 
flights  from  town  to  town.  One  bearing  his  scribbled  auto- 
graph in  pencil  was  in  the  collection  of  Dr.  Philip  G.  Cole, 
and  at  Cole's  sale  in  1939  passed  into  the  hands  of  Norman 
Serphos,  who  has  heard  of  no  other  autographed  copy. 

Also  in  1909  the  first  Zeppelin  post  appeared  in  Ger- 
many. On  September  23,  1911— curiously  enough,  the  an- 
niversary of  the  first  balloon  mail  out  of  Paris  in  1870—3 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  305 

few  letters  and  cards  were  officially  carried  by  a  plane  from 
Garden  City  to  Mineola,  Long  Island.  And  so  through  the 
several  years  of  experimental  flights,  the  spanning  of  the 
continent  by  Macready  and  Kelly,  the  notable  flights  of 
Maughan,  Hawks  and  others,  the  attempt  of  the  Maud  ex- 
pedition of  Amundsen  to  reach  the  North  Pole  in  1922, 
the  spanning  of  the  ocean  by  Brown  and  Alcock  and  by 
Chamberlain  and  Levine,  all  these  carried  a  few  letters 
which  are  "musts"  for  the  collector,  if  he  can  possibly  lay 
hands  on  them. 

And  of  course  the  Government's  first  real,  regular  mail 
service  flight  between  New  York  and  Washington  in  1918, 
the  first  flights  between  New  York  and  Cleveland,  Cleve- 
land and  Chicago,  the  gradual  extension  by  plane-and-rail- 
road  relays  across  the  continent,  the  first  all-plane  day-and- 
night  flight  from  New  York  to  San  Francisco  in  1923,  the 
first  daily  transcontinental  service  in  1924,  the  first-day 
flights  to  every  American  city,  to  Canada,  Cuba,  Mexico, 
South  America,  first-day  flights  in  all  other  countries,  all 
these  keep  the  air  collector  on  his  toes  constantly.  At  each 
new  venture  in  cross-ocean  service— England  to  South 
Africa,  England  to  Australia,  Europe  to  South  America, 
China  Clipper,  and  so  on,  the  load  of  first-day  covers  grew 
larger,  until  when  the  Yankee  Clipper  left  New  York  on 
May  2oth,  1939,  for  the  first  eastbound  flight  across  the 
Atlantic,  it  carried  112,574  of  those  prized  collectors'  items. 

Air-mail  carrying  has  also  brought  about,  as  we  have 
already  shown,  no  little  racketeering  and  some  stiff  exploi- 
tation of  collectors,  usually  with  the  co-operation  or  actual 
design  of  some  government.  In  the  flight  of  the  Balbo  air 
squadron  from  Rome  to  Chicago  and  back  in  1933,  sur" 
taxes  were  laid  on  the  stamps  to  the  extent  of  from  about 
four  to  nine  times  their  face  value.  The  old  Graf  Zeppelin, 


306          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

LZ-i2y,  was  the  greatest  private  mail  carrier  in  history.  It 
collected  far  more  than  a  million  dollars  from  philatelists 
for  the  privilege  of  having  covers  decorated  with  its  cachets. 
Many  of  the  nations  of  the  world,  including  the  United 
States,  co-operated  with  it.  Its  profits  have  been  handsome. 
For  example,  when  it  cruised  to  this  country  via  South 
America  in  1930,  the  United  States  issued  sixty-five-cent 
stamps  for  post  cards  and  $1.30  and  $2.60  stamps  for  letters 
to  be  handled  by  it,  according  to  distance  carried.  Of  these 
sums,  the  United  States  collected  only  its  usual  share  of 
three  cents  for  sending  post  cards  and  five  cents  for  letters 
to  the  ship's  base  at  Friedrichshafen;  the  Zeppelin  got  the 
rest.  Uncle  Sam  sold  $314,324  worth  of  these  stamps,  and 
the  majority  were  not  used,  but  went  into  albums,  giving 
Uncle  a  nice  little  profit  himself.  Of  the  stamps  used,  the 
government  received  less  than  $3,800  for  carrying  mail  to 
the  Zep's  starting  point,  while  the  Zeppelin  company's 
share  was  $106,310. 

On  one  trip  over  Germany,  the  airship  dropped  mail  at 
fourteen  cities.  Usually  it  did  not  descend  at  such  places, 
but  just  dropped  the  bag  from  the  air.  On  two  occasions, 
bags  came  open  as  they  fell,  scattering  mail  over  the  land- 
scape and  gloom  among  collectors.  On  at  least  two  other 
air-post  trips,  bags  fell  into  the  ocean  and  were  not  re- 
covered for  some  time— in  one  case  many  of  the  stamps 
being  soaked  off  the  letters.  This  caused  some  heartburn- 
ing, but  the  cachets  remained  on  the  covers,  and  it  was  dis- 
covered that  the  sea  bath  and  rescue  gave  them  an  added 
distinction.  The  late  Dr.  Victor  M.  Berthold,  famous  New 
York  collector,  had  a  large  and  magnificent  album  contain- 
ing, we  believe,  a  cover  from  every  mail  bag  dropped  by 
the  Zep  in  its  flights,  as  well  as  dozens  of  photographs  of 
the  big  dirigible,  inside  and  out,  in  many  positions  and 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  307 

places,  and  photographs  of  Count  Zeppelin,  Dr.  Eckener 
and  much  other  data. 

When  our  dirigible  Akron  fell  into  the  ocean  in  1933,  a 
portion  of  the  rubberized  fabric  which  formed  the  outer 
covering  of  the  helium  gas  cells  was  recovered  from  the 
Atlantic  off  Barnegat  Light,  New  Jersey,  and  F.  Hambroch 
made  it  into  post  cards  which  were  franked  with  a  three- 
cent  stamp  and  mailed  at  Lakehurst  on  Memorial  Day, 
making  an  unusual  collectors'  item. 

And  speaking  of  Paris  during  the  Franco-Prussian  War, 
has  any  reader  an  envelope  from  the  first  "submarine  mail?" 
You  see,  the  French  outside  Paris,  torturing  their  brains 
to  think  of  means  of  communicating  with  their  country- 
men inside  the  German  ring  of  steel,  hatched  the  idea  of 
hollow  balls  of  thin  sheet  copper  or  zinc,  which  were  to  be 
filled  with  letters  and  put  into  the  Seine  above  the  city, 
thence  to  be  rolled  by  the  current  downstream  until  they 
were  caught  by  a  net  stretched  across  the  stream  within  the 
city.  Of  the  many  balls  launched,  only  one  got  through  but, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  some  of  the  envelopes  which  trav- 
eled in  it  are  still  in  existence. 

In  mid-nineteenth  century,  not  only  was  the  carrying  of 
letters  in  the  larger  cities  done  by  privately  owned  "letter 
expresses/'  whose  stamps  are  now  a  collector's  joy,  but  one 
also  finds  gay  little  stickers  on  some  envelopes  in  the  1840*8 
and  '50*8  which  show  that  these  letters  traveled  across  coun- 
try from  town  to  town  by  the  hands  of  private  concerns. 
Such  was  the  origin  of  express  companies,  which  conveyed 
letters,  money  and  documents  before  they  thought  of  han- 
dling freight.  The  bright  red,  blue,  green  and  yellow  stick- 
ers of  Hill's,  Jackson's,  Pomeroy's,  Favor's,  Gilman's,  Gay, 
Kinsley  &  Co.'s,  Davenport  &  Mason's  and  other  expresses 
carry  the  story  up  to  the  time  when  they  merged  into 


3o8          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

greater  companies— Adams,  National,  American,  United 
States,  Southern,  Wells,  Fargo  &  Company;  some  of  these 
carried  mail  in  defiance  of  the  Post  Office,  up  to  and  even 
after  the  Civil  War.  Their  covers  make  a  colorful  and  in- 
structive collection. 

But  it  was  'Forty-Nine  that  brought  the  greatest  mass 
of  such  material  into  existence.  The  Pacific  Coast  became 
populated  more  rapidly  than  a  slow-coach  government 
could  bring  itself  to  extend  postal  facilities,  and  hundreds 
of  expressmen— individuals  and  companies— sprang  up  out 
there  to  carry  letters,  packages  of  money  and  valuables 
among  towns  with  such  names  as  Red  Dog,  You  Bet, 
Jackass  Gulch,  Fiddletown,  Gouge  Eye  and  Hell's  Delight. 
Just  as  soon  as  the  busy  job  printers  in  the  little  town  of 
San  Francisco  could  give  them  service,  they  began  using 
envelopes  with  their  corner  cards  thereon,  thus  preparing 
for  the  future  happiness  of  many  a  collector.  Through  three 
decades  thereafter,  as  new  Eldorados  were  found— in  Ne- 
vada, Idaho,  Montana,  Colorado,  the  Black  Hills,  Arizona- 
new  expresses  sprang  up  to  serve  their  public.  W.  W. 
Phillips,  a  collector  of  Stockton,  California,  says  that  he 
has  identified  775  of  them  west  of  the  Mississippi  River. 
Henry  C.  Needham  of  New  York,  Ernest  A.  Wiltsee  and 
W.  Parker  Lyon  of  California,  did  notable  work  in  search- 
ing out  the  history  of  these  concerns  and  collecting  their 
covers. 

The  most  enormous  collection  of  these  western  franks 
of  which  the  author  knows  is  that  of  Alfred  Lichtenstein— 
some  twenty-five  huge  albums  full,  the  envelopes  set  thickly 
overlapping  each  other  in  pockets  running  across  the  broad 
pages.  There  are  twelve  albums  full  of  Wells,  Fargo  alone! 
What  pungent  whiffs  of  Bret  Harte  color  and  whimsy  one 
finds  in  the  very  names  as  one  turns  the  pages— Indian 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  309 

Creek  Express;  the  Noisy  Carriers;  Langton's  Pioneer  Ex- 
press; Hogan  &  Co.'s  North  San  Juan  and  Humbug  Ex- 
press; Zack's  Express;  A.  M.  Hinkley  &  Co/s  Isthmus  of 
Panama  Express;  Loon  Creek  Express;  English  &  Wells' 
Moore's  Flat  and  Eureka  Express,  connecting  at  Nevada 
City  and  Emigrant  Gap;  Dietz  &  Nelson's  British  Colum- 
bia and  Victoria  Express;  M.  Fettis's  Oro  Fino  Express; 
Cheyenne  and  Black  Hills  Express;  Tombstone  and  Pata- 
gonia Express  Line. 

There  are  stories  connected  with  the  finding  of  some  of 
these  things,  too.  Mr.  Lichtenstein  shows  you  a  little  sheet 
of  twelve  type-set  stickers  on  once-green  paper,  rumpled, 
faded,  partly  washed  out  by  dampness,  and  tells  how,  in  a 
half-ruined  cabin  far  up  the  Fraser  River  in  British  Colum- 
bia, whither  a  gold  rush  began  in  1858,  a  man  found  an  old 
table  minus  one  of  its  front  legs  and  with  face  turned  to 
the  wall  for  support.  Turning  it  around,  he  discovered  that 
there  was  a  drawer  in  it.  In  that  drawer  was  a  rusty  tin  can, 
tightly  covered;  and  in  that  can  were  these  stickers  of 
Barnard's  Cariboo  Express,  which  carried  letters  to  those 
miners  eighty  years  ago.  Another  of  Lichtenstein's  chief 
treasures  is  the  cover  of  a  letter  which  was  in  a  mail  bag 
stolen  by  the  Indians  in  Nevada  from  the  Pony  Express  in 
1860,  recovered  and  delivered  to  the  addressee  two  years 
later. 

Edward  S.  Knapp  of  New  York  is  said  to  have  been  the 
pioneer  in  the  collection  of  corner  cards— envelopes  bearing 
mere  printed  names  and  addresses  or  advertising  on  front 
or  back  of  businesses,  hotels,  schools,  cults  and  anything 
else  that  feels  the  need  of  publicity.  This  sort  of  thing 
began  in  the  1850'$.  His  collection  of  hotel  envelopes  is 
particularly  notable.  Here  one  finds  all  the  hostelries  fa- 
mous in  our  history— the  Parker  House  in  Boston,  where 


3io          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

our  favorite  rolls  originated,  the  old  Astor  House  in  New 
York,  built  by  the  first  John  Jacob  himself  in  1836,  the  old 
Tremont  in  Boston,  at  whose  opening  banquet  in  1829 
Daniel  Webster  and  Edward  Everett  ate  and  declaimed; 
the  National  in  Washington,  opened  in  1827,  closed  in 
1930,  operated  by  John  Gadsby  until  1844  and  called 
Gadsby's  until  then,  where  Andrew  Jackson  and  James 
Buchanan  stopped  at  times,  where  Thaddeus  Stevens  and 
Henry  Clay  lived  for  years  (Clay  died  there),  where  John 
Wilkes  Booth  lived,  in  whose  room  the  plot  against  Lin- 
coln was  probably  contrived;  the  Palace  in  San  Francisco, 
creation  of  the  spectacular  William  C.  Ralston,  where 
California  gold  and  Nevada  silver  millionaires  had  their 
headquarters,  destroyed  in  the  great  cataclysm  of  1906;  the 
Union  Square  in  New  York,  where  Richard  Canfield, 
America's  most  famous  gambler,  was  night  clerk  for  several 
years  in  the  iSyo's;  Delmonico's,  into  which  a  ship  captain 
came  one  day  and  showed  the  maitre  d'hotel  how  to  pre- 
pare a  new  dish  which  was  christened  Lobster  Newburg; 
the  Broadway  Central,  still  functioning,  once  the  Grand 
Central,  in  whose  lobby  Ned  Stokes  killed  Jim  Fisk  in 
1872;  the  Hoffman  House,  headquarters  of  politicians,  pro- 
moters and  sports,  which  had  the  finest  collection  of  bar- 
room nude  art  in  America,  whose  "Hoffman  House  Per- 
fecto,"  a  ten-cent  straight  cigar,  had  a  copy  of  one  of  the 
paintings,  "Nymphs  and  Satyrs"  on  the  lid  (of  course  Mr. 
Knapp  has  a  specimen  of  that  cigar-box  label);  the  Palmer 
House  in  Chicago,  whose  proprietor  is  best  remembered  as 
the  husband  of  the  beautiful  and  brilliant  Mrs.  Potter 
Palmer— and  hundreds  of  others. 

Mr.  Knapp  likes  to  ask  you,  "What  is  your  native  town?" 
and  when  you  answer  Oskaloosa,  Iowa  or  Shamokin,  Penn- 
sylvania, he  plucks  one  of  his  albums  from  the  shelf  with 


ft  WE   SUNNY 
QUR  COUNTRY^ 


>tt  taking  JoflT  Monkey's 
Dajst  Trump. 


REMEMBER  ELLSWORTH. 


Jeff.  Davis'  Coat  ui  "  AI 


DIXIE  : 


Some  of  Hugh  M.  Clark's  Civil  War  "patriotic"  envelopes. 

Notice  the  one  at  the  bottom  glorifying  the  Federal  General 

Rosecrans,  but  bearing  a  portrait  of  Jefferson  Davis. 


,.    oteirirnetz, 


Dl 


ADDRESS 

YOUR  MAIL 

TO 


^Ulster  -,,t.t 
r.ncisco,   3aa  if 


a  tr 


122- 5tK  -venue 
Kew  Y'ork ,  ... 


From  the  Collection  of  Norman  Serphos 

Four  noted  air-mail  covers.  Reading  downward,  Amundsen 
Arctic  flight  of  1922;  first  continuous  transcontinental  mail 
flight,  1923;  one  of  the  earliest  pieces  of  mail  carried  by  plane 


,'„    A 


j        i     1.          j 


i  i  i 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  311 

eager  expectation,  and  is  usually  able  to  show  you  an  en- 
velope sent  from  a  hotel  which  in  childhood  you  regarded 
as  a  triumph  of  metropolitan  elegance.  If  he  hasn't  it,  you 
can  detect  a  slight  depression  in  his  manner;  he  feels  that 
his  life  has  not  quite  measured  up  to  the  achievement 
which  might  reasonably  be  expected  of  him. 

From  hotels  Mr.  Knapp  drifted  into  the  corner  cards  of 
schools  and  colleges,  another  enormous  category.  Here  are 
letters  of  all  periods  from  all  the  most  famous  institutions 
of  the  country  and  from  many  of  which  the  casual  observer 
never  heard;  many,  in  fact,  now  long  dead.  Here  are  not 
only  classical  but  scientific  and  professional  schools,  busi- 
ness colleges  galore,  "female  seminaries/'  "young  ladies'  in- 
stitutes," academies— one  finds  the  term,  "high  school"  ap- 
plied away  back  in  the  1850'$  to  an  academy  at  which  tui- 
tion was  paid.  There  are  many  delightful  names:  Music 
Vale  Seminary  in  Connecticut,  the  Providence  Conference 
Seminary,  the  Commercial,  Chirographic  and  Telegraphic 
Institute  of  Oberlin,  Ohio,  the  Society  of  Friends  of  the 
New  London  Literary  and  Scientific  Institute— only  this 
New  London  was  in  New  Hampshire  and  the  dates  are  far 
back  in  1854-55.  In  some  of  the  envelopes  from  New 
London  are  reports  to  Mrs.  Clarissa  Griffin,  printed  forms 
on  blue  paper,  of  the  absences,  excused  and  unexcused, 
from  chapel,  recitations  and  church  service,  as  well  as  schol- 
arship standing— note  that  the  absences  came  first  in  im- 
portance—of her  daughters,  Miss  M.  W.  Griffin  and  Miss 
J.  Griffin.  We  are  gratified  to  observe  that  neither  of  the 
young  ladies  had  any  unexcused  absences  and  that  their 
standing  in  scholarship  was  high. 

One  discovers  how  extensively  envelopes  have  been  used 
for  propaganda  purposes  when  one  looks  through  a  collec- 
tion like  this— for  Knapp  collects  corner  cards  of  almost  all 


3i2          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

kinds.  Religion  and  temperance,  as  it  used  to  be  called— 
later  prohibition— are  the  two  principal  causes  found  pro- 
moted on  envelopes  of  the  past  in  peace  times.  One  en- 
velope shouts,  "2,480,000  Drunkards  in  the  United  States, 
of  whom— 120,000  die  annually,  while— 120,000  sober 
youth  are  yearly  doomed— to  replenish  the  ranks/'  Another 
cover  has  practically  a  whole  history  in  small  type  on  its 
face,  with  the  suggestion  in  larger  letters,  "Have  this  pub- 
lished in  your  local  papers."  Of  course  the  political  en- 
velopes are  legion;  and  the  earliest  propaganda  cover  of  any 
sort  that  Mr.  Knapp  has  been  able  to  find  bears  simply  the 
portrait  of  General  Winfield  Scott  when  that  old  gentle- 
man was  running  for  the  Presidency  in  1852,  as  all  generals 
used  to  do  sooner  or  later.  There  were  letterheads  boost- 
ing William  Henry  Harrison  for  the  Presidency  in  1840 
(Knapp  has  one,  of  course),  carrying  his  portrait  and  his 
trademarks,  the  log  cabin  and  the  barrel  of  cider,  but  that 
was  before  envelopes  came  into  general  use,  and  this  letter, 
folded  over  and  sealed,  became  its  own  cover. 

What  isn't  in  this  fascinating  collection!  Here  are  en- 
velopes from  livery  stables  elegantly  designating  themselves 
as  "Horse  Mansion"  and  "Horse  Hotel";  several  from  Bar- 
num's  American  Museum  in  New  York,  1857-60  (with 
much  other  Barnum  material);  from  the  management  of 
the  Seven  Sutherland  Sisters,  whose  hair  trailed  upon  the 
floor;  from  little  forgotten  railroads,  some  of  which  never 
got  anywhere;  from  Tex  Rickard's  prize-fight  promotions  at 
Goldfield,  when  that  boom  town  was  in  its  heyday;  several 
very  ornate  ones  issued  by  Elihu  Burritt,  "the  learned  black- 
smith," who  yearned  for  international  peace  and  under- 
standing, but  whose  principal  object  in  these  envelopes  was 
the  carriage  of  letters  across  the  Atlantic  for  a  British 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  313 

penny.  "Britain,  from  Thee  the  World  Expects  Penny  Pos- 
tage" is  flaunted  on  a  banner  across  several  of  them. 

There  are  other  specialized  collections  of  corner  cards; 
that  of  Stephen  G.  Rich  of  Verona,  New  Jersey,  for  ex- 
ample, of  old  schoolbook  publishers;  surprising  to  find  how 
many  of  them  are  still  in  business  after  sixty  or  eighty  years. 
And  there  is  Theodore  E.  Stein  way's  collection  of  piano 
makers  and  dealers;  all  the  early  Steinway,  Chickering, 
Mason  &  Hamlin,  Knabe  and  other  names,  together  with 
many  now  almost  or  quite  forgotten— Haines  Brothers, 
Hallet  &  Allen,  Carhart  &  Needham,  manufacturers  of 
melodeons,  John  Farris  of  Hartford,  Joseph  Foster,  maker 
of  organs  and  melodeons  at  Keene,  New  Hampshire,  in 
the  '50'$.  There  are  many  modern  dealers'  envelopes,  too, 
ranging  from  the  most  dignified  all  the  way  down  to 
"Popple's;  See  Si  Before  You  Buy.  Grand  Forks,  N.D." 
and  "Redewill  Music  Co.,  One  Blok  West  of  Cort  House 
Water  Hole  since  1881,  Fenix,  Arizonny." 

By  far  the  most  enormous  group  of  propaganda  enve- 
lopes in  our  history  was  that  of  the  so-called  patriotics,  is- 
sued mostly  during  the  Civil  War— for  it  is  only  in  war- 
time that  we  grow  really  patriotic.  The  war  with  Spain  in 
1898  and  the  World  War  produced  much  smaller  crops. 
There  are  many  collections  of  these,  but  that  of  Hugh  M. 
Clark  of  New  York,  containing  somewhere  near  ten  thou- 
sand varieties,  practically  all  of  Civil  War  vintage,  and  fill- 
ing ninety  albums,  is  the  most  remarkable  one  within  our 
acquaintance. 

These  began  with  pictures  of  the  flags,  Union  and  Con- 
federate (in  colors,  of  course),  pictures  of  soldiers  in  camp 
and  out,  of  men  rushing  into  battle,  of  the  American  eagle, 
Miss  Liberty,  and  Miss  Columbia  (often  you  can't  tell 
which),  liberty  bells  and  caps,  cannon  and  bits  of  verse, 


314          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

patriotic  or  satirical,  some  of  them  the  worst  doggerel  that 
ever  crawled  from  a  pen.  Both  sides  flaunted  emblems  of 
freedom  and  cheered  for  liberty.  In  addition  to  the  printed 
envelopes,  there  were  stickers  bearing  all  these  emblems 
and  scenes,  which  were  pasted  on  an  upper  corner  of  the 
envelope. 

Some  of  the  earliest  of  the  Confederate  specimens  are 
mailed  in  United  States  three-cent  stamped  envelopes,  this 
being  before  the  Confederate  postal  service  had  gotten  into 
operation.  The  Confederate  flag  appeared  with  numerous 
mottoes-'The  Flag  of  the  Oppressed,"  "Bully  for  C.S.A.," 
"We  Ask  no  Favours,"  "A  Bitter  Pill  for  Lincoln,"  "In- 
vincible!"  "Prodigious!"  On  the  Northern  side,  eagles 
clutched  the  Serpent  of  Rebellion  in  their  claws,  while  the 
same  pudgy  infant  clutching  a  snake  appeared  on  both 
Northern  and  Southern  envelopes,  in  one  case  the  reptile 
being  "Secession,"  in  the  other  "Abolition."  The  identical 
aspect  of  the  child  seems  to  argue  that  the  two  batches 
were  turned  out  in  the  same  shop.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  most 
of  the  Confederate  covers  were  produced  in  Northern 
shops,  and  the  South  was  able  to  get  them  from  New  York 
by  water  for  several  months  after  the  war  began— fancy 
that!  But  with  the  clapping  down  of  the  blockade  this  was 
stopped,  and  before  long,  people  in  the  South  were  making 
envelopes  out  of  wrapping  paper,  wall  paper,  the  backs  of 
advertising  circulars  or  just  taking  used  envelopes  apart  and 
turning  them  inside  out. 

Portraits  of  the  leading  Confederate  generals,  the  Cab- 
inet, and  other  statesmen  are  found  with  the  imprint  of 
Charles  Magnus,  12  Frankfort  Street,  New  York.  How 
many  of  these  actually  reached  the  South,  we  do  not  know; 
for  Mr.  Clark  tells  us  that  less  than  half  of  the  alleged 
Confederate  envelopes  were  actually  used  in  those  states; 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  315 

the  others  were  printed  in  the  North  for  sale  to  collectors! 
But  there  are  some  bitter  and  satirical  ones  which  are  iden- 
tified as  genuine,  some  of  them  actually  turned  out  in 
Southern  printeries.  When  a  Northern  envelope  pictured 
an  aristocratic  Southron  in  bed  with  a  Negro  woman,  a 
Southern  printer  retorted  with  a  picture  of  a  depraved-look- 
ing Yankee  reformer  with  a  fat  colored  woman  on  his  knee, 
and  the  legend,  "This  is  how  the  Abolitionists  loves  the 
negro." 

There  was  an  interesting  tendency  to  represent  public 
men  as  animals;  smart,  likable  animals  if  the  men  were  on 
your  side,  the  lowest  of  all  fauna  if  they  were  on  the  other. 
The  Southern  President  Davis  was  naturally  the  favorite 
target,  being  pictured  variously  as  the  Devil,  as  a  snake, 
wolf,  fox,  monkey,  rat,  cat,  chicken,  crow  or  weasel.  A 
favorite  Northern  cartoon  showed  a  big  bulldog  in  cocked 
hat,  supposed  to  be  General  Winfield  Scott,  while  a 
smaller,  slinking  cur  was  "Jeff  Davis."  Between  them  was 
what  was  intended  to  be  a  rib  roast,  marked  "Washing- 
ton." "Well,  why  don't  you  take  it?"  growls  Scott.  One  of 
the  few  zoological  sneers  from  the  South  is  found  on  a  pic- 
ture of  a  cotton  bale,  with  the  vaunt,  "Cotton  defeated 
Packenham,  and  cotton  will  defeat  APE  LINCOLN." 

Both  sides  pictured  and  claimed  Washington,  Martha 
Washington  and  Charles  Carroll  of  Carrollton,  and  the 
North  even  enlisted  old  Ben  Franklin,  as  "A  Northern 
Man  with  Union  Principles."  Each  side  showed  opposing 
celebrities  dangling  from  the  gallows.  Lincoln  was  pictured 
in  scores  of  ways;  in  company  with  every  important  Fed- 
eral general;  on  many  campaign  covers,  with  and  without 
Hamlin  in  1860,  with  and  without  Andrew  Johnson  in 
1864.  He  is  pictured  splitting  rails,  and  one  cover  has  a 
crude  rail  fence  along  the  top  and  one  end,  labeled,  "The 


316          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

fence  that  Abe  built."  Another  combines  his  portrait  with 
the  fence  and  a  flatboating  scene,  explained  as  "Honest 
Abe  Lincoln  on  his  flatboat."  Mr.  Clark  actually  has  a 
whole  album  full  of  envelopes  inspired  by  the  killing  of 
Colonel  Ellsworth  of  New  York  at  Alexandria  in  the  first 
days  of  the  war— portraits  of  Ellsworth,  pictures  of  the 
hotel  where  the  episode  occurred,  numerous  versions  of 
the  tearing  down  of  the  flag  and  the  death  scene  itself, 
pictures  of  Zouaves,  and  one  cover  containing  a  terse  alleged 
letter  from  the  real  hero  of  the  affair:  "FATHER:  Col.  Ells- 
worth was  shot  dead  this  morning.  I  killed  his  murderer. 


FRANK." 


Some  comic  stunts  by  the  printers  are  revealed.  All  the 
eminent  Union  generals  were  given  envelopes  to  them- 
selves, with  their  names  in  huge  letters,  often  in  red  and 
blue.  One  of  these  bears  the  caption,  "Rosecrans,  the 
Hero  of  the  West,"  but  the  portrait  is  unmistakably  that 
of  Jefferson  Davis.  This  might  have  been  a  genuine  error 
of  the  printer,  or  it  might  be  explained  on  the  theory  that 
it  was  a  rush  job,  the  printer  had  no  cut  of  Rosecrans  and 
could  lay  hands  on  no  photograph  immediately  from  which 
to  make  a  cut,  and  that  he  thought  so  few  were  acquainted 
with  Rosecrans's  aspect  that  he  could  get  away  with  the 
substitution. 

One  interesting  discovery  made  by  Mr.  Clark  has  to 
do  with  a  picture  of  a  standing  small  boy  in  sailor  costume, 
supporting  with  his  right  hand  the  staff  of  a  United  States 
flag,  its  base  resting  on  the  floor.  This  appeared  on  two 
types  of  covers.  Clark  has  recently  found  that  the  picture 
was  a  faithful  copy  of  a  portrait,  at  the  age  of  two  and  a 
half  years,  of  Perry  Belmont— still  alive— painted  by  East- 
man Johnson  at  The  Hague  in  1853. 

As  usual,  there  is  some  delightful  reading  in  the  letters 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  317 

sent  in  these  envelopes.  Of  two  of  Mr.  Clark's  gems,  one 
is  from  a  Federal  private  at  Hilton  Head,  South  Carolina, 
in  1862,  in  which  he  tells  the  home  folks,  among  other 
things,  "Tomorrow  morning  at  11  oclock,  Private  Lunt  of 
the  Qth  Regiment  Maine  volinteers  is  to  be  shot  in  presents 
of  the  whole  command.  He  deserted  from  said  Regt  some 
time  ago  and  went  over  to  the  rebells  in  florida  but  was  so 
mean  they  would  not  keep  him  they  came  with  a  flag  of 
Truce  and  gave  him  up." 

On  a  note-head  with  a  Lincoln  portrait  and  the  caption, 
"The  Nation  mourns  his  loss,"  a  private  still  marooned  on 
Lookout  Mountain  on  July  8,  1865,  "having  a  few  lesure 
moments,  thought  I  would  right  a  few  lines"  to  father  and 
mother.  His  principal  news  was,  "The  3d  of  July  my  pay 
was  $63  20/100.  The  forth  was  very  dul  exept  about  the 
hole  of  the  Brigaid  was  drunk  and  four  men  was  killed 
and  about  300  deserted." 

Among  other  collectors  of  patriotics,  Dr.  Thomas  O. 
Gamble  has  a  fine  collection  of  the  Spanish-American  War 
—Rough  Riders,  "Remember  the  Maine,"  Cuban  flags, 
battle  scenes,  camps,  regimentals,  sentimentals,  comics,  ad- 
vertising (even  "Hood's  Sarsaparilla"  sneaked  in  on  some 
of  them ) ,  and  all  the  heroes— McKinley,  Roosevelt,  Dewey, 
Hobson,  Schley,  Sampson,  Clark,  Shafter,  Watson,  Sigsbee, 
Miles,  Lee,  Evans. 

There  have  been  times  when  revenue  stamps  were  neces- 
sary on  telegrams;  and  there  have  been  telegraph  companies 
whose  customers  paid  for  telegrams  with  the  company's 
own  specially  designed  stamps.  Furthermore,  the  big  com- 
panies to  this  day  hand  out  yearly  to  close  friends  and 
insiders  sheets  of  stamps  for  the  free  franking  of  their  tele- 
grams. All  these  combine  to  make  interesting  collections, 
of  which  that  of  Frank  E.  Lawrance  of  Jersey  City  is  the 


3i8          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

most  notable  one  we  have  seen.  But  once  the  first  false  step 
is  taken,  anyone  can  see  to  what  this  may  lead.  The  first 
thing  you  know,  the  besotted  enthusiast  is  collecting  the 
telegrams  themselves  and  the  envelopes  of  all  companies 
(and  there  were  still  217  of  them  in  the  United  States  in 
1886),  regardless  whether  they  have  stamps  on  them  or 
not.  And  Mr.  Lawrance  has  yet  another  interesting  side- 
line—a large  assortment  of  the  courtesy  cards  which  the 
many  telegraph  companies  fifty  years  ago  passed  around 
yearly  to  the  presidents  of  all  the  other  companies,  so  that 
no  executive  ever  had  to  pay  for  sending  a  telegram. 

This  drifting  into  quiet  byways  becomes  at  times  an 
irresistible  thing.  Edward  Stern,  when  once  he  had  started 
on  his  collection  of  Presidential  and  other  governmental 
franks,  found  himself  powerless  to  stop.  He  went  right  on 
to  picking  up  autograph  letters  of  the  Presidents,  auto- 
graphed photographs  of  them  as  far  back  as  he  could  go, 
then  their  bank  checks— there  seemed  no  end  to  it!  His 
greatest  prize  in  this  line  is  a  check  drawn  by  Washington 
on  the  Bank  of  Alexandria  in  1797  for  $500.  We  learn  from 
his  collection  that  President  Wilson  once  drew  a  check  for 
one  dollar  and  President  Taft  one  for  fifteen  cents.  Finally, 
Stern  found  that  he  had  to  collect  ribbon  badges,  mostly 
Presidential  campaign  badges  with  portraits  of  the  candi- 
dates and  slogans,  but  also  badges  of  patriotic  celebrations, 
anniversaries  and  memorial  celebrations  for  great  statesmen 
and  generals. 

Collections  of  postal  miscellany  or  oddities  are  lots  of 
fun  for  the  owner.  Here  you  will  find  letters  sent  during 
great  disaster  periods,  such  as  epidemics— when  the  en- 
velopes might  have  holes  cut  in  each  end  so  that  fumigation 
might  be  blown  through  them— floods,  fires,  train  wrecks, 
shipwrecks,  plane  crashes.  When  San  Francisco,  post  office 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  319 

and  all,  was  overwhelmed  by  earthquake  and  fire  in  1906, 
no  stamps  were  procurable  there  for  days  afterwards,  and 
by  an  emergency  ruling,  people  simply  paid  the  cash  to 
transmit  the  letter,  which  was  postmarked  and  sent  on 
without  stamp.  Stationery  was  hard  to  get,  too,  and  people 
wrote  letters  on  collars,  cuffs,  shingles,  mere  scraps  of  paper 
and  pieces  of  glove  and  sent  them  through  the  mails. 

In  the  oddity  collection  of  George  B.  Sloane  of  New 
York  you  may  see  some  of  these  curiosities.  He  has  one  of 
the  stampless  San  Francisco  letters,  on  which  the  Phila- 
delphia post  office,  which  apparently  hadn't  heard  of  the 
emergency  ruling  ("Always  slow!"  the  New  Yorkers  point 
out),  stuck  a  postage-due  stamp.  He  has  the  cover  of  a 
letter  which  sank  with  the  mail  steamship  Oregon  off  Long 
Island  in  1886,  and  was  recovered  four  months  later,  as 
attested  by  a  post-office  label;  another,  from  Japan,  dam- 
aged in  the  wreck  of  the  Twentieth  Century  Limited  on 
the  fourth  trip  eastward  of  that  famous  train,  June  21, 
1905,  when  nineteen  persons  were  killed.  He  has  eight 
stamps  which  passed  through  the  Equitable  Building  fire 
in  New  York  in  1912,  showing  the  effects  of  water  and 
chemicals;  some  darkened,  some  lightened,  one,  a  blue  five- 
center,  almost  faded  out. 

He  has  the  large  envelope  which  carried  a  letter  to  Presi- 
dent Harding  from  a  crank  who  thus  announced  himself 
on  the  back:  "From  God  Almighty,  who  comes  to  judge 
the  living  and  the  dead.  Woe  be  unto  him  who  heeds  not 
my  voice  and  does  not  as  I  will."  Along  the  top  and  down 
the  ends  of  the  envelope  he  had  affixed  seventeen  stamps 
of  all  denominations  from  one  cent  up  to  one  dollar;  nearly 
four  dollars'  worth,  all  told.  To  our  eyes,  one  of  the  gems 
of  Sloane's  collection  is  a  post  card  sent  out  in  1874  to 
sheriffs  and  police  chiefs  the  country  over,  carrying  news 


32o          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

of  the  kidnaping  of  little  Charley  Ross— the  first  kidnap- 
ing for  ransom  in  our  history  and  the  only  one  for  several 
decades  thereafter— and  offering  a  reward  of  $20,000  for  his 
recovery.  Space  is  lacking  to  tell  of  all  of  Mr.  Sloane's  oddi- 
ties, and  it  may  be  said  that  no  collection  is  more  thor- 
oughly explained  and  documented  on  the  album  pages. 
Like  many  another  collector,  the  vagaries  of  our  American 
post-office  names  have  tempted  him  into  whimsy.  His  is  a 
post-office  romance,  and  is  represented  by  letters  post- 
marked in  succession  from  Liberty,  N.  Y.,  Friendship,  Me., 
Love,  Va.,  Kissimmee,  Fla.,  Ringgold,  Ga.,  Church,  Iowa, 
Home,  Ore.,  Bliss,  Neb.,  and  Boise,  Idaho.  We  are  a  little 
dubious  about  the  last  item,  but  let  it  pass.  Others  find 
postal  menus  in  the  many  towns  in  our  country  bearing  the 
names  of  food— even  including  such  gems  as  Hot  Coffee, 
Mississippi— and  Yuletide  stories  in  such  place  names  as 
Christmas,  Holly,  Mistletoe,  Santa  Glaus,  Jerusalem  and 
Nazareth.  Incidentally,  one  ought  to  have  one  of  those  thou- 
sands of  letters  postmarked  from  Santa  Glaus,  Indiana, 
every  year,  whether  one  is  an  oddity  collector  or  not. 

Some  foreign  countries  pick  up  pin  money  by  selling 
advertising  space  on  their  stamps;  and  of  course  these 
things  must  be  collected.  On  the  back  of  each  stamp  of 
certain  issues  in  New  Zealand  were  printed  (before  the 
gum  was  applied)  ads  of  soap,  pills,  cocoa,  jellies,  carpets 
and  other  commodities.  France  leases  the  white  margins 
around  whole  sheets  of  stamps  to  advertisers.  France,  Bel- 
gium and  Italy  have  lately  had  a  practice  of  attaching  an 
advertising  stamp  to  each  postage  stamp  sold  in  the  small 
books  such  as  are  used  in  this  country.  The  trailer  is  of 
the  same  size  as  the  attached  postage  stamp,  but  carries  a 
blurb  for  liquor,  phonographs,  radios,  sewing  machines, 
anything  that  will  buy  the  space.  "Macchine  Singer  Percu- 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  321 

cire"  on  an  Italian  booklet— does  it  have  a  familiar  sound? 
There  are  many  nowadays  who  collect  Red  Cross,  Jewish, 
and  Christmas  seals— and  these  run  into  the  thousands  of 
varieties.  Others  go  in  for  oddities,  errors,  misprints,  cracked 
plates.  One  wants  "Valentine  covers  with  interesting  postal 
markings."  Some  concentrate  on  a  small  political  unit  such 
as  Surinam,  that  remote  colony  which  contains  so  few 
white  people.  John  D.  Stanard  of  Chattanooga,  Tennessee, 
found  an  odd  byway  and  an  interesting  study  in  the  local 
stamps  of  Lundy  Island,  a  rock-bound  British  possession 
lying  at  the  mouth  of  the  Bristol  Channel  and  privately 
owned  by  a  wealthy  Londoner,  Martin  Coles  Harman, 
who  practically  ordered  the  British  post  off  the  island  some 
years  ago  and  installed  his  own  mail  service  to  the  main- 
land, with  stamps  of  his  own  design,  valued  at  from  one 
to  twelve  "Puffins"— the  seabird  of  that  name,  a  cousin  of 
the  great  auk,  being  a  constant  resident  of  the  island. 
When  Mr.  Harman  casually  remarked  that  he  had  dis- 
missed the  General  Post  Office  from  the  place,  Punch  ex- 
claimed, 

We  hardly  hoped  that  we  would  meet 
Such  men;  and  yet  can  History  show 

A  speech  more  royal,  more  complete 
Than  "I  dismissed  the  G  P  O.?" 

Harman  also  brought  air-mail  service  to  the  islet,  and 
there  are  cancellations  and  cachets  to  delight  the  hobbyist's 
heart.  Mr.  Stanard  writes  us  that  he  was  laughed  at  at  first 
for  his  interest  in  Lundy,  but  that  at  present  there  are 
thirty-six  serious  specialists  in  its  stamps  in  America  and 
twenty-eight  in  Europe. 

But  there  are  yet  stranger  bypaths.  Some  large  concerns 
keep  on  hand  a  full  supply  of  stamps  of  all  denominations 


322  THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

for  heavier  first-class  mail,  and  there  are  those  who  make 
special  collections  of  covers  stamped  with  these  larger 
values— six-cent,  eight-cent,  eleven-cent,  thirteen-cent,  sev- 
enteen-cent  and  all  the  rest.  And  here  is  another  curious 
one.  Some  large  companies,  in  an  effort  to  prevent  the 
private  use  of  their  stamp  drawer  by  employees,  have  their 
stamps  marked  with  their  initials,  made  with  pinhole  per- 
forations. The  object  of  certain  specialists  is  to  find  on 
covers  these  stamps  used  in  an  unauthorized  way.  For  ex- 
ample, the  collector's  searching  eye  detects  on  a  letter  a 
stamp  perforated  "A.T.  &  T."  But  up  in  the  corner  is 
penned  a  private  return  address— Percy  Woof,  96  Shake- 
speare Avenue,  New  York.  It  is  evident  that  Percy  is  either 
an  A.T.  &  T.  employee  or  a  friend  of  one,  and  is  using  a 
stamp  filched  from  the  company's  stamp  box.  They  say 
there  are  some  considerable  collections  of  this  sort. 

One  of  the  loveliest  exhibits  to  be  seen  at  the  New  York 
World's  Fair  during  the  summer  of  1939  was  an  example 
of  what  one  may  do  if  one  has  both  an  idea  and  great 
artistic  ability.  Mr.  James  T.  Dye  of  New  York,  a  water- 
color  artist  of  superlative  skill,  has  painted  upon  the  fronts 
of  large,  white  bond  envelopes  of  fine  quality,  the  coats  of 
arms  of  many  countries  of  the  world  in  their  own  rich 
colorings,  placed  blocks  of  four  of  the  country's  own  stamps 
upon  them  and  asked  the  heads  of  those  governments  to 
autograph  them  for  him.  The  drawings  are  so  beautiful 
that  the  rulers  have  in  most  cases  capitulated,  though  a 
few  of  the  more  stiff-necked  handed  the  autographing  job 
over  to  a  prime  minister.  So  far,  Mr.  Dye  has  the  signa- 
tures of  the  kings  of  Great  Britain  (with  the  queen),  of 
Sweden  (with  crown  prince  and  princess),  Norway,  Den- 
mark, Jugoslavia  and  Siam— the  last-named  first  sent  to 


THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES  323 

Bangkok,  forwarded  by  the  government  to  the  little  king, 
now  studying  in  Switzerland,  autographed  by  him  and  re- 
turned to  Siam,  then  forwarded  to  New  York.  Mr.  Dye 
has  the  presidents  of  France,  Finland,  Switzerland,  Lithu- 
ania, Estonia,  Liberia,  Cuba,  Mexico,  Brazil,  Argentina, 
Chile,  Bolivia,  Peru,  Ecuador,  Colombia,  Panama,  the 
Dominican  Republic,  Guatemala,  Honduras,  Costa  Rica 
and  Salvador;  the  British  governor-generals  of  Canada, 
Southern  Rhodesia,  New  Zealand  and  Gibraltar,  the  prime 
ministers  of  Egypt,  the  Netherlands  and  Iceland;  the 
Grand  Duchess  Charlotte  of  Luxembourg,  Dictators 
Horthy  of  Hungary  and  De  Valera  of  Ireland;  also  on 
separate  covers,  Prime  Ministers  Ramsay  MacDonald  and 
Stanley  Baldwin. 

Two  of  Dye's  greatest  achievements  are,  first,  the  en- 
velope with  the  coat  of  arms  of  the  United  States,  which 
bears  the  signatures  of  President  Roosevelt,  Governor  Leh- 
man of  New  York,  Mayor  La  Guardia  and  Postmaster 
Goldman  of  New  York  City;  second,  the  one  which  carries 
the  autographs  of  the  British  monarchs.  Anyone  would 
have  laid  a  wager  with  him  that  he  would  never  get  those 
latter  signatures.  But  when  the  envelope  reached  Bucking- 
ham Palace,  little  Princess  Margaret  Rose  saw  it  and 
wanted  it  for  her  stamp  collection;  so  after  some  negotia- 
tion, after  Mr.  Dye's  assurance  that  the  cover  would  not  be 
sold  nor  used  for  commercial  purposes,  and  that  he  would 
paint  another  envelope  just  like  this  one  for  the  little 
princess,  back  came  the  autographs  of  Royal  George  and 
Elizabeth. 

He  likewise  has  the  autographs  of  the  governor  of  every 
one  of  the  forty-eight  states  on  envelopes  bearing  copies  of 
the  state  seal;  he  has  painted  pictures  of  many  of  our  war- 


324          THE  BYWAYS  AND  HEDGES 

ships  with  comely  backgrounds  and  so  won  the  autographs 
of  admirals  and  commanders  of  those  ships.  There  are  other 
items,  too,  in  this  collection  unique  in  the  world,  which, 
Mr.  Dye  says,  will  eventually  go  to  the  Philatelic  Museum 
or  the  Smithsonian  in  Washington. 


IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 


T: 


(HE  EDITOR  of  the  Rocky 

CHAPTER   EIGHTEEN  '        »,         A   •      o*  i.-     £ 

Mountain  Stamp,  his  face 


f  f 

aglow  with  high  purpose, 
seized  his  pen  one  day  in  1899  and  under  the  heading, 
"Some  Benefits  of  Philately/'  wrote  of  the  happy  state  of 
children  who  invest  their  pennies  in  good  stamps  (chil- 
dren's pocket  money  was  counted  in  pennies  then,  you  will 
notice)  and  are  compelled  to  save  in  order  to  procure  rare 
specimens.  "On  the  other  hand,"  he  observed,  "the  child 
who  spends  his  money  for  candy,  chewing  gum,  etc.,  gen- 
erally acquires  no  knowledge  of  saving,  and  at  the  same 
time,  is  continually  undermining  his  health." 

We  have  never  seen  the  proposition  better  stated.  The 
thesis  is  just  as  true  today  as  it  was  forty  years  ago;  but 
unfortunately,  the  depraved  taste  for  candy,  chewing  gum 
and  ice  cream  still  maintains  its  fell  clutch  upon  our  chil- 
dren, and  many  cases  are  even  found  today  among  adults. 

Seriously,  there  is  no  fad  to  which  childhood  is  subject 
that  is  so  wholesome,  educational  and  practical  as  stamp 
collecting.  Its  value  in  teaching  history  and  geography  have 
been  dwelt  upon  often  enough.  As  to  its  practicality,  there 
is  nothing  which  gratifies  the  youthful  urge  to  collect, 
which  so  maintains  its  market  value.  If  the  youngster  in- 
vests in  our  commemoratives,  they  will  at  least  be  worth 

325 


326  IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 

face  value  for  postage  purposes,  if  he  tires  of  the  hobby.  If 
he  has  the  advantage  of  a  bit  of  wise  guidance  and  does  not 
spend  too  much  on  junk,  he  will  lay  the  foundation  for 
a  collection  which  may  be  very  valuable  some  day,  espe- 
cially if  he  is  encouraged  to  concentrate  on  some  one  or 
two  particular  objectives. 

For  it  must  be  said  that  specialization,  and  intensive  spe- 
cialization at  that,  will  be  the  chief  hope  for  the  building 
of  collections  that  will  be  apt  to  sell  for  more  than  cost. 
We  shall  probably  in  the  next  fifty  years  see  no  such  re- 
markable rise  in  values  as  has  taken  place  in  the  past  fifty. 
If  elderly  people  now  alive  had  from  thirty-five  to  fifty 
years  ago  bought  stamps  which  they  could  have  had  at  from 
fifty  cents  or  less  up  to  ten  dollars,  they  could  sell  many  of 
them  now  for  fifty,  a  hundred,  some  several  hundred  dol- 
lars. If  they  had  been  smart  enough  to  lay  away  some  sheets 
of  our  Columbians  of  1893,  ^eY  would  have  picked  up  a 
nice  bit  of  interest  on  their  investment. 

We  have  told  how  the  young  Maine  collector,  F.  W. 
Ayer,  put  some  thousands  into  speculation  in  mint  sheets 
of  this  series,  then  suffered  a  chill  in  the  lower  extremities 
and  sold  out.  A  corner  in  the  one-dollar  value  was  at- 
tempted soon  after  its  issue,  and  the  price  pushed  up  to 
nine  dollars  before  it  broke.  John  Wanamaker  decided  that 
if  the  one-dollar  was  a  good  speculation,  the  two-dollar 
ought  to  be  still  better.  He  bought  ten-thousand  dollars' 
worth  of  them  in  sheets,  and  they  were  still  in  his  vault 
when  he  died  in  1926.  Unused,  they  are  worth  twenty- 
five  dollars  per  stamp  today.  But  the  four-cent,  now  worth 
two  dollars,  would  have  been  a  still  better  gamble.  Try 
compound  interest  on  four  cents  from  1893  on,  and  see 
how  much  better  it  would  have  been  than  money-lending. 

Again  in  recent  years,  many  persons  have  been  misled 


*» 


World  Photos 

»ve— Quanti- 

of   newly   is- 

stamps  have 

bought    in 

ts  as  a  specu- 

n    in    recent 


Wide  World  Photos 

An  expert  checking  the  perforations  on  a  stamp.  Wi 


THE  ANNUA 

SPRING  STAMP 

IN  LONDON 

Left-Collect( 
at  a  dealer's  be 


fernational  News  Photos 

SPRING  STAMP  FAIR 
IN  LONDON 

ight— Two   Parisian   ex- 
erts discuss  specimens. 


IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE?  327 

into  storing  quantities  of  sheets  of  the  commemorative 
stamps  of  this  and  other  countries,  in  the  hope  of  big 
future  profits.  There  is  a  far  greater  weakness  in  the  idea 
today  than  in  '93,  because  it's  all  so  overdone— both  the 
number  of  commemoratives  and  the  number  of  specula- 
tions. The  great  rush  into  this  adventure  began  about 
1934-35.  One  man  °f  whom  we  heard  had  had  five  thou- 
sand pieces  of  glassine  paper  cut  to  the  proper  size  to  stow 
between  sheets  of  stamps  to  protect  the  gum.  Not  only 
United  States  but  Great  Britain  seemed  a  good  bet,  because 
Britain  had  not  hitherto  been  so  reckless  with  the  pretty- 
pretties  as  had  other  countries.  Certain  banks  and  loan 
companies  began  lending  money  on  sheets  at  from  seventy- 
five  to  eighty  per  cent  of  face  value.  It  became  a  pernicious 
habit  to  buy  a  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  new  sheets,  bor- 
row $750  on  it,  take  that  and  buy  $750  worth  more,  borrow 
$500  or  $600  on  that,  then  buy  $500  more— we  don't  know 
how  far  this  pyramiding  went  in  extreme  cases,  but  it  was 
sheer  madness,  of  course,  for  no  one  could  expect  within 
his  lifetime  to  cash  in  on  those  sheets  at  sufficient  profit 
to  pay  the  interest. 

The  peak  of  the  boom  has  been  variously  estimated  to 
have  arrived  with  the  King  George  V  Silver  Jubilee  issue 
and  with  the  George  VI  Coronation  issue.  The  latter  seems 
more  nearly  correct;  for  we  know  that  with  our  industrial 
"recession"  of  1937,  the  bull  market  in  mint  sheets  began 
to  weaken  in  this  country.  Borrowers  couldn't  keep  up 
their  interest  payments,  the  bankers  seized  the  sheets  and 
began  to  unload  them.  Within  the  next  two  years  there 
were  many  sales  made  at  less  than  face  value. 

There  was  a  rather  silly  speculation  in  the  Typex  sheet 
of  1936—3  special  sheet  of  120  stamps,  printed  in  panes  of 
four.  One  pane,  with  a  face  value  of  twelve  cents,  was 


328  IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 

pushed  up  to  twenty,  twenty-five,  even  to  fifty  cents  and 
beyond.  "It'll  go  to  four  dollars,"  the  speculators  were 
telling  buyers  and  even  each  other.  Then  the  bottom  fell 
out,  and  today  the  pane  can  be  had  for  about  thirty-five 
cents.  There  have  been  attempts  before  to  corner  a  certain 
stamp— the  first  crude  four-skillings  of  Norway— which  was 
selling  for  ten  cents  in  1897  when  Me^eel's  Weekly  won- 
dered why  somebody  didn't  buy  it  up  and  raise  the  price. 
This  was  not  done  save  half-heartedly  for  several  years 
afterward;  then  E.  T.  Wallis  of  Indianapolis  attempted  a 
corner,  and  actually  paid  from  $3  to  $6.50  per  copy  in  his 
effort  to  achieve  it.  He  eventually  accumulated  a  thousand 
copies,  which  were  later  sold  to  a  New  York  dealer,  doubt- 
less at  much  less  than  what  Wallis  had  paid  for  them;  but 
the  price  of  the  stamp  had  been  considerably  raised.  In  the 
same  manner  two  other  men  who  thought  the  five-cent 
U.  S.  1847  was  too  cheap  at  thirty-five  cents  per  copy  began 
buying  it  up,  paying  seventy-five  cents  and  a  dollar  arti- 
ficially until  they  had  at  least  ten  thousand  copies.  They 
lost  some  money,  but  they  boosted  the  price  of  the  stamp 
forevermore,  and  it  has  continued  to  rise.  Look  it  up  in  the 
catalogues  today. 

The  dramatist  Sardou  introduced  into  his  Famille  Benoi- 
ton,  written  in  1865,  a  shrewd  little  broker  of  eight  years 
of  age  who,  having  a  straight  tip  that  the  American  Con- 
federacy was  headed  for  the  rocks,  got  the  better  of  his 
little  comrades  on  the  Champs  Elysees  Bourse  by  buying 
all  the  Confederate  stamps  they  had,  which  he  was  able  to 
sell  at  a  nice  profit  a  short  time  later  when  news  came  that 
Lee  had  surrendered  at  Appomattox,  and  the  Southern 
nation  was  no  more.  As  this  chapter  is  being  written,  the 
best  of  American  experts  are  sharply  divided  as  to  the  effect 


IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 


329 


that  the  war  now  raging  in  Europe,  or  rather,  in  the  waters 
around  Europe,  may  have  upon  philately.  Some  stamp- 


THE  CHILDREN'S  STAMP  BOURSE  IN  THE  CHAMPS  ELYSEES, 
PARIS,  1875 

dealers'  advertising  shows  the  tendency  to  trade  upon  the 
situation:  "Czechoslovakia  his  disappeared.  Poland  is  dead. 
Prices  on  their  stamps  will  go  skyward  soon.  This  is  your 
last  chance."  There  will  be  new  countries,  too,  in  the  cata- 


330  IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 

logues— Slovakia  is  already  emerging— and  war  rarities  and 
overprintings  and  unique  cancellations  will  be  promoted 
by  some  just  as  they  were  after  the  World  War. 

But  what  will  be  the  effect  in  general  upon  philately? 
Some  veterans  say  stamp  prices  will  collapse.  Others  are 
quite  as  confident  that  we  are  due  for  a  boom;  and  these 
point  to  the  war  of  1914-1918  as  a  precedent.  That  war 
created  thousands  of  new  collectors  in  this  country;  people 
who  came  in  contact  with  foreign  letters  and  postal  service, 
saw  curious  postmarks,  war  tax,  charity  and  other  stamps, 
and  became  stamp  conscious.  That  this  may  happen  again 
to  some  extent  seems  more  likely  than  the  more  pessimistic 
surmise,  especially  as  a  betterment  of  business  may  be 
brought  about  by  the  war.  But  it  may  be  just  as  well  to 
consider  the  opinion  of  the  third  group  of  veterans  who 
are  saying  that  no  one  can  tell  what  will  happen. 

During  the  last  war  not  only  the  philatelic  rookies  but 
even  some  old  campaigners  were  lured  into  buying  heavily 
by  the  flood  of  stamps  of  new  governments,  occupation, 
provisional,  surcharges  and  a  thousand  others  as  yet  un- 
catalogued,  often  paying  fancy  prices  which  could  not  be 
realized  afterward.  Kent  B.  Stiles,  philatelic  editor  of  the 
New  York  Times,  cites  one  collector  who  spent  $6,000 
during  the  war  years  on  a  collection  of  what  might  be  called 
war  stamps,  at  prices  then  asked,  and  found  several  years 
later  that  he  couldn't  get  more  than  $300  for  it.  No  defi- 
nite information  is  available  as  this  is  written  about  the  new 
provisional  printings,  and  European  dealers  who  lay  hands 
on  the  stamps  first  are  naturally  going  to  get  all  they  can 
out  of  America  for  them;  some  will  even  misrepresent  them 
a  bit  in  their  eagerness  to  sell. 

Mr.  Stiles  further  observes  that  sixty-four  Red  Cross 


IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE?  331 

stamps  issued  by  twenty-three  French  colonies  were  priced 
in  the  Scott  catalogue  shortly  after  the  World  War  at 
$131;  in  the  1940  edition  they  are  quoted  at  $71,  a  decline 
of  about  forty-five  per  cent.  Slightly  less  than  three  hun- 
dred occupation  stamps  coming  from  Hungary  were  priced 
at  nearly  $1,100  just  after  the  great  war,  but  only  $415 
now,  a  recession  of  more  than  thirty-seven  per  cent.  Some 
occupation  stamps  of  other  warring  countries,  however, 
have  held  their  own  or  increased  in  value;  Cameroons  from 
$550  to  $830,  for  example,  and  Saar  from  $28  to  $200.  All 
of  which  suggests  pretty  clearly  that  prophesying  as  to 
future  values  of  stamps  of  the  present  war  is  a  futile  pas- 
time. 

That  great  expert,  Charles  }.  Phillips,  wrote  a  pamphlet 
in  1923  entitled,  Postage  Stamps  as  an  Investment,  and 
therein  listed  the  items  which  he  considered  worth  buying 
with  a  view  to  increase  in  value.  He  believed  that  our  Con- 
federate States  represented  the  best  opportunity  of  all.  Next 
he  mentioned  the  United  States  official  departmental 
stamps;  and  then  he  listed  Argentina,  1858-72;  Austria, 
1850-77;  Barbados,  1852-78;  Belgium,  1849-61,  or  even 
down  to  '83— but  the  list  of  more  than  fifty  others  is  too 
long  to  reproduce  here;  you  will  have  to  read  his  book  if 
you  want  it  all.  He  doesn't  consider  it  necessarily  valid 
now,  since  the  new  war  broke  out.  "Fm  not  giving  any 
advice  at  all  now/'  he  said  shortly,  when  asked  about  it. 
"Who  can  tell  what  will  happen?" 

Mr.  Stiles,  searching  the  catalogues,  past  and  present, 
finds  interesting  proof  of  the  statement  that  the  values  of 
many  good  stamps  are  advancing  steadily  in  the  present 
century.  Supporting  Mr.  Phillips's  citation  of  Austria  as  an 
investment,  Mr.  Stiles  shows  that  its  regular  issues  from 


332  IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 

1850  through  1910  were  quoted  at  about  $73  before  the 
World  War,  at  $93  in  1919  and  $150  in  the  1940  cata- 
logue. He  quotes  others  which  Phillips  did  not  mention; 
as  for  example: 

Around 

1913        1919        1940 
Bavaria's  stamps,  unused.  ...  $400        $466        $726 

Bavaria's  stamps,  used 56          104          307 

Caroline  Islands 12  22          107 

Poland  1860,  Russian  occupa- 
tion, unused 2.50         4  8 

It  has  not  been  so  many  moons  since  we  were  being 
told  by  the  best  informed  men  in  philately,  'There'll  never 
be  any  more  prices  like  that  $32,500  for  the  British  Guiana 
'56  because  there  won't  be  anybody  to  pay  them.  Great 
fortunes  are  being  confiscated  by  governments,  and  there 
will  be  no  more  vastly  rich  collectors."  As  far  as  the  factual 
part  of  the  statement  goes,  this  is  true;  but  when  we  come 
to  the  prophecy— ah,  that  is  quite  another  matter.  Who 
would  wager  much  against  the  possibility  that  some  physi- 
cist may  find  a  way  to  throw  television  five  hundred,  a 
thousand  miles  or  more,  and  that  he  and  the  men  who 
back  him  may  become  multi-billionaires  and  stamp  collec- 
tors? Who  can  say  that  some  other  new  widget  may  not 
be  discovered  which  will  speedily  become  a  necessity  and 
make  its  producers  rich?  Within  a  week  in  November, 
1939,  remarkable  new  gold  strikes  were  announced  in 
Georgia  and  California.  Is  Nature  preparing  to  turn  kindly 
and  create  some  new  millionaires  in  those  areas? 

That  there  are  still  men  wealthy  enough  and  willing  to 
pay  well  for  fine  stamps  was  shown  late  in  1938  by  the 
purchases— already  mentioned  in  Chapter  IX— by  Esmond 


IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE?  333 

Bradley  Martin,  Jr.,  of  the  1869  block  of  inverts  for  $25,000, 
and  other  rarities  at  top  prices.  It  is  reported  that  not  only 
he  but  others  are  quietly  building  collections  which  may 
some  day  surpass  Ferrary 's,  Hind's  or  Green's.  Neverthe- 
less, prices  in  general  were  sagging  at  the  time  of  Mr. 
Martin's  big  purchase,  and  the  publishers  of  the  1940 
Standard  Catalogue,  compiled  in  the  summer  of  1939,  were 
a  bit  pessimistic  over  the  outlook;  so  much  so  that  they 
figured  a  decline  in  the  estimated  value  of  more  than  500 
stamps,  amounting  to  about  $992.  Some  fifty  stamps  had 
been  marked  up  a  little,  however,  making  the  net  reduc- 
tion a  trifle  more  than  $890. 

But  the  catalogue  had  not  yet  appeared  when  some  auc- 
tion sales  in  the  late  summer  and  fall  sounded  a  more 
optimistic  note.  At  the  sale  of  the  collection  of  Dr.  Phillip 
G.  Cole  of  Tarrytown,  N.  Y.,  one  of  the  two  known  mint 
copies  of  the  Honduras  twenty-five-centavos  on  ten-centavo 
dark  blue  sold  for  $5,300  and  the  five-centavo  blue  1925 
overprinted  in  red  brought  $3,900,  which  proved  that  such 
items  are  not  exactly  going  begging.  But  the  sale  of  the 
American  collection  of  the  late  Stephen  D.  Brown  of  Glens 
Falls,  N.  Y.,  early  in  November,  was  an  eye-opener  for  the 
entire  fraternity.  A  London  firm  of  auctioneers  had  won 
the  privilege  of  selling  the  collection,  but  the  outbreak  of 
war  made  the  sale  in  England  impracticable,  and  it  was 
transferred  to  the  Collectors  Club  in  New  York.  The  auc- 
tioneers admitted  afterward  that  they  had  expected  to  real- 
ize only  somewhere  between  seventy-five  and  eighty-five 
thousand  dollars;  instead  the  total  sales  were  $106,625.50. 
Many  prices  were  above  catalogue  quotations,  and  some  of 
them  broke  records. 

For  example,  a  twenty-four-cent  air  mail  of  1918  with  in- 
verted center,  sold  for  $4,100,  a  decidedly  different  figure 


334  IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 

from  the  $2,500  received  for  each  of  two  copies  of  the 
same  stamp  by  the  same  auctioneers  at  a  sale  in  London 
earlier  in  the  year,  and  the  $2,750  paid  by  Senator  Fre- 
linghuysen  in  1932.  A  mint  block  of  four  of  the  1893  Co- 
lumbian five-dollar,  catalogued  at  $1,000,  brought  $1,150, 
and  a  similar  block  of  the  four-dollar,  catalogued  at  $750, 
was  knocked  off  at  $925.  A  St.  Louis  postmaster  ten-cent 
greenish  on  cover  sold  for  $1,075,  about  double  the  cata- 
logue price.  Another  envelope  bearing  both  the  five-  and 
ten-cent  1847  sold  for  $1,100,  which  was  precisely  three 
and  two-thirds  times  what  the  cataloguers  thought  it  was 
worth! 

A  Wells-Fargo  Pony  Express  one-dollar,  tied  to  its  cover 
by  the  pony-running-horse  frank  and  with  St.  Joseph  post- 
mark sold  for  $520,  the  highest  price  ever  known,  and 
$370  above  catalogue.  When  a  similar  cover  sold  for  $160 
in  London  a  year  before,  it  was  thought  to  have  done 
nobly.  Dozens  of  other  items  sold  for  more  than  the  cata- 
loguer's figures.  "Damn-fool  prices!"  grumbled  some  con- 
servatives; but  to  others  they  were  a  cheering  sign;  they 
seemed  to  prove  that  philately  is  still  on  the  up-grade.  And 
then,  a  few  days  later,  came  the  sale  at  Boston  of  the  collec- 
tion of  Judge  Robert  S.  Emerson  of  Providence,  when  one 
of  the  only  two  known  blocks  of  four  of  the  fifteen-dollar 
ultramarine  mortgage  revenue  stamp  sold  for  $450,  a 
hitherto  unheard-of  price,  and  a  two-cent  playing  card 
stamp,  imperforate,  brought  $152.50,  which  was  exactly 
$150  more  than  the  catalogue  price  of  a  perforated  copy. 
On  the  heels  of  this  came  the  news  that  Colonel  E.  H.  R. 
Green's  collection  is  to  be  sold  soon,  and  predictions  that 
instead  of  the  $1,298,444  appraisal  valuation  placed  upon 
it,  it  will,  if  given  favorable  auction  conditions,  bring  more 
than  $2,000,000. 


IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE?  335 

What  could  have  brought  about  such  buying  enthusiasm 
at  these  sales  and  this  strengthened  confidence  in  future 
prices?  Well,  perhaps  the  war  in  Europe  has  something  to 
do  with  it.  Steel  is  strengthening,  airplanes  are  building 
and  more  war  orders  are  looked  for.  Even  those  gold  strikes 
in  Georgia  and  California  may  touch  the  public  conscious- 
ness pleasantly;  for  remember  that  it  was  largely  the  gold 
and  silver  dug  from  the  earth  in  the  west  between  1850 
and  1900  that  made  this  the  world's  richest  nation,  and  in 
turn  elevated  many  a  humble  little  scrap  of  paper  into  a 
philatelic  treasure  worth  thousands  of  times  its  weight  in 
gold. 

One  point  which  has  been  made  increasingly  evident  in 
these  recent  sales,  and  one  which  should  be  driven  home 
in  the  mind  of  new  collectors  (not  to  mention  the  old), 
is  that  fine  condition  of  the  stamp  is  coming  more  and 
more  to  be  a  requisite.  Creased,  tattered,  soiled,  faded  or 
heavily  canceled  stamps  are  not  apt  to  bring  high  prices 
unless  there  is  only  a  corporal's  guard  of  their  kind  in  exist- 
ence. 

For  those  who  cannot  compete  for  these  greatest  of  rari- 
ties, the  hope  of  the  future  lies,  as  we  have  said,  in  intensive 
specialization  and  development  of  a  single  narrow  category. 
We  have  already  mentioned  dozens  of  byways,  and  there 
are  yet  others  covered  in  a  manner  showing  a  degree  of 
study  and  loving  care  such  as  can  scarcely  be  found  else- 
where than  in  the  laboratory  of  a  great  chemist  or  physicist, 
or  in  the  ivory  tower  of  a  scholar  to  whom  study  and  re- 
search are  more  essential  to  life  than  food.  Many  concen- 
trate on  just  one  stamp— a  Los  Angeles  dentist,  for  example, 
on  the  President  Hayes  eleven-cent  of  1922,  in  all  its  forms 
and  shades— we've  forgotten  how  many  he  can  count— run- 
ning the  whole  gamut  of  blue  and  into  green. 


336  IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 

Another,  Mr.  Pickard  of  Greenville,  Delaware,  has  spent 
rather  more  money  on  a  collection  of  the  ninety-cent  bi- 
color  of  1869.  He  has  it  with  the  several  shades  of  red  with 
which  the  printers  unintentionally  varied  the  frame;  he 
has  the  engravers'  tryouts  on  cardboard  in  green  and  brown, 
green  and  blue,  brown  and  blue,  brown  and  black  and  so 
on;  essays  of  the  frame  alone;  some  with  a  portrait  of 
Washington  instead  of  Lincoln,  which  latter  was  finally 
used— these  portraits  in  black,  with  frames  of  taupe,  orange, 
brown,  blue;  plate  proofs  on  India  paper;  proofs  on  card- 
board with  normal  and  inverted  portrait;  cancellations  in 
black,  red  and  blue;  varieties.  It  is  a  biological  history  of 
the  stamp. 

Howard  Lederer,  a  New  York  broker,  has  centered  his 
attention  on  the  two-cent  black  Harding  Memorial  stamp, 
issued  just  after  the  President's  death  in  1922.  He  has  a 
sheet  autographed  by  Mrs.  Harding,  all  the  position  blocks 
of  four  and  six,  used  and  unused,  top  and  sides  of  sheet, 
a  double  paper  block,  a  double  plate-number  block  of 
twenty-five  with  the  Bureau  employees'  initials,  singles, 
pairs  and  blocks  with  slight  misalignments,  plate  smears, 
frame  break,  vertical  imperforates,  canceled  covers  show- 
ing the  plate  layout  lines  and  position  dots.  There  is  a 
sample  of  the  coil  used  in  the  Shermack  stamp-vending 
machine;  a  strip  of  six  on  an  air-mail  cover,  first  flight  from 
Los  Angeles  to  Salt  Lake;  a  first-day  cover  from  Marion, 
Ohio,  carrying  a  letter  from  the  postmaster  to  the  superin- 
tendent of  the  Division  of  Stamps;  a  beautifully  mounted 
proof,  one  of  ten  made  by  order  of  Postmaster-General  New 
for  presentation  to  members  of  the  Harding  family;  black- 
bordered  mourning  letters  and  envelopes  from  all  the  gov- 
ernment departments,  franked  with  plate-number  blocks 
of  four  and  six;  the  official  Department  notice  of  the  issu- 


IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE?  337 

ance  of  the  stamp;  seaport  and  other  cancellations,  news- 
paper clippings  about  the  stamp,  and  finally  a  handsome, 
full-sized  etching  of  the  pen  portrait  of  Harding  from  which 
the  stamp  was  made.  Here,  in  two  or  three  nutshells,  are 
instructions  for  making  a  one-stamp  collection,  one  which 
will  command  the  respect  and  some  day  the  dollars  of  high- 
ranking  philatelists. 

There  are  albums  in  which  the  drawings  and  supple- 
mentary information  lettered  on  the  pages  are  culturally, 
scientifically  or  historically  so  important  that  one  wishes 
they  might  be  saved  in  some  museum  or  library  for  the 
future  use  of  persons  doing  research;  for  there  is  informa- 
tion here  which— as  we  have  remarked  in  the  instance  of 
Holcombe's  match  and  medicine  collection— is  the  result 
of  years  of  patient  research  through  every  species  of  the 
printed  word;  information  which  others  could  not  get  with- 
out even  greater  labor  and  patience,  and  which,  half  a 
century  hence,  will  be  much  harder  to  find,  if,  indeed,  it 
is  not  lost  entirely. 

Sometimes  these  collections  do  go  into  museums;  as  for 
example,  that  of  Alpheus  B.  Slater,  who  died  in  1936,  of 
the  Providence  postmaster  stamps.  He  had  them  in  all  the 
possible  forms— original  sheets,  blocks,  on  covers,  likewise 
proofs  and  reprints.  There  were  old  pictures  of  the  post 
office  in  Providence  which  was  in  service  in  1846-47,  por- 
traits of  the  postmaster,  Welcome  B.  Sayles,  who  issued 
them,  even  a  portrait  of  the  engraver  who  made  the  plate. 
Here  was  something  as  nearly  approximating  completion  as 
one  could  get  of  a  stamp  so  old;  and  at  Mr.  Slater's  death, 
it  passed,  intact  forever,  into  the  possession  of  the  Rhode 
Island  Historical  Society. 

As  an  example  of  the  care  with  which  these  collectors 
ascertain  and  record  the  facts,  take  Philip  H.  Ward,  Jr/s, 


338  IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 

collection  of  Panama,  all  issues,  including  wash  drawings, 
essays,  proofs  and  the  finished  stamps  in  all  possible  group- 
ings, constituting  a  history  of  the  designing  and  manufac- 
ture of  the  stamps  from  the  preliminary  sketch  to  the  fin- 
ished article.  Or,  in  another  category,  take  the  air-mail  col- 
lection of  L.  Russell  Albright  of  Newark,  Delaware,  in 
which  each  envelope  is  accompanied  by  an  outline  map, 
sometimes  covering  half  a  dozen  states,  with  lines  showing 
its  carriage  by  air,  rail  and  truck— blue  lines  for  air,  red  for 
rail,  green  for  truck. 

For  rare  historic  value,  look  at  the  Cook  Islands  collec- 
tion of  Professor  L.  L.  Steimley  of  the  University  of  Illinois, 
in  which  the  pages  are  beautified  with  photographs  of  those 
lush  tropic  isles,  of  cocoa  palms,  of  chiefs  of  Raratonga 
from  old  paintings,  of  other  native  types.  Lettered  on  the 
pages  is  really  a  full  history  of  the  islands,  telling  of  the 
attempts  of  the  missionary  John  Williams  to  discover  Rara- 
tonga, having  heard  of  it  from  the  Society  Island  natives, 
and  of  his  final  discovery  of  it  in  1822,  with  everything  of 
importance  that  followed  thereafter. 

The  Martinique  collection  of  Ralph  Holtsizer  of  Phila- 
delphia is  another  notable  achievement.  Here  in  nine  al- 
bums is  almost  a  history  of  the  island,  beginning  back  in 
the  pre-stamp  days.  In  addition  to  the  varieties,  overprints, 
errors,  complete  sheets,  proofs,  essays,  postal  stationery 
and  so  on,  one  sees  here  pitiful  hints  of  the  awful  devasta- 
tion of  the  island  by  Mont  Pelee  in  1902— postmarks  of 
little  towns  which  disappeared  forever,  some  whose  post 
offices  began  functioning  again  only  after  three,  five  or  six 
years.  The  pages  are  decorated  with  pen  drawings  of  scen- 
ery, palm  trees,  churches,  ruins,  native  types,  studies  of 
heads,  fishermen  bringing  their  haul  up  from  the  water. 

In  building  such  collections,  any  document,  clipping, 


IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE?  339 

pamphlet  or  picture  that  has  reference  to  any  of  the  stamps 
should  not  be  permitted  to  escape  if  it  comes  near  enough 
for  the  collector  to  grab  it,  and  certain  others  should  be 
sought  for  until  they  are  found.  If  one  is  making  a  British 
collection,  it  is  desirable  to  accompany  the  Penny  Black 
with  the  Parliamentary  Postage  Acts  of  1839  and  '40,  either 
originals  or  reprints.  Samples  of  the  printed  envelopes  dis- 
cussed in  the  commissioners'  report  of  1837  would  also 
be  valuable.  Similarly,  photostat  or  other  copies  of  our  first 
Congressional  Acts  for  the  printing  and  use  of  stamps 
should  accompany  a  good  collection  of  early  Americans. 
And  there  are  other  things  to  be  picked  up  at  sight,  such 
as  an  item  in  Mr.  Lichtenstein's  British  Columbia  collec- 
tion—the certificate  by  a  committee  of  the  destruction  of 
half  a  million  dollars'  worth  of  demonetized  stamps,  "this 
day  destroyed  by  fire  in  our  presence,  with  the  exception  of 
sixty  (60)  of  each  Denomination  preserved  as  specimens." 

The  point  toward  which  we  are  driving  in  these  descrip- 
tions is  that  some  day,  when  these  collections  are  put  up  at 
auction,  wealthy  bidders  will  compete  for  them,  with  the 
result  that  the  men  who  assembled  them— or  their  estates- 
will  be  well  paid,  not  only  for  the  stamps  and  the  com- 
plementary documents,  but  for  the  hours  and  days  of  de- 
lightful toil  required  in  searching  for  them  and  for  the  his- 
torical and  other  data  bearing  upon  them,  for  the  planning 
of  the  album  pages  and  the  slow  building  of  them  into  a 
beautiful  and  compendious  whole.  It  has  all  been  fun;  one 
of  the  few  varieties  of  hard  work  in  this  world  which  are 
also  good  fun;  and  if  properly  and  carefully  done,  you  get 
paid  for  it! 

Unwearied  vigilance  and  search  are  the  price  of  success 
in  stamp  collecting.  Arthur  H.  Deas,  President  of  the  Col- 
lectors Club  of  New  York,  tells  how,  a  few  years  ago,  he 


34o  IS  IT  WORTH  WHILE? 

took  his  little  daughter  out  for  a  walk  before  breakfast 
each  morning  in  their  home  town,  Mount  Vernon,  which 
adjoins  New  York  City  on  the  north.  At  a  corner  they 
would,  just  for  fun,  toss  a  coin  to  see  which  way  they 
would  turn;  and  as  they  went  along,  Mr.  Deas  would  stop 
at  each  house  and  ask  the  denizens  if  they  had  any  old 
letters  or  documents  from  which  he  might  buy  the  stamps. 
Not  so  many  summers  back,  two  other  New  York  collectors 
went  for  a  motor  trip  the  full  length  of  Long  Island  along 
the  south  shore,  stopping  at  every  old  house  they  saw— 
and  there  are  plenty  of  them,  especially  up  around  the 
Hamptons  and  Sag  Harbor— and  finding  many  fine  old 
stamps  ranging  from  1871  back  to  the  beginning,  as  well  as 
some  old  foreign  ones,  for  many  of  the  ancestors  out  that 
way  had  been  seafaring  folk. 

If  you  collected  stamps  as  a  youngster  thirty,  forty,  fifty 
years  ago  and  then  ceased,  but  still  have  your  album,  it  may 
be  that  you  have  items  in  it  which  are  now  worth  many 
times  what  you  paid  for  them.  A  little  girl  exhibited  her 
album  in  a  hobby  show  in  New  York  recently,  and  was 
scarcely  less  amazed  than  were  the  judges  when  they  found 
in  it  stamps  worth  several  thousand  dollars.  Her  father  con- 
fessed that  he  had  bought  the  album  with  most  of  the 
stamps  in  it  at  an  auction  years  ago  for  a  hundred  dollars, 
and  hadn't  realized  how  valuable  the  collection  was. 

The  final  fact,  and  one  of  the  most  important  to  be 
pondered  by  the  one  who  is  not  yet  a  stamp  collector,  is 
that  even  if  you  are  somewhat  of  a  dilettante  at  the  hobby, 
even  if  you  do  not  build  a  supercollection  of  rarities  or  one 
of  the  highly  specialized  and  documented  ones  which  we 
have  just  described,  there  is  no  hobby  now  engaging  the 
attention  of  man  which  has  as  great  a  salvage  assurance  as 
philately. 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

This  book  could  not  have  been  written  without  the  ac- 
tive aid  of  good  fellows  such  as  Hugh  M.  Clark,  Hiram 
E.  Beats,  Percy  B.  Doane,  James  T.  Dye,  Henry  W.  Hoi- 
combe,  Edward  S.  Knapp,  Harry  M.  Konwiser,  Harry  L. 
Lindquist,  Elliott  Perry,  George  B.  Sloane,  John  D.  Stanard, 
Norman  Serphos,  Philip  H.  Ward,  Jr.,  and  Harold  D.  Wat- 
son, all  of  whom  contributed  much  time  and  information 
or  gave  or  lent  pictures,  books,  covers,  and  data  from  their 
collections.  Among  others  who  co-operated  in  one  way  and 
another  were  Edward  Stern,  Sidney  F.  Barrett,  J.  Murray 
Bartels,  Alfred  F.  Lichtenstein,  Morris  Herbert,  Miss  Jean 
Koor,  and  the  officials  and  staff  of  the  Collectors  Club. 
The  privilege  of  research,  not  only  in  the  New  York  Public 
Library,  but  in  the  private  libraries  of  the  Scott  Stamp  and 
Coin  Company  and  the  Collectors  Club,  was  invaluable. 


INDEX 

Ackerman,  E.  R.,  48,  65  Arrow  pairs,  60 

Adams,  John,  225,  256,  260,  Arsenius,  Frederick,  287 

263  Ashburton,  Lord,  11 

Advertising,  22,  23,  246,  320,  Atlantic  Air  Mail  stamps 

321  (J939)>  133 

"Affiches,"  17  Auction,  stamp,  first,  42 

Air  mail,  8,  9,  67,  157,  302,  Australia,  62,  147,  149,  274 

321,  333,  334,  338  Austria,  56,  271,  272,  276 

Albrecht,  R.  F.,  111  Ayer,  F.  W.,  55,  143-145,  326 

Albright,  L.  Russell,  338 

Albums,  22,   28,   32,   34,   36,  Bailey,  John,  27 

337,  339,  340  Balloon  mail,  303,  304 

American   Bank   Note   Com-  Balzac,  Le  Cousin  Pons,  17 

pany,  68,  80  Barham,    Ingoldsby   Legends, 

American  Cyclopedia,  43  13 

American  Journal  of  Philately,  Barrett,  Sidney  F.,  234 

30-35,  42,  55,  74,  107,  181-  Bartels,  J.  Murray,  236 

183,  207-209,  252,  288,  294;  Belgium,  16,  17, 155,  279,  281, 
"Roll    of    Dishonor,"    183-         285,  287,  320 

185  Benjamin,  Alfred,  210,  211 

American    Philatelic    Associa-  Bennett,  James  Gordon,  103, 
tion,  46-48,  111,  136  181,  182 

American  Stamp  Mercury,  31,  Berger-Levrault,  Oscar,  21,  50, 

34>  39>  41  51 

American  Whig  Review,  11  Berthold,  Dr.  Victor  M.,  306 

Anderberg,  August,  238,  240,  Bishopp,  Henry,  224 

241  Blackwood's  Magazine,  19 

Anti-Surcharge  Association,  Blair,  J.  Insley,  64,  65 

59  Bogert,  Rudolphus  R.,  45,  46, 

Appleton   (D.)    &  Company,         48,  59,  111,  112,  172 

28  Bogert  &  Durbin,  117-119, 165 

343 


INDEX 


344 

Booty,  artist,  22 

Bopeley,  Joseph  L.,  292 

Boscawen  stamp,  143,  146 

Boston  Daily  Advertiser,   18,     Caiman,  Henry,  59,  108,  186, 


Cachets,  9,  222,  303,  306 
Caiman,  Gus  B.,  108, 117, 186, 


21,  28 


187 


"Boston  Revenue  Book,"  146,     Camoys  of  Henley,  Lord,  55 


295 
Bourne,  Herbert,  70 

Bourse,  Paris  stamp,   51,   52, 

329 
Boutwell,  George  S.,  291 

Bradt,  S.  B.,  46,  47 


Canada,  48, 144, 165, 181,  280, 
285;  sixpence,  37,  122,  166; 
twelvepence,  37,  166 

Cancellations,  67,  74,  226-247, 
292 

Cape  of  Good  Hope,  62,  147, 


Brattleboro  postmaster  provi-         151 
sional  (1845),  62,  148,  162,     Carol,  King  of  Roumania,  135, 


178,  179,  234 

Brazil,  16,  205,  273,  276,  2! 
Brennan,  dealer,  27 


M3 
Carpenter,  Joseph  R.,  289-295 

Carrier  stamps,  109, 117,  118 


British  American,  62,  148,  153     Casey,  John  J.,  32,  33,  45 
British  colonials,  64,  68,  146,     Castle,  M.  P.,  64 


197 


Catalogues,  first,  21,  22,  27, 


British    Columbia,    244,    245,         37,  157,  331 


Central    America,    135,    186, 


279>  339 
British  Guiana,  9,  42,  66,  139,         187,  190 

140,  143,  149,  206,  332  Champion,     Theodore,     198, 

199 

Chancy,  C.  B.,  78 
Change  Alley,  23,  24 


Brown,   Mrs.   Edith   Adams, 

276,  280 

Brown,  Mount,  22 
Brown,  Stephen  D.,  159,  333 
Brown,  W.  P.,  27,  28,  109-111     Chase,  Dr.  Carroll,  62,  63,  66 
Bruckmann,  Kasper  E.,  284         Chicago  Inter-Ocean,  48 

Chicago  Morning  News,  48 
Chicago  Times,  48 


Chappell,  Alonzo,  79 


Brunei,  Sultan  of,  192,  193 

Burger,  A.  H.  E.,  48 

Burger,  August  and  Artur,  113-     Children,  collections  by,  276, 

115  277,  325,  326,  328,  329,  340 

Chittenden,  Dr.  J.  Brace,  32 


Butler  &  Carpenter,  289-295 
Bye,  George  W.,  243 
Byrd  Antarctic  stamp,  81 


City  Hall  Park,  New  York,  29, 
98,  101,  105,  155 


INDEX 


345 


Civil  War,  22,  28,  104,  291, 

313-317 

Clark,  Hugh  M.,  313-317 
Clark,  Mrs.  Hugh  M.,  275 
Clark,  Thomas,  55 
Cleveland,  Grover,  254,  263, 

284 

Cole,  Dr.  Philip  G.,  333 
Collectors  Club  of  New  York, 

57,  108,  277,  333,  339 
Collector's    Club    Philatelist, 


Davis,  Frederick  W.,  160 
Dealers,    stamp    (see    Stamp 

dealers) 

Deas,  Arthur  H.,  339,  340 
Deats,  Hiram  E.,  57,  60,  145, 

289,  290,  295 
de  Coppet,  F.,  42 
De  Pinedo,  221 
De  Witt,  Lockman  and  De 

Witt,  102,  103 
Dexter,  G.,  28 
Columbian  stamps  (1893),  86,     Diaz>  Porfirio  135,  136 

87,  144,  326,  334  Dies>  69'72>  82>  226;  Proofs> 

Commemorative   stamps,    10,         79»  °2 
35,  49,  76-79,  81,  98,  195-     Doane>  PercY:  112>  "9>  12° 
198,  200,  204,  222,  325-327     Dockwra,  William,  224,  225 
Confederate    envelopes,    313-     Dominican  Republic,  187, 188, 
315;  stamps,  28,  55,  92,  142,        285 

Dull,  Christian,  66 
Dunbar,  Seymour,  302,  303 
Durbin,  L.  W.,  160 
Durbin  and  Hanes,  45,  46 
Duveen,  H.  J.,  66,  143,  146 


146,  147,  328,  331 
Cook  Islands,  338 
Cooper,  Sir  Daniel,  53 
Corner  cards,  309-313 
Corwin,  Charles  B.,  42,  57 
Counterfeits,   34,   38,   39,  41, 

42,  45,  60,   117,  118,  183, 

209 
Crawford,  Earl  of,  38,  69,  75, 

76,  134,  146 
Creswell,   Postmaster-General, 

228-230 

Crocker,  Henry  J.,  66,  147-149 
Crocker,  William  H.,  66,  147- 

149 
Cromwell,  Mrs.  Caroline  Pren- 

tiss,  65,  146 
Cuba,  214,  217,  222 
Curie,  Charles,  65 


Dye,  James  T.,  322-324 

Earhart,  Amelia,  220,  221 
Ecuador,  188,  189,  191,  207 
Eden  Musee,  48 
Edward  VIII,  King,  134,  138, 

i39>  277 
Emerson,  Robert  S.,  334 

England  (see  Great  Britain) 
Envelopes,    58,   71,   72,    104, 
125,  199,  202,  203,  257,  309- 

3*7>  339 
Express  mail,  303,  307-309 


346  INDEX 

Faber,  William  H.,  26  Gold  Rush  (1849),  228,  235, 

Farley,  James  B.,  81,  82,  86,  241,  309 

204,  222,  223,  284  Governmental    five-and-tens, 

Ferrary,  Phillippe  la  Renotiere  180-205 

von,   52-55,   142,   146,   210-  Gramm,  Charles  F.,  238 

212;  sale,  139-141  Grant,  Ulysses  S.,  43 

Filatelic  Facts  and  Fallacies,  Great  Britain,  2,  4,  11-25,  fy> 

86,  196  13^  l89>  210,  226,  248-250, 

First-day  covers,  6,  9,  202,  222  289;     colonies,     137;     first 

Fiscals,  first,  288-293  stamps,  13-15,  67;  postal  sys- 

France,  5,  6,  10,  22,  54,  55,  tem    (l66o)>    248>    <<PennY 

59,  90,  91,  282,  320;  com-  Black"  (l84°)>  6l>  l66>  l8o> 

memoratives,  198,  273;  first  2o6>   25°>   339;   stamP  tax 

stamps,  16,  17  (X765)^  289 

Frankings,  248-269,  317,  318,  Green,  Colonel  Edward  H.  R., 

«6  *49>  15°-159^  334 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  75,  81,  98-  Gremmel  Henry,  111 

100?  26o  Guatemala,  43,  135,  186,  190, 

Franco-Prussian  War,  50,  303  2°7'  2°8 
Franks,  55,  224,  244,  252-269; 

western,  307-309,  334  ^  ^  'ff£ 

^      1.1     n    r™           ^  Handshaw,  J.  E.,  92,  108,  190 

Gamble,  Dr.  Thomas  O.,  317  Hard;       BeJrtita^  J 

C^atun  Locks  oroofs   80  •                      T^I  •         ^^ 

Gelbach  John  J    280  ^^  W~C^  j^  ^ 

George  V,  King,  62,  134,  136- 

139,  141,  326  Harman,  Martin  Coles,  321 

George  VI,  327  Hausberg,  Leslie,  62 

Germany,  215,  240,  274-276;  Hawaii,  18,  120,  147,  192,  206, 

music,  272  22g  2_2 

Gibbons,  E.  Stanley,  21,  55  Hawaiian    missionaries,     142, 

Gibbons,  Stanley,  Ltd.,  36,  55,  143,. 177 

64,  136,  144;  catalogue,  157  Hawkins,  William  E.,  65,  159, 

Ginnity,  stamp  finder,  116-118  160 

Glover,  Irving,  204  Heath,  Lloyd,  277-280 

Godkin,    Editor    New    York  Heinemann,     Andrew,     Billy 

Evening  Post,  184  and  Jack,  61,  62 


INDEX 


347 


Hemingway,  168,  169 

Herpin,  G.,  24 

Herrick,  Dr.,  293,  294 

Hill,  Rowland,  13,  14,  40,  206     King  and  Johl,  78,  81,  82 

Hind,  Arthur,  55,  64,  65,  140-     Kleeman,  John,  111 

146 
Holcombe,   Henry   W.,    297 

301>  337 
Holtsizer,  Ralph,  338  Kroog,  119-122 

Honduras,  186,  188,  191,  285,     Kuenstler,  Hugo,  92 
333 


Kilton,  Hen,  123-130 
Kimmel,  F.  K.,  104 
King,  Beverly  S.,  79,  81 


Knapp,  Edward  S.,  309-313 
Konweiser,    Harry,    66,    141, 


Hoover,  Herbert,  136 


Lallier,  Justin,  22 


Hudson,  Dr.  Otho  G,  282,     Lamborn,  Arthur  H.,  146 


283 

Hughes-Hughes,  W.,  36,  50 
Hungerford,  Edward,  235 
Hunter,  F.  W.,  111 

Image,  Dr.  W.  E.,  54 
Imperf orates,  56,  291,  334 
Indian  Territory,  66,  244 


Lawrance,  Frank  E.,  317,  318 

Leavy,  Joseph,  155 

Lederer,  Howard,  336 

Legrand,  Dr.  J.  A.  ("Dr.  Mag- 
nus"), 56 

Letters,  folded,  257,  258 

Lichtenstein,  Alfred,  147,  245, 
308,  310,  339 


Inverts  (1869),  132,  135,  149,     Leisure  Hour7  l6 

160,  190,  196,  333 
Ireland,  239,  274 
Italy,  69,  198,  214,  215,  221, 

304,   320,   321;   Stradivarius 

stamps,,  273 


Jackson,  Andrew,  76,  102, 182, 

255 
Japan,  135,  147,  238,  319 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  128,  259 
Johl,  Max  G.,  79 
Jones,  Gilbert  E.,  57 
Journals,  stamp,  30,  31,  38-41;     Condon  Times   15 
first,  211  Longnecker,  J.  W.,  269 

Luff,  John  N.,  59,  66, 111,  197 
Kennett,  William  C.,  141,  143     Lundy  Island,  321 
Kent,  Philip,  17  Luxemburg,  first  stamps,  27 


Lever,  Charles,  19,  20 
Lienau,  R.  S.,  87 

Abraham,   103, 

263,    336;   Civil 

War     envelopes,     315-317; 

commemorative  (1909),  76 
Lindbergh,  Charles  A.,  303 
Lindquist,  H.  L.,  239 
London,    15,   19,   22-24,   143, 

163,  210 
London  Morning  Post,  95 


348  INDEX 

Macklin,  John  J.,  match  stamp,  Milliken,  Edwin,  236 

294  "Mission  mixtures,"  88-97 

McKinley,  William,  75,  253,  Moens,  J.  B.,  17,  37,  168 

263,  266  Mulready  letter  sheet,  13,  14 
Madison,  Dolly,  259,  265,  268 

Madison,  James,  259,  260,  261  Nassau  Street,  98-115,  116-133, 
Magazines,  stamp,  34,  40,  41,         151 

46,  63;  first,  19,  22  National    Bank    Note    Com- 
"Magnus,  Dr."  (Dr.  J.  A.  Le-         pany,  291 

grand),  56  National  Philatelic  Society,  45 

Mandel,  Henry  G.,  66  National  stamps,  five-  and  ten- 
Mann>  64  cent  (1847),  106 

Map  stamps,  285  Needham,  Henry  Q,  48 

Marie,  Queen  of  Roumania,  Negreen,  John  F.,  132 

A/3  1    ixrii  17  NCW  Bmnswick,  37,  139,  276 

Marsh,  Will  E    40  New  Orleans  Picayune   30  ' 

Martin,  E.  Bradley,  Jr.,  148,  New  South 


AT3!2'  -333      11    .-  282,  283;  "Sydney  Views," 

Martinique  collection,  228  o      0 

\x  i.  ^  147^  J4^  l8°^  211 

Match  stamps,  114,  204,  207-  XT  T/«TT?  ~.'             n 

J                        y/  New  York  City,   57,  98-115, 
301>  337 
Mauritius,     one-     and     two- 


penny,  9,  16,  18,  37,  47,  14*, 

Maximilian,  Emperor,  issues,  New  York  Philatelic  Society, 

135  30-32,  34>  184 

Mead,  James  M.,  136  New  York  Sun'   35^  73^  99» 
Mekeel,  C.  H.,  167,  191,  213;        103 

Stamp  and  Publishing  Com-  New  York  Time^  36^  57>  75» 

pany,  49;  Stamp  Collector,         X45^  33° 

64;   Weekly  Stamp   News,  New  York  Tribune,  99,  111 

197,  328  New  York  World,  99,  162 

Melville,  Fred  J,  70,  210,  211  New  York  World's  Fair,  198, 
Metropolitan  Philatelist,  New         205,  322 

York,  26  New  Zealand,  282,  287,  304, 
Mexican  Philatelic  Society,  220         320 

Mexico,  73,  135,  191,  209,  213,  Newbold,  Mr.,  121-123,  172? 

275,  280-282  173 


INDEX  349 

Newfoundland,  43,  86,  87, 139,  Patent  royalty  stamps,  300,  301 

181,  195,  219,  277,  287  Patriotics,  Civil  War,  313,  314 

Newspapers,  12;  stamps  (1875-  "Penny  Black,"  61,  180,  206, 

95),  173,  174,  288  250,  339 

Nicaragua,  87,  182,  188,  189,  Perforations,  56,  57,  59,  63,  74 

213,  285  Perkins,  Jacob,  68 

Norway,  197,  239,  328  Perkins,  Bacon  &  Fetch,  68 

Nova  Scotia,  37,  139  Perry,  Elliott,  94,  95,  177,  178 

Nye,  Bill,  15  Philadelphia  Centennial 

(1876),  185,  272 

Obelisk,  Central  Park,  43,  44  Philatelic  Agency,    193,   203, 

O'Dowd,  Cornelius,  19  2O . 

Offenbach,  La  Belle  Helene,  philatelic  Bluebook,  287 

35  Philatelic  Journal  of  America, 

Olympic  Games  series,  81, 195  ^ 

Overprinting,  59,  73,  74  Philatelic  Library,  The,  38 

Philatelic  Monthly,  c6,  200 

Pack,    Charles    Lathrop,    62,  phihtelic  World>  ?8 

„  X39'  M6  Philately,    development,    28- 

Paderewski^  stamp,  273^  ^  mm^  ^  ^  y,  premier 

HnS  SzetZ^Jgi77  WOrM  h°bby'  '*  S3lvaSe  as' 

Pan-American    series    (1901),  ^"^"f '  T34? 

78   152    160   106  Philbnck,  Judge,  53,  54 

PaSma!  87:  ^8  PhilliPS'  CharleS  I-   ^^ 

Panama^c    series    (^  ^^^^  ™  *> 

Paper^  thicknesses,  56,  63  Pickard'  Mr"  33^ 

Paris,    14,    24,    130;    balloon  P^torials,   49,    55,    180,    181, 

envelopes     (1870-71),     303;  270-287 

Bourse,  stamp,  51,  52,  329;  Piercv>  Marv  K->  286 

Revolution,  244;  stamp  col-  Pinkham,  F.  H.,  190 

lectors,  51,  52;  "submarine  Plating,  56,  61-63 

mail,"  307  Plympton   Manufacturing 

Parliamentary    Postage    Acts,  Company,  71,  72 

339  Post  cards,  42, 43,  57, 125, 127, 

Patent  medicine  stamps,  293,  128 

294-208,  337  Post  offices,  106, 107,  173, 174. 


350  INDEX 

(See  also  United  States  Post  Reprints,  45,  49,  183 

Office)  Revenue  stamps,  55,  56,  74, 

Postage,  early,  11-25  93>  1X9»  121>  14^  171?  2^~ 

Postage-due  stamps,  173,  203  300,  317,  334;  first  American 

Postal  miscellany,  318-322  catalogue,  289 

Postmarks,  67,  224-247;  adver-  RFD  covers,  242,  243 

tising,  246,  247;  first,  224-  Rich,  Stephen  G.,  313 

226;     RFD,     243;     railroads  Richardson,  A.  J.  H.,  244 

and   steamboat   lines,    235;  Ricketts,  William  R.,  28 

towns  changing  names,  238-  Ridgley,  A.  N.,  192 

241  Robey,  W.  T.,  157,  158 

Postmaster  stamps,  106,  117,  Rocky  Mountain  Stamp,  325 

147,  162,  163,  166,  167,  172,  Roosevelt,    Franklin    EX,    81, 

176,  177,  334  136,  201,  202,  204,  284 

Postmasters,  cancellations,  227,  Roosevelt,  Theodore,  254,  263, 

228;  franks,  269  285 

Potiquet,  Alfred,  21  Roosevelt,  Mrs.  Theodore,  267 

Powers,  Eustace,  170,  171  Roumania,  183,  240,  277,  281 

Precanceling,  73,  245,  246  Russell  &  Company,  117,  118 

Price  lists,  30,  32,  45;  first,  21,  Russia,  18,  35,  152,  206,  216, 

30;  first  American,  28  238-240,  274 
Proofs,  stamp,  69,  70 

Propaganda    envelopes,     311,  St.  Helena,  191 

312  St.  Louis,  169,  303,  334 

Proprietary  stamps,  293-300  St.  Louis  Times,  46 

Provisional  stamps,  57,  106  Salisbury,  Henry  Wood,  281, 

Pullen  collection,  42  282 

Punch,  16,  321  Salvador,  188,  191 

San  Francisco,  198,  285,  318, 

Radasch,  Dr.  H.  E.,  303  319 

Railroad  postmarks,  235  San  Marino,  193 

Randall,  Postmaster-General,  Sanford,  E.  Harrison,  62 

106,  107  Sarabia,  220 

Rawdon,  Wright,  Hatch  &  Ed-  Sardinia,  letter  sheets,  14 

son,  70,  71  Sardou,  Famille  Benoiton,  328 

Religions,  collections,  280-282  Sarpy,  J.  H.,  210,  211 

Remainders,  45,  49,  183,  186,  Saxony,  three-pfennige,  37 

188  Sayles,  Welcome  B.,  337 


INDEX 


351 


Scales,  first  stamp  collector,  17     Soviet  Philatelic  Association, 
Scott,  John  Walter,  29-37,  48,         216 

59,  89,  100,  107,  108,  146,     Spain,  142,  184,  208,  282;  war 

186,   189,   191;  album,  28,         with  (1898),  299,  300,  313, 

32,  34;  catalogue,  37,  157,      ^  317 

331;  price  list,  30;  first  stamp     Special-delivery  stamp,  79-81 

auction,  42.  (See  also  Ameri-     Specialization,  6,   50-67,  144, 

can  Journal  of  Philately)  *46>  326 

Scott,  Walter  S.,  63,  111,  212     Stamp   collecting,  9,  46,  49; 
Scott  Stamp  &  Coin  Co.,  108,         earty>  2'4>  15~19>  2&,  modern, 

117,  186,  187 
Seebeck,  N.  F.,  187-191 
Sellschopp,  W.,  57 
Serbia,  provisional,  192 
Serphos,  Norman,  303,  304 
Seward,  William  H.,  82 
Seybold,  John  F.,  57,  58 


6-9;  value,  8,  9,  325 
Stamp   Collector's  Magazine, 

19,  182,  270 

Stamp  Collectors  Manual,  22 
Stamp  Collector's  Review,  19, 

28 
Stamp  dealers,  first,  24-27,  41, 

45,  51,  52,  64,  67,  102-115, 

133,  147,  159,  163,  210 
Stamp  exchange,  open-air,  23, 

24,  51,  52,  329 
Stamp  Exchange,  The,  40 
Stamp  finders,  116-133 
Stamp  list,  first,  50 


Ship  mail,  235-237 
Silby,  W.  T,  70 
Singer,  Sam,  130-133 
Sketches,  and  drawings,  69,  79- 

83 

Slater,  Alpheus  B.,  337 

Sloane,  George  B.,   77,   201,     £1111*'  t^  ""£  >w 
s     s,.     &  ' '          '     Stamp  Lover,  The,  210 

246,  266,  202,  2Q2,  31Q,  22O       o.  ,«  r  /   o/r   \ 

c    -V  T>  Vk V    j  o        Stamp   peddler,   first    (1860), 

Smith,  R.  Ostrander,  75,  80,  r 

0     „  r  Stamped    envelopes,    58,    71, 

Smollett,  Humphrey  Clinker,         12512g 

Q2^.'  v         •     A    r-    ^    T      StamPed   Paper,   fiscals,    288- 
Societe  Fran^aise  de  Timbrol-  .5 

c  °^f  ?4  .  Stamps,  15,  16,  56,  67,  125- 

Society  for  the  Suppression  of  ^  22g?  22Q?  335;  adhesive, 

Speculative  Stamps,  189  first?    ^   ^.^   Iy6?   2o6; 

Solomon,  Burnes,  280  early?    1]L.25.    recent    sajes? 

Sotheby,  42  333-335;     repair,     130-133; 


South  America,  62,  66,  135,        stages  in  making,  68-70,  79, 


190 


338 


352 


INDEX 


Stamps,  77,  78,  141,  195,  204,  Tiffany,  John  K.,  26,  38,  46, 

239,  292,  303  47,  55,  146 

Stanard,  John  D.,  321  Tiffany,  Louis  Comfort,  79 

Standard  Catalogue  (1940),  'Timbres   postes,"    17;   Cata- 

333  logue,  21 

States,  cover  collections,  242-  Timbromanie,  10,  19 


Toaspern,  Herman,  169,  170 
Travers,  84-86 


243 

Steimley,  L.  L.,  338 
Steinway,  Theodore  E.,  146,     Trenton  Match   Company 

313;  music  collection,  271-         stamps  (1881),  114 


274 

Sterling,  E.  B.,  47,  289-295 
Stern,  Edward,  108,  253-256, 

259-262,  268,  269,  318 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  141, 

142 
Stiles,  Kent  B.,  330-332 


Trifet,  Ferdinand  Marie,  31- 

34,  39-41,  212 
Triumph  Stamp  Company,  41, 

42 
Trollope,  Anthony,  John  Cal- 

digate,  44,  45 
Turner  carrier  stamp,  118 


Street-car    cancellations,    236,     Tuttle,  Arthur,  112 


238 


Tuttle,  George  R.,  63,  112 


Surcharges,  45,  53,  59,  63,  73;     Tyler,  John,  261,  262 


faked,  210;  first,  300 
Swapper,  The,  4 
Switzerland,  16,  54,  273,  275 
"Sydney  Views,"  147, 148, 180, 

211 

Taft,  William  H.,  104,  263, 

264,  285,  318 

Tapling,  Thomas  K.,  9,  10,  54 
Taxis  stamps,  27 
Taylor,  S.  Allan,  29,  211,  212 
Tea  Party  stamps,  289 
Telegraph   stamps,   174,   175, 

V7>  3l8 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  35 

Texas  Republic,  244 
Thorne,  William,  65,  66,  148 
Thurn,  stamps,  27 


Typex  sheet  (1936),  327,  328 

United  States,  12,  17-19,  55, 
69,  142,  144,  146,  181,  195- 
197,  204,  222,  285;  attitude 
toward  collectors,  199-204; 
early  stamps,  16,  70,  148, 
169,  171,  224,  225;  (1847), 
124,  125,  166,  184;  (1851), 
63, 160;  (1869),  93, 160, 173, 
336;  postmarks,  first,  225, 
226;  revenues,  55,  56,  119, 
121,  148,  171 

United  States  Board  on  Geo- 
graphic Names,  243 

United  States  City  Despatch 
Post,  176 

United  States  Post  Office  De- 


INDEX 


353 


partment,  70,  71-75,  82-87,         260,  264,  284,  336;  check, 

125,  126,  185,  199-201,  228,         318;  commemorative  stamp 

238,  260  (1755),  76 

United  States  Bureau  of  En-  Washington,  D.  C.,  225,  226 

graving  and  Printing,  60,  69-  Waterbury,  cancellations,  234 

80,  157,  291  Watermarks,  56,  57,  59,  63 

United    States    Stamp    Com-  Watson,  Charlie,  29,  32,  33 

pany,  30  Watson,  George  H.,  57 

Unperforated  stamps,  57  Watson,  Harold  D.,  65,  89, 
Unused  stamps,  65,  159  171,  172 

Used  stamps,  6,  26,  57,  65,  88,  Webster's  Dictionary,  43 

89;  collecting  a  million,  88-  Wells  Fargo,  308,  334 

97;  on  covers,  189;  for  dec-  Western  Philatelist,  Chicago, 

oration,  44,  90;   on  entire         27 

envelope,  57-59  Wilhelmina,  Queen,  134,  275 

Williams,  Ben  Ames,  163 
Wilson,  Sir  John,  139 


Vanderbilt,  William  H.,  43 
Variations,  56,  59 
Vaughn,  L.  Vernon,  140 
Victoria,  Queen,  14,  68,  69, 

276;  jubilee,  283 
Victoria  collection,  62 
Viner,  Dr.  C.  W.,  17 


Wilson,  Thomas  E.,  296 
Wilson,  Woodrow,  254,  264, 

318 

Wilson,  Mrs.  Woodrow,  266, 

267 
Wilson's   (Rev.  E.  A.),   298, 

299 

Wolsieffer,  P.  M.,  160 
Worthington,  George  H.,  66 
Wytheville,  Va.,  30 


Wanamaker,  John,  74,  326 
War  (1914-18),  54,  313,  330 
War    (1940),   effect   on    phi 

lately,  328-33 
Ward,  Cornelia  C.,  282 
Ward,  Philip  H.,  Jr.,  253,  254,     Young  England,  2 

257,  258,  263-268,  337,  338     Young  Ladies'  Journal,  20,  21 
Warren,  Whitney,  79 
Washington,  George,  75,  77,     Zeppelin  mail,  304-307;  covers, 

79,  98,  124,  125,  256,  258-        67