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CHAPTER II

THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN IDEA

Early instances of contrivances to denote prepayment of postage—The "Two Sous" Post—Billets de port payé—A passage of wit between the French Sappho and M. Pellisson—Dockwra's letter-marks—Some fabulous stamped wrappers of the Dutch Indies—Letter-sheets used in Sardinia—Lieut. Treffenberg's proposals for "Postage Charts" in Sweden—The postage-stamp idea "in the air"—Early British reformers and their proposals—The Lords of the Treasury start a competition—Mr. Cheverton's prize plan—A find of papers relating to the contest—A square inch of gummed paper—The Sydney embossed envelopes—The Mulready envelope—The Parliamentary envelopes—The adhesive stamp popularly preferred to the Mulready envelope.

The simplest inventions are usually apt adaptations. The postage-stamp, as we know it to-day, can scarcely be said to have been invented, though much wild controversy has raged about the identity of its "inventor." The historian must prefer to regard the postage-stamp of to-day as the development of an idea.

It would not serve any purpose useful to the present subject to trace to its beginnings the use of stamped paper for the collection of Government revenues; but it is highly interesting to disentangle from the web of history the facts which show this system to have been recognised as applicable to the collection of postages by the prototypes of the reformers of 1840.

The first known instance of special printed wrappers being sold for the convenience of users of a postal organisation occurred in Paris in 1653. At this time France had its General Post, just as England about the same time had set up a General Letter Office in the City of London; but in neither case did the General Post handle local letters. To despatch a letter to the country from Paris, or from London, there was no choice but to deliver it personally, or send it by private messenger, to the one solitary repository in either city for the conveyance of correspondence by the Government post.

The porters of London found no small part of the exercise of their trade in carrying letters to the General Letter Office, and in Paris, no doubt, a similar class of men enjoyed the benefit of catering at individual rates for what is now done on the vast co-operative plan of the State monopoly.

In 1653, a Frenchman, M. de Villayer, afterwards Comte de Villayer, set up as a private enterprise (but with royal authority) the petite poste in Paris, which had for its raison d'être the carrying of letters to the General Post, and also the delivery of local letters within the city. He distributed letter-boxes at prominent positions in the chief thoroughfares in Paris, into which his customers could drop their letters and from whence his laquais could collect them at regular intervals. At certain appointed places M. de Villayer placed on sale letter-covers, or wrappers, which bore a marque particulier, and which, being sold at the rate of a penny each (two sous), were permitted to frank any letter deposited in the numerous letter-boxes of the Villayer post to any point within the city. The post is the one afterwards referred to by Voltaire as the "two-sous post."

These wrappers, then, were the first printed franks for the collection of postage from the public. The exact nature of the matter imprinted upon them is uncertain; but it probably included M. de Villayer's coat of arms, and it was on this hypothesis that the late M. Maury, the French philatelist, reconstructed an approximate imitation of the original form of cover. The covers, it should be stated, were wrapped around the letters by the senders, and were then dropped in the boxes. In the process of sorting for delivery, the servants of M. de Villayer removed the special cover, which removal was practically the equivalent of the cancellation of the stamps of to-day.

These covers undoubtedly represent the first known form of printed postage-stamps, being the forerunners of the impressed non-adhesive stamps of to-day. The Maury reconstruction is fanciful, but the inscriptions thereon are literally correct. Owing to the removal of the covers (which were probably broken in the process) during the postal operations no originals of these covers are now known to exist. Indeed, the only true relics of the billets de port payé of M. de Villayer are in the two fragments of correspondence between M. Pellisson and the French Sappho, Mlle. Scudéri. Pellisson, who was not noted for his good looks, addressed "Mademoiselle Sapho, demeurant en la rue, au pays des Nouveaux Sansomates, à Paris, par billet de port payé." Signing himself "Pisandre," he inquired if the lady could give him a remedy for love. Her reply, sent by the same means, was, "My dear Pisandre, you have only to look at yourself in a mirror." It was of this correspondent that the lady once declared, "It is permissible to be ugly, but Pellisson has really abused the permission."

The London Penny Post of 1680, while it did not use special covers for the prepayment of letters, introduced the system of marking on letters, by means of hand-stamps, the time and place of posting and the intimation "Penny Post Payd." Dockwra, instead of setting up boxes in the public streets, organised a great circle of receiving houses to which the senders took their letters and paid their pennies over the counter. So the principle of the postage-stamp, as we know it to-day, was not represented in the triangular hand-stamps of Dockwra, or of his successors in the official Penny Post.

A device representing the arms of Castile and Leon was used in the eighteenth century as a kind of frank or stamp which passed official correspondence through the posts, and in the last quarter of that century the Chevalier Paris de l'Epinard proposed in Brussels the erection of a local post with a mark or stamp of some kind to denote postage prepaid—a plan which, however, was not adopted.

A FACSIMILE OF THE ADDRESS SIDE OF A PENNY POST LETTER IN 1686, SHOWING THE "PENY POST PAYD" MARK INSTITUTED BY DOCKWRA AND CONTINUED BY THE GOVERNMENT AUTHORITIES.

FACSIMILE OF THE CONTENTS OF THE PENNY POST LETTER OF 1686.

There is a curious account given by a correspondent in The Philatelic Record [xii. 138] of some so-called stamps said to have been used in the Dutch Indies. The writer, whose account has never so far as I am aware received any definite confirmation, says:—

"At the beginning of this year [1890] were discovered amongst some old Government documents at Batavia some curious and hitherto—whether here or in Europe—unknown postally used envelopes, with value indicated. … In the time of Louis XIV. it is believed that postage-stamps existed; but nobody has been able to bring them to light, consequently we have in these hand-stamped envelopes of the Dutch East Indian Company absolutely the oldest documents of philatelic lore.

"The letter-sheets are all made from the same paper, and are all of the same size—namely, about 23 × 19 centimetres; whilst the side which is most interesting to us—the 'address' or 'stamp' side—is folded to a size of 103 × 88 mm. Up to the present the following values have been found:—

3	stivers	black
5	"	"
5	"	red
6	"	black
6	"	"	double; that is to say, two stamps of 6 stivers side by side.
10	"	"
10	"	red
15	"	"

"On the address-side is no date stamp, and no indication of the office of departure; also the figures denoting the year are only discernible on the seal of each letter. On the specimens hitherto found are the dates from 1794 to 1809; but it is quite possible that other values may be unearthed. So far, of all the above values together, only about thirty specimens are known. … These envelopes came from various places in the Dutch Indian Archipelago."

THE OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION OF DECEMBER 3, 1818, RELATING TO THE USE OF THE SARDINIAN LETTER SHEETS.

Described in the records of the Schroeder collection as "the oldest official notification of any country in the world relating to postage stamps."

(Continuation from previous page.)

THE MODELS SHOW THE DEVICES FOR THE THREE DENOMINATIONS: 15, 25, AND 50 CENTESIMI RESPECTIVELY.

The foregoing statement is open to much question, in view of the lapse of twenty years since the matter was first aired in The Philatelic Record. If authentic, these would be the earliest denominated stamps for the prepayment of postage, the Dutch stuiver in use in the colonies being a copper coin equal to about one penny. Perhaps the introduction of the matter in these Chats will, in the light of increased modern facilities for research, bring the subject before the notice of our Dutch philatelic confrères.

The Sardinian letter sheets of the early nineteenth century are now tolerably well known to stamp-collectors. They, however, represented a Government tax on the privilege of letter-carrying, rather than a direct prepayment of postage. These were the product of a curious anomaly in the exercise of the postal monopoly by the Government of Sardinia. It was forbidden to send letters and packets otherwise than through the Government post; but as this latter was very inefficient, and in many parts of the country was practically non-existent, the authorities established by decree, in 1818, a system whereby the people for whom the Government post was inconvenient, if not absolutely useless, could send their letters by other means. To effect this the senders had to supply themselves from a post-office with a stock of special letter sheets, stamped with a device of a mounted post-boy, within a circular, oval, or octagonal frame, at a cost of 15, 25, or 50 centesimi apiece. The use of these stamped letter sheets, bought from the post-office, was an authority for their conveyance by private means, but not through the ordinary channels of the Sardinian postal organisation. Thus, while the Post Office took its full charges for the conveyance of such letters, it did not perform the work of collecting, transmitting, and delivering them. The three denominations, 15, 25, and 50 centesimi were used for letters conveyed varying distances according to the Government postal tariff, from which, however, the actual messenger derived no benefit, his remuneration being over and above these official charges.

SARDINIAN LETTER SHEET OF 1818: 15 CENTESIMI.

THE 25 CENTESIMI LETTER SHEET OF SARDINIA.

Issued in Sardinia, 1818: the earliest use of Letter Sheets with embossed stamps.

The next proposal of stamped covers the historian has to note, is that embodied in a Bill introduced in the Swedish Riksdag, March 3, 1823, by Lieutenant Curry Gabriel Treffenberg. His proposals included: "Stamped paper of varying values, to be used as wrappers for letters, should be introduced and kept for sale in the cities by the Chartæ Sigillatæ deputies, or by other persons appointed for that purpose by the General Chartæ Sigillatæ Office at Stockholm, and in the rural districts, by the sheriffs and other private persons." Private persons were to be granted the privilege of selling these "Postage Charts" by the local officials representing the Crown authorities on obtaining proper security.

The actual proposals for the distinguishing character of the stamped covers were:—

"The Postage Charts should be made of the size of an ordinary letter sheet, but without being folded lengthwise as these are. The paper should be strong but not coarse, and in order to make forgery more difficult, should contain a circular design, easy to discover. It should also be of some light colour.

"In the centre of the paper two stamps should be impressed side by side, occupying together a space of six square inches. One of the stamps should be impressed into the paper and the other should be printed with black ink. Both should contain, besides the value of the Chart, some suitable emblem which would be difficult to imitate. The assortment of values should be made to meet all requirements."

The letters were to be folded so that the stamps would be outside, and so easily cancelled or otherwise marked if required; and in the case of the despatch of packets too large to enclose within a chart, the latter could be cut down, preserving the stamped portion, which was to be sent along with the packet, both packet and chart bearing marks by which the two could be identified and associated in the course of the post.

The Bill did not pass the Riksdag, and so Sweden was deprived of the national credit of giving a lead to the nations of the world in a postage-stamp system, not very different in principle from that of Great Britain in 1840.

THE HIGHEST DENOMINATION, 50 CENTESIMI, OF THE SARDINIAN LETTER SHEETS.

ONE OF THE TEMPORARY ENVELOPES ISSUED FOR THE USE OF MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS, PRIOR TO THE ISSUE OF STAMPS AND COVERS TO THE PUBLIC, 1840.

I now come to the period of the active development of the idea, and so far from the stamp being a particular invention of the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, we must recognise that, beyond all controversy, the notion—whether for an impressed or an adhesive stamp is of little matter—was "in the air." It was stated before the Select Committee on Postage, on February 23, 1838, by a Mr. Louis, formerly Superintendent of Mails, that a plan for stamped covers was communicated to him "by Mr. Stead of Yarmouth, a gentleman who has interested himself a good deal about the Post Office."[1] The sheets of paper were to be stamped and sold to persons who would then be at liberty "to send their letters by conveyances not suitable to Post Office hours."

The scheme had been proposed to the Post Office according to Mr. Louis in his evidence "many years ago," and it is attributed by some writers to 1829, though I can trace no source for their information as to this date.

The plan, from the rather vague remembrance of the witness before the Committee, may have been simply one to introduce the Sardinian method of 1818 into this country, and in any case there are no concrete relics of Mr. Stead's ideas in the shape of essays. Mr. Charles Whiting, of the Beaufort House Press, entered the arena of postal reform some time prior to March, 1830, but we have no definite knowledge of his proposals previous to that date. In that year Mr. Whiting suggested the use of stamped bands for the prepayment of postage on printed matter.[2]

Mr. Whiting called his stamped wrappers "Go frees," and he is understood to have intended the plan to extend to written matter, if it proved successful in an experimental trial with printed matter. The plan did not get a trial, and no greater success attended the efforts of Mr. Charles Knight, the celebrated publisher, who suggested stamped wrappers as a means of collecting postage on newspapers, subject to the abolition of the "Taxes on Knowledge," which were the occasion of a vigorous campaign set on foot in 1834. According to Hansard, a resolution was moved by Mr. Edward Lytton Bulwer, May 22, 1834, "that it is expedient to repeal the Stamp Duty on newspapers at the earliest possible period," and in the course of the debate the member for Hull, Mr. Matthew Davenport Hill, advocating the payment of a penny upon an unstamped newspaper sent by post, said: "To put an end to any objections that might be made as to the difficulty of collecting the money, he would adopt the suggestion of a person well qualified to give an opinion on the subject—he alluded to Mr. Knight, the publisher. That gentleman recommended that a stamped wrapper should be prepared for such newspapers as it was desired to send by post; and that each wrapper should be sold at the rate of a penny by the distributors of stamps in the same way as receipt stamps."[3]

Mr. Knight had made the proposal referred to in a private letter to Lord Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer.[4]

The ultimate result of the campaign was the reduction, not the abolition, of the Newspaper Tax, and, as the reduced tax of one penny for an ordinary newspaper included free transmission in the post, there was no need for the adoption of Mr. Knight's proposal at that time. It is to be noted, however, that Mr. Knight was an active supporter of Rowland Hill's plan a few years later, and that Hill was not unaware of the suggestion, for he wrote of it in his pamphlet that: "Availing myself of this excellent suggestion, I propose the following arrangement:—Let stamped covers and sheets of paper be supplied to the public from the Stamp Office or Post Office, as may be most convenient, and sold at such a price as to include the postage: letters so stamped might be put into the letter-box, as at present."

Dr. Gray, the eminent zoologist of the British Museum and one of the earliest scientific collectors of postage-stamps, made a somewhat ambiguous claim to the authorship of the proposal for the prepayment of postage by means of stamps. When challenged by Rowland Hill in The Athenæum,[5] he stated in that journal that "I have simply said I believe I was the first who proposed the system of a small uniform rate of postage to be prepaid by stamps." When Mr. Knight entered upon the Athenæum correspondence, Dr. Gray reminded him of an incident:

"In the spring of 1834 we [Knight and Gray] were fellow-passengers in the basket of a Blackheath coach, when the subject was discussed. I then stated, as I had frequently done before to other fellow-travellers, my views in relation to the prepayment of postage by stamps. These views Mr. Knight combated, and so little was he then prepared to adopt them that he exclaimed, as he quitted the coach at the corner of Fleet Street, 'Gray, you are more fit for Bedlam than for the British Museum.'" Knight, whose case has the advantage of attaining substantial record in Hansard and The Mirror of Parliament, disclaimed any connection with the incident, and left his friends to decide "whether the language, stated to have been used by me to a gentleman of scientific eminence, would not have been better suited to a costermonger returning from Greenwich fair than to mine."

THE "JAMES CHALMERS" ESSAY.

ROUGH SKETCHES IN WATER-COLOURS SUBMITTED BY ROWLAND HILL TO THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER FOR THE FIRST POSTAGE STAMPS.

Mr. Wallace, the member for Greenock, was perhaps the first to turn Rowland Hill's attention in the direction of a serious campaign for postal reform, and Wallace succeeded in 1837 in getting a Committee "to inquire into the present rates and modes of charging postage, with a view to such a reduction thereof as may be made without injury to the revenue; and for this purpose, to examine especially into the mode recommended for charging and collecting postage in a pamphlet published by Mr. Rowland Hill." The Committee started its sessions in February, 1838, and it had the advantage of the reports of the Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry, and the collection of much valuable material by a Mercantile Committee, of which Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry Cole was secretary.

The proposals from this time on, till the issue of the stamps, were numerous. The Commissioners of Post Office Inquiry had printed samples of several suggested letter-sheets for use by the London District post, in their "Ninth Report, 1837." Mr. J. W. Parker, of the Cambridge Bible Warehouse, West Strand, London, printed a somewhat similar letter-sheet, with advertisement on the reverse, which was circulated with W. H. Ashurst's "Facts and Reasons in support of Mr. Rowland Hill's plan for a Universal Penny Postage,"[6] and Mr. James Chalmers of Dundee first communicated to the Mercantile Committee a proposal that stamped slips should be printed at the Stamp Office on prepared paper, furnished with adhesive matter on the back. These slips were to be sold to the public, and affixed by senders to their letters; and postmasters were to deface the stamps in the course of the post. He included two specimens; similar specimens were submitted by Chalmers to the Treasury in the same year.

In 1839, the first uniform postage Act (2 and 3 Vict. c. 52) was passed, and the Lords of the Treasury, in preparing to give effect to the plan of Rowland Hill, extended an invitation to "artists, men of science and the public in general" to submit proposals in competition for prizes of £200 and £100, for the best and next best proposals. My Lords stated that in the course of the inquiries and discussions on the subject, several plans were suggested, viz., stamped covers, stamped paper, and stamps to be used separately, and "the points which the Board consider of the greatest importance are:—

"1. The convenience as regards the public use.

"2. The security against forgery.

"3. The facility of being checked and distinguished at the Post Office, which must of necessity be rapid.

"4. The expense of the production and circulation of the stamps."

The contest brought in about 2,700 suggestions, and although none was actually adopted, the suggestions contained in some were deemed of value. The Treasury increased the amount of prizes to £400, dividing that sum equally between Mr. Benjamin Cheverton, Mr. Charles Whiting, Mr. Henry Cole, and Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co. Mr. Stead of Norwich, Mr. John Dickinson, the paper-maker, Mr. R. W. Sievier, the sculptor, Mr. S. Henderson of Dalkeith and others were included amongst the competitors. Until recently, however, little or nothing has been known as to the nature of these suggestions, except that the majority were impracticable; but it is on record that Mr. Charles Whiting sent in at least one hundred samples, embodying his ideas or illustrative of designs and methods of duplication in use at his printing establishment.

HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED EXAMPLES OF THE PROPOSALS SUBMITTED TO THE LORDS OF THE TREASURY IN 1839 IN COMPETITION FOR PRIZES OFFERED IN CONNECTION WITH THE PENNY POSTAGE PLAN.

(From the Author's Collection.)

However, in May, 1910, an article which I contributed to The Daily Mail brought from the daughter of Mr. Cheverton a letter in which she made the interesting statement that her late father's papers relating to the proposals made by him in 1839 were still in her possession. She very kindly promised me a sight of them.

Enthusiasts know how difficult it is, when on the verge of an anticipated discovery, to possess their souls in patience, hoping for at least a sight of the find; but my patience in this case was unavailing, for the next I heard of the treasured papers and the dies was—and this is some consolation—that they were in the capable hands of the Earl of Crawford, who prepared and subsequently read before the Royal Philatelic Society a scholarly reconstruction of Cheverton's plan.

Fortune, however, made me some compensation shortly afterwards. The upheaval and dispersal of an old store of rubbish and unconsidered trifles brought into my possession a considerable parcel of papers accumulated by the Lords of the Treasury in response to their invitation of 1839, and which, after lying hidden for nearly three-quarters of a century, have fortunately escaped total destruction in the year of grace 1911.

The suggestions are mostly crude designs in the form of pencil or crayon work on envelopes, pen and ink drawings for adhesive labels, and in one case the latter were made up in such form as to suggest how the labels would be printed in sheets. The unravelling of the plans for which these various suggestions were made is not yet complete, but they will, I trust, yield to further investigation and admit of extensive description in a forthcoming work in which Mr. Charles Nissen is collaborating with me on the subject of British essays and proofs for postage-stamps.

It was towards the end of 1839 that Mr. Henry Cole visited Messrs. Perkins, Bacon & Co., then at Fleet Street, and told them that the idea of the authorities was that the adhesive labels should be about one square inch in size, and on December 3, 1839, that firm submitted their first estimate of not exceeding eightpence per thousand, nor less than sixpence per thousand, the price being exclusive of paper. The process by which they were to be produced is the now well-known system known as the "Perkins mill and die" process, a method of production which was adopted in due course, and has never been superseded for the production of artistic stamps.

The history of the making of the stamp, the combination of the art of Wyon, Corbould, and Heath, I have dealt with elsewhere, so I turn to the envelope plan. Stamped covers, as we have seen, had been used in Sardinia in 1818 and, in a different fashion, in Paris as early as 1653. In 1838, while Britain was in the throes of the postal agitation, New South Wales actually issued and used embossed envelopes, which were sold in Sydney at 1s. 3d. per dozen sheets. The embossed design consisted of the royal coat of arms of William IV. enclosed in a circular frame, bearing the words "General Post Office—New South Wales."

THE ADDRESS SIDE OF THE MODEL LETTER WHICH HAS THE STAMP (SHOWN BELOW) AFFIXED TO THE BACK AS A SEAL.

ANOTHER OF THE UNPUBLISHED ESSAYS SUBMITTED IN THE COMPETITION OF 1839 FOR THE PENNY POSTAGE PLAN.

(From the Author's Collection.)

The envelope proposals that were before the Treasury in 1839 consisted mainly of rough sketches, but in a few cases of elaborate printed designs (e.g., Harwood's envelope), and the patterns made up of intricate geometrical work like the specimens in Ashurst's "Facts and Reasons" and the "Ninth Report." Cole called upon Mr. William Mulready and invited him to draw a design for the envelope, and it was decided that this design should be printed on the paper with the silk threads embedded in its substance, a paper which has since been known to philatelists as "Dickinson" paper, after the name of its inventor. Mr. Dickinson had all along been keenly interested in the proposals for postage reform, and was a witness before the Select Committee in 1837, providing paper with threads in it for the essays in the Report. Many of the chief officials and the agitators were convinced of the protection that this paper offered against forgery, and it is not generally known—I mention it as specimens of the paper are by no means commonly met with—that Mr. Dilke was so convinced of the importance of the use of this paper that he printed the entire issue of The Athenæum for April 28, 1838, on the thread paper.[7] Mr. Dickinson's firm was at that time supplying the regular Athenæum paper.

Among the rarities for which collectors, even general collectors, will pay high prices are the temporary letter-covers prepared in January, 1840, to give members of Parliament the first privilege of using the penny "post-frees." There are several kinds with inscriptions reading "Houses of Parliament," "House of Lords," and "House of Commons." These were in use from January 16th, but their great rarity suggests that the use of them was not extensive. That, no doubt, was attributable to the injunction, "To be posted at the House of … only."

The public in London first saw the stamps on May 1, 1840, when Sir Rowland Hill reports, "Great bustle at the Stamp Office"—£2,500 worth were sold on the first day. They did not come into use, however, until May 6th, when Sir Henry Cole went to the Post Office and reported that "about half the letters were stamped."

The envelopes, covers and labels were issued simultaneously. Within six days the "labels" won the race for popular favour. "I fear," wrote Hill on May 12th, "we shall be obliged to substitute some other stamp for that designed by Mulready, which is abused and ridiculed on all sides. … I am already turning my attention to the substitution of another stamp, combining with it, as the public have shown their disregard and even distaste for beauty, some further economy in the production."

PROOF OF THE MULREADY ENVELOPE ON INDIA PAPER, SIGNED BY ROWLAND HILL.

(From the Peacock Papers.)

Sir Rowland Hill was perhaps pardonably piqued at the success which the label won from the start, at the expense of the elaborate envelope design on which the artistic ideals of both Cole and Hill had set their hopes.[8] It was not the public lack of appreciation of beauty or art, but their ready selection of the convenient and the practical, instead of the imaginative and sentimental, and, it must be admitted, very impracticable, design for the envelopes and covers. More than two decades later—May, 1863—Sir Rowland Hill, writing to Signor Perazzi, who was making inquiries on behalf of the Italian authorities, said, "I do consider them [stamped envelopes] as of real use to the public, although the small proportion used (not more than 1 per cent., I believe), shows that the demand for them is comparatively insignificant."