To become a financial success it was necessary that the stamps should be produced cheaply, yet of workmanship so excellent that imitation could be easily detected. Now there is one art which we unconsciously practise from infancy to old age—that of tracing differences in the human faces we meet with. It is this art or instinct which enables us to distinguish our friends from strangers; and it was, perhaps, recognition of this fact that long ago led to the placing on the coinage of the portrait of the reigning monarch because it was familiar to the public eye, and therefore less likely than any other face to be counterfeited. In an engraving of some well-known countenance, any thickening or misplacing of the facial lines makes so great an alteration in features and expression that forgery is far more easily detected than when the device is only a coat-of-arms or other fanciful ornament.[166] For this reason, therefore, it was decided in 1839 to reproduce on the postage stamp the youthful Queen's head in profile designed by Wyon for the money of the then new reign, daily use of which coinage was making her face familiar to all her people. The head is also identical with that on the medal—likewise by Wyon—which was struck to commemorate her first State visit to the city in November 1837.
The stamp then being difficult to counterfeit, and worth but little in itself, while the machinery employed to produce it was costly, the reason is obvious why, so far as is known, only two attempts, and those so clumsy that one wonders who could have wasted time in forging the things, were made to imitate the finely executed, earliest “Queen's head.”[167]
The design was engraved by hand on a single steel matrix, the head, through the agency of this costly machinery, being encompassed by many fine, delicately-wrought lines. The matrix was then hardened, and used to produce impressions on a soft steel roller of sufficient circumference to receive twelve repetitions, the beautiful work of the original matrix being therefore repeated, line for line, in every stamp printed. The roller, being in turn hardened, reproduced, under very heavy pressure, its counterpart on a steel plate a score of times, thus making up the requisite 240 impressions which cause each sheet to be of the value of one sovereign.[168]
Absolute uniformity was thus secured at comparatively little cost. The ingenious process was invented by Mr Perkins,[169] of the firm of Perkins, Bacon & Co. of Fleet Street, who, during the first forty years of the reformed postal system, printed some 95/100ths of our postage stamps, and in that space of time issued nearly 21,000,000,000 of penny adhesives alone.[170] Later, the contract passed into the hands of Messrs De La Rue, who hitherto, but long after 1840, had merely printed stamps of a few higher values than the penny and twopenny issue. In at least one work of fiction, however, the impression is conveyed that the latter firm from the first enjoyed the monopoly of stamp production of all values.
About midway in the 'fifties a serious fire broke out on Messrs Perkins & Co.'s premises, and much valuable material was destroyed. Investigation of the salvage showed that barely two days' supply of stamps remained in stock; and some anxiety was felt lest these should become exhausted before fresh ones could be produced, as even a temporary return to prepayment by coin of the realm would by this time have been found irksome. But with characteristic zeal, the firm at once recommenced work, and only a few people were ever aware how perilously near to deadlock the modern postal machine had come. It was after this fire that the crimson hue of the penny adhesive was altered to a sort of brick-red. The change of colour—one of several such changes exhibited by the red stamp—is duly recorded in Messrs Stanley Gibbon & Co.'s catalogue, though the probably long-forgotten accident with which it would seem to be connected is not mentioned.
The reasons for the four months' long delay in the issue of the stamps were twofold. They were, first, the more or less open hostility of the Post officials to both reform and reformer, which, as has been stated, caused all sorts of hindrances to be strewn in the path of progress; and, secondly, the apprehension still felt by the Government that the public would not take kindly to prepayment. The stamps ought, of course, to have been issued in time to be used by the 10th January 1840, when the new system came into force. When they were at last forthcoming, none were forwarded to the receiving offices till complaint was made. The fault was then found to lie with the wording of the Treasury letter giving the requisite directions. Later, another difficulty arose. The Stamp Office persisted in issuing the stamped covers in entire sheets as they were printed, and the Post Office refused to supply them uncut to the receivers. Three days alone were wasted over this wrangle. A week later the Post Office, which had formally undertaken the distribution of the covers, discovered that such work was beyond its powers. For a month after the first issue of the stamps the receiving offices remained unsupplied.
While the Government and others still cherished the delusion that the recipient of a letter would feel insulted if denied the time-honoured privilege of paying for it, the delayed publication of the stamps was less to be regretted since it enabled the experiment to be first tried with money only.
The official forecast was at fault. From the very start, and with the best will in the world, the public, when posting letters, put down pennies and missives together, and when the stamps—called by would-be wits the “Government sticking-plasters”—at last appeared, the difficulty was not to persuade people to make use of them, but to get them supplied fast enough to meet the popular demand.