Chats on Postage Stamps

by Frederick John Melville

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.