Chats on Postage Stamps

by Frederick John Melville

These things do happen, but in the "legitimate" stamp-collecting they are necessarily of rarer occurrence in these days of popular newspapers, over-educating in certain directions, or at least pandering to the common desire for a royal road to easy wealth. Many dealers have told me that it is their experience that, if they make a fair offer for valuable stamps submitted to them by the uninitiated, they never succeed in effecting a purchase at all in these days. The hawker of "finds" visits the stamp-shops to get an idea of the value of his wares, and plays off one dealer against another, with the result that it is necessary for the seller nowadays to state his price in the first instance.

The modern collection is specialised, that is to say, it deals with the postal history of a country or group of countries, instead of being a mere accumulation of specimens of the postage-stamps of the world. The advanced collector's albums of to-day are like the "association books" of the autograph collector, and indeed there have been many successes in "grangerising" the more important specialist monographs on stamps. One of the most interesting of these latter was the late Mr. Thomas Peacock's copy of "The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of Great Britain," written by the late Mr. (afterwards Judge) Philbrick and the late Mr. W. A. S. Westoby, and published by the Philatelic Society, London, in 1881. This book was sold by auction after Mr. Peacock's death, and realised only £19, its treasures not having been generally noticed before the sale; and it had been denuded of some of its wealth before I saw it, an act for which it is not easy to forgive the man of commerce. Peacock, as Inspector of Stamping at Somerset House (1853-93), had had intimate associations with the Hill family (of whom several members got comfortable positions in the Government service), and his connection with the mechanical side of the production of stamps enabled him to enrich his "Philbrick and Westoby" with copious notes, photographs, proofs, and stamps. Major Evans published most of the notes in Gibbons Stamp Weekly, and I had the privilege of adding the notes and some photographs from the original to my own copy of this book.

The collector "grangerising" a book on the British stamps to-day would, of course, work on the later authority, "The Adhesive Stamps of the British Isles," by the late Mr. Hastings E. Wright, and Mr. A. B. Creeke, jun., or on the sectional works of mine, of which Mr. W. H. Peckitt has issued large paper sets with special bindings for that purpose.

THE SMALL "EXPERIMENTAL" PLATE FROM WHICH IMPRESSIONS OF THE TWO PENCE, GREAT BRITAIN, WERE MADE ON "DICKINSON" PAPER.

Only two rows of four stamps were impressed on each piece of the paper.
(Cf. [next plate].)

Generally, however, it is the stamp collection itself that is enriched by a variety of evidential matter and extensive notes by the owner. I have traced with fair success in my Great Britain collection the early history of the Post Office in this country, and have been fortunate enough to secure several of those raræ aves among historic documents, the proclamations relating to the post. Lord Crawford has the finest set of these in any private collection, and he has given a list of them in the catalogue of the philatelic section of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, with details of the location of all known copies. Acts of Parliament are not always convenient for inclusion with the stamp collection, but those relating to the issuance of stamps should be included where possible. The original of the "pretended Act" of the Commonwealth, to which I have already alluded, was a bookstall-bargain, costing a few shillings. The Uniform Penny Postage Acts of 1839 and 1840 should be included in the "association collection" of the stamps of Great Britain. My copy of the former is an original, but the 1840 one is a reprint. The years 1837-39 are of great importance in the history of postage-stamps; this was the first period of the essays and proposals for the system, to the advocacy of which Rowland Hill devoted himself with such tenacity of purpose. The published proposals, samples of the printed envelopes and covers of which were included in the "Ninth Report of the Commissioners appointed to Inquire into the Management of the Post Office" (1837), and in Mr. Ashurst's "Facts and Reasons in support of Mr. Rowland Hill's Plan," are accessible to the specialist, and are the natural priores of the Mulready envelopes and covers. Not so accessible are the proposals of Forrester, Cheverton, Dickinson, and the minor lights who sought to provide the Treasury with the key to success in the adoption of prepayment. My "Forrester" is a perfect copy which came from the sale of the Philbrick library, where it had been overlooked and classed among some more ponderous but less treasured productions. The Cheverton papers and the metal dies intended for striking the impressions of his proposed labels remain in the possession of the inventor's relative, Miss Eliza Cooper, though casts have been made of the die for the collections of his Majesty the King, Lord Crawford, the British Museum, and the Royal Society. Mr. Lewis Evans, the grandson of the late Mr. John Dickinson, the great paper manufacturer—a contemporary of Fourdrinier and no mean rival of that genius—has a family treasure-store in the Dickinson correspondence with Rowland, Ormond, and Edwin Hill, and Mr. Spring Rice, Chancellor of the Exchequer; and particularly in a fine series of the patterns drawn up by Ormond Hill for the envelopes printed on Dickinson "thread" paper. Samples of the actual thread-papers (unprinted) as used for the Mulready and the later embossed envelopes and for the first Ten Pence and One Shilling embossed stamps are surprisingly rare—indeed, the authors of "Wright and Creeke" had only seen three-quarters of a mill-sheet at the time of writing their book. Mr. Lewis Evans has a number of the original samples, and has been good enough to allow me to prepare a complete transcript of the Dickinson papers, so far as they relate to postal matters, and I have included facsimiles of Ormond Hill's pattern instructions for the paper for the Ten Pence and Shilling adhesives in "Great Britain: Embossed Adhesive Stamps." These are items which form part of the life-history of the stamps or impressed stationery to which they relate, and are properly included with the stamp collection. But, except in the facsimile state, it will be obvious that but few can enrich their collections with items of so unique a character as Ormond Hill's carefully measured and ruled patterns and the autograph letters with instructions from Rowland Hill. But it is open to each specialist to introduce much individuality into a collection of Great Britain, or some other country, on these and similar lines.