[294] I have received from an esteemed correspondent the following cutting from the City article of one of the London Daily Papers:—
“MONEY MARKET AND CITY INTELLIGENCE.
“Friday Evening.
“Considerable diversion was created in the City to-day by the appearance of the new penny-post devices for envelopes, half-sheet letters, and bits of ‘sticking plaster,’ about an inch square, for dabbing on to letters. The surface of the latter is filled up with a bust of Her Majesty, or what is guessed to be intended for such, but which is much too vulgar of expression so to be mistaken by any of the loyal subjects who have had the good fortune to see the graceful original herself. But for this unlucky perversion of the royal features, the penny-post ‘sticking-plaster’ might appropriately have come into fashion and superseded the court sticking-plaster, so common for the concealment of trifling cutaneous cracks on the face of beauty. Thus women and men, too, might have carried sovereigns on their countenances as well as in their hearts and purses, and many a decayed beauty might have refreshed her faded charms with the renovating representation of royal youth and loveliness. It is shrewdly suspected that this untoward disfiguration of the royal person has been the studied work of ministerial malevolence and jealousy, desirous of rendering their royal benefactress, if possible, as odious as themselves. The envelopes and half-sheets have an engraved surface, extremely fantastic, and not less grotesque. In the centre, at the top, sits Britannia, throwing out her arms, as if in a tempest of fury, at four winged urchins, intended to represent post-boys, letter-carriers, or Mercuries, but who, instead of making use of their wings and flying, appear in the act of striking out or swimming, which would have been natural enough if they had been furnished with fins instead of wings. On the right of Britannia there are a brace of elephants, all backed and ready to start, when some Hindoo, Chinese, Arabic, or Turkish merchants, standing quietly by, have closed their bargains and correspondence. The elephants are symbolic of the lightness and rapidity with which Mr. Rowland Hill’s penny post is to be carried on, and perhaps, also, of the power requisite for transporting the £1,500 a-year to his quarters, which is all he obtains for strutting about the Post Office, with his hands in his pockets, and nothing to do like a fish out of water. On the left of Britannia, who looks herself very much like a termagant, there is an agglomeration of native Indians, Missionaries, Yankees, and casks of tobacco, with a sprinkling of foliage, and the rotten stem of a tree, not forgetting a little terrier dog inquisitively gliding between the legs of the mysterious conclave to see the row. Below, on the left, a couple of heads of the damsel tribe are curiously peering over a valentine just received (scene, Valentine’s Day), whilst a little girl is pressing the elders for a sight of Cupid, and the heart transfixed with a score of arrows. On the right again stands a dutiful boy, reading to his anxious mamma an account of her husband’s hapless shipwreck, who, with hands clasped, is blessing Rowland Hill for the cheap rate at which she gets the disastrous intelligence. At the bottom of all there is the word ‘Postage,’ done in small upon a large pattern of filagree work. With very great propriety the name of the artist is conspicuously placed in one corner, so that the public and posterity may know who is the worthy Oliver of the genius of a Rowland on this triumphant occasion. As may well be imagined, it is no common man, for the mighty effort has taxed the powers of the Royal Academy itself, if the engraved announcement of W. Mulready, R.A., in the corner may be credited. Considering the infinite drollery of the whole, the curious assortment of figures and faces, the harmonious mélange of elephants, mandarin’s tails, Yankee beavers, naked Indians, squatted with their hind-quarters in front, Cherokee chiefs, with feathered tufts, shaking missionaries by the hand; casks of Virginia threatening the heads of young ladies devouring their love letters, and the old woman in the corner, with hands uplifted, blessing Lord Lichfield and his Rowland for the saving grace of 11d. out of the shilling, and valuing her absent husband’s calamity or death as nothing in comparison with such an economy—altogether, it may be said, this is a wondrous combination of pictorial genius, after which Phiz and Cruikshank must hide their diminished heads, for they can hardly be deemed worthy now of the inferior grade of associates and aspirants for academic honours. Withal the citizens are rude enough to believe that these graphic embellishments will not go down at the price of 1s. 3d. the dozen for the envelopes, and half or quarter sheets, for the size is somewhat of the mongrel sort, and of 1s. 1d. per dozen for the bits of ‘sticking plaster,’ with a head upon it which looks something like that of a girl, but nothing of a Queen. As a very tolerable profit may be made out of the odd pence thus charged over the stamp, the penny-postman calculates, no doubt, to make up the deficit in the Post Office revenue by the sale of these gimcrack pictures for babes and sucklings.”—Ed.
[295] In Sir R. Hill’s Journal is the following entry;—“I fear we shall be obliged to substitute some other stamp for that designed by Mulready, which is abused and ridiculed on all sides. In departing so widely from the established ‘lion and unicorn’ nonsense, I fear that we have run counter to settled opinions and prejudices somewhat rashly. I now think it would have been wiser to have followed established custom in all the details of the measure where practicable.”—May 12th, 1840.—Ed.
[296] “First Report of the Postmaster-General,” pp. 65-68.
[297] The late Professor R. Phillips, F.R.S.
[298] Now Sir Charles Pressly, K.C.B. He was then Secretary, and afterwards Chairman, of the Board of Stamps and Taxes.
[299] The extracts which I have given in Appendix I from the Annual Reports of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, show how well my brother discharged the duties of his office.
[300] See p. 346.