POSTCARDS FROM THE PAST - Beginning the Grand Tour

 We had enjoyed our usual cake and cappuccino (maximum chocolate sprinkles) in Costa’s, and were just having a mooch around the little shops in Hayes, Kent.  We moved slowly, taking our time, as my friend has impaired mobility and was not having a good day in that department.  Still, the sun was shining and we chatted away, messing about trying on daft hats and poring over the array of goods in the charity shops. We had reached the second-to-last one on our perambulation, and my friend had found several of the items on her ‘things to look for’ list in that shop, which was particularly busy that day. As she paid for her purchases, my eye was caught by a small pile of what looked like old black and white postcards, just languishing, sad and abandoned, on the corner of the counter.  I really, really wanted to take a look, but as my friend was getting tired and there was a long queue, I decided to save my money. Besides, our current finances are such that I shouldn’t be spending money on fripperies. (Costa’s doesn't count).

It was a fortnight before we came again to Hayes.  During that time my mind had often returned to those cards; how I wished I had bought them! I thought of them constantly - mourned them like a lovesick swain who has let the love of his life slip through his fingers. I have a collection of cards dating back to my youth, and as a keen genealogist I couldn’t help but wonder if there had been anything written on these specimens; thoughts that I tried to ignore as reason told me the cards would by now have been lost or binned if they had not already been sold.

We followed our usual routine; coffee and cake, Sainsburys and charity shops.  My heart fluttered as we approached the ‘postcard’ shop. As soon as we entered, I shot a sideways glance across to the counter.  They were not there. Of course not. Silly to even think it!  We browsed round, I picked up a cuddly dinosaur and a Star Wars book and took them to the till.  As my friend paid for her stuff, I gazed up idly.  Surely not!  Surely that could not be ‘my’ cards shoved in that old plastic letter rack on the shelf above the till!  Oh joy! This time there was no hesitation.  I got the assistant to get them down, paid the pound quoted and legged it before she could change her mind.

 I so could not wait to get home. I snuck a peek at them in the car (I should point out my friend does the  driving) and was beside myself with anticipation when I realised that most were postmarked over a hundred years ago.

Studying them closely with my Dad’s trusty magnifying glass later in the day, I discovered the older ones were all views of the UK and Italy, and there was a more modern fold-out card of colour photo views of Madeira, 1970s I would guess.  Of the older cards, some were sepia, and some of them were colour-tinted.  There were four with no writing on them, and a picture of a smart Victorian woman that looked like it had been torn from a book.

But the real treasures were the eleven cards with addresses and messages on them written in ink in neat old-fashioned handwriting.  And what was more – closer inspection showed that they were not only from the same era – 1905 to1910 – but they were all addressed to members of the same family!  I could not wait to make good use of my Ancestry subscription to try to identify them and maybe learn the stories behind the correspondence.

Like a woman possessed I spent as much time as possible picking up clues from the cards, which were quite difficult to read with the flowery handwriting, sometimes ink-stained and smudged:  of course they were all stamped and postmarked (except one, a sepia photo of Lake Maggiore, addressee hard to read but the Milan address legible and the message in Italian) until at last I felt confident enough to copy out each one longhand onto good old-fashioned index cards so I wouldn’t have to continually handle the originals, which were already fragile and faded.

Although the addresses and most of the addressees surnames were clear, they all bore the then habitual formal appellation, just ‘Mrs So and So' – without initial or Christian name; the salutations were just ‘Dear Auntie’ or more commonly none at all, and were usually signed with just a difficult to read initial.

However, most of them were addressed to the same family or a person care of that family.  It was an unusual name, which vaguely rang a bell with me.  Of course, I turned to the internet.  Imagine my excitement when, after checking with both Google and detailed searches on the Ancestry site, I realised that these cards related to the family of a very eminent Victorian indeed, one who had once been called ‘The most influential English speaking philosopher of the 19th Century’.

John Stuart Mill was dedicated to the causes of liberty; he was a political economist and the first MP to call for women’s rights to vote. His wife and sister were well-known activists in the women’s suffrage movement, and he wrote books on the subject, amongst other things.  He was also Bertrand Russell’s Godfather. In fact, his whole family and their descendants were at the heart of intellectual society in Victorian times.

I liked this man! It was with a great feeling of anticipation that I began the long trawl through millions of pieces of information and sometimes badly transcribed Censuses.

Some people believe that by remembering and naming the dead we honour them and give them the opportunity of eternal life.  John Stuart Mill is well remembered in history; but what of his family who wrote these cards in such fond and caring terms some thirty years after the great man’s death?

I must find out exactly who these people are.