Cape of Good Hope: Palimpsest letters
Due to the high cost of sea postage, many pre-adhesive letters were written in a criss-cross fashion. These are sometimes named by collectors as "palimpsest" letters. The ones I have are all addressed to the wife of the Royal Astronomer Thomas McClear. I would love to see other examples.
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How do you read it with a magnifying glass or with 'difficulty'?
It is readable (with great difficulty) once you get used to the penmanship. The image doesn't do it justice, as when the letter is fully opened it looks like embroidery. What I always battle is to read the "rates".
I am a big fan of the Maclear correspondence but regrettably have only one very nice item from the Admiralty, London, addressed to the "Royal Astronomer, Royal Observatory", Cape Town. Given how Cape Town has grown, it is quite incredible to discover that the observatory, the first in the southern hemisphere, was sited where it was to take advantage of dark nights far from town.
I bought this in a lot of 29 Cape covers for £290. It is possible that this cover might sell for that price by itself to the right buyer. It has been written in Cape Town, possibly in the Castle, at the HQ of the Inniskillen Regiment. (Their HQ group was based in CT where it enjoyed the hospitality of the Tavern of the Seas while the regiment itself 'kukked off' in Grahamstown on border duty.) The letter has been written by what I presume is an HQ officer in CT to an officer in Grahamstown with the regiment but who was in fact based at the minor fort at Trompetter's Drift on the Great Fish River which guarded the approach to Fort Peddie. Trompetter's Drift was a notorious Xhosa river crossing point for raiding across the border. It was also the site of a massacre of a party of European civilians by the Xhosa. The drift along the Great Fish River, as well as the fort, were named after the leader of a group of Khoikhoi who settled near the fort. As a mark of his authority, the Dutch colonial authority gave 'Trompetter' a trumpet which he liked to blow.
Am I correct in thinking that officers were required to pay postage but the ranks were not?
I found reading this palimpsest letter very difficult. I think that in this letter there is reference to "going out whoring" in CT. It is packed full of detail of life for a soldier in Cape Town and the difficulty of paying off one's debts.
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Steve
Thanks for posting your example. You are right that career officers were required to pay postage and depending on the period the soldiers either paid nothing or paid a lesser amount.
What surprises me about these letters, one would have expected that by the 1830s/1840s the practice would have disappeared. Occasionally one can see palimpsest writing on postcards as well during the Edwardian period.
I am not surprised at the price you paid, although you may realize a decent profit on this one. Actually world-wide and particularly GB and the Cape of Good Hope, prestamp covers are not in great demand. I think this has to do with "competitive exhibiting " that has divided collectors into "specialty areas" as well as ingrained a culture of "quality of markings". The latter is almost next to impossible to achieve, at least for CGH markings.
Maybe as you wrote in an answer to "Letters to the Editor" as prices go down, it is our chance to buy, although my observation is that in other areas the demand and prices are going up and not down.
Yes, I have a few postcards, somewhere, that have been written in palimpsest. I guess, if you've got a lot to say and only a postcard on which to say it then palimpsest is a practical solution to the problem at hand.
If you are not surprised at the price I paid, I would hope that means that you think the the possibility of my making such a purchase again is high. I sure hope so. I got about five good display quality, (not exhibition quality), items out of it and was highly chuffed about my good luck at the time. I would certainly like to buy more at that price as recently prices have been going through the roof. However, if this material is not very popular and if the collecting base for it is getting smaller, supply will outstrip demand at some point in the future. I am no longer expecting to show a profit on my purchases but if I do, good. I have realised that if I get pleasure from them and they add to my display and the story I get to tell, ideally with a little discovery here or there, then that is as good as it gets. If I can sell my material for what I paid for it, that will be enough. We are only temporary custodians of this material in any event.