Art in Pen and Ink
The evocative artwork created by the senders of postal history items catches the eye of postal historian John Scott this month.
In the Victorian era, young ladies of distinction were taught to while away the hours pending their marriage to a suitable gentleman by becoming accomplished artists and often embellished their letters with wonderfully evocative images. These could be either purely decorative or be illustrative of the content of the letter. Whilst printed Mulreadies and Caricatures have a huge following among collectors, the art of penmanship is much less appreciated.
In 1841, Eliza Panting set sail for India on the ship George the Fourth, sailing from Portsmouth to Calcutta with her husband, the Reverend Richard Panting, who had been appointed as Assistant Military Chaplain to the Bengal Establishment of the East India Company.
On 28 May, her father, Thomas Farmer Dukes, wrote her a long letter headed with a sketch of Calcutta (Figure 1) and expressing the hope that ‘this little sketch at the head of this communication will probably convey to you what is passing at this moment in the minds of your mother, myself and of those who dearly and truly love and regard you. We fondly anticipate that you have now escaped the dangers of the swelling seas and are safely landed on the glittering shore of Bengal.’
After practicing law and serving as mayor of Shrewsbury in 1831, Thomas Farmer Dukes had devoted himself to antiquarian research and to drawing churches and monastic remains. Not knowing her address in India, the letter was directed to Eliza c/o Cockerell & Co, Bankers in Calcutta, via Falmouth and was received by Eliza on 21 July 1841 (Figure 2).
When such a letter survives in its entirety, we can be confident as to the identity of the artist, but the same is seldom the case with envelopes that have lost their content and where the image is anonymous. Then, the collector must dig rather deeper in the hope of establishing an attribution. The two envelopes illustrated here are amongst the finest of their kind, and there is no doubting the skill of the originator (Figures 3–4). Two clues that help us are the name of a property embossed on the back flap and the addressee. Newtown Anner House in Clonmel had been built for the Osborne family in 1829, and the family had two daughters, Edith and Grace. Both girls were taught art at an early age, but Edith was disinherited for what her parents deemed to be an unsuitable marriage to Henry Blake, an
inspector with the Royal Irish Constabulary. As a result, Grace inherited the estate and, with that dowry, went on to marry the Duke of St Albans. Edith, on the other hand, developed a career as a botanical illustrator and was described in the Irish Times as a ‘technically gifted artist with the ability to capture minute detail’. Henry, meanwhile, distinguished himself in the Colonial Service as Governor of the Bahamas, Newfoundland, Jamaica, Hong Kong and Ceylon in succession.
The covers are both addressed to ‘Miss
A de la Poer, Gurteen, Clonmel’ with one being postmarked from Holyhead in 1868. Castle Gurteen had been completed in 1866 for Edmond Power, 18th Lord le Poer, and private chamberlain to Pope Pius X. His sister, Anastasia, lived from 1844 to 1916, and the envelopes were sold by her family in 2023.
Writing in Country Life in July 1970, Mark Girouard illustrated two equally accomplished sketches on envelopes addressed to Miss Grace Osborne, which he attributed to Edith and so I rest my case that Lady Edith Blake (1846–1926) was indeed the lady of such accomplishment.