Easter Greetings

Considering how many Easter cards I have, I think it must have been common practice to send lots of them. I'm guessing they were almost as popular as Christmas cards. Who sends Easter cards anymore? Nobody that I know. There is something very festive and fun about them though and the mystifying blend of pagan and Christian traditions, with bunnies, eggs, chickens, and Jesus.

Don't mess with this chick; you'd be sorry.

 This poor little chick with the umbrella must live in Portland or Seattle.

Wait a minute, angels don't have sideburns. Run away little chick, this is an imposter.

$15 for the Minister

What better way to celebrate Easter than to pledge $15 towards the minister's salary.

Here's the back of the card, sent to Mrs. Gussie Ward in Canastota, New York. The message reads:

Gussie - 

Put me down for $15 for the year on your ministers salary - 

Best wishes - 

____(?)

Fröhliche Ostern

These two Easter cards were both sent to Trinchen von Oesen, the German maid featured in last Saturday's post.

The first card was from her sister Lina, who thankfully had fairly legible handwriting. The message reads:

Dear Sister!

I received your card many thanks for that. I'm traveling to Grambkermoor

The Baetjers got a little girl but I would have gone anyway. Now you can write me about how things are with you there. Now ___ your time is soon up.

Happy Easter along with friendly greetings

Your Lina

I am unable to decipher the message on the second card.

I am Your Brudder

This card with Best Easter Wishes was sent to Freda R. McKewen (?) at the Mansion House in Binghamton, New York in 1916.

There are a number of mansions in Binghamton, but I have a feeling that this was actually some sort of boarding house rather than an actual mansion. I found an article in the November 3, 1900 issue of the New York Times announcing the death of a salesman, John Higgins of Binghamton, at the Mansion House. Higgins, a traveling salesman for the Beck Cigar Company, was despondent over family and health problems. He committed suicide by eating two ounces of rat poison. Higgins left behind a wife and four children.

Here's the back of the card and the message, which reads:

Wishing you a happy Easter

I am your brudder

Deloss

Little Prince Rainier

Yesterday's Tram Tuesday post, showing the scenic tramline between Nice and Monaco, made me want to post some more on Monaco. Here we have a card with the royal children of Monaco, Rainier and Antoinette, children of  Prince Pierre and Princess Charlotte. Unfortunately for Princess Antoinette (born in 1920),  her younger brother, born in 1923, would become the heir to the throne.

That's just the way it is. There's protocol, you know. Although I will say that the royal protocol in Monaco is particularly unusual.

Judge for yourself. Here's the condensed recent history of the Monaco's royal family starting with Prince Louis II:

1870 - Prince Louis is born to parents who don't like each other, Prince Albert I and Lady Hamilton. Shortly thereafter, Lady Hamilton leaves Monaco forever and raises Louis in Germany with her new husband.

1881 - Yikes, Louis is 11 and he's the only heir. He must return to Monaco and to the father he doesn't know to be trained for his royal duties.

About 1891 - Like his mother, Louis doesn't like it much in Monaco. He goes off to France to enroll in the St. Cyr Military Academy. After that, he opts to join the French Foreign Legion in Africa to avoid returning to Monaco.

1895 or so - Louis falls in love with a woman, Juliette Louvet, who is variously described as a washerwoman and a cabaret dancer. She is married to a 'girlie photographer' and already has two children.

1898 - Prince Louis and Juliette conceive a child.

1904 or thereabouts - Louis is informed that the Principality of Monaco will revert to a distant German relative if he does not produce an heir.  "Hmm", he says, "Well, I did have this illegitimate child with the washerwoman/cabaret dancer in Algeria, who was married to a girlie photographer and already had two children. There's my heir!"  (This is an approximate quote)

1919 - Charlotte, the daughter of his tryst with the washerwoman/cabaret dancer, is adopted by Louis, and declared Princess of Monaco.

1920 - Louis arranges the marriage of Charlotte with Count Pierre de Polignac of Guidel, who is by all accounts gay.  Pierre becomes Prince of Monaco. Somehow, they give birth to a daughter (Antoinette) the same year.

1923 - Charlotte and Pierre give birth to a son, Rainier.

1922 - Prince Albert I dies. Prince Louis takes over.

1944 - Princess Charlotte cedes her rights to her son, Rainier. 

1946 - The 75-year-old Prince Louis marries a French actress, divorced wife of some French actor. They leave Monaco for Paris.

1949 - Prince Louis dies. Prince Rainier becomes Sovereign Prince.

1949 - Rainier's mother, Princess Charlotte, is now free. She moves in with her lover, a noted French former jewel thief, and turns the family estate near Paris into a rehabilitation center for former convicts.

1940s/50s - Prince Rainier moves in with French film star, Gisele Pascal.

1940s - Prince Rainier's sister Antoinette has three children out of wedlock with a Spanish lawyer and international tennis champion.

1950s - Antoinette starts making sounds about her son becoming heir to the throne, since Rainier doesn't have any heirs.

1956 - Rainier takes the hint and marries American film star, Grace Kelly.

Allegedly, Rainier's sister, Princess Antoinette, was so unpopular and fixated on the hierarchy, that Princess Grace demanded she leave the country.

You're probably familiar with all of the more recent history of  Caroline, Albert, and Stephanie, so I'll stop here. And in case you think all this stuff is so unbelievable that I must have made it up, check the sources at the end of the post. In the meantime, here are some more views of Monaco.

Want to know more? Check out these links.
http://www.geocities.com/henrivanoene/genmonaco.html
http://www3.monaco.mc/monaco/700ans/hist.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F7091EF83C5A17738DDDAB0894DA405B888CF1D3
http://madmonaco.blogspot.com/2009/08/princess-mary-victoria-of-monaco.html
http://madmonaco.blogspot.com/2009/07/hsh-prince-louis-ii.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Charlotte,_Duchess_of_Valentinois
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Antoinette,_Baroness_of_Massy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/royalty-obituaries/8409783/Princess-Antoinette-of-Monaco.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_de_Polignac
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainier_III,_Prince_of_Monaco

Tram Tuesday - Nice to Monaco

We're off to Monte Carlo, Monaco to gamble our money away and stroll along the promenade. Then we'll get back on the tram and enjoy the spectacular views on the way back to our hotel in Nice, France.

Here are the backs of the cards in the same order, ending with Marguerite's description of the incredible scenery.

Clinton Burnett Died

I am sometimes surprised by the casual death announcements that are transmitted on an otherwise cheerful postcard - especially when the card has cute little Easter chicks on it.

Here's the back of the card, sent to Mrs. E.B. Spoor c/o Geo. Snyder in Delanson, New York.

The message reads:

Dearest Mother.

Hope this will find you all well. Clinton Burnett died this morning I have not been down home this week there has been some thing all the time Miss Fancher is going to be here to supper to night Well good by love to Florence and George and yourself. Carrie

Don't be a Fool - Back up Your Blog

Along with the French April Fish cards in honor of April 1, I have a word of caution for people who have blogs on Blogger. I was caught off guard yesterday when all traces of my blog vanished. It was as if it never existed. Over two-and-a-half years of work and 800+ posts disappeared from the internet. I have heard of this happening to other people, but I thought it was an 'old' issue. Often the deleted blog comes back in a day or two, but not always. I am happy my blog is back, but I was kicking myself for not staying up to date on back-ups. This only takes a minute, so be sure to do it. It's very easy to do, just not so easy to find the directions:

Click on Design in the upper right-hand corner of your blog window.
The new window that comes up will have a list on the left. Click on the last one: settings
Then click on other at the bottom of the list
Towards the top of the page, you will see Blog Tools, click on Export Blog
Don't worry, this will not make your blog go away, but it will create a file that includes all of your posts and the comments too!

It's probably a good idea to do this at least once a month. You can just delete the older files.  Then if your blog disappears, you have two options:

1. You can create a new blog in Blogger, and go through the same steps above, but instead of clicking on Export Blog, click on Import Blog. It will then allow you to browse for files. Hopefully you can remember where you saved the export file. Click on it and it will quickly load all of the posts.

2. You can export the blog to another blog service like Wordpress.

I have not tried exporting to Wordpress, but I did try creating a new test blog on Blogger and importing the posts. It worked beautifully. Please note that it does not save the blog template; you have to do that separately. The export works very quickly and without taking up much disk space (my exported blog was 15.4 MB.) With any luck your blog will not disappear, but in case it does you'll feel a lot better if you saved a copy of it and so will your readers.

The Life of a German Housemaid

One of the things that's so wonderful about postcards as documents of social history is that people of every economic and social status sent them - from royalty and world rulers to farmers, laborers, and housemaids. Children just learning to write sent cards to each other and to relatives. Old people sent them too. If you were somehow able to pull all of these cards together, you would have an amazing collection of first-hand accounts of world and local events, epidemics, and trends in fashion and technology,  all from varied individual perspectives. Along with this, you would also get a sense of their values, daily routines, interests, and education.

If you have a collection of cards to or from one person, that's where it can get very interesting as you try to piece together the events that shaped their lives. I bought a collection of about 100 cards sent to a young German woman named Trinchen von Oesen over a span of years from 1909 to 1926.  I wondered at her ever-changing addresses, inevitably in care of someone else. I speculated that she had been a domestic servant of some kind. With the help of genealogical information, I was able to confirm that this was indeed the case. Her social status did not prevent her from sending and receiving lots of beautiful cards, including real-photo cards of herself and family members, as well as co-workers.

Based on the other photos I have, I believe that Trinchen (pronounced Treen-shen) is the one in the middle. She was born in 1892, so she would have been about 23 in this picture.  It's hard to see, but there's a sign above the door that says 'Wilkommen.' The three young women, with their well-worn shoes, likely worked at a guesthouse in the vicinity of Bremen.

This is a somewhat earlier picture. I think Trinchen may be the third from the right. The card was sent in 1911, so she would have been about 19 at the time.

The second card was sent from her sister Lina, although the handwriting, as on many of these cards, is very difficult to decipher. Trinchen also received many cards from her twin brothers Karl and Hermann from home and as they went off to fight in World War I. I know that Karl returned, but I suspect that Hermann did not.

Here are the backs of the cards in the same order. Once I learn to read this Suetterlin handwriting (any day now), I will have a translation for this.

The second card from her sister is a discussion of keys, in particular keys for Trinchen's chest of drawers and for a safe of some kind. She is requesting that Trinchen bring all the keys she has when she visits.

If you want to observe more people at work (as you relax this weekend), head over to Sepia Saturday.

De qui ce joli poisson?

Who sent you this lovely fish? That's often the question when it comes to the first day of April and the French tradition of April fish. People in France don't do it much anymore, but they used to send each other cards with fish on them accompanied by messages of affection. Often the card included only a simple message, such as 'guess who.' I have posted many of these Poisson d'Avril cards over the past few years. If you go back to the first post, you can read about the history and traditions of the holiday.

I love these cards because the combination of fish and romance seems so unlikely, but then again, it's fish, romance, and humor - the best combination.

Here are the backs of the first card and the last card.

To Monsieur Narischkine from Nice

Yesterday's post on trams in Nice, France made me want to post another non-tram postcard of Nice. There are so many wonderful details on this card, some of them undiscovered since I do not speak Russian. If there are any Russian speakers out there who can provide a translation, I would be very grateful, because the back of this card seems to have just as much going for it as the front.

The front of the card shows the fairly typical scene of Nice, with well-dressed people out for a stroll.

 It would be easy to overlook some of the added elements, such as the man with the balloon.

There's also the woman (?) on the left-hand side of the card with the umbrella.

And then there's the kiosk, selling magazines and newspapers from all over the world.

 

And finally, there's the back of the card. The message is written in Russian, so I can't begin to decipher it, but it is addressed to Mr. Narischkine at Palazzo Galitzine in Rome. Who is this Mr. Narischkine and what is Palazzo Galitzine?

I found a reference in the New York Times, February, 1918 referring to a Prince Cyril Narischkine  and his marriage to opera star Genevieve Vix. This doesn't guarantee that our postcard recipient is Cyril Narishkine, but the address of the card at Palazzo Galitzine in Rome is another clue. The Galitzine (Golitsyn) family was also a noble family of Russia with hereditary connections to the Narishkine family. It's also possible that our recipient was M.B. Narischkine, who liquidated an extensive art collection in 1883. That's where that Russian translation might help.

Tram Tuesday - TNL

Tramways de Nice et du Littoral (TNL) operated the tram lines in Nice, France as well as those connecting Nice to other places along like the Côte d'Azur. Back in January of last year, I put up a post on trams in Nice, including an overview of the history and a look at the sleek new system. I won't repeat the information from the previous post, but I do have a number of additional views to show you. Each Tuesday for the next four weeks I will post cards that feature views from different areas of the Côte d'Azur tram lines. Today’s card show you some views in the city of Nice itself as you might have seen them while riding the trams at the turn of the century.

Avenue de la Victoire:

Avenue de la Gare:

Le Casino Municipal: