Wish you were here

It’s just a guess, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the 60p first-class stamp has finally done for the postcard as a useful or desirable means of communication. Receiving one postal delivery a day instead of two didn’t help, but then postal authorities across the world ceased to treat postcards with respect a long time ago. Sometimes you were off on your next holiday before postcards from your previous holiday had reached their destinations. And when was the last time you sent a postcard when you were on holiday? Were you spending francs or pesetas at the time, and cashing in travellers’ cheques?

Postcards had their day, though. In 1903, more than a billion of them passed through the German postal system. In 1909, our own Post Office sold 833 million stamps for postcards, nearly 20 for every man, woman and child. They represented the very cutting edge of communication technology. ‘By 1903,’ write Klich and Weiss, ‘the international postal system guaranteed the friend in Germany that a card dropped in a Munich postbox would find its way quickly and safely to a house in suburban London.’ According to one publisher, the postcard was ‘part and parcel of the busy, rushing, time-saving age we live in.’

Naturally, some people did not approve. ‘For one thing, the short messages that fit on the cards could hardly convey the erudition of a traditional letter, a longtime sign of refinement.’ And the lack of envelope meant that anyone could read it: not just postal workers, but more worryingly, ‘the servants who brought the mail to its final recipient’. Some commentators suggested that sending an unsolicited postcard actually amounted to an invasion of privacy. And then there was the question of public morals.