Better than a picture

I have stacks of old postcards each one a small glimpse in the past for I had been collecting them for years.

This brief correspondence of a bygone age becomes the property of a reader voyeur often tells the true story many years later.

The were many of France in WW1 when hundreds of thousands of cards were sent home to loved ones all over the world.

I have one which is very precious as it it is from an Australian aboriginal soldier sent to his girlfriend Doris at home on which he writes: "On leave in Paris with friend I saw you at the station, better than a picture. Tell you about it when I get home and we are wed. Tommy.

I have been to Paris many times and it dawned on me what he meant for he had probably arrived at the old Gare'd"Orsay railway station now a museum where there are four statues of each of the races of mankind depicted by women; one of which was Oceania showing as an Australian Aboriginal woman with a kangaroo by her side.

Much later after a lot of digging in the war records that I found that Private Tommy Karpany hadn't returned back home to Australia to fulfill his dreams with Doris but had stayed on in a battlefield in France.


Image found at www.eurohistoryprof.blogspot.com

The Laundry Girls and the hinge of fate.

Look what I came across, it’s an old snap of the Laundry girls, and there is the foreman, five laundresses and the office girl. It is 1926 and it must be summer in England. For working girls the bobbed hairstyle was all the rage, even in a city on the south coast of England. Well they knew all about the latest styles because fathers and uncles worked the big liners that sailed into and out of Southampton all across the world. They would tell their daughters and nieces all about what they had seen and describe the exotic places they visited how the ladies dressed in America. So the tales from far off would germinate a need that would echo the black and white pictures they saw in the movies with the subtitles imposed and a piano player providing the music to match the scenes portrayed.  The hinge of fate has yet opened on their lives.          

That is Edna on the left and she has put her best foot forward. Curiously she was quite shy, and soon she will get engaged and later will give him up because he was too “fast”. Later she will marry the son of a friend because everyone will say what a hard worker he is. But that doesn’t make them love each other, and she will feel she has failed him because she can only bear him daughters and not sons. Edna lives to be 97.

Next to her is Patsy, what a pretty round face and smile Patsy had. Sadly she believed everything her first boyfriend told her and ended up pregnant a year after the photo was taken. Her mother raised the baby girl and Patsy thought of the little mite as a younger sister. Patsy died during a raid on the docks in Southampton in 1941 and her baby never ever knew who her real mother was.

Deirdre the office girl could type, so she worked in the office. She was the clever one and was good at dressmaking. Her indulgence was shoes because her mother used to tell of not having shoes to wear to school and having to wear her brother’s boots. So Deirdre decided to be different had four pairs of shoes including the black leather boots she is wearing here today!      

This is Bert the foreman with the two most senior girls linking arms with him. He was a veteran of the 1st World War but was too old for new war in 1939 forecast to be more lethal than the first; and it was for many. Bert joined the Home Guard and guarded the Post Office at night with a broomstick as there were not enough weapons to go round. He died in 1948 of tuberculosis after spending months in a sanatorium just south of Winchester.

Brenda is next in line with the big hair, I think she is a beautiful girl and she is in charge of all the girls except Deidre. Everyone loved Brenda. She married Frank a butcher’s boy who delivered meat on his bicycle and eventually had his own butcher’s shop. They had five children two boys and three girls. Their eldest boy became a politician and stood for parliament a couple of times but always got beaten by the sitting member.

Winifred comes next and she always looks sad. She is the eldest of eight and her father died many years ago. At home everything is left to Winifred to do, and must go out to work, get the younger children ready for school and somehow run the home while her mother takes in sewing. She said that when she married she would never have children but when one of her younger sisters had a child she changed her mind and never regretted it. She loved all babies and when she was old and ill her daughter looked after her.

Now what can I say about Lucy? Lucy was trouble with a capital T. When waists were not emphasized she bucked the trend and showed everyone she had one! With her dark come hither eyes and olive complexion some say she had Italian blood in her. Who knows? She didn’t stay long at the laundry for people to find out. The story is she headed straight for London and hit the stage with a bang. I like to think that when most of the theatres were closed down during the war she stayed on to entertain Londoners with some feathers and exotic dancing at the Windmill Theatre!

Note this is a conjectural piece with names and events invented

Tommy's big dream

I shuffled through the old postcards. I had stacks of them, each one a small glimpse into the past. Collecting things is a strange hobby. None stranger is that of Postcards, where the brief correspondence of a bygone age becomes the property of a reader voyeur.

The scenes of Paris and northern France were scattered about the table, as I searched for the photo of a line of horse drawn cabs in the Champs Elysee. A few cards had turned over and the early messages of long gone correspondents were on view. The ones in ink were mainly from French men and women, wishing their addressees: "mes meilleurs amities" or "sentiments affecteux", and other similar Gallic endings. Others in pencil were from the front. Pathetic messages from soldiers with little time, writing possibly their last messages to loving wives, girlfriends, mothers and children."All well here, hope you are same over there", or "At Field Hospital until Wednesday, then rejoin regiment, saw Ted Porter from the Avenues", and "Hope you like this pretty card, we go up the line tomorrow".

Postmarks were generally of Field Post Offices, and the addresses were to Brighton and Liverpool, Aberdeen and Glasgow and then I noticed one sent to Port Adelaide, in South Australia. Addressed to Doris Watson, the message betrayed little except that writing didn't come easy to the soldier, and what lessons he had never included spelling and the use of capitals.
"on leave in paris with frend. reckon I saw you at the stashun. better than a picture. tell you about it when I get home and we get wed. Tommy."

It was not many months later that I too was in Paris. There was no purpose for the trip other than to make use of the free flight which came as part of the return ticket from Australia. I took the opportunity to visit the Musee D'Orsay, while I was there. This was a museum of French Art of the second half of the Nineteenth Century. The building erected not far from the banks of the Seine in 1900 was a former Railway Station. Its fine architecture and convenient position made its reuse for public purposes essential. I spent some hours in the galleries wistfully enjoying the paintings of Corot, Manet, Renoir and Degas. The sculptures of Rodin and Maillol were a delight and the Art Nouveau designs of Mucha, made me wish that I could live closer to France so that I could visit the Museum again and again.

Sated at last, I left the great building. I came out into an autumn shower. The former entrance plaza still had the original statues that greeted the rail commuters years ago. I walked up to them and gazed with awe at the massive bronze castings. They were of the four races of man depicted by the female form. These sad figures posed there crying tears of rain. Here was the European beauty, there the Asiatic maiden, now the African queen and the last was an Australian Aboriginal girl! I thought at first that I was mistaken but no; her features were quite distinct. She proudly looked out into the plaza so many miles from home with a little kangaroo by her side.



I thought back to that postcard.
"reckon i saw you at the stashun...better than a picture.."
That postcard from the first world war in my collection must have been from an aboriginal soldier! He had seen his girlfriend at the station. When I first read the card I had naturally thought the soldier's girlfriend was a nurse or some other auxiliary, that he was unlikely to see again before they returned to Australia. But he had seen that magnificent statue looking just like his Doris with even a kangaroo at her side. No wonder he said it was better than a picture.

It was much later that with some digging in the war records that I found out that Private Tommy Karpany, hadn't returned home to Australia to fulfill all his big dreams with Doris but had stayed on in a battlefield in France .

Pictures: 1. Collecting Yams by Susan Wanji Wanji 1991, 2. Bronze statue of L'Oceanie by Mathurin Moreau c 1880.