The Postcard
A Valentine's Attwell Series postcard which was posted in Glasgow on Friday the 6th. July 1928 to:
Mr. W. Oliver,
13, Glenthorne Road,
Roker,
Sunderland,
Co. Durham.
The enigmatic message on the other side of the card was as follows:
"Many of them.
From All" x
Mabel Lucie Attwell
Mabel Lucie Attwell was a British illustrator and comics artist. She is known for her cute, nostalgic drawings of children, inspired by her daughter. Her drawings are featured on many postcards, advertisements, posters, books and figurines.
-- Mabel Lucie Attwell - The Early Years
Mabel was born on the 4th. June 1879 in Mile End, London, the sixth child of butcher Augustus Attwell and his wife Emily Ann.
She studied at Saint Martin's School of Art, but left to develop her own interest in imaginary subjects, disliking the emphasis on still-life drawing and classical subjects.
After Mabel sold work to the Tatler and Bystander, she was taken on by the agents Francis and Mills, leading to a long and consistently successful career.
In 1908, she married painter and illustrator Harold Cecil Earnshaw (d. 1937) with whom she had a daughter, Marjorie, and two sons.
Attwell's initial career was founded on magazine illustration, which she continued throughout her life, but around 1900 she began receiving commissions for book illustrations.
Mabel illustrated children's classics such as Mother Goose (1910) and Alice in Wonderland (1911).
During the 1910's Attwell produced a number of posters for London Transport featuring children to promote travel to Christmas pantomimes and other events.
-- Mabel Lucie Attwell - The Later Years
From 1914 onwards, Mabel developed her trademark style of sentimentalised rotund cuddly infants, which became ubiquitous across a wide range of markets. These included cards, calendars, nursery equipment and pictures, crockery and dolls.
Mabel illustrated Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales (1914), The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley (1915), and an edition of J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan and Wendy.
-- Shelley Potteries
In 1926 Shelley Potteries commissioned Attwell to produce designs for children's china ware. Attwell’s first six designs portrayed scenes involving children, animals and small green elves in green suits – these were called 'Boo Boos' and were featured on cups, mugs, bowls etc.
-- The Death of Mabel Lucie Attwell
Mabel died at her home in Fowey, Cornwall on the 5th. November 1964, after which her business was carried on by her daughter.
The Lucie Attwell Annual, which was first published in 1922, continued to be published for a further ten years ten years after Mabel's death. This was made possible by extensive re-use of earlier images.
Annie Meinertzhagen and her Death by Gunshot
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 6th. July 1928 was not a good day for Annie Meinertzhagen, because she died on that day.
Annie was a Scottish ornithologist who contributed to studies on British birds, most significantly the moulting patterns in ducks and waders.
She married fellow ornithologist Richard Meinertzhagen in 1921, and died from a gunshot fired under suspicious circumstances.
Annie Meinertzhagen - The Early Years
Born Annie Constance Jackson on the 2nd. June 1889, her parents were Major Randle Jackson and Emily V. Baxter of Swordale, a village in eastern Ross-shire in the Scottish Highlands.
Annie developed an early interest in natural history, especially in birds. With her younger sister Dorothy, who was to become an entomologist, she studied zoology for three years at the Imperial College of Science in London.
Much of her early ornithological work occurred while she was based in Swordale, in Ross and Cromarty, and she began publishing papers on the local birdlife in 1909.
She took an interest in bird migration, and corresponded with lighthouse keepers who sent her specimens of rarities.
Marriage of Annie Meinertzhagen
In March 1921 she married the British soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen. She spent part of her honeymoon in research at Walter Rothschild’s ornithological museum at Tring.
Annie Constance Meinertzhagen left ₤113,466 in her will to her husband if he should remain her widower and if he remarried he was to get an annuity of £1,200 and an interest in their London home for life.
Death of Annie Meinertzhagen
Annie Meinertzhagen died aged 39 at her estate at Swordale on the 6th. July 1928, just over three months after the birth of her third child, in an apparent shooting accident in the presence of her husband.
The circumstances of her death were controversial, though no inquest or enquiry took place. Richard Meinertzhagen’s diary entry for the 1st. August 1928 reads:
”I have not written up my story for some
weeks, not because I have had nothing to
say, but because my heart has been too
full of sorrow, my soul too overwhelmed
with unhappiness.
My darling Annie died on July 6th as a
result of a terrible accident at Swordale.
We had been practising with my revolver
and had just finished when I went to bring
back the target.
I heard a shot behind me and saw my
darling fall with a bullet through her head.”
Brian Garfield comments, in his exposé of Richard Meinertzhagen’s life and character:
”To those who believe that Annie’s death
was no accident, the circumstantial evidence
seems persuasive.
The path of the bullet would seem to create
doubt as to whether she could have inflicted
the wound on herself.
RM was at least a foot taller than his wife, so
a downward shot through her head and spine –
especially if she were leaning forward a bit –
could have been fired much more readily by
him than by her.
It is argued that Annie would not likely have
shot herself by accident. She was an expert
with firearms, having grown up with them in
the landed hunting set, and having spent years
hunting birds all over the world and providing
specimens to the leading museums.
Those who believe she was murdered point
out that if ever in RM’s long and bloody career
there was a smoking gun, this was that case –
literally, with its bullet driven through Annie’s
head and spine at point-blank range.
They cite the standard homicide trinity; method,
opportunity, and motive.
Annie was shot to death at close range; her
husband was the only witness; she died under
suspicious circumstances at a time when her
death was very much to his benefit because,
they point out, it kept her from exposing his bird
thefts, it freed him to carry on with his pubescent
cousins, and it left him with a large income for life.”