The Postcard
A Valentine's Attwell Series postcard that was printed in Great Britain.
The card was posted in Devon using a 1½d. stamp on Monday the 15th. August 1921. It was sent to:
Miss Beryl Baylis,
Eastbury Manor,
Lambourn,
Berks.
The brief message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"With love and kisses
From Betty."
Eastbury Manor
The 905-acre Eastbury Manor estate with its Grade II* Listed manor house, near the racehorse town of Lambourn, is in the heart of the North Wessex Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
The manor was acquired in the 1360's by the ancestor and namesake of John D'Estbury, the Lambourn benefactor who built the village almshouses.
The present 16th.-century manor house has three reception rooms, eight bedrooms, three bathrooms and gardens running down to the banks of the Lambourn.
In 1895, George Baylis, the inventor of the Baylis system of modern arable farming, took on the tenancy of the farm at Eastbury Manor, eventually buying the freehold of 990 acres in 1918 for £11,900.
By 1929, he was England's largest plough-land farmer, occupying 12,000 acres, employing 250 men and 300 working horses.
On his death in 1936, his holdings were split between his four sons, with his eldest son George taking over Eastbury, Bockhampton and Leckhamsted Manor Farm.
His granddaughter is the beneficiary of the trust which now owns the farm, with its rich arable land and water-meadows, extensive range of modern and traditional farm buildings, traditional broad-leaf woodland and eight-furlong all-weather gallop.
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.
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.
A New Committee
So what else happened on the day that Betty posted the card?
Well, on the 15th. August 1921, the International Committee for Russian Relief (ICRR), founded to feed victims of the famine in Russia, was organized in Geneva by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the League of Red Cross Societies, led by Fridtjof Nansen.
A Relinquishing of Control
Also on that day, the British government relinquished control of the United Kingdom's railways, seven years after having taken over jurisdiction during the Great War.