The Sepia Saturday October theme of Portraits gives me an opportunity to repeat another early post from this blog, with an old postcard that I still find very intriguing.
G.001-3 – Girl with Moustache
A postcard sent to Gustaf at Odensberg in 1901, while he was staying with his brother Oscar. (Cf. my post for SS 690. Before he emigrated to America in 1902, Gustaf seems to have alternated between staying with his father at his farm, vs with his brother who was running a country store at Odensberg.)
The postmark PKXP indicates a railway line and a locality along that line. In the early days, post was sorted aboard the trains.
The second printed line on the back of the card (Bostad - om den kan uppgifvas) indicates that this space is set aside for the recipient's residential address – “if it can be given". Most people probably had to collect their post at the nearest post office, railway station or village shop.
The message is rather mysterious. Besides the moustache and beard added to the image, the message is written in incomplete sentences and using abbreviations ("text message" style of 100 years ago?). The last sentence is also written upside-down; and the sender is anonymous. But this is how I read it:
"Undrar hur Ni befinner Er. Hoppas inte som - hjärtligt tack därför i alla fall - i för. vk. [= i förra veckan] Jag har f.n. tandvärk o är mycket retlig."
“I wonder how you are. Hope not like - many thanks for that anyway - last week. I am currently having a toothache, and am very irritable.”
My guess is that sender and receiver had been "up to something" together the week before, which probably made the message easier to interpret for Gustaf than it is for us, 120+ years later.
The sender has also given the young lady in the picture an ink moustache and beard - in the same way one sometimes sees it done to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
The remarkable thing is that when I checked, I found that the most famous parody of Mona Lisa with moustache and beard (L.H.O.O.Q by Marcel Duchamp) was not made until 1919. But this postcard was sent in 1901...
I also noticed one more thing on "my" postcard: An ink line drawn across one of the girl's fingers, which makes it look like she's wearing a ring. (It's on her right hand, while an engagement ring would normally be worn on the left hand - but still...)
If anyone has come across similar parody images from before 1919, I'd be interested to learn about it!
Linking to Sepia Saturday 693 - Portraits
Well certainly you would wonder about something so strange without any sort of explanation! Obviously it was some kind of joke. Too bad you'll never know what it was because it looks like it might have been quite humorous. Oh well. :)
ReplyDeleteGail, postcards are often very teasing like that - the writers being well aware that they were likely to also be read by others than the intended recipient...
DeleteI laughed before I even read a word of your story. I have a few postcards like this where the writer adds a mustache doodle for either the recipient or sometimes just to make a postcard's picture even sillier. The handwriting seems masculine to me and the message sounds like he and Gustaf shared a memorable occasion that was fun while it lasted but required a price to be paid the next day.
ReplyDeleteMike, I too assume the writer to be a male friend, and the "last week" event alluded to likely to have caused them both a bit of headache (of some kind!)
DeleteInteresting photo and quite a mystery--and good catch noticing that ring. I was struck by the town name of Ogdensberg. We have an Ogdensberg in New York State, near the Canadian border. I wonder there is a link to the Ogdensberg in your post card!
ReplyDeleteMolly, I'm sorry, you misread the name in my post: It's Odensberg - not Ogden. 'Oden' - or 'Odin' in English - is the name of a god in old Norse mythology. And 'berg' means mountain. So Odensberg = Odin's mountain. There are old tombs etc showing that there were people living in these parts of Sweden as far back as 3300 b.C. (stone age).
DeleteOut of curiosity I checked up on Ogdensburg NY: That was named after an early landowner there with the surname Ogden, and it's 'burg' at the end (not 'berg') so = Ogden's borough (or settlement). (And the name Ogden has nothing to do with Odin, but means "from the oak valley".)