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
