In the gloaming

It's still the Festive Season and it is all Christmas Trees, Reindeer, and Kiss Me Quick Under The Mistletoe. Now call me an old misery if you will, but some of these activities have always seemed to me to be best suited to spreading a host of infectious diseases. But I could be in a minority of one on this view. Anyway, a lazy and wet post-Boxing Day afternoon has given me the opportunity to look at our collection of old postcards and I've come across something that drove me into the arms of Mrs Google and diverted me for a while. 

It's a postcard which dates back to 1906 and which was published by the Cynicus Publishing Company of Tayport, Fife. As you can see, we have an acrobatic embrace along with a line from the Victorian song "In The Gloaming". Written by Annie Fortescue Harrison and Meta Caroline Orred, the song is a typical bit of Victorian melodrama about doing the right thing and setting a lover free.

"Think not bitterly of me

Though I passed away in silence

Left you lonely, set you free

For my heart was tossed with longing

What had been could never be

It was best to leave you thus, dear,

Best for you, and best for me."

Mrs Google tells me that it is supposed to be semi-autobiographical because Annie (a lowly daughter of a Conservative MP!) fell in love with the 4th Marquis of Downshire, but gave him up because she was from a lower class and wrote music instead. Some time later, the Marquis heard the song at a concert and realised it was about himself and sought her out, proposed to her and they were married in 1877. It seems to me to be a little too much like the stuff a celebrity publicist would come out with and, if like me, you are suspicious of a happy ending, you will be better concentrating on the artist who drew and published the postcard.

"Cynicus" was the name used by the Victorian artist Martin Anderson who gained fame during the picture postcard craze of the first decade of the twentieth century. Unlike many other postcard artists who produced their drawings for established publishers, Anderson set up his own publishing company - The Cynicus Publishing Company - and for a brief time achieved both fame and fortune. Alas, the success was as short lived as the postcard craze and by 1911 the business faced financial ruin. Poor Anderson lived for the next two decades in poverty and was eventually laid to rest in an unmarked paupers' grave.

Now that's the kind of story we want for Christmas. Bah Humbug!