I KID you not: a letter written in 1916 — yes you read right, 1916 — has taken 100 years to be delivered to its destination!
According to the London Guardian newspaper, the “letter from 1916” was “delivered to its London address over 100 years later!”
A British Post Office official was quoted as saying: ‘We were fairly mystified as to how it could have taken so long to be delivered, but thought it must have got lodged somewhere in the sorting office.’
The letter was posted from Bath, in the United Kingdom. It bore a “penny” George V stamp and Bath and Sydenham postmarks”.
It was received [appropriately?] by a theatre director, Mr. Finlay Glen, at Crystal Palace, London, in 2021.
The intended recipient was Katie Marsh, the wife of [appropriately again?] a local stamp dealer named Oswald Marsh. The sender’s identity was found to be Christabel Mennell, who at the time was on vacation at Bath.
It began: “My dear Katie, will you lend me your aid – I am feeling quite ashamed of myself after saying what I did at the circle.”
The writer confessed that she was “quite ashamed of myself after saying what I did…miserable here with a very heavy cold”.
The events Mennell is referring to have not been revealed perhaps are unknown. No doubt the theatre director may commission a play to explore the circumstances.
In the mean time, the BBC has reported that the British Royal Mail has taken the stance that it is “uncertain what happened in this instance”.
One observer has, however, propounded the theory that the letter got lost at the Sydenham post office, which has since been closed. “I think it is being redeveloped. So, in that process they must have found this letter hidden somewhere, perhaps fallen behind some furniture.” he speculated.
After further research, he elaborated that “The Upper Norwood and Crystal Palace area became very popular with wealthy middle-class people in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The letter is from Christabel Mennel, the daughter of a local wealthy tea merchant, Henry Tuke Mennell. And she was friends with Catherine – or Katie – Marsh.
“Oswald Marsh is recorded in 1901 living in Crystal Palace as a lodger and as a stamp dealer. He was 20 years of age at the time.”
He turned out, in later years, to become “a stamp magnate, who could be called upon to investigate cases of stamp fraud.
When asked about his initial reaction, the theatre director who found the letter, said that at first, he and his girlfriend just “shoved it in a drawer”, until they realised that it was from — 1916, not 2016!
He went on: “We were fairly mystified as to how it could have taken so long to be delivered but thought it must have got lodged somewhere in the sorting office and that a century later, was found and someone stuck it in the post!”
Asked if relatives of the sender or recipients got in touch, the theatre man replied, “Well, it’s an amazing piece of their family history that has turned up – and, if they want to, they can come round.”
The fact that the letter “made a century” in the “Lost In Transit” stakes, has aroused the poetic imagination of some cricket writers.
“Imagine what the odds could be,” one of them speculated. “Such a variety of potential mishaps, he mused.”It could, if it were a cricket ball, have been “caught”; or been “caught and bowled”; or “smashed for four”; or “hoisted over the roof” [of the stadium] for six!”
Another opined that “its innings could have been squashed with a disputatious ‘LBW’ [Leg Before Wicket decision.”
Inspired by the cricket metaphors, one person offered: “Did the post office have walled-off sections which the ball could have scraped on its way to its 100-year-old hding place? Would it have been an ‘inside edge’ or an “outside edge?”
“Ah! what about a stumping? Was a post office sorter drunk that evening and put a sock where he shouldn’t have, thereby sending the envelope into a centurion’s odyssey?”
As I chortled whilst reading these observations by the cricket afficionados, I wondered what a letter written in Ghana this year and discovered 100 years later would read like.
Dear Aku Sika” (I could see in my mind’s eye, “I am sorry I appeared to be making fun of our Members of Parliament in your presence yesterday. I now realise that it was rather insenstive of me to ask whether the Minister of Finance was thanking God, as he quoted from Psalm 105, for saving his skin or for delivering the Ghana economy from onerous debts.
“I should also not have shown bias and taken the side of the former Chief Justice against the person whose viewpoint she described as a “disturbance!” I mean, I was quite affected by the quality of the invectives — one person telling the other that she was “bigger than this”, and the other retorting that her accuser held no official position and that his viewpoint was therefore something of an abstraction — a “disturbance”!” I mean, I ask you, when did we begin to have this type of quality give-and take, huh?
“I mean, one gets used to expecting the usual “You are a liar!”; “No I am not! It was you who got an Auditor-General’s order to vomit chopped money out, not me!” Or, “Your wife left you for another man!”— “No, I had a baby with another woman and she couldn’t take it” sort of thing, doesn’t one, huh?”
The question I want to pose now is this: Could you find ONE HUNDRED WAYS TO INSULT SOMEONE, and thus score a century in the “Invective T-20 Tournament”?
Answers On A Postcard Please.
A Condition: Only London postmarks accepted!
By Cameron Duodu