Launching a Stamp Trail
One of my favourite short stories at school was Too Many Books by Frank Candlin, for obvious reasons. (Spoilers ahead, if you want to read it for yourself.)
Mr Johnson, the man in the story who collects too many books, is berated by his wife for scattering his treasure around the house. One day, at her wits’ end, she warns him that he had better not bring any more books into the house; Mr Johnson agrees quietly. But in the manner of an inveterate collector, the moment he espies a finely-bound book with a leather cover and gold letters, he buys it promptly. When he returns home, his wife snatches it from him with equal promptness and throws it out of the window on to the damp grass.
Justifiably angry, Mr Johnson walks out of the house. Upon his return some hours later, he finds that his wife has penitently mended the book. He also examines an envelope that she finds in the book — and it turns out to bear an extremely rare British Guyana stamp worth several thousand pounds. The couple sell the stamp and buy themselves a large house, with a room devoted entirely to Mr Johnson’s books (I somehow visualise this as being slightly different from a library).
This story came to mind when I saw an article about the 1856 British Guiana One-Cent Magenta. I learnt that it was displayed at the National Postal Museum in Washington, DC, for three years, one of those coinciding with my stay there. True to form, I was utterly unaware of it, because though I collect stamps, I don’t really know much about them.
Regret seeps in today, of course, but I have decided to make amends by researching the stamps that I have and actually learning something about them. Thanks to G.’s colleagues, I have built (what seems to me) a reasonable collection of contemporary stamps, which I arrange in an album I hunted down in Kodaikanal in 2015 — for some reason, I had a tough time locating one in Chennai or online. Every few months, I take it out, dust it, enjoy the beauty of the stamps, and put it back. No more.
I collected stamps when I was eight or nine, but I rarely went beyond the customary Gandhi stamps or others featuring Indian politicians. I kept the stamps in a plastic tub that once contained a vivid blue Park Avenue hair gel. Gradually, as phone calls took over and letters tapered off, my collecting slowed to a trickle. I’d safely tuck away the odd stamp that came my way from penpals or family, but never in an organised manner, until I married G. and the stamps started flooding in.
As a child, I was told that you learnt a lot if you collected stamps, but in those pre-Internet years, I never figured out how. I didn’t have access to a good library with encyclopedias, and never thought about the stories stamps could tell. It has taken me only a few decades, but I have now decided to analyse my stamps and unearth what I can about them. I don’t know what I hope to find and this is certainly not a path where no one has gone before. But this is my own personal search, hopefully enriched by my dormant imagination, and a chance to travel to places that costs and my underprivileged passport don’t allow (let’s not talk about the other reason for now).
If I am diligent, I’ll study one stamp (or a few) a week, at random, and write about my “discoveries”. This may also lead me down a literary rabbit-hole, because how can you not read a book about a country that has grabbed your attention, but that is a separate subject.
Some of my prettiest stamps are from Vanuatu, which is where I’ll probably go first. Expect my meandering to begin next week with Lopevi and the Eurema hecabe. And because I am beginning at zero, please tell me if you have some information!
PS: Going back to the short story, I once tried to find an online version and asked the then Guardian books editor if they knew where I could find one. They ran a whole blog post on their site to look for a link and that is one of the nicest things anyone has done for me. Forever grateful.
