Gabrielle Debrives as First Page in Barbe Bleue, Bluebeard, by Paul Boyer, postmarked 1906

7.00 USD, by redpoulaine via Etsy http://ift.tt/1wzwiiJ

La Fée aux Cheveux d'Or, by Bergeret, posted 1904

11.00 USD, by redpoulaine via Etsy http://ift.tt/1rAKdIl

Gabrielle Debrives as First Page in Barbe Bleue, Bluebeard, by Paul Boyer, postmarked 1906

7.00 USD, by redpoulaine via Etsy http://ift.tt/1wzwiiJ

La Fée aux Cheveux d'Or, by Bergeret, posted 1904

11.00 USD, by redpoulaine via Etsy http://ift.tt/1rAKdIl

Gabrielle Debrives as First Page in Barbe Bleue, Bluebeard, by Paul Boyer, postmarked 1906

7.00 USD, by redpoulaine via Etsy http://ift.tt/1wzwiiJ

Mirror Writing Mystery and Handwriting Deciphering Contest

Some kinds of mysteries arrive at Red Poulaine on a regular basis. The model whose name we can't discover; the performer whose name we know, but whose biography remains frustratingly obscure; the photographer whose works we love, but whose true identity remains hidden behind an impenetrable veil of secrecy.

All of these we have come to accept as a normal part of the business of working with the paper ephemera that are our stock in trade.

Yet, even so, every once in a while we stumble across a mystery that we just can't let go of. One that, no matter how tiny a matter, refuses to be ignored. Such is the mystery we present today.

The card, itself, is quite wonderful, but before we share the face, let us share the reverse, with its romantic message, sent in 1904 to Mademoiselle Noémie:

Reverse, La Fée aux Cheveux d'Or

Dans l'infini mon coeur plane
À pris de toi il se réchauffe
Bon souvenir à Bientôt

Translation:

You have taken and warmed the infinite plane of my heart. Fond remembrance, with anticipation.

Not an exact, word for word translation, but one which we hope accurately reflects the sentiments expressed.

You can learn more about this card, get a full translation of the song lyrics, and discover the story that inspired the photographer and the song in our posting for this card on Etsy. Here, we examine the mystery.

The face of the card is a depiction of a fairy tale character, whose beauty and long, golden hair were celebrated in the song lyrics printed on the card, La Fée aux Cheveux d'Or.

La Fée aux Cheveux d'Or

And, it is on the face of the card that our mystery can be discovered.

Postcards, while providing a speedy way to sent a short message, much as we use email or text messages today, had the disadvantage of exposing the message to all who handled the card, not only the postal carrier, but also a young woman's parents and other members of the household. What was a suitor to do?

The sender of this card had a solution. He included a secret message for his beloved, written in mirror writing, much as Leonardo De Vinci did when his writing was not intended to be read by strangers. Not only did the sender use mirror writing for this message, but it was written using an ink which smeared and is much more faded than the ink used on the reverse. Or, was that ink at all? Could the message have been written using lemon juice or some similar substance, so that it could be viewed only after someone knowing the secret had warmed the message over a flame to make it visible?

Here's a closeup of the message, as we see it on the card today:

 A bit hard to read, no?

To make this easier, we've used digital magic to hold a mirror up to this writing:

Now, we can almost make out the secret message. The first word, we believe, is "je," I, and the last is "beaucoup," very, or much, but the key word in the middle remains indecipherable.


Do you know French better than we do, which is pretty much not at all? Are you an expert at deciphering handwriting? Can you help solve this mystery?

Please share your answers here, on Facebook, on Google+, or by convoing us on Etsy.

The first poster to contact us with the answer that we feel best deciphers the message will be awarded a 20% discount (not to be used with any other discount) on any item in our shop.

Belle Epoque Actress, Mlle. Meryl, Costumed Princess, at the Scala of Paris

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Images of the Fantastic in La Belle Époque

One aspect of La Belle Époque, not just in France either, was a very palpable embrace of antiquity, and though often in a rather naive fashion by today's standards, one gets the sense that people were turning away from the onslaught of the industrial explosion and towards the real, and imagined, simplicity of earlier times. With this came a sense of the possibility of magic, and the ubiquity of images like this one, in which we wouldn't be terribly surprised to see faeries or woodland sprites cavorting about.

SOLD Wood Nymph at the Well

Or, perhaps we expect at any moment to see a faun, satyr, or even Bacchus, himself!

SOLD Nymph Calling Forth the Woodland Sprites circa 1905

We love the way in which the magical is suggested in these images, without the introduction of a single truly fantastic element. These images make us feel much as we might when reading a fairy tale, that at any moment something truly marvelous will happen.

Nymphs, Naiads, Dryads, and Faerie folk so often cropped up in La Belle Époque. Found throughout the period from popular entertainment to commercial advertising, these images reflected a blossoming of Western occult experimentation and a yearning for magic, for myth made manifest. We've written before of our fondness for images depicting the Marvelous Maenad, which is not only a subgenre of the "Lovely Lady" category, but of fantasy postcards, as well.

AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE Maenad at the Garden Wall, circa 1900

Maenads could be seductive, inviting the viewer to join them in the Bacchanal, as in the previous image, but they could also be depicted as shy and elusive creatures of the wilderness, emerging from a tangle of vines, perhaps looking back with a mixture of amusement and discomfiture at a pursuer.

AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE Maenad Peering Through the Trees, circa 1910s/20s

Even more interesting, we think, is the fact that this new medium, the picture postcard, made available to anyone with a penny or two the possibility of possessing such an image, one in which an obviously very real human being is pictured in a fairyland setting. We take photographs for granted today, of course, but think about it for just a moment—at the turn of the 20th century, this was all entirely new. Prior to this time, fantastic photo images of human beings were seldom accessible to the common man, woman or child, and we cannot take lightly the effect of "likeness" on the human psyche, and it's worth considering the effect this mass phenomenon had on society. Mass phenomenon, you wonder? Really? Absolutely. Just as an example, in the United States alone, "the official figures from the U.S. Post Office for their fiscal year ending June 30, 1908, cite 677,777,798 postcards mailed. At that time the total population of the United States was only 88,700,000!" (Thanks to emotionscards.com for their fascinating article that provided us with that factoid.)

Leopold Reutlinger, the Belle Époque photographer, took thousands of photographs of famous Parisian actresses. These were published in black and white, cropped to close up and republished, hand tinted, glittered, sequined, published again, and when every imaginable possibility had been explored, he superimposed these images onto wonderfully fantastic, often surreal backgrounds. The "Artiste with Bird" series is one of our favorites and quite collectible. As of this writing, we have two such images, both by Reutlinger and in unusually fine condition.

AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE Marguerite Brezil, Belle Epoque French Actress, Interspecial Romance Image by Reutlinger

AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE Avian Romance Fantaisie by Leopold Reutlinger of Paris, circa 1905

Can't you just imagine these lovely ladies as heroines in fairy tales, in which for their kindness they have been rewarded the ability to speak the language of the birds? Or, perhaps the bird in the picture is actually an enchanted prince, in need of saving by the brave young woman.

One of the issues with Reutlingers "fantaisies," is that although the artiste's name was usually printed on the face of the card in its early incarnations, by the time they got to these dramatic creations, the name would often be left off. This was fine at the time, since their faces were very well known, but not today. We've been able to identify the first of these two beauties as Marguerite Brezil, but the identity of the second remains a mystery and we would welcome any clues that might shed some light on this.

These wonderful fantasy-inspired photographic images quite clearly reflect the same underlying ideals found in Victorian fairy paintings and Victorian attempts to portray fairies in photographs, a connection which ties them in with the Romanticism of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In his examination of fairy paintings, Jeremy Mass identifies "the turn to mythological and fantasy elements, and in particular to the fairy's world, [ as allowing] an escape from these demands. 'No other type of painting concentrates so many of the opposing elements of the Victorian psyche: the desire to escape the drear hardships of daily existence; the stirrings of new attitudes toward sex, stifled by religious dogma; a passion for the unseen; the birth of psychoanalysis; the latent revulsion against the exactitude of the new invention of photography.'" That photographs, emblematic in some eyes of the science and technology that was displacing many traditional beliefs and occupations, could be manipulated to portray the longed-for simplicity and magic of a bygone (never-was) era was marvelously ironic and ironically marvelous. Photographs, which Jeremy Mass, and many others!, fuse with conformity to a hard and unforgiving realism have, from almost the very moment they came into existence, been used to portray the world in ways the eyes are rarely able to see, providing us with visual evidence of the magic we all long to see.