A Long Lost Sketchbook from the 1890s
Victorian Ink
The Back Story
The black book sat on my grandfather’s shelf for decades. Its pages yellowed… its spine weakened - so much so that someone had reinforced it with duct tape. When I finally cracked it open, I was amazed to find my great grandfather’s stamp collection from 1895. It's a precious album and a rare glimpse into turn of the century America. The catch is, there aren’t any stamps in it.
My great grandfather, Frederick Reid Cornwall, had - at one time - an impressive assortment of stamps - 5 cent stamps from 1847… 2 cent stamps from the Civil War era… a series of stamps celebrating Christopher Columbus’ voyage and dozens of other collectors' pieces. He arranged them in elaborate designs, cataloged them and embellished every page with drawings - detailed ink sketches of women, children at play, bathers by the river.
I don't know whether Frederick himself sold the stamps or if they were sold after his death by his widow and six children. It is clear though that someone peeled over 100 stamps out of the book, one by one. Glue and bits of backing stuck to the pages, leaving marks of where each stamp had been.
But the drawings remained untouched.
Dozens of scenes and doodles. Some of the drawings were clearly inspired by the stamps – the Columbus collection for example. Other drawings just seemed to be whatever was on his mind – snippets of daily life in Saint Louis, Missouri.
The dates at the bottom of the drawings range from 2/23/95 to 4/14/95, (the ’95 being 1895 of course) but the bulk of the drawings do not have dates at all. When Frederick incorporated a date into one of his drawings, it was the year of the stamps on that page, not the date that the picture was drawn. The book itself was just the Victorian era equivalent of a blank book. If you hold a page up to the light you can see a watermark that reads “Bankers 1888 Linen Ledger.”
What was left behind...
It is a shame that his priceless stamp collection is long gone, but what remains is invaluable. These drawings from turn of the century Saint Louis provide something far more delicate – the inky fingerprints of a man’s imagination.
