Still More Ladies with Brass

 

Four steely-eyed young women
dressed in military style band uniforms
stand in a line wielding four long natural trumpets.
They are a formidable quartet.

You would not want to get too close.
Better to sit at the back of the hall.

The name of their ensemble was the

Fanfaren Bläserinnen
vom Damen Trompeter Corps
„Traviata“
~
The Fanfare Windplayers
of the Traviata Ladies Trumpeter Corps
director A. Reiss

Giuseppe Verdi certainly knew how to write a good trumpet fanfare, but I don't think he put one into La Traviata, his opera about the tragic life of a courtesan. Though perhaps if he had seen this attractive quartet he might have been inspired to do so. This postcard never had a stamp or postmark but it likely dates from around 1910 to 1915. The note on the front "Damen bedienung" means Ladies Service.

 

 

Two weeks ago in Two Wise Guys, I wrote that I believe humor to be one of the most ephemeral of human sentiments. Music, that is the sound we hear, is likewise the most transitory of arts. Until the invention of the gramophone, music really existed only to musicians who performed it and people who were present to hear it. The image of the Traviata Ladies Fanfare Trumpeters doesn't tell us very much about the actual tunes that they played, or how they presented it to their audiences. There are few reviews or programs of their performances preserved. All we can do is speculate.

 

Their instruments are simple bugle-like horns which have no valves. They are longer than a modern B-flat trumpet and similar to the type of trumpet that was played in the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Being without a mechanism to change the length of the instrument, a fanfare trumpet is limited to just a few pitches in a fixed key, about 8 notes, not in a scale, but spaced apart. 

All trumpets are meant to be played LOUD, which is the whole point of a fanfare. You don't announce the arrival of the Kaiser with a whisper. Usually a pair of tympani drums tuned to the trumpet key were included to add rhythmic interest. And if the drummer and trumpeters were on horseback, playing a processional piece in maestoso time with lots of double and triple tongued noise notes, you would hear the ultimate Grand Entrance.

 

That's what I imagine the Traviata Trompeters sounded like. But it's only my semi-educated guess. However, what I do know is that in the Germanic parts of Central Europe during the early 20th century, female trumpet ensembles were a hot thing in music. Whether in Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, or Prague, any place where there was music, there was likely a brass band of young women playing fanfare trumpets. 

 

 

* * *

 

 Before I introduce more Fanfaren Bläserinnen,
I recommend starting this video

Der Pappenheimer Marsch

 played by the Deutsche Trompeter Korps
under director Hans Freese.
It will give you an idea
of the music they made.

 

 

_ _ _

 

 

 

 

One might easily mistake this quartet of trumpeters as the same group, but they are subtly different. Their military-style uniforms and hussar shakos came from a different costume catalog, I think. And their trumpets have tassels instead of banner flags. But these four women do share the same no-nonsense attitude that the Traviata quartet displayed. This group was called:

 

Elite Damen Trompeter u. Humor. Gesangs
Ensemble „La Paloma“
~

Elite Ladies Trumpet and Humorous Song Ensemble
director A. Bohm

 

It's hard to imagine what kind of funny songs these four young ladies sang when they weren't blowing their trumpets. Like I said before, humor doesn't preserve very well. This postcard was sent from Halle in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany on the 25 April 1914.

 

* * *

Here is another female trumpet quartet, but dressed in a more fetching feminine fashion of matching frocks, white hose and shoes. This group has banners on their trumpets. They are the:

Fanfarenbläserinnen
des Damen Trompeterkorps „Germania“
~
Fanfare Windplayers
of the Germania Ladies Trumpet Corps
director J. Schnur

The similarity of the Germania trumpeters to the Traviata and La Palomo groups is not by accident. All three postcards were published by the same studio, Nordische Kunstanstalt Ernest Schmid & Co., of Lübeck in northeast Germany near the North Sea. Perhaps because they are not in military uniform, these young women do smile a bit, but their trumpets would have blared just as loud. This postcard was sent from Darmstadt by a soldier using the free military Feldpost on 30 January 1915. His recipient was Fraulein Clärchen Funk of Dillenburg in Hesse.

 

 * * *

 

 

 

My next trumpet quartet are also from the same Lübeck publisher but here the photographer has changed the backdrop to a more domestic set. The caption on the postcard reads:

Fanfarenbläserinnen

des Damenorchester „Monopol“
~
Fanfare Windplayers
of the Monopol Ladies Orchestra
director Frau Rich. J. Meiser

The women wear matching skirts and aprons in, what I suppose, is a traditional German folk manner. Their trumpets have banners in two patterns. This postcard was never mailed but probably dates to the same period 1905 to 1918.

 

This quartet belonged to a larger ensemble of twelve musicians, eight women and four men. On this postcard the men are dressed in formal evening suits while the women wear military style costumes. The shoulder epaulettes, called swallow nests, were a distinctive mark of a bandsman's uniform. The caption on this card reads:

 

 

Erstklassiges Damen Trompeter Corps „Monopol“
~
First Class Monopol Ladies Trumpeter Corps
Kapellmeister Richard Meiser

This postcard has a short message, but no postmark. It was probably included in a letter. It dates from around 1905-1915. 

* * *

Sometimes four was not enough. Six was better. This trumpet sextet was called the:

Damen Trompeter Corps „Rhenania”
~
Rhenania Ladies Trumpeter Corps
director: F. P. Hartwig

The six young women, carefully arranged left to right—short to tall, wear matching white dresses in a nautical fashion with sailor caps and collars. Their trumpets sport cord-wrapped grips with tassels. Rhenania is Latin for the Rhineland, the central part of Germany.

Their postcard was never posted. But like the Monopol trumpeters, the Rhenania women were members of a large musical ensemble.

This postcard shows their full band. There are eleven musicians, seven women and four men. The leader/director sits on the right. The caption reads:

Damen Blas Orchester „Rhenania”
Erstklassige Musik u. Gesaneinlagen
~
Rhenania Ladies Wind Orchestra
First class music and singing
director: Paul Hartwig

In the center row, four women raise their trumpets in what presumably was the typical playing position. Here the women wear matching folk style skirts and vests. Possibly this was a style particular to a German vocal ensemble. A Tyrolean folk song rendered while dressed in a military band uniform would look strange. This postcard was also never mailed but comes from the same period as the others. 

* * *

My last postcard is another trumpet sextet of young women, also outfitted in matching maritime fashion. Unlike the other cards printed in half-tone, this is a real photo with a caption neatly written along the top.

Damen Trompeter Corps „Weserlust”
~
Weserlust Ladies Trumpeter Corps
director: A. Miericke

Here the Weserlust lasses wear large floppy caps with shirts that have a sailor collar and neckerchief. Their shoes match but not their stockings. But unlike the Rhenania women's costumes, the Weserlust trumpeters appear in short pants, which I don't believe was regulation navy issue. Their trumpets have fringed banners. Weserlust was the name of an Ausflugslokal, a garden restaurant park on the Weser River in Bremen, Germany. It was established in 1894 with outdoor seating, bowling lanes, and a concert stage. Bremen, together with the port of Bremerhaven at the mouth of the Weser, is the second largest port in Germany. 

It is also well known through the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale the "Town Musicians of Bremen". In the story, four old domestic animals - a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster, after suffering a lifetime of hard work, feel neglected by their masters. The four animals decide to run away and become town musicians in the city of Bremen. I don't think fanfare trumpets or sailor suits feature in the tale. 

This postcard was sent from Wilhelmshaven, Germany on 2 June 1914. Wilhelmshaven is just a short distance on the coastland west of Bremerhaven. 

A trumpet with valves makes a fine melodic voice within a band or orchestra. The natural trumpet that was used in these ladies' bands makes a splendid, even heroic sound too, but without valves its limitation on notes and key center doesn't offer much musical variety. 

A century later it's very hard to appreciate what it was about Fanfaren Bläserinnen that appealed to German audiences. Was it the martial music they played? As far as I know, these female trumpeters never performed while marching in parades or mounted on horses. They were essentially just a pretty imitation of male military musicians. Their full brass bands no doubt played a wider repertoire, drawing from opera and symphonic composers, but the music would need to be arranged specifically for an individual band's instrumentation. Waltzes and polkas don't typically start with trumpet fanfares, but maybe these ensembles found a way to add that musical color. It's a curious puzzle why they were so popular in German culture at the time. 

For more evidence on this musical fad of German ladies' brass bands,
check out my previous stories on this peculiar subject.

 Even More Ladies with Brass

 More Ladies of Brass

Ladies with Brass - part 2

Ladies with Brass

I can promise you haven't heard the last of
of these brazen ladies of brass.

As one final musical treat,
here is the U.S. Army Historical Trumpets Fanfare
playing Guard À Vous by Henri Senée.

See if you can spot the woman.

_ _ _

_ _ _

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where three's company
and four is a party.

Zeppelin Kommt!

 

Look at that!
It's unbelievable!
It's fantastic!

How is that possible?
What keeps it up?
It's so..so...so BIG!

What's the commotion about?
Why all the fuss and clamor?

Zeppelin kommt!

Zeppelin kommt!

Zeppelin kommt!

 

 

 

The reason for everyone's agitation was that they wanted to see the Luftschiff, the flying airship, the Zeppelin. It was 1909 and people everywhere were excited to get a glimpse of this new German machine that could defy the law of gravity and fly. For the first time the very idea of a human being moving across the sky amidst the birds and the clouds was no longer unimaginable.

 

The German postcard artist Carl Robert Arthur Thiele (1860 – 1936), gives us an artist's impression of the madcap pandemonium created when the first Zeppelin appeared high above a German city. Thiele, who signed his artwork Arth. Thiele – Lpzg (for Leipzig, his hometown), was featured in my story from September 2020, Auf Urlaub — On Leave with another set of his postcards from 1916-17.

This postcard was sent on the 15 October 1909 to Marie Schmeer of München, Bayern (Bavaria). The publisher was Verlag F Eyfriedt of Düsseldorf.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

The object in the sky that fascinated the public was the Luftschiff III built by the German company, Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH,  founded by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, known as the Graf von Zeppelin, (1838–1917). It was built in Friedrichshafen, a city on Lake Constance (the Bodensee) in Southern Germany near the borders of Austria and Switzerland. In 1862 Ferdinand von Zeppelin was a young officer in the  army of Württemberg, when he was assigned as a military observer to the United States' Union Army. During the Peninsular Campaign he watched the use of observation balloons and later took a flight in one. This inspired him in the 1890s to create a larger lighter-than-air craft with a rigid frame that would be powered by engines and be steerable to any direction.

 

Using his own fortune, with support from the King of Württemberg as well as donations from subscribers, Zeppelin succeeded in building his first air ship, the LZ 1. It made its first flight over Lake Constance on 2 July 1900. It carried a crew of five men and flew a distance of 6.0 km (3.7 mi) in 17 minutes, reaching an altitude of 410 m (1,350 ft). After two more flights in October 1900 when the LZ 1 established a new speed record that beat the French electric-powered non-rigid airship, La France, Count Zeppelin ran out of money and was forced to dismantle his prototype airship.

In January 1906 Count Zeppelin completed construction of his second airship, the LZ 2. Unfortunately it was badly damaged by high winds on its maiden flight on 17 January 1906 and subsequently had to be scrapped. 

 

Despite this setback, the LZ 2 proved that Zeppelin's new engineer, Ludwig Dürr (1878 – 1956) had  fixed many problems in the original design, so a new sister airship, the LZ 3 was built. Its first flight was made on 9 October 1906. As originally built, the LZ 3 was 126.19 m (414 ft) long with a diameter of 11.75 m (38 ft 6 in). Within its aluminum frame were gas bags that displaced a volume of hydrogen gas equal to 11,429 m3 (403,600 cu ft). Power to its propellers was provided by two Daimler piston engines of 84 hp each. It's maximum speed was 40 km/h (25 mph). 

This photo postcard of the Zeppelin Luftschiff III was sent from Nürnberg, Bavaria to Miss Mahtilde(?) Semmer in London on the 29-??-1909. 

 

 

 

 

 

 * * *

 

 

The image at the top of my post is taken from this second postcard of Arthur Thiele's "Zeppelin Kommt!" series. It shows a colorful group of Germans who have rushed out from their shops onto the street for a glimpse of the great Zeppelin airship. There are about ten different occupations depicted including a chimney sweep, a butcher, a hair dresser, and carpenter's mate. Because it is a painting the colors give a better representation of people than a photograph could do at the time. In the 1900s camera technology was not able to capture movement very well, so artists still had an advantage.

The postcard was sent from Berlin on 19 August 1909 to Paul Bernhagen, also of Berlin. The writer used all four sides of the card with a florid cursive style, and their signature is along the top edge. I believe it is a woman, Johanna Steinca(?). No doubt Paul knew who she was.

* * *

 

 

The third postcard in this series shows another street scene, this time at night. Numerous people in their bedclothes and slippers have gone to their windows to see a Zeppelin which is illuminated by a search light from the airship's gondola.

This postcard was mailed on 3 November 1909.

* * *

This next postcard has a bird's eye impression of a Luftschiff  high above a dramatic landscape with a heroic vignette of Graf von Zeppelin in the corner. The artist is unknown.

The first flight of the LZ 3  in 1906 carried eleven people and was in the air over Lake Constance for only 2 hours 17 minutes. A second shorter flight was made the next day, but after that success Count von Zeppelin had the airship deflated and stored for the winter. Nonetheless it was successful enough to convince the German government to take a serious interest in this new aeronautical machine. It offered Count Zeppelin a grant of 500,000 marks if his new airship could make a flight lasting 24 hours. 

However Zeppelin's designers knew that the LZ 3 was not capable of making that goal, so he assigned his engineers to make a better airship, the LZ 4. This airship made its first test flight on 20 June 1908, but it only lasted 18 minutes because of a problem in its steering mechanism. After repairs, further trials were taken on 23 and 29 June, and then on 1 July 1908, the LZ 4 made a spectacular 12 hour cross-country flight over Lake Constance to Zürich, Switzerland and back again. A distance of 386 km (240 mi) during which time the airship reached an altitude of 795 m (2,600 ft). 

On its return the LZ 4 was prepared for the 24-hour endurance trial, which would be a return flight to Mainz. On 13 July 1908 the airship was re-inflated the with fresh hydrogen to ensure maximum lift, but when it tried to take off the next morning engine problems forced a delay. Finally on the morning of  4 August 1908 thousands of people came out to see the LZ 4 lift off for its grand test flight. It carried 12 people onboard and had enough fuel for 31  hours of flight. The route would take it over Konstanz, Schaffhausen, Basel and Strasbourg on the way to Mainz. 

Throughout the flight the LZ 4 was plagued by engine and fuel problems. At times it struggled against the wind while in an extreme nose-down or nose-up position. It rose to a height of 884 m (2,900 ft) which forced the release of its precious reserves of hydrogen gas. These difficulties forced an emergency landing on the Rhine near Oppenheim, 23 kilometres (14 mi) short of Mainz, where five crewmen and all unnecessary material was unloaded. 

The LZ 4 finally reached Mainz about 11:00 PM and immediately set off on its return to its hanger on Lake Constance. But bad luck had a tight grip on the airship. Early the next morning another engine failure forced it to land for repairs at Echterdingen. That afternoon a gust of wind tore it from its moorings. Soldiers and groundcrew struggled to hold onto its tether ropes. A member of the crew who had remained on the airship managed to turn it back towards ground, but in the process the airship struck some trees which punctured gas bags and ignited a disastrous fire. Within minutes the huge Zeppelin was a twisted wreckage. 

Zeppelin LZ 4
Source: Wikipedia

An estimated 40 to 50 thousand spectators witnessed this terrible catastrophe on 5 August 1908. Yet newspaper reports on Count Zeppelin's misfortune led to a spontaneous wave of support for his airships. Within 24 hours his company had received enough unsolicited donations from the German public to build another airship. Ultimately the total donations realized over 6 million marks which provided Zeppelin with a secure financial basis to continue with his aeronautical experiments. 

My postcard with the cloud view of Zeppelin's majestic airship was produced to commemorate this disaster, and may have been sold to raise funds for a new airship. The back of the card has a clear postmark and handwritten date of 21/8/08, which was just two weeks after the LZ 4 accident. 

* * *

 

 

On this next postcard of Arthur Thiele's Zeppelin series, a large crowd has gathered in a street to cheer an airship floating in the sky. It may reflect the kind of reception that the LZ 4 received in August 1908 before the accident. This card was sent from Stuttgart on 12 September 1912.

* * *

Here is another artist's rendition of a Zeppelin Luftschiff in the air from a vantage point that would have been impossible for any camera. The artist is unnamed but the caption reads:

Graf Zeppelin lenkbares Luftschiff über dem Rheintal
~
Count Zeppelin steerable airship over the Rhine valley

After the destruction of the LZ 4, the Zeppelin company went back to the LZ 3 and made modifications to improve it. By late October 1908 it was ready for test flights. On 27 October it flew for 5 hours 55 minutes with the Kaiser's brother, Admiral Prince Heinrich, on board. On 7 November 1908, Crown Prince William was a passenger, and it flew 80 km (50 mi) to Donaueschingen, where the Kaiser was staying. Despite poor weather conditions the flight was a great success and two days later LZ 3 was officially accepted by the German government. The next month Graf von Zeppelin was awarded the Order of the Black Eagle by Kaiser Wilhelm II. 

This postcard has a postmark from Heerlen in the Netherlands dated 25 January 1909.

* * *

 

 

The Zeppelin LZ3 made numerous flights in 1909 and was likely the inspiration of Thiele's postcard series. This image shows another nighttime flight with people clambering onto roofs to get a good look. Firemen, oddly with real fire torches, try to restore order. 

Piloting an early airship seems difficult enough that trying to fly after dark must have been particularly risky. The searchlights were used as an aid to landing and avoiding trees and buildings.. Very little was then known about the nature of the Earth's atmosphere at high altitudes. The Zeppelin's giant sausage shape made a perfect sail to be pushed around by winds and the early petrol engines were very underpowered. The airship was equipped with rudders to control horizonal movement left and right, and ailerons to change vertical elevation. 

But the biggest challenge to steering an airship was understanding how the mass of the entire Zeppelin was offset by the lighter-than-air hydrogen gas. Vast quantities of water were stowed as ballast to adjust trim and altitude, which affected performance whenever the airship changed position. Flying a Zeppelin required a new 3-dimensional thinking that had to learned through trial and error. The consequence of a mistake was death.

The postmark on this card is affixed to a postage stamp of the Austrian Kaiser Franz Josef. It is too faint to read but the stamp has a helpful printed year of 1908. My guess is 1909-1910.

* * *

 

 

This next postcard from my collection is another unknown German artist's painting of a Zeppelin over a city. But there is a second object above the skyline, an airplane with four wings. The perspective makes it appear almost half the size of the Zeppelin, when in fact it was smaller than the boat on the river.

While Count Zeppelin was working on his dream of a lighter-than-air craft, two brothers from Dayton, Ohio were pursuing their idea for a heavier-than-air machine. Their first powered flight on the beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was on 17 December 1903. By May 1906 they secured a U. S. patent and by 1908 their Wright flyer was on its way to France. On August 8th, just three days after the LZ 4 disaster, Wilbur Wright gave the first demonstration of powered flight at the Le Mans racetrack witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people. 

Just a month later on 17 September 1908, Orville Wright was seriously injured and his passenger, Lt. Thomas Selfridge, was killed in a crash while demonstrating the Wright airplane at Fort Meyer, Virginia. Lt. Selfridge became America's first victim of an airplane accident. Yet despite this tragedy, Orville and Wilbur were able to sell contracts to the governments of the United States, France, and Germany. On 13 May 1909, the Flugmaschine Wright Gesellschaft, the Wright Flying Machine Company was formed in Berlin.

At the end of August, Orville and his sister Katherine Wright were in Berlin to give a demonstration of their airplane. On 29 August, on the orders of the Kaiser, Count Zeppelin flew there, with his latest airship. Over 100,000 people came to see it land. The following week Orville flew exhibitions of his airplane to similar sized crowds. 

On September 15, Orville and Katherine traveled to Frankfort to accept Count Zeppelin's offer of a ride in his new airship. They flew 50 miles to Mannheim. Days later, Orville set a new airplane record for a flight that lasted 54 minutes 34 seconds and reached an altitude of 565 feet. 

The postmark on this postcard is from Frankfurt am Main and dated 25 September 1909. A printed caption reads Internationale Luftschiffahrts Aussellung Franfurt a M. ~ International Aviation Exhibition, which I presume meant it was a special souvenir of the exhibition. (The riverboat in the picture looks odd because its engine smoke funnel is hinged to allow it to pass beneath bridges.)

* * *

 

 

The final postcard in Arthur Thiele's Zeppelin set shows a wedding party interrupted by the sight of a Zeppelin outside the church. The bride does her best to restrain the enthusiasm of her husband-to-be. There was no cake at the reception. This card was posted on 25 July 1910.

* * *

1960, Echo 1 satellite 
Source: Wikipedia

In the summer of 1960 my mom and I were living at my grandparent's home outside Washington D. C. One day, when I was not yet six, my grandfather took me outside at dusk to see something unusual. He pointed to a shiny dot of light moving across the sky and told me it was called Echo. My vision was probably a bit blurry then, so I didn't see much and wasn't very impressed. But the name stuck, and later I learned that the shiny dot was the communication satellite, Project Echo. 

It was the first satellite project by the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Echo 1 was a spherical balloon 100 feet (30 m) in diameter with a non-rigid skin made of 0.5-mil-thick Mylar. It had a total mass of 180 kilograms. The construction of the balloon was not too dissimilar to Count Zeppelin's airships. The silvery globe functioned as a passive reflector, not a transceiver. Radio signals sent from a ground station were reflected by its metal surface and bounced back to Earth.  For my grandfather, born in 1905, it must have seemed amazing that modern engineering could achieve such a thing. Count Zeppelin would have been impressed too.

By an odd coincidence, (and there are a lot in this story), two days ago, on 18 February 2021, NASA successfully landed the Perseverance rover robot vehicle on the surface of Mars. Because there are no cameras nearby to record the actual event, a NASA artist illustrated the moment of touchdown. The rover was lowered by the "skycrane" part of the lander assembly. It was launched from Earth on 30 July 2020 with the mission spacecraft hurtling through space at 24,600 mph (about 39,600 kph). The trip to Mars took nearly seven months and traveled about 300 million miles (480 million kilometers).

Landing of Mars rover, Perseverance
18 February 2021
Source: NASA

In 1909 Count Zeppelin's airship
was a wonder in every sense of the word.

When people turned their eyes upward to the sky
and saw this enormous cylinder
slowly progressing across the clouds,
they were amazed by a new unfamiliar concept. 
Mankind can fly.

Today in 2021,
we take Orville and Wilbur's airplanes,
if not Ferdinand von Zeppelin's airships, 
for granted, as a familiar common science.
But as the new illustrations and photographs
of the Mars mission are released, 
they should fill us with that same wonder.
It's a feeling of profound astonishment
that sends a person running outside
 to look up at the sky.

Look at that!
It's unbelievable!
It's fantastic!

Mankind can touch
the surface of the Red Planet.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where some say Zee and others say Zed!

Two Wise Guys

Comedy is hard.
An English pun or a Hungarian double entendre
doesn't translate very well into German or Chinese.
Funny stuff doesn't preserve very well either.
Neolithic man didn't leave behind
a great deal of fossilized humor.

What looks odd or peculiar
in antique ephemera we can guess at,
but we will never know for certain
just how amusing it really was.
The silly or childish things
that we see in bygone art
seem easier to discern,
but can we recognize actual mirth?

We think we see
the ridiculous absurdities of fools,
but if we are honest,
the farce that once appeared
so hilariously comical,
so humorous that it produced more
than just a chuckle or a guffaw,
but uncontrollable shrieks of laughter,
that joke is invisible to our eyes.
 

Somehow we never get the punchline.

Which is why comedy
is the most ephemeral of human sentiments.

Two comical characters stand in front of a white panel.
A kind of Chinese sage seems to be instructing a foppish dandy
about a series of twelve dots on the panel.

The postcard's caption reads:

Le Clown dessinateur — Proposition

~
The Cartoonist Clown - Proposal

The postcard's sender has added a date 26.6.05 on the panel board.

 It seems that these two French music hall clowns
are setting up a puzzle joke or a magic trick.
They were probably featured on a series of postcards
that were produced as souvenirs for a theater or circus act.
If I ever find a full set,
they might offer more clues to the clowns' skit,
but the actual funny business will have to remain
a mystery to us in the distant future of 2021.

 

The postmark of 28 June 1905
identifies the sender living in the commune Confolens
in southwest France, which is a rural city located
at the confluence of the Vienne and Goire rivers,
hence its name.
The recipient was Madame Andre Pallier
of Saint-Priest-Taurion, a commune
in the Haute-Vienne department, east of Confolens.

 

 The grim message on the back
makes an ironic case for how
the corollary to "Comedy is Hard",
is that "Death is Easy."

 

Notre malade est toujours
dans le meme état, elle ne
garde absolument rien pas
meme l'eau sucree; nous la
soutenons par des lavements
nutritifs.  Vous avons
une religieuse de l'Espérance
depuis Lundi soir, comme
cela nous sommes plus tranquilles
la nuit.  Le docteur nous
dit que cet état peut se pro-
longer encore longtemps.
Nos amitiés à tous autour de toi. 
mes meilleurs baisers pour
toi et Vovoune

Our patient is still in the same condition,
he/she keeps nothing down,
not even sugar water;
we support him/her through nutrient enemas.
We've had a nun from l"Esperance [name of a hospital?]
since Monday evening;
that way we are calmer at night [less worried].
  The doctor tells us
that this condition may
continue for a long time.
Our best regards to everyone
at your house, 
my best kisses [love]
to you and Vovonne.  [a name?]

[With special thanks to my Francophone English wife for making this translation] 

The second postcard of the same two clowns 
puts them in a completely different sketch.
Both are perched on top of the backs of kitchen chairs.
The Chinese clown has a guitar and is demonstrating a kick step.
His sad-faced companion has a mandolin.
The rush seats of their chairs
look about to be busted out.
The caption reads:

Séance interrompue
~
Interrupted session

 Their costumes tell us that they are a crazy duo.
Their instruments suggest a musical element.
The joke, however, has vanished. 

The card was sent to Mademoiselle Bertha Dumont
of Montluçon, a commune in central France on the Cher river,
on 7 September 1904.

 The antique photographs and postcards that I collect
show us images of entertainers from past times,
but I only pretend to know anything
about their musical artistry
or, in this case, their comic flair.
Music and humor are both
elusive historical artifacts.
Living a century later
we can't hear the melody
or experience the gag.

Our timing is off.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday.
where we might find more answers
to the question,
Why?