Pam’s Pictorama Postcard Post: When we visited the postcard show in the spring of this year, a woman was selling mountains of very expensive Louis Wain cards and I have already written about some of my acquisitions at her table. (For more on my adventures and indulgences at the show have a look here at my other Wain acquisition that day We Are Getting Quite Attached and another buy of the day Crown.) However, this was the card that really got under my skin. The woman had purchased an entire set of these cards, all devoted to Fortune Telling, and was on the fence about selling only one from the group. They were vastly expensive so even one was a commitment and I certainly was in no position to buy, if I remember correctly, six or so. Also, for some reason it was this particular one I really wanted. Clearly I convinced her to sell it to me.

My card, You will be lucky in love, shows these two animated cats, one on bended knee proposing, claw paws bared in their excitement – the boy cat has a nice little white spot on his neck, just exactly like my Blackie, although everyone else seems to be an all black kitty, just some white hairs for highlight and texture. (The British didn’t seem to have this bad luck thing about black cats and even often said they were symbols of good luck, although maybe there’s some irony here.) Anyway, it is also all these other maniacal Wain cats popping out all over the room, watching the proposal, that make this great for me. Two grinning kitties, a sort of shocked one behind the chair, and that jolly one coming in the door – each cat could almost be its own tale. Somehow that set against this background of this sort of common sort of average room, table and chairs, stuffed armchair, just tickles me. Striped wallpaper and two mundane landscapes adorn the interior in question and make us quite at home.

The card was sent, from Bath to Paris August 10, 1906, but it is written in a tiny French hand that somewhat defies me. A woman seems to be asking her friend if the friend is enjoying her vacation and if she needs someone’s address which she can send. (With multiple mail deliveries a day, postcards were evidently the texts of the time.) It was sent to Madamoiselle Lina Paulier, 96 Rue La Fontaine, Auteuil, Paris, France. I cannot read the name on the signature. Sadly there is no reference to the great illustration on the front of the card.

I am a fan of fortune telling in generally and will indulge given an opportunity. I recently even took a swing at feeding a dollar into the Zoltar fortune telling machine at Ripley’s Believe It or Not in Times Square a few weeks ago, when Kim and I were there doing some research for his next book. Sadly, not nearly as nicely illustrated as my Wain postcard (and Zoltar is a wordy fellow), however I share a photo of my fortune below – for entertainment purposes only, as noted.