Recently I added a couple of postcards of the Touraine to my small collection, this time through EBAY. The one below is a view of Amboise that, while interesting in itself, it is the reverse that tells a story. It appears to be a postcard between two friends; the jeweller and clockmaker, H Simon of 1 Rue de la Butte in Blois in the Loire Valley and a fellow watchmaker, with the French name of L.E. Lefevre of 141 Chestnut Street, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.
It is signed on the front by H Simon who sends his greetings to Mary (presumably L.E. Lefevre’s wife). The card is franked “Indre et Loire” but the postage of 5 cents does not seem to tie in with the handwritten date on the front of the card of 12th November 1906 ~ I would have thought that it would have been more expensive to send such a card abroad. On the reverse of the card the sender has crossed out the words “Carte Postal” and handwritten the word “Imprimé” (Print). This was because it was cheaper to send a Postcard if it was an ‘advertising card’ rather than one used for ‘correspondence’. It is for this reason, I presume, that the sender wrote his messages to his friends on the front of the card. Even so, from the research I have done I would have expected the cost to have been higher. Be that as it may, the post certainly got through!
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