Is it because I am a slightly bitter cynic that I don’t believe this? Would a slightly bitter cynic actually keep four tags before deciding to put on her research hat?

It struck a chord with me, because during the research for my book on stamps, Blue Mauritius, I came across similar stories dating back to the nineteenth century, which promised to build a hospital/ward for sick children if the [insert your local hospital here] could get a million stamps (or variations of this theme). Just search the wonderful Trove database of digitised Australian newspapers on million stamps hospital and you’ll see ample evidence of this, back to at least the 1890s.

This current tea bag thing sounds similar. Sure enough, a Google search on tea bag label tag wheelchair turns up a scan in Google News from the Connecticut Sunday Herald, dated 15 October 1972, ‘Tea Bag Mystery’, reading:

Can’t get any confirmation on those reports concerning a drive to collect tea bag tags for wheelchairs. Readers tell us many in town collecting the tags with the understanding it will help the handicapped. Rehabilitation Center knows nothing about it nor do the local hospitals. Sounds like the old cigarette package drive that fooled so many people a few years back.

So that’s almost forty years ago, referring to another even older scam, with antecedents pre-1900.

The only other thing of note I found was a comment on an article about raising funds for wheelchairs through Rotary, dated 15 May 2011, asking ‘Our Croquet Club is collecting tea bag labels for the purpose of buying wheelchairs, how does this work, where do the labels go, and how many are needed to buy a chair. Our contact says they are collect at Dandenong hospital, more info please.’ It seems a few other people/groups have collected tea bag tags over the years, but right now there is nothing concrete on the web to verify this collecting drive in Melbourne, Australia.

Fascinating, don’t you think?

My book, Blue Mauritius, included a brief history of philately to set the scene, mention of which must include a word on the origins of the history of the word philately, or more specifically, the man who coined the word – who also happened to be the first person to remark on the curious issue of Mauritius, the ‘Post Office’ – one G. Herpin.

Ah, there’s the rub. It doesn’t sound right does it, writing G. Herpin in a narrative kind of sentence (although writing J. K. Rowling does, so what was I concerned about?!). Who was Monsieur Herpin and what was his first name? This was definitely not one of the main (or really even minor) concerns in my book, although I would like to have been able to have felt more authoritative about my eventual use of George without an S. (You see how clear statements that avoid verb after verb after verb in the ‘I’ll have a bob each way’ tense is preferable, and the problem inherent in writing so called literary or narrative non-fiction?)

Why did I do so in the book? I think because the earliest French source I could find wrote it thus and I had to trust it.

But in the companion website** to the book I slipped (again) – as easily as the Williams brothers – into the usage Georges, with an S, and I have been called on this by another researcher, happily so I might add – as it proves the worth of sharing your research widely via the Web. I will do what I should have done in the first place, on the Web at least, and revert to what is known, what the original, contemporary literature supports – G. Herpin!

Christian Boyer, in compiling his research into the origins of the word philately came across my website and contacted me about some records I had imaged and queried my use of Georges. I wrote in reply:

Ah, I have been sloppy here, much to my shame. I have just checked the text of my book and see that he appears as George Herpin throughout the book. As you point out, in the contemporary texts that I saw I only saw his name signed as G. Herpin…

This issue of the spelling did exercise my mind. There must be a reason that I decided to use George in the book but I can’t remember why (quite possibly because the Williams brothers used Georges and I don’t trust them)…

I only had limited access to the French philatelic journals (on two brief trips to London – I live in Australia – in 2003 and 2004) at the Royal Philatelic Society there, and I regretted that I wasn’t able to go through them in any kind of thorough fashion, as I did through the early English language journals, readily accessible to me here in Melbourne… the issue of Herpin’s name didn’t exercise my mind until much later in the writing when it was impossible to do the checking I would have liked.

Christian, based in France, has been more thorough. He did not turn up any usage other than G. Herpin in the philatelic literature but followed through on the tip that Herpin was also a numismatist and checked the numismatic literature. There he found abundant evidence of a Gustave Herpin. Why would Herpin style himself differently in these two aspects of his research and writing life? Je ne sais pas. I concur with Christian’s conclusion that G. Herpin might be Gustave and not George/s, and that until such time as the mystery is quite definitively solved we are better not perpetuating the assumptions of others (oh woe is me) and sticking with a simple G!

I recommend Christian’s website on the origins of the word philately to you: http://cboyer.club.fr/philatelie

**Currently in need of some minor updating, which is not likely to be done for a few weeks.

What constitutes a good memento of travel?

Kate Holden recently reflected on this in The Age (A2, 20 October 2007, p.3), noting that you can buy Vegemite and Tim Tams in London (so no point bearing these as gifts) and you can get most things in Australia, so what then is worth bringing home as a souvenir?

Photographs and vintage postcards she concludes. On her recent travels she happened upon ‘a cache of correspondence’ at a market in Rome, among a lot of vintage postcards. This series, written on standard issue postal stationery, represented a long correspondence in the life of an early twentieth century Italian family. What a find! Archivists and historians will immediately appreciate the significance.

And what did she do?

With regret, I chose five. Signore Mazza, I am very sorry to have broken up your correspondence. Perhaps I was wrong – but I also didn’t want to be selfish and take them all. The five are enough. Someone else will find the rest one day and never know what’s missing.

Aaaghh! The written life of everyday people is so much harder to find than that of the well-to-do. The archives of the everyday do not as commonly end up in archival and manuscript collections. They may be tossed out with the inevitable moves and clean outs that follow death. In this case, someone has realised the value to philatelists and postcard collectors and sold the lot to a dealer.

Holden continues, ‘I have mixed feelings about removing these photos and cards from their native lands – are they trophies or detritus, or have I saved them?’ Good question. If she hadn’t broken up the collection someone else would have, but perhaps not. Perhaps somebody might have bought the whole collection and offered it to a public collection in Italy where it would gain immeasurably in significance in its local context. Removed from their context and fractured like this they have become mere trophies. They haven’t been saved. That she cherishes them isn’t enough.

However, wince as I might about this story, I’m of a mind to agree with her about the value of the vintage postcard. Wandering the aisles of the Paris stamp bourse in 2003, I hunted for old postcards of Bordeaux, where I’d recently been researching for Blue Mauritius. I found several in pristine condition, never postally used. Propped up on my desk at home in Australia, they helped me to write (I hope) in a more evocative way about Bordeaux’s past.

I had no qualms (price paid excepted) in removing these from their homeland, because they had, almost a hundred years later, fulfilled their original purpose.