Review by Nick Anning: This is a truly surprising book, a work about stamps, by a non-philatelist who has actually done her research, is comfortable with the jargon of stamps, and spins a ripping yarn besides.
Helen Morgan is a Melbourne-based historian and writer who approached me a few years back to see if I could point her in the right direction for researching her proposed book about the 1d and 2d ‘POST OFFICE’ stamps of Mauritius. I showed her the detailed histories of all the known examples in LN Williams’ “Encyclopedia of Rare and Famous Stamps”, and she was fascinated. I introduced her to John Shawley, a prominent local collector of Mauritius, and she was so drawn to his material and his stories that she actually joined the Royal Philatelic Society of Victoria.
I can say that I am proud to have had some small part in bringing this exceptional book to fruition.
“Blue Mauritius” is part philatelic study, part historical narrative, and part spellbinding thriller. If you already think you know all about these famous stamps, prepare to be disabused of that notion. Even LN Williams got it wrong more than once. If you have read Nicholas Courtney’s turgid work “The Queen’s Stamps” and vowed to never again read a stamp book by a non-stampie, let me urge you to suspend that promise and get ready to devour Helen Morgan’s skilfully crafted book.
“Winter in colonial Mauritius…was a time of balls and dinner parties. The ‘gay season’ usually began with the return of the Governor and his family to the capital, Port Louis, from their country residence in Moka. Then Mauritian society stirred itself, eagerly anticipating the invitations to musical soirées, picnics, race day at the Champs de Mars, and particularly to the balls. Rejoicing in the cooler weather, the ladies readied their wardrobes, shaking out their best dresses and venturing into the well-supplied merchants’ shops in town.”
So begins “Blue Mauritius”, an evocative paragraph that, in a few lines, paints a delightful picture of the elegant lifestyle of upper-class Mauritius in the late 1840s.
Morgan is married to a Mauritian; she has visited Mauritius; and she has established a bond with the island and its people. And it is clear that she has a passion for the subject of her book.
We get to know quite a lot about the Ile de Maurice, as the French had named it. We visit Lady Gomm’s ball, join Major Evans on his expedition of philatelic discovery to the island, and even get inside the heads of the principal actors involved in the production and use of the ‘POST OFFICE’ “errors”, finding out incidentally that they were nothing of the sort.
We learn almost as much about the French port of Bordeaux where the first, and several other, discoveries of these rare stamps were made. We get up close and personal with the many collectors and dealers who handled and bought them: Mme Desbois, Jean-Baptitste Moens, Harry Nissen, King George V, Alfred Lichtenstein, Henry Duveen, Ferrary, Burrus, Kanai and the latest in the line Vikram Chand.
We go inside institutions - the British Library, Buckingham Palace, the Berlin Reichspostmuseum - and anywhere else that these precious fragments of paper have come to a permanent or temporary rest.
Every story about the stamps is examined and either confirmed or, often, debunked. These are stories of intrigue and criminal activity, of luck and disappointment, of fantastic prices and sharp practices. They involve several kings, wealthy industrialists, a mysterious schoolboy, and no shortage of fortune-hunters.
In short, “Blue Mauritius” is a great read. The similarly named but entirely unrelated Broadway production is currently introducing non-collectors to the world of top-end philately. Helen Morgan is doing the same thing, in a stylish and absorbing book that I can heartily recommend to the collector and the non-collector alike.Review by Gary Watson.
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