France to Spain - 1866

Today's cover was mailed in August of 1866 from Bordeaux, France and mailed to Jerez de la Frontera (near Cadiz), Spain.  The sender paid the postage for a single weight letter, but it was found to be too heavy and required more postage.

Paying the Postage - Sort of

If you wanted a reason why I was attracted to this postal history item, you need go no further than the fact that this item was paid 40 centimes, which was deemed to be insufficient to get to the destination, so the recipient had to pay 24 cuartos to receive the letter.  The story is in the 'why' of it - so that's where we go next!

The French and Spanish agreed to a postal convention that was put into effect on February 1, 1860 and to make matters simple for explanation, the basics were as follows:

If someone in France wanted to mail a letter to Spain, they would have to pay 40 centimes (French currency) for every 7.5 grams of weight.  If someone in Spain wanted to mail a letter to France, they would have to pay 12 cuartos (Spanish currency) for every 4 adarmes in weight (4 adarmes is about 7 grams).

Do you see a possible problem?  I sure do!  Technically, an item that weighed 7.2 grams would be light enough for a single rate in France, but it would require a double rate in Spain.  Clearly a recipe for potential problems.

The treaty also allowed people to send letters UNPAID.  If they opted for this service, the recipient would have to pay a different rate to receive their letter.  If a Spaniard received an unpaid letter from France, they would have to pay 18 cuartos for every 4 adarmes in weight.

So, what happened if a person paid for a letter that they thought was light enough for a single rate letter (40 centimes), but it actually required double rate postage?  Well, we get to find out because that is exactly what happened with this item.

Apparently, the French post office was aware that this item weighed too much, so they put the red boxed handstamp on the cover which reads "Affranchissement Insuffisant" (insufficient postage).  I believe it was the French traveling post office on the train to Irun that calculated the amount due and put the big red "24" on the front of the cover.  

Hm, so the recipient in Jerez had to pay 24 cuartos for the honor of receiving this letter.  Why?

Unpaid rate of mail from France to Spain was 18 cuartos / 4 adarmes

Double rate due = 36 cuartos
Less amount paid = 12 cuartos    (40 centimes in France)
Total due = 24 cuartos

And there you have it.  Underpaid mail was penalized for failure to prepay the service properly by charging the unpaid mail rate to calculate the total fee due.  However, unlike many other mail agreements of the time, this one actually gave some credit for the attempt to prepay the postage.

How Did It Get There?

Route markings on this cover:

Bordeaux - Les Chartrons Aug 23, 1866
Bordeaux Aug 23 (verso)
Bordeaux A Irun Aug 24 (verso)
Jerez - Cadiz Aug 27 (verso)

Les Chartrons is a district that borders on the Garonne River in Bordeaux and the first two markings likely show the progress from a branch post office in that neighborhood to the main Bordeaux office.  From that point, the Bordeaux A Irun marking shows that this mail item boarded a train and the traveling post office on that train served as the exchange office for France.  From there, we have no markings to confirm the direction of the voyage through Spain, though we can certainly speculate the most likely route.  The remaining marking is from Jerez - Cadiz, which apparently served as Spain's exchange office in this case.

The map shown above illustrates a generalized view of the mail route via Paris for mail from England to Cadiz, Spain.  Of particular note is the fact that France and Spain ran their railways on different gauge (sized) tracks.  The Spanish were quite a ways behind the French and other European nations in developing rail services.  Needless to say, with fewer rail options, it is a bit easier to make an educated guess regarding the route.

The map of the border between France and Spain from 1863 shown above clearly indicates that a rail route via Irun was planned.  On April 8, 1864, an agreement was reached between the two countries that trains from France to Spain would terminate in Irun (in Spain) and trains from Spain to France would terminate in Hendaye (in France).  The two countries would run track to the terminus of each location on their own gauge and each train would return across the border empty, though they could load with return traffic in their own country's territory.  This site provides both modern and historical context.

Since my best reference at present is this map, I cannot be certain that rail service was available for the entire route in 1866, nor can I be sure that the rail line south of Madrid to Cadiz was in service.  That will be work for some other day.

Bordeaux - Must Be a Wine Company?

This folded letter wrapper includes no contents, but it is likely that this was some sort of business correspondence between A. de Luze & Fils in Bordeaux and Ysasi & Cie in Jerez de la Frontera (Cadiz).  And, sure enough, this was likely a correspondence somehow related to wine, since both Bordeaux and Jerez de la Frontera have long histories as wine making areas.  In fact, this AP article from 1988 discusses the modern fates of the Spanish sherry businesses in the area after 'flourishing for over two centuries.'  Not a surprise, multi-national corporations were taking over many of the best known sherry houses in the area.  Of particular note, one of the persons mentioned in the article is Jose Joaquin Ysasi-Ysasmendi - likely a descendant of the recipients of this piece of letter mail.

Alfred de Luze set up his winery in Bordeaux in 1822 and some of his winery's product can bring a pretty penny.  For example, this bottle with 1890 vintage was being offered at over $3800.  While I am not interested in the wine, I was interested in the history that was appended to the description of this lot (and is likely the reason it popped up when I was searching for information about the de Luze company.

Born Georges Henri Alfred de Luze in Frankfort, Germany (1797-1880), de Luze and his brother went to New York to establish a company for trading in fine wines.  Alfred returned to France to secure the supply in 1820 once they had established the agency in New York.  De Luze had a winery established by 1822 in the Bordeaux region.  In 1862, Alfred bought the Domaine de Chaigne, near Touzac (grand champagne district), but I presume this letter came from the 'agency' in Bordeaux rather than from this location, which is quite a ways east of the city (see red symbol for location).

Open Questions

1. The development of rail in Spain is an ongoing question, especially at the West border location near Irun.
2. The use of exchange offices in Spain does not seem to operate in the same way that it does in France and other countries I am more familiar with.  It would be nice to gain more secure knowledge on this.
3. Spain collected an additional cuarto for carrier delivery of the mail (but that's another story).  I am not certain how this is indicated on items and I am guessing it is inconsistent depending on the city.