"Putting something away for a rainy day!"

Chromo lithograph. Vertical. In acid free mylar envelope. POST CARD. [Cancellation stamp:] LEICESTER 5.15 PM 9 AUG 17 Dear Ethel, Many thanks for p.c. which I was very surprised to receive. You should see us now kid, we are as brown as berries with the sea air. It is about the end of the week as you will see by the picture on the front. That's what we have got to do. [Top margin:] Don't you feel sorry for us. Best love From Helina xxx” Helina ran out of space at the bottom of the card so she wrote the ending at the very top. [Address section:] Miss Ethel Webster Sycamore St., Blaby Nr. Leicester Recto: The signature in the bottom-right corner is "Comicus," a prolific pen name used in the British postcard industry. Blaby, a small, historic village located just south of the city of Leicester ("Nr. Leicester" = "Near Leicester"). "As brown as berries with the sea air" was a popular British idiom a century ago, used to describe getting a deep suntan while holidaying at the coast. The postmark date, August 9, 1917 was in the middle of World War I. Despite the wartime austerity, families still took brief summer trips to seaside resorts. The comical illustration on the front showing a man pawning an umbrella is a play on the phrase "putting something away for a rainy day" but here Helina is saying "our holiday money has run”. The census records for 1901 to 1921 point to the addressee, Ethel May Webster, who was born in 1887. Ethel married John Tom Marratt in 1914. It was common during World War I for working-class women to return to their parents’ homes while husbands were away on military service, so she was still receiving mail under her maiden name at her parents’ address in Blaby, a residential strip lined with traditional brick cottages. One of the links of the Webster family on Sycamore Street is in the war records. Ethel's relative (likely a cousin or nephew raised on the same street) was Private William Charles Webster Vann. He lived on Sycamore St., Blaby, and served in the "C" Company of the 11th Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment. Seven months after Ethel received this cheerful seaside postcard, William was killed in action in France on March 22, 1918, at age 20. Ethel died in 1980 at the age 92. She outlived that relative by 72 years. She and Tom had 2 daughters, one named Catherine Cissie. Tom Marratt served as a soldier in the Leicestershire Regiment (known affectionately as the "Tiger"). By the summer of 1917, the battalions of the Leicestershire Regiment were deeply entrenched on the Western Front in France and Flanders. They fought through brutal, muddy campaigns, including the initial stages of the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), which raged during the month this postcard was sent. This context paints a poignant picture of the home front. While Ethel's husband was facing the horrors of the trenches in France, her close friend or family member, Helina was taking a quick trip to the English seaside to cope with the stress of the war, sending Ethel a lighthearted joke to distract her from the worry of a husband at the front. Helina addresses Ethel as "kid" underscores their close, informal, and peer-to-peer relationship as young women. WWI paradox: while the conflict completely reshaped Britain, including German air raids, the ritual of summer escape endured, though there were nighttime blackouts to avoid guiding German U-boats or warships and grand seafront hotels, boarding houses, and pleasure piers were requisitioned by the War Office to serve as convalescent hospitals for wounded soldiers returning from the Western Front, or as temporary barracks for new recruits. Very bottom left corner is the publisher’s serial number for this postcard: 3797.…