Gilbert Wheat, F.R.P.S., is very well known to many G.B. collectors, because he has exhibited parts of his remarkable collection so widely, both competitively and to specialist societies, over some 20 years and more. Now in his nineties (he was born in Sheffield in 1916) he has decided that he would prefer to oversee the disposal of his philatelic treasures personally, rather than leave the task to his family and executors; but he has not given up collecting entirely... He has retained a small study of Line Engraved 1½d Rose-Red covers, and is continuing his collections of the Postal History of Sheffield and Wotton-under-Edge. As the special ‘Stamp Finder’ Index to this catalogue will show, he has collected covers with almost every plate number of every single Victorian Surface Printed stamp up to the 5/- value, and even including one 10/- value as well. (The ‘Abnormals’ were naturally excluded from his task.) So this catalogue includes a breathtaking array of Surface Printed rarities, along with a sprinkling of Prestamp and Line Engraved/Embossed items. It is no surprise that his exhibits/displays have won the G.B.P.S. Willcocks & Kirk trophies plus the Stampex Phillips Trophy.
Gilbert was – like me – born into a long line of solicitors who kept attics full of old correspondence (his firm was started in 1763, some 30 years before the G.-T. firm, but my - elder - brother is, unlike Gilbert, still practicing) and so he was inspired in a similar way to collect ‘old envelopes’; but Gilbert was able to sort through his tin boxes some 40 years before I could sort mine! Gilbert did not take to the Law and after the Second World War – where he survived the 1940 evacuation at Dunkirk and then went on to see service in India and in Burma, first as an Infantry Company Commander and later as an Intelligence Officer at Divisional H.Q. – he soon gave it up and became a schoolmaster. This second career suited him perfectly; he taught for 40 years, spending the last 21 of those years as the Headmaster of a Preparatory School in Gloucestershire. He had started collecting Postal History in the 1930s, but it was not until semi-retirement in 1978 that he became very active again. It is no surprise that he then focussed on India and the Far East having travelled there during the war.
The great strength of this unique collection is the high quality of the Surface Printed stamps themselves, combined with the extraordinary variety of destinations, routes, rates and – one of Gilbert’s favourite studies – the combinations of postage stamps which were used to make up those rates. Most of us would be content to track down each stamp on cover – and would find a lifetime hardly long enough to achieve it – but Gilbert set himself a much harder and more intriguing task; he sought out the most lightly cancelled stamps available on fine and attractive covers (he even pursued Blocks on cover) and he also tried to find each one used in combination with as many other values as he could. Thus, for example, the 8d Orange – which is not a particularly easy stamp to find on cover at all – is to be found here on covers used internally (a unique usage?), to Europe (another unique usage?), to the Americas (very rare), to India, to the Far East and to Australasia, with registered mail; there are examples used in combination with every other contemporary stamp from ½d to 1/-.
I am not aware of anyone having attempted such a comprehensive study of Surface Printed covers before, but Gilbert then added a second, almost equally difficult, collection; he built up a complementary specialised collection of Victorian mails to India and the Far East. It is this second collection that became Gilbert’s main focus in recent years and that he has exhibited most often (under the titles of “Passage to India” and “Passage to the Far East”). Anyone who has ever looked for fine QV stamped mail to unusual Far Eastern destinations in particular will know how difficult a collecting area it is. In several decades of energetic search, Gilbert tracked down one single cover to the Celebes, and only a handful to Siam and the Malay States, most of which proved to be even rarer than those to the smaller Chinese Treaty Ports or even to Sarawak. I think Gilbert enjoyed the chase all the more as his quarry proved the more elusive!
The importance of one aspect of this collection – the condition of the stamps & covers themselves – can hardly be overstated. Gilbert likes to be able to see the designs of the stamps, but the Victorian Post Office naturally tried even harder to “obliterate” those stamps that had a higher face value than the ubiquitous 1d Reds and 2d Blues. In most collections the lightly cancelled stamped cover is the exception, but here it is the norm.
Until Gilbert pointed it out, I had not realised how much ‘kinder’ early Scottish Duplexes are than their English cousins, so the Cross Reference Index to this catalogue bears witness to the fact that Gilbert chose Scottish covers whenever they were available. Likewise his preference for unusual (and colourful) combinations of stamps on covers led him to acquire an unusually high proportion of Registered and Late Fee covers. There is even a small subsidiary collection of ‘G.B. Used Abroad’ covers at the end, because the consular Postmasters were sometimes more lax in cancelling the stamps on the few letters posted in their small offices.
After 30 years and more creating this collection, one can be sure that an item is particularly rare if Gilbert has seldom seen it; his knowledge has become encyclopaedic. He knows which destinations were normal for particular stamps, precisely how long the appearance of stamps for new face values lagged behind the introduction of the new postal rates for which they were intended (as with the 9d and 10d values, which appeared long after those rates had begun), and he knows how some destinations are well nigh impossible to find at all. Most of the covers in the collection and attractive and rare, but the few items whose condition or appearance are not up to the normal ‘Wheat’ standard are some of the very rarest; if something could not be obtained in beautiful condition then Gilbert would reluctantly lower his standards, always hoping to ‘upgrade’ when possible. The 2/- Brown is one example, but all the known covers have faults, and Gilbert’s example – though restored (to preserve and not to deceive) – is one of the finest and the only known example on Registered Mail. The internal 8d Orange cover is another example; it may be grubby but “find me another”!
Writing in 1989 (G.B.P.S. ‘G.B. Journal’, vol. 27, No.3, pp. 52-53), Gilbert stated that his collection was a ‘hybrid’ of Philately and Postal History; “…my main purpose has been to obtain one copy of each plate of all the surface printed stamps issued during this period [up to the 2/- value]”; but he made it clear that he also sought out unusual Postal History usages at the same time. In the following 20 years, he went on to create the India/Far East collections as well, and whereas in the 1989 article he bemoaned the fact that he had yet to ‘capture’ a 2/- Brown cover or a 9d Dull Green cover (the latter having mainly been used on Parcel Post labels), examples of both are to be found here. Indeed the second example of the 9d Dull Green that Gilbert acquired (Lot 536; see also Lot 358) is featured in another G.B. Journal article (and on the front cover) in the latest issue (Mar. 2009) issue. However, in spite of all Gilbert’s researches, there is still work to be done; for example the many steamships that carried the overseas covers have yet been identified.
It has been a great privilege to describe the whole of this amazing collection personally (I am grateful to Ken Baker for the specialised SG numbers and shades analysis of all the stamps); I do not think there will ever be another G.B. collection quite like this one. One sometimes sees 100 or even 200 lots of Surface Printed destination covers, but this collection includes some 700 in all, plus the earlier material. It is the high quality that sets Gilbert’s collection apart. Viewers will, I am sure, enjoy looking through these colourful and rare covers as much as I have done; there are covers from almost every county of England and from every corner of Scotland (as will as a sprinkling from Wales and Ireland) – there are covers to every corner of the world. I make no apology for the profusion of lots including the words “Rare”, “Colourful” and “Attractive”, because those attributes are the three main reasons why Gilbert acquired the covers in the first place.
James Grimwood-Taylor, 14th April 2009.