The Daisy will come along pretty soon, but you won`t get flowers in the first year, only leaves, which you will start to see within ten days after pressing the seeds into the soil. We call it the simple daisy, but it is anything but, for what you think of as a single yellow flower in the centre are hundreds of small pollen carriers, each a magnet for bees, butterflies, and beetles. And when they go to seed the birds will feast on them.
So for our second card we had Daisy Irving, shown here with a long feathered headdress that seems to come from her most famous role, as Angele Didier in the operetta "The Count of Luxembourg" - in in which she appears on many postcards. There is a problem though, because when the original London production opened, at Daly`s Theatre, in 1911, it starred Lily Elsie. And I have failed quite spectacularly at finding anything biographical about Daisy Irving, though I will keep looking. I know she appears on two other sets of cards, neither of which have a descriptive back, these being the 1908 Lorillard "Actresses", and the 1908 Ogden`s "Actresses" - both of which use the same picture as each other with her hands to her chin.
This set is also non biographically texted. It first described in our Wills reference book, part four, or RB.16, which was published in 1950, and it appears as :
- 118. 30. ACTRESSES - Orange/mauve surround (adopted title). Size 64 x 37 m/m. Fronts per Fig.68, printed by letterpress, portraits in black and white. surround in orange or mauve. Backs in red, with illustration of open "Scissors" packet, inscribed at head "This seres consists of 30 subjects", numbered at foot. "Scissors" issues in the East, between 1910-15 : -
A. Surround in orange ; normal background is black, but there is a distinct printing with olive background.
B. Surround in mauve
By the time of our original World Tobacco Issues Index this has been shortened, to :
- ACTRESSES - W/118. Sm. 63 x 36. Portrait in black and white, coloured surround. Nd. (30). See W/118 ... W62/337
A. Surround in orange
B. Surround in mauve
And in our updated World Tobacco Issues Index it appears as :
- ACTRESSES - W/118. (A). Sm. 63 x 36. Portrait in black and white, coloured surround. Nd. (30). See W/118 ... W675/476
A. Surround in orange
B. Surround in mauve
In none of these books is it mentioned that only the colour changes, the actresses in both sets remain the same in picture and in number, as follows :
- Iris Hoey
- Iris Hoey
- Sybil de Bray
- Gertie Millar
- Cissie Moore
- Avice Kelham
- Madeline Seymour
- Isobel Elsom
- Ellaline Terriss
- Gwladys Gaynor
- Gladys Mason
- Miss Le Gros
- Jean Aylwin
- Daisy Irving
- Madge Saunders
- Gladys Mason
- Zoe Gordon
- Peggy Kurton
- Gabrielle Ray
- Phyllis Terry
- Miss Greenough
- Winnie Collins
- Constance Worth
- Emmy Wehlen
- Agnes Glynne
- Fay Compton
- Lilian Fay
- Gracie Cooper
- Violet Blythe
- Avice Kelham