£460
** VERDUN/CLERMONT-IN-ARGONNE - P.O.W.'s WIFE's LETTER HOME WITH "TRANSPORT OFFICE..." OVAL"; Fine 7 June 1813 EL written by Anne Fanshawe at Clermont[-in-Argonne] ("We are now quiet at Clermont") where her husband Commander Henry Fanshawe (of HMS Grasshopper that had been stranded during a storm with blizzards on the Texel sands on the Dutch coast in December 1811) was being held as a Prisoner of War on parole, to her father Major General Jenkinson at the Board of Green Cloth in London. It has a very fine double-oval "TRANSPORT OFFICE/[Crown]/G.R/PRISONERS OF WAR" nicely placed on the front (and clear in spite of being overstruck by the local London 2d-Post h.s. "2") adjacent to a mainly fine blue oval "Two Py Poft/Unpaid/Bge St. Weftmr" RH mark. The long cross-written letter gives an account of a very hectic social life in Clermont and the surrounding small towns! Senior British POW Officers were allowed to have their wives sent to join them if they were on parole and could afford it. Letters from their wives are rare.Cross Reference: MILITARY - P.O.W. MAIL, LONDON POSTAL HISTORY, FRANCE
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