A former work colleague of mine, Deborah Slater who now works as a fundraiser for Acorns Children’s Hospice told me about an ancestor of her mother named William Mulready whom Debbie told me ‘invented the envelope’. Any claim like this just had to be worth investigating further!
William Mulready was born in Ennis, County Clare on 1 April 1786 and before anyone jumps to any conclusions his date of birth has no relevance to the story. When William was a child his family moved to London where his gift for drawing and painting was spotted and encouraged. At just 14 years old William was accepted at the Royal Academy School where he developed into a brilliant artist.
In 1802 William Mulready married Elizabeth Varley, who was a landscape painter and their three sons, Paul Augustus, William and Michael also became artists. Mulready became a very popular painter of landscapes, but then started to build a reputation as a genre painter from 1808 on, painting mostly everyday scenes from rural life. Mulready also began to illustrate books, including the first edition of Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare in 1807 and a poetry book for children by Catherine Ann Dorset. The book was very popular as it was a sequel to The Butterfly's Ball, and the Grasshopper's Feast by William Roscoe.
Mulready became a hugely popular painter from the early 19th century into the Victorian period. His first painting of importance, Returning from the Ale House, now in the Tate Gallery, London, under the title Fair Time, appeared in 1809.
In 1815 William Mulready became an Associate of the Royal Academy (A.R.A.) and R.A. in 1816. In the same year, he was also awarded the French "Légion d'honneur".
His most important pictures are in the Victoria and Albert Museum and in the Tate Gallery. In the former are 33, among them Hampstead Heath (1806); Giving a Bite (1836); First Love (1839); The Sonnet (1839); Choosing the Wedding Gown (1846); and The Butt (Shooting a Cherry) (1848). In the latter are five, including a Snow Scene. In the National Gallery, Dublin, are Young Brother and The Toy Seller. His Wolf and the Lamb is in Royal possession.
But what of the claim that William Mulready invented the envelope?
There are a few histories online concerning the origins of the envelope. Obviously people had been writing letters for centuries, especially the upper classes, but the main method used for sending a letter was a piece of paper containing the message on one side, that was then folded and sealed, probably with wax and a personalized stamp, then hand delivered by a messenger. This was called a letter-sheet.
In 1840 the British Government introduced important reforms to the postal system, led by Sir Rowland Hill. The first postage stamp, also introduced in 1840, was the famous Penny Black. The Government also commissioned William Mulready to design a standard letter sheet to go with the new stamp. It seems that Mulready was commissioned more for his artistic skills than his inventiveness and he went about designing a lozenge-shaped letter-sheet with beautiful artwork of Britannia and a reclining lion amongst other figures. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II still owns the copyright to his original design.
The innovative thing about Mulready’s letter-sheet was that even though it followed the age-old design of a single piece of paper which contained the message on the inside and when folded allowed the outer side to be used for an address and of course the new Penny Black stamp, his new design allowed the paper to be completely sealed on all sides, thus creating an envelope into which additional sheets could be placed. This became known as Mulready stationary, or even as ‘a Mulready’ as opposed to being called an envelope.
Unfortunately for William Mulready, his beautiful illustrations were widely lampooned by newspapers and satirists who scoffed at their ornamental extravagance. Stationery manufacturers, whose livelihood was threatened by the new letter sheet, complained to the Government and only six days after their introduction, on May 12, Rowland Hill wrote that; I fear we shall have to substitute some other stamp for that design by Mulready ... the public have shown their disregard and even distaste for beauty, and within two months a decision had been made to replace the Mulready designed stationery.
William Mulready’s paintings continue to attract acclaim and reverence from professional art scholars and the viewing public alike and he joins a long-line of Irish men and women who excelled in the creative arts. But in answer to the question “did you hear about the Irish fellah who invented the envelope?” we can give the resounding answer “yes, it was William Mulready!”
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