This story actually happened to me. The postcard is a forgery and was a prank on me and others. As much as I wanted to believe this was a real card from Dennis Brain, it is not. Everything in this story is true, except the card is a fake, forged by my friend. His dad, a former pilot and now retired, did know Brain from the RAF. Read on, if you want, or back out :)
One day, one of my friends said to me, "you play the French Horn, don't you ? My dad worked in the RAF and was friends with a pretty good horn player. He used to play at parties and stuff. His name was Blaine or something like that".
"Hmmm.... was his name, perhaps, 'Brain'...", I asked. "Yeah... that's it, Dennis Brain!", my friend said, starting yet another small world story. I told my friend that if his father has anything like a signed program note or something, I would be interested in seeing it. He brought over a postcard. I asked when the postcard was sent, my friend said, "well, it was after my dad left the service, 1957". This was pretty shocking since Dennis died that year in a car crash driving from Edinburgh to London on Sept 1 1957. However, even more shocking is that this postcard was sent from Edinburgh...
Bigger images of the postcard from Dennis Brain (1.picture) (2.signature, stamp, etc)
If you take a close look, there is 1925 on the postmark. If you observe the original, you will see that the stamp was cut from another letter and posted on the postcard! Dennis cheated the Royal Post out of 2.5 pennies!
Some Dennis Brain Links:
Ivan Wong's Dennis Brain Homepage
"He was a young musician of priceless talent, a unique and flawless perfomer whose playing delighted and exhilarated all who heard him...at the age of 36, he stood at the pinnacle of his profession and had already achieved greater fame than any performer on the French Horn had ever known." - Thomas Heinetz, Saturday Review September, 1957.
"Dennis Brain had no peer" - Eugene Ormandy.
