Three Edwardian Londoners stroll the Victoria Embankment in their Sunday best — two women in long dark skirts and a gentleman in a dark suit — while one of the great bronze sphinxes guarding Cleopatra's Needle watches impassively from its pedestal, the Thames glimmering behind and a graceful bridge receding into the distance. This hand-coloured halftone postcard from Valentine's Series captures the Embankment at its Edwardian peak, when it was one of London's premier promenades, the gaslit lamp standards still in place and horse traffic just visible at left. The reverse text notes that "two of these bronze Sphinx are situated at the base of Cleopatra's Needle and add to the ornamentation of the Thames Embankment" — the sphinxes, cast in 1881 by George Vulliamy, are still there today, the left-hand one famously bearing shrapnel damage from a 1917 Zeppelin raid. The "British Manufacture" branding on the reverse reflects Edwardian-era commercial patriotism; Valentine's of Dundee was one of Britain's premier postcard publishers of the period.