THE- VALENTINE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 35, 11 February 1937, Page 11

THE- VALENTINE

AN OLD CUSTOM

GONE BEYOND RECALL?

February 14 is St. Valentine's Day, but it will pass almost unremarked in New Zealand. The custom of sending "valentines," once so common in England and Scotland, has been long dying out, and perhaps it is just as well, since it had much degenerated. Valentines are now .treasured by.a few sentimental old ladies and by collectors, and the modern generation hardly knows them at all.

The original valentine was a kind of greeting, card sent by lads and lasses (and by older people too) to each other, cupids, pierced hearts, and such like designs being the predominant feature on them.' Valentines later degenerated'into ludicrous and'sometimes vulgar caricatures. They indicated a kind'of mock'betrothal, and we have it on the authority of Samuel Pepys that married folk were not exempt from the attentions of valentine senders. .' '

Both Chaucer and Shakespeare allude to February'l4 as being the date upon which' birds .(in the northern hemisphefe) chose their mates for the coming spring and summer. The Saint Valentine, whose day falls on February 14 and after whom the missives were named, really has his name taken in vain and his connection with the sentimental custom is purely accidental. ' However, the "observance of some sort of feast about St. Valentine's Day dates back to the Roman period. These were feasts with which the choosing of mates was closely associated. ' '. "

The Medici Society in' London recently held a very interesting collection of valentines. As told by the Medici collection, the valentine of between one and tw6 centuries ago was largely a printing-house story. The exhibits, chiefly printed tokens of love or disdain, provide a valuable record of the costumes of the day, whether the adored happened to be a housemaid, a milkman, or the grocer in his corner-shop; They also show that, love is not the monopoly of any particular class.

After these came a new , vogue in valentines. .A "lace", paper period followed, and then the designers added artificial flowers and other ornate details. Some of these valentines were very wonderful productions—perhaps more wonderful than beautiful. They were certainly effective in their realism, shells, seaweed, moss,, etc., being employed in their making.

Towards the . end of. the nineteenth century dignity had given N way to prettiness, and prettiness .to affectation and bathos. Valentines became vulgar, and .endured principally as unsightly lampoons.in the windows of shops in back streets. .. Modern printers .. are endeavouring to restore the valentine to. the pedestal it once adorned, but in spite of their efforts the vogue of the valentine has probably, passed beyond recall. ■ : ■ ■ ;