Page 3 Advertisements Column 2

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21038, 14 February 1940, Page 3

Emblem of affection kind, In the faithful Dove we find, Pledge of my regard for thee, May it raise thy love to me. rpnE Victorian Age, despised and rejected during the hectic twenties, is coming back again into favour. Our furniture is sprouting ball-fringe, women are putting their hair up and wearing crinolines. It would be strange in this favourable atmosphere if that most typical product of Victorian sentiment, the Valentine, should not be collected or even sent again. As late as the middle eighties of the last century, it was still necessary for the Post Office to issue an annual appeal for early posting on February 13. just as they now urge us to despatch our Christmas cards in time. But. by the end of the century, the Valentine was dead. What killed the Valentine ? One answer is obviously the Christmas card, which came in much later than the Valentine and ousted its more delicate arid decorative rival when manufacturers tumbled to the obvious fact that while people (it is to be hoped!) sent only one Valentine, they might send a hundred Christmas cards or more. The Christmas card is hardly heard of before 1840, whereas Valentines— A ballad of great antiquity quotes a proverb that “birds of a feather, upon St. Valentine's day will flock together,” and from the fifteenth century, at least, the chosen sweethearts for the Coming year were called one another’s Valentine. At the Court of Elizabeth lots were cast every year for Valentines, and in the next century it had become the custom to present the lady of your choice—or your chance—with a handsome gift. A pair of gloves \yas a very usual present, but Mrs Pepys once received half-a-dozen pairs—and a pair of silk stockings and garters as well ! The nobility exchanged rings and valuable jewels. But these were hardly Valentines in the generally accepted use of the word. Paper Valentines appeared towards the end of the eighteenth century and were at first elaborately written and handpainted. The sender of the Valentine was expected to have taken very considerable trouble over it. and to have produced as artistic a creation as his taste and skill would allow. Soon etching and lithography were called in to provide at least the foundation, the outline design which could afterwards be coloured by hand. From that moment the commercial Valentine grew ever more and more elaborate as the years progressed. It was in the late ’forties and the ’fifties that the Valentine reached its most characteristic form, and so universal did this become that we are apt to think a Valentine incomplete without its paper lace. Paper lace is still manufactured, but its use has shrunk to the adornment of a cake or a mere fringe round the inside of a box of chocolates. In the mid-nineteenth century enormous quantities must have been sent through the post in the form of Valentines with or without the addition of bows of ribbon, pressed flowers, metal hearts, and all the other decorative trifles which the age producecl in rich variety. It cannot be said that the Valentine ever inspired the poets to their highest flights of fancy. The verse on one of the early examples reproduced may be taken as typical : Tho’ distant climes may us divide To think on you shall be my pride. Tho’ Winds and Waves may prove unkind, In me no change you’ll ever find. A Magic Spell will bind me fast And make me love you to the last. L.et Cupid then your Heart incline To take me for your Valentine. This is really a remarkable profession of constancy for a sailor, and we can only hope that he did not buy his Valentines by the dozen and leave one in every port. Seme think the Valentine was killed by vulgarity; by the practice of sending would-be humorous pictures and verses, and certainly some of the examples which have come down to us are enough to kill any custom. It was the decay of Victorian sentiment that killed the Valentine, as the revival, if ever it comes, will resuscitate it.