Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1919 — VALENTINESOFOLD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

VALENTINESOFOLD

Some Recollections of the Time When People Took the Day Most Seriously. RHYMESTERS OUT IN FORCE Doggerel for the Most Part, but Some Really Pretty Verse Can Be Found in .the Treasured Hoards of Collectors. By FRANCES BURNS. You are witty, you are pretty; You are single—what a pity! I am 'Single for your sake, What a handsome couple we shall make! Such doggerel, a little over a century, ago, hack writers used to.dash off to include in the funny chapbooks through which rustic swains were instructed how to make love on St. Valentine’s day. That was before the era of the commercial printed valentines. Gentlemen, and ethers, still penned their own or some “boughten” sentiments, on or about the 14th of February, and trem-’ blingly dispatched the caligraphic production to the cherished “fair." Often outside help in rhyming was sought. “The Gentlemen’s New Valentine Writer," “The Bower of Cupid,” “Cupid’s Annual Charter,” “The School oFTbye,” “The Ladies’ Polite Valentine Writer” —these are some of the souvenirs of (he period when all valentines were hand made and homemade. About a generation later —that is, in the thirties of the nineteenth century —came the real thing in valentines —

the deliciously, hopelessly; helplessly sentimental effusions of the age of autograph albums and daguerreotypes. During these decades of British and continental romanticism, when the fine arts' all together dropped to the lowest depth of aesthetic degradation they had ever reached, the art of valentine making flourished as never before or since. When the collector of today says “valentines” he means those of the funny forties. Great Valentine Industry. Especially in England, the home of the arts of the heart, a great industry grew up around the valentine, employing a multitude of workers from poets to die sinkers. Everybody gave everybody else a valentine, tq delight or to

insult. Maids and bachelors, widows and widowers all looked eagerly for the postmail on St. Valentine’s day. It is these mid-century English valentines that have in the past few years caught the fancy of collectors of the old missives, as readers of a chapter on “A Box of Old Valentines” in Virginia Robie’s “The Quest of the Quaint” may have noted. In Cincinnati Frank H. Bear has formed a collection of valentines that is internationally famous, with upward of 2,000 specirepresenting such makers as Kershaw, Marks, Dobbs, Martin, Gilks, Peck, King, Richardson, Hughes, Bysh, Hodgson, Kidwell, Tegg, Dean, Bailey, Harrison and others of London ; Lloyd of Edinburgh, Leleux of Calais and Riedel of Nurnberg. Churches and towers rise in the background of many of these February romances. In one, at least, issued over thename of “A. Park, London,” the village church is all the picture —lust a fine, substantial late Gothic structure quite literally depicted. To the receptive maiden it must have come as a rather commonplace if apparent symbol of her suitor’s hope for early nuptials. Seemingly he might have sent something with a little more of the color of love. However, probably he knew the temperament of the lady. ' The Message Revealed. Just the bare church and it Imperfect, for that flap over against the southern aisle has not been properly pasted down. “Why, look, it was intended~to be~ li f ted.” You raise it, the loose cardboard, and behold, you are looking’ into the warmly lighted church interior where a pretty wedding, just like the one we hope to have, is in progress. Was there ever a sweeter conceit? To match the sentiment of the picture these dainty lines: Yes, here at last young love and I The Gordian knot of love shall tie. And throbbing thus, my bosom swells. To listen to the marriage bells. Oh! hasten fond one—haste to me, In thine own truth and constancy. • Concerning the maker of this churchwedding'valentine, and of many others which are much sought after by collectors, Miss Robie has gathered a bit of information. He was located at 47 Leonard street, London, and made many valentines about the time of Queen Victoria’s wedding. His productions are generally “printed in color over a bla ck and -white-foundation, the

deep reds anti blues and a green running at the edges as If put Tin with a full brush. The scene is always set in the center of a large sheet. The lady is always retiring and coy. The gentleman wears a low waistcoat, a high stock and Victoria whiskers, gias for high romance, while Cupid looks on like a small English schoolboy Rh tent on "a new game. Park valentines are not beautiful, but they are well worth securing and a few are decidedly" amusing.” Cupid 'and a Merry Widow. Much in several of the valentines of the famous collection somehow reminds one of : the art,’ or, artlessness, of the beefy English ladies who semiexpose their charms to all weathers among the forsythia bushes along the facade of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Wholesome beef-fed Briton, the fact • is, asserted Itself even Tn the most ethereal manifestations of nineteenth century romanticism, in such valentines as the one of a plump blonde lady with Merry Widow hat who complacently., permits three cupids to paddle about her neck and shoulders. Nothing in the .wording of the piece suggests

that this buxom middle-class lady Is a widow of thirty-five, but one rather gathers that from her appearance. She is very "east county,” very Nordic in build. Her lover, on the other hand, one suspects from his identification of fairies and cupids, is a dolichocephalic Irishman, a kinsman of Lloyd George. Good luck to his suit. This, at all events, is his invocation: Fairy, for her my passion move. Whisper 'neath her ringlets that I love. Fairy, upon her molded bosom press Thy rosy fingers to yield a happiness. "Grandma" in the Picture.

Man, the deceiver, comes in for a swat from grandma (“truly, she herself had suffered !”L in a valentine In which a tall, fragile, willowy, underfed and presumably tubercular damsel in low,

well-nigh Improperly low, bodice, fills part of the room with her bulging crinoline. The old dame sits in a chair reading from “The Sorrows, of Werther,” or “Don Juan” or other religious literature of the period, and thus begins a homily which is interrupted and contradicted by the young man sending the tender missive: Dear girl, whilst listening to a lover’a vows • Beware deceit—save when a youth Like me unfolds his heart to spouse Thee in conjugal links of truth. Somebody, somewhere, in those Tennysonian days, discovered with Browning that “Love is Best,” and thus communicated with the loved one under the caption of “Return of Happiness:” The hearf~that lay in secret woe ' Has borne love’s arrows ranking there. Now raised by hope’s deceptive glow, Now sinking into dull despair; That heart alone can duly feel. The mad’nihg joy, the ecstatic bliss. Of knowing that their love’s returned— This, this, indeed, is happiness. ulasthat first experienced, maintains another versifior; whose lines on “First Love" accompany a pretty picture: Like as the moon's subduing light. , - Thrown on the ruin, tree or stone. - - Win give to object drear and dull, A beauty which is all their own; Just so First-Love a radiance throws O’er every object on Life’s stream And gives Its own bright coloring To ail that’s touched by its pure beam. Tn such manifestations oil.one day of the year of love and sentiment like that which in our time Miss Mildred Champagne has ably edited dally the temper of the remarkable Victorian age may be studied closely. As for St. Valentine’s day itself, whose observance reached its apogee , about 1850, readers of English literature need not be reminded how frequently it is mentioned by the poets and romaneen from Chaucer downward.