' VALENTINES.
TO my cousin Turner's, where, having the last night been told by her that she had drawn me for her Valentine, I did this day call at the New Exchange, and bought her a pair of green silk stockings and garters and shoestrings, and two pair of jessamy gloves, all coming to about 28s., and did give them to her this noon." Such were the gifts which
custom demanded that a fashionable gentleman like Mr. Pep ys should give to the young woman who had drawn him for her Valentine in the debonair days of Charles II., though, to be sure, on one occasion when his Valentine happened to be his wife he did not give her haberdashery, but "a ring of a Turkey-stone, set with little sparks of diamonds." His wife, as was quite right and proper, got a much better Valentine's gift than the ladies to whom he gave presents in other years, and on consideration Mr. Pepys was not disposed to regret his generosity. "It will cost me near £5," he remarks reflectively, but is not much troubled about it, "she costing me but little compared with other wives, and I have not many occasions to spend money on her." That was written in 1669, and the proper observance of the customs of Valentine's Day has been, virginibus puerisque, a privilege for perhaps two hundred and fifty years since Sir Henry Wotton, "on a banck as he sate a fishing," wrote of February 14th This day dame Nature seem'd in love ; The lusty sap began to move ; Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines, And birds had drawn their valentines."
Is it just possible that there are some of those to whom twenty or thirty or more years ago February 14th was a recognised feast in the calendar, who would learn with a shock of surprise that the valentine is dead ? Not; that is, dead in the sense that it belongs essentially to the nursery and the schoolroom, and therefore has no part in the lives of "grown-ups"; but extinct, non-existent, unobtainable. And is it realised how suddenly the valentine died ? In 1882 there actually passed through the post valentines to the number of one million six hundred and thirty-four thousand,—the largest number on record. Ten years later February 14th was still a day which postmen dreaded. To-day if you ask in a stationer's for a valentine the young lady regards you with the same expression which you would get if you asked for a bib in a post-office. "We do not keep them." "They are not asked for." The latter remark is almost a reproof ; you feel that in asking for what is not asked for you are doing something which-is not quite proper.
What was it that killed the valentine ? Its degeneracy— for it did degenerate—into ugliness? That can hardly be the whole truth, for we still give our children Golliwogs and other hideous playthings. It may be part of the truth, for when the white boxes containing decorative and amatory epistles began to be supplanted by folios of a large size and astonish- ingly repulsive appearance, it may very well have happened that numbers of parents and schoolmasters published an edict, by which it was proclaimed that "Valentines are not allowed," and so the shopkeepers, finding the demand lessened, gradually ceased to stock a line of goods which was not the fashion. But that is not the whole truth. What really killed the valentine was the telephone. When the telephone came into the house the valentine could not live in the same atmosphere. The valentine belongs to the same period in the past as the old-fashioned Christmas card, Guy Fawkes Day, Christmas waits, and May Day. The real old-fashioned Christmas card used to be not very large, with a church and a sunset in the background, all the fields and roads covered with snow, and in the foreground some holly and a pair of robins, and all the snow was covered with a sort of spangly stuff that glittered in an extremely satisfactory manner. After some years the card-makers took off the spangles, which were said to be made of glass and to be dangerous to breathe ; still, they might have left the holly and the robins. Probably, however, the snow and the church and the sunset were not up-to-date, and so the Christmas card of to-day was evolved,—a sort of illuminated visiting-card, which is printed especially for you by. the ,hundred, and you write your name in the space provided after "For Auld Lang Syne " or "Wishing you a Joyous Yuletide" (you never use the word " joyous " on any occasion whatever in real life), and then send them round to your friends in envelopes with halfpenny stamps. As for the
waits, not to mention the mummers, they also belong td a kind of .Christmas which is hopelessly old-fashioned. It is con- ceivable that in some out-of-the-way district it is still possible to be wakened up on grey Christmas mornings by footsteps shuffling in the snow, and the singing of " Christians-Awake," and "The Mistletoe Hung in the Castle Hall," and the other tunes that belong to the days when Christmas mornings were dark, delightful hours mysterious with bulging, misshapen stockings, and the promise of the spangled joys of the first page of " Struwwelpeter." But it is more likely that the waits have decided that it is not worth while getting up in the dark, and that the real thing to do is to have your sleep out As to the First of May, that can hardly be said to be a festival which has disappeared in our day. It is true that May Day is still observed as a holiday on the Stock Exchange ; but it is as long ago as the days when " Edgworth's Parents' Assistance" was a standard nursery volume, that you were informed that Simple Susan lived in a village where it was "still the custom" to celebrate the First of May with a dance round the maypole. Simple Susan, you may be certain, received a valentine on February '14th from practically every child in the village, except, of course, the spiteful, conceited Barbara; though, indeed, very likely she sent an ugly one.
It is quite possible, without any kind of sentimental snuffling, to mourn the disappearance of the valentine. In the first place, the more feasts there are in the nursery calendar the better, and Valentine's Day was really an occasion of great and notable doings. There used to be, of course, two main classes into which valentines were divided. First, there was the valentine which you sent to the people you liked. The one you sent to your parents was of the best and most ex- pensive kind, but there were others of the same kind which you sent to your brothers and sisters and your nurse and governess. It was a thing which had its foundation, as it were, on a rather thin, white sheet of notepaper, of which the back half was plain and the front half crinkled and emboss6d round the edges, rather like a piece of paper Lice. Then on the front half there were fastened, on springy little paper hinges, a number of pieces of paper framework, made of filigree silver stuff and perforated edgings, gradually getting smaller and smaller. The top frame of all was decorated with forget-me-nots, and you could draw all the successive frames out until you looked down a vista of retreating edgings of filigree, and at the end, in the centre of the main sheet, there was a picture of a sort of dove carrying a letter in its mouth, marked "I love you," or something suitable of the kind, and there was generally a heart with an arrow stuck through it somewhere,—indeed, the whole affair breathed a spirit of hope- less devotion which did the sender the greatest possible credit. As a shrine in which so striking an emblem of affection might properly repose, the makers of the valentine devised a species of thin cardboard box covered with white paper of an astonish-
ing slipperiness, so that it was extremely difficult to prevent the ink running out of the pen into little pools and spoiling the address, which you wrote in a feigned hand, generally slanting the letters backwards to make it look more natural. The postmark was almost more difficult even than the address, especially if the only stamp you could get to put on it was one of those on which the postmark was printed in a circle with the name very clear, and half of it off the stamp, so that it had to be filled in on the lid of the box ; but of course the thing to do was to get hold of a stamp which was merely smudged in the post, so that by adding a little extra ink the whole looked quite natural and workmanlike. Those were the valentines over which most trouble was taken. There were others of a less decorative nature which it was satisfac- tory to despatch to those whom the sender did not regard with favour,—perhaps the housemaid or the new butler. A suitable sort for the housemaid was the portrait of a very rubicund person in- difficulties with a blacking-brush. There was also a kind of allegorical picture of a man wearing a top. hat, with a red-and-green serpent's body,.and underneath was written, "Beware the snake in the grass." It was difficult to understand, but it appeared to convey an insult, and, on the whole, did very well for the butler.
If it is true that the atmosphere of the telephone, and modern improvements and practicalities in general, have been too much for the valentine, is it possible, nevertheless, that the valentine may still, on reflection, as it were, be allowed to return ? Unhappily, experience shows that cast-off customs of the kind never do return. They can only be enjoyed in the same way as it is possible to enjoy a stage representation of "things that have been." If you could ,find somewhere in a deep, untouched corner of the most countrified of counties, a village of cottages covered, with roses and honeysuckle, where on Christmas Eve the mummers came up to the Hall, and on May Day the children romped round a pole tied up with bluebells and daisies and milkmaids and buttercups, no doubt everybody who came from the outside world to visit it would pronounce it perfectly charming ; perhaps, indeed, if you happened to be there on Valentine's Day, the spirit of the place would even embolden you to offer a pretty girl a pair of green silk stockings. But would it all be anything more than transitory and make-believe ? The shopkeepers supply the answer. They know their business, and if you want a valentine to send to anybody, even when it is really im- portant to send one, you cannot get one for love or money.
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