Victorian Valentine's Card
It appears that Geoffrey Chaucer and his circle in the fourteenth century were the perpetrators of the myth surrounding St Valentine and his association with romantic love, as set out in Chaucer’s “Parlement of
Victorian Valentine's Card
It appears that Geoffrey Chaucer and his circle in the fourteenth century were the perpetrators of the myth surrounding St Valentine and his association with romantic love, as set out in Chaucer’s “Parlement of Foules (1382) (Assembly of Fowls); but this may be the result of misinterpretation. Chaucer wrote the following lines to honour Richard II of England and Anne of Bohemia his betrothed (they were only 14 years old):
“For this was on seynt Volantynys day
Wha euery bryd comyth there to chese his make”
Shakespeare had Ophelia ruefully mention Valentine’s Day in Hamlet in 1600 some two hundred years after Chaucer. Perhaps the French had one of the quaintest links – the ritual for the High Court of Love was established on Valentine’s Day in 1400. The court dealt with love contracts, betrayals, and violence against women. Judges were selected by women on the basis of poetry reading!
Saint Valentine of Terni oversees the construction of his basilica at Terni, from a 14th century French manuscript
The earliest surviving valentine is a fifteenth-century rondeau written by Charles, Duke of Orleans, who was being held in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415, to his wife which commences:
"Je suis desja d’amour tanné
Ma tres doulce Valentinée..."
During the 1800s printers had begun publishing sentimental verses for young lovers to use, then along came “mechanical valentines”, while the reduction in postal rates ushered in the less personal but easier practice of mailing valentines. This led to another Unintended Consequence in an era otherwise prudishly Victorian – the sudden appearance of racy verse!
Paper Valentines began to be assembled in factories made with real lace and ribbons; paper lace followed on, while talented lovers painted and wrote prose and poetry to their loved ones. In the1800s the legend and lore of the language of flowers were included, some with hand-coloured and detachable flowers containing a hidden message behind each, others containing perfumed sachets, and all of them bearing words of love.
Valentine's Day postcard, circa 1910
Eugene Rimmel, the celebrated parfumier, also specialised in Valentines. From his sweetly-scented emporium in London in the late 1860s and 1870s hearts and darts, and loves and doves, encircled with gilt and paper lace, secured with satin bows, were dispatched to all parts of Britain.
Along came the 20th century when the ease of posting cards encouraged the industry to new growth levels – ever expanding the p