Leap Year Valentine: 1920

Leap Year Valentine

My dear young man: I want to state

I know your measurements and gait

And you’re no mental heavyweight,

Nor are you apt to jar the state,

But what of that? I don’t desire

A man to set the seas on fire.

He, whom the very gods admire

Is apt to blow up like a tire.

 

I want a man who earns enough

to keep the kids in shoes and stuff,

So we can make a decent bluff

At being somewhat up to snuff,

But I don’t want a man so bent

On profiteering and per cent

That all his days and nights are spent

Upon that one accomplishment.

 

I want a man whose form and face

Proclaim him of the human race,

But not of such transcendent grace

He aims to take Apollo’s place,

For it is my judicial view

Most men are steadfast, strong and true

As they’re unattractive. You,

In this respect, I think will do.

 

So if you’d like a wedding trip

By motor, trolley, train or ship,

With me along, well here’s my tip:

Don’t let your present chances slip.

If you agree to this just sign

The contract on the dotted line

And take me while the taking’s fine.

Your loving, leap-year

VALENTINE.

Bisbee [AZ] Daily Review 15 February 1920: p. 4

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: It appears that the narrator has exceedingly low standards for a mate–and expects that the chosen candidate will fail to achieve even those modest requirements. Mrs Daffodil wishes her joy.

In this Leap Year when, traditionally, the ladies may propose to the Beloved, Mrs Daffodil also wishes her readers the happiness of loving and being loved on this Valentine’s Day.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Love in an Election Year: 1899, 1918

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Valentines-Card-Cupids-Ballot-Box-Die-Cut-Easel-Victorian-Style-Shackman-/202719532730

It Was a Leap Year Valentine

The most original conceit of the season in the shape of a valentine came to a handsome Philadelphia beau on February 14, from a young woman, who evidently looks upon every year as a leap year. The valentine was in the form of an official blanket ballot, and the different party columns were headed “love ticket,” “friendship ticket,” “Independent ticket,” and “marble-heart ticket.” The young woman voted her ticket, in the first column, straight, and the recipient of the valentine declares he will acknowledge his election as soon as his salary has grown enough to permit of such rashness.

The ticket she voted for follows:

Oregonian [Portland OR] 1 March 1899: p. 5

An odd valentine was that sent two years ago by Francis Evelin of Chicago to Sarah Collins of Toledo. I. Everlin had asked the latter to marry him on numerous occasions; but the young woman had always asked him to refrain from regarding her otherwise than “a sister.” Everlin had no such intention, however, and, biding his time till Valentine’s day, sent her a valentine made up to resemble a ballot, such as is used in municipal elections. At the top of the ballot was a pen and ink picture of a house, and beneath appeared Everlin’s name opposite all the offices to be voted for, viz., rentpayer, bundle carrier, loving husband, and so on. A slip was appended asking the voter to vote the straight ticket. Whether it was the humor of it or something else is unknown; but the fact remains that Miss Collins put the matrimonial X under the house.

Tombstone [AZ] Epitaph 10 February 1918: p. 3

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil understands that 2020 is both an election year in the United States and Leap Year the world over. If those ladies eager to be married will be guided by Mrs Daffodil, she suggests that a working knowledge of parliamentary procedure is always useful in affaires de cœur. 

It is generally supposed that the idea of young girls proposing marriage in leap-year is a pleasant little fiction of the humorist; but there is evidence that sometimes the fair sex does avail itself of its quadrennial privilege. An anecdote told in England of a member of the House of Commons is a case in point. According to the raconteur who is responsible for the story, the commoner had been paying attention to a young lady for a long while, and had taken her to attend the House until she was perfectly posted in its rules. On the last day of the session, as they came out, he brought her a bouquet, saying,

“May I offer you my handful of flowers?”

She promptly replied, “I move to amend by omitting all after the word hand.”

He blushingly accepted the amendment, and they adopted it unanimously.

Northern Christian Advocate [Syracuse NY] 16 August 1893: p. 7

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

The Young Man and His Valentines: 1887

Valentine c. 1860-1880 https://collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/492719.html

[St. Valentine’s] day is observed right along now, and here in Springfield where we live, move and consequently don’t have to pay any rent, it is particularly celebrated. It’s the biggest day in the year for the largest percentage of people. I like St. Valentine’s day. I once paid $4.45 for a large, sweet-smelling affair with a heart-shaped basque and no end of flesh-colored kids, without buttons or anything on which to button, meandering around over it. I got another fellow to address the envelope. It was a girl on whose outline I was madly and passionately impaled. The other fellow was a good writer and the next day the girl accused him of sending her the valentine. He looked down in sweet confusion and said as he wiggled from side to side, “Oh, Miss Jones, who’d have thought you knew my hand-writing.”

Then the girl was sure it was him, and the next week she crocheted him a horse blanket and a lot of other fancy work, including a cute little money purse to be used as a savings bank in which his nibs was expected to put all his spare coin for missionary purposes. On  one side it had these crewel, crewel words, “Give freely,” and on the other side, “Love the giver.” The young man obeyed one of the mottoes, at least. I never in my life saw a man so stuck on himself. But I got even with him. He married the girl.

Since the sad and foregoing experience, I have rigidly adhered to the habit of slyly writing my name in one corner of every pretty and costly valentine I send. It adds to the poetry of the lovely trifle and keeps the girl’s father from kicking the necktie off of the wrong man.

I put my name once on a comic valentine which I sent to a young fellow whom I used to wake myself up at night with an alarm-clock to hate. I wanted him to know who sent it. It was a hideous caricature, got up in the most exaggerated style. It had a great mouth, like the map of somebody’s affected lung in the almanacs. It was unmistakably homely in six colors and a verse. I put my name on it and sent it to this fellow. I was wild with glee and excitement during the day, and fancied I could see him flinging himself over a four-story precipice and dashing his brains out with a three-“em” dash.

Next morning  I received a note from the recipient of the valentine. He had evidently recipped it. The note was as follows:

Springfield, O., Feb. 15, 1884.

Dear Fellow: — Photo received. Thanks so hard. But the signature was superfluous. I recognized the features as soon as I saw them. But don’t you think that part of the mouth was lost in the retouching of the negative at the expense of the naturalness of the picture.

Yours in earnest inquiry.

GUS.

P.S. I don’t speak positively about the mouth. I merely throw it out as a suggestion. I had to throw it out, as there wasn’t room enough in the house.

Once More,

Gus

The next time I met Gus, we had a chat and when we parted, he looked hurt—especially about the left eye. During the next week, Gus put in his time trying to decipher the inscription on a beef-steak, at a distance of a decimal part of an inch from his sense of sight.

When I was fourteen years old I was wildly stuck on a little girl who lived across from where we were accumulating a rent account. I determined to send her a valentine. I got a lovely one, with a beautiful vine clambering over it and a cluster of violets in the center. A sweet little cherub, attired in an intelligent look and a maxillary dimple, was peering out from between the violets, with one little fat leg trailing along behind him in the airy fashion that cupid affects. But the verse on it made me tired. It was something to the effect that when the starlight was kissing the moonlight and the evening zephyrs were exhaling a bouquet of vesper odors, then I loved her—oh, I loved her. I knew that my girl was a practical sort of a person who always split the family kindling and had to draw the family rain-water by hanging head downward in the cistern and dragging an old brass kettle along the bottom with a sound like an escaped Wagnerian overture. I knew that if I wanted to make any impression on her, I mustn’t spring any “Luna, thou art the moon” business on her, for she would simply come to the front gate and yell across to my folks to put me on ice before I got mildewed. So I made some verses entirely of my own composure and pasted them over the sentimental lollipop. This was my poetry:

Oh maid! My little speckled maid!

This is a world of trouble,

But when I see you—am I glad?

Well, I should gently bubble.

 

You are the apple of my eye,

As I have oft declared;

And I’m the apple, too, of yours,

Why then can’t we be pa(i)red?

 

Forgive me for my crime-like rhyme,

And should we ever part,

Dost know fair maid, what restest next

My madly palping heart?

I didn’t see anything of my girl for four days and I had concluded she had fallen into the cistern and broken her pledge. But on the fifth day she came sneaking across the street, shoved something under the front door, rang the bell, and then skinned back again as tight as she could go. On the way she stepped on her left ankle with her right foot and brushed away a mud-puddle in the road, but I laid it to excitement. My heart beat wildly as I heard my big brother go to the door, and present he returned with an envelope in his hand and a broad grin bordering the hair on his head. My brother had the broadest grin I ever stood beside and examined. He handed me an envelope. It was dog-eared and finger-marked. I tore it open. Inside was a half sheet of paper, with the following written on it in red ink:

You talk as though you were a chump,

Or took me for a flirt:

I guess the thing that’s next your heart

Must be your undershirt.

I let this girl alone after this and turned my affections elsewhere. I always felt hard toward the family, and as soon as I grew up and went to work for a newspaper I took my revenge out on her brother. I saw him washing his neck one day, and he got so much soil off of it that I wrote the item up and put it under the head of real estate transfers. He must have appreciated this delicate piece of satire, for I never knew him to repeat the operation.

There are somethings in a person’s life which ought not to be made fun of, and I deeply deplore the habit of sending comic valentines. I admit that the temptation is strong, but it ought to be resisted. I knew a man who had a mother-in-law on his wife’s side of the house, who had a cast of features that would stop the progress of time on a sun-dial when she looked at it. She was so ugly that her son-in-law used to keep a jar of cucumbers pickled by setting her photo next to it. Yet he did not go and get a horrible thing in four and five colors with a satirical verse, and send it to his mother-in-law. Not he. He simply sent her one of her own tintypes. She had him arrested. She then expired to slow curtain, soft music, and plaid fire.

Any young man of good address ought to have no trouble in having plenty of pretty valentines sent him. Mine is care REPUBLIC office. But any one who intends sending me comic ones will please address them to Box ¾, New Zealand.

CABRIOLET.

Springfield [OH] Daily Republic 29 January 1887: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: The “comic” or “vinegar” valentine was the bane of St Valentine’s Day. The receipt of one of these horrors might cause tears, loving hearts torn asunder, ruptured engagements, horse-whippings, and even worse violence.  Still, unkind as it was, Mrs Daffodil feels that the verse hand-delivered by “the little speckled maid,” equitably summed up the narrator’s “chump” tendencies. One wonders what would have been the outcome had he not called her “speckled” (that deadly insult to the charmingly freckled complexion!) and had left the Valentine versifying to trained professionals.

To be Relentlessly Informative, the puzzling reference to “plaid fire,” refers to melodramatic theatrical conventions as in this passage from an 1866 edition of “Fun,” satirically describing a play: “Dance by all the characters, blue fire, green fire, red fire, plaid fire, grand transformation scene, and rhymed tags…”

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

The Valentine Charm Party: 1911

VALENTINE CHARMS

A recently engaged girl gave a charming valentine charm party to her young girl friends. The invitations were made of water-color paper, and were in the form of tiny padlocks, with a dainty key attached. A painted Cupid was on one side and the following words filled the other: “If thou wouldst know the secrets and charms of love which St. Valentine keeps under lock and key, meet at the mystic board at 29 Chestnut St., at eight o’clock, on February fourteenth.” After a session of girlish chatter, and a social game or two of “Hearts,” the guests were taken to the dining-room, which was hung with many-colored dangling hearts. Heart-shaped ices, “kisses,” “lover’s delight,” etc., were served. Garlands of vines, rosebuds and hearts trailed from the chandelier over the white cloth. The centerpiece was a mammoth crimson rose made of crape paper surrounded by ferns, and its heart contained as many petals as there were guests. Each petal was fastened to a white satin ribbon which led to each place. After the plates had been removed, the guests remained at table and the charms began, when each guest gently drew her streamer and its petal. The petal contained her fortune. The heart of the rose being drawn away disclosed a tiny Cupid in a white satin bride’s slipper. The slipper was filled with crape-paper rose leaves of various colors. Each guest received three leaves on which she wrote a lover’s name (a different lover for each leaf). and dropped them into her individual bowl of water. The first to come up was to be her future husband. On each place-card was found five bay leaves, a tiny crimson candle, two matches and a pencil. Then tiny cups of tea were brought in. The maidens wrote their wishes on the bay-leaves, lighted the candles and burned the leaves, so that the ashes fell into the tea. At a given signal the tea, ashes and all, was consumed, and thus St. Valentine’s help was insured for the gratification of the wishes. Each guest then received an egg, on the shell of which was written the name of her best love, with indelible ink. The eggs were boiled and each lassie claimed her egg. Then the yolks were removed and salt put in its place. The girls bravely ate the eggs, salt and all, while their wishes were made. If they retired without taking a drink of water, the person of whom they dreamed was to be lord of the future, and the wish would come true. The favors for the occasion were satin sachets with a garland of rosebuds and lovers’ knots painted on the surface. A long-stemmed crimson rose was pinned to it. In the heart of each rose was a tiny gilt heart with a quaint valentine verse on it.

-Florence Bernard.

The Delineator, Volume 77, February 1911: p. 157

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  What dainty accessories as a backdrop to the performance of ancient (and to be perfectly frank, rank) superstitions!  Mrs Daffodil has written before about the Valentines’ rites and customs of yore in Holly Boys, Ivy Girls, Eggs, and Billets. The bay leaves were more usually pinned to the young lady’s pillows, but one supposes there are fads in love charms as well as Valentines.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

A Deadly Valentine: 1896

A Deadly Valentine

W.J. Lampton

The colonel had received a valentine, and as he looked it over and read its pretty verses he handed it to the writer.

“From a lady?” smiled the writer.

“Yes, from my wife. She never forgets,” and the colonel’s face wore the look of a sweetheart’s.

“Surely,” said the writer, “no better valentine could be than that.”

The colonel took it again and held it in his hand tenderly

“When she and I were married,” he began, in a reminiscent way, “we went to a post in the far west, where as a lieutenant, that was thirty years ago, I was stationed. Not far away was a town of the class not uncommon at that time, and chief among its well-known characters and prominent citizens was a man known as ‘Bug’ Thornton. He was a bad man and the barkeeper in the leading hotel of the town. The landlord of the hotel had a daughter of twenty-five or thereabouts, who was by odds the best-looking woman in town and a very nice girl, barring the fact that she was in love with Thornton.

“At first he was flattered by the favor in which he stood with the young woman, but her attentions in a few months wearied him, and he made her wildly jealous by devoting himself to the cashier of the Golden Lion restaurant, a young woman who owned a half interest in the business and was considered a good catch. This occurred about valentine season, and when the day came around the landlord’s daughter received a comic valentine, setting forth those things do, the delightful attractiveness of a jealous woman. The accompanying verse was more galling than the picture, and the girl was frenzied by it.

“It was no unusual matter for Bug Thornton to have a scrap once or twice a day with the rough characters who frequented his saloon, and every now and then he added a feature to the bill by shooting somebody or getting a shot himself, though, up to that time, escaping with slight wounds. Late in the afternoon of St. Valentine’s day he tried to put a gang of miners out of his place, and the whole crowd surged out into the street in front of the hotel. There the shooting began. And it lasted long enough for those not interested to get into what shelter first presented itself.

“I ran into the hotel, and as I did so, I noticed, Mollie, the landlord’s daughter, sitting by a window, with the shutters half-closed, looking at the fight. When it was over three men were dead on the ground and the others had disappeared. One of the men was Thornton, and, as I knew him, I ran to him first and lifted him up to see how badly he was hurt. As I raised him up with my arm under his back a bullet fell from his coat into my hand. I thrust it into my pocket without thinking, and helped carrying him into the house. Of course, the town was considerably excited over three killings at one time, and as all sorts of rumors were flying about I hurried to the post to let my wife know I was all right. Young husbands, you know, think first of their wives. When I found her and told her the story she became very nervous and asked about Mollie. I told her I had seen the girl at the window during the fight, and that made her worse.

“Then I became provoked and said Mollie hadn’t anything to do with it. Then my wife told me that she had seen Mollie at noon, and she had told her she was going to send Bug Thornton a valentine he would not forget, and that very day, too. That night I went back to the hotel and found that Thornton had received a bullet in the arm and one in the thigh, but the one which had done for him had gone square through his heart. I also found Mollie in a raving delirium. With all this going on around me, there wasn’t any wonder that I should forget the bullet I had put in my pocket, and there’s no telling when I would have remember it if it had not dropped on the floor that night when I took off my coat to go to bed.

“My wife picked it up and asked me what it was. Then I remembered, and quietly took it from her without saying. She insisted, and as she showed signs of hysteria about it, I told her it was the bullet that had killed Bug Thornton. She grabbed it from me, held it close to the light and then collapsed in a dead faint. She became conscious in half an hour or so, but I had to sit up all night with her, and the post surgeon was also in attendance until nearly daylight. By daylight things were quieter, and I took a look at the bullet. It was a .44 long and was not much roughened by the deadly work it had done. As I turned it over in my  hand, thinking what a fatal effect so small a bit of lead could have, I notice da mark on it, and taking it out where I could see better I found on it, scratched deep with a large needle, evidently, one word and part of another: ‘My Valen–.’ That told a dreadful story and explained my wife’s hysteria.

“What to do now I scarcely knew. Mollie had shot Bug Thornton, that was circumstantially proved by my wife’s testimony and the words on the bullet, but no one knew it save myself and wife. No one knew so much as that I had the bullet, except my wife. We had both known Mollie and respected her, and it seemed to be something awful to give her over to the law when it was so easy to let it all go to the credit of the miners in the night. After an hour’s thinking I was so near hysteria myself that I went to the doctor for something to quiet my nerves.

“At 9 o’clock I started into the town, leaving my wife asleep under the influence of opiates, and half way there I met a messenger coming for my wife to come to the hotel, as Mollie had shot herself and was dying. I turned the messenger back and hurried on to the hotel. When I reached her room she was dead, and near her on a table lay a .44-caliber revolver. It was the same one that had sent Bug Thornton his fatal valentine, but I didn’t go around looking for any more bullets. I had already found one too many.

“It was a positive relief to my wife when I told her as carefully as I could that Mollie was dead, and we talked it all over, coming to the conclusion that the girl had seated herself at the window, half concealed, with the object of killing Thornton when he came out to go to his supper, and had marked the bullet in the strange freak of a crazy woman. That her shot had been so true was a piece of chance or luck, or retribution; whatever you may call it, although she was not unskilled in the use of firearms. None the less was it chance that the fight in the street should have taken place at the time it did?”

“What did you do with the bullet?” inquired the writer.

“Dropped it into Mollie’s coffin when my wife and I went to see her for the last time. And,” concluded the colonel, “neither of us ever told our story of the tragedy until five years ago, when the last member of Mollie’s family died and was buried in the same graveyard where the bodies of Mollie and Bug Thornton lie moldering in the clay.”

Evening Star [Washington DC] 15 February 1896: p. 14

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: “Comic” or “vinegar” valentines were the bane of the holiday. Although we may be baffled as to why a caricature and an insult should deserve any notice whatsoever, despairing lovers often took these vile missives entirely too much to heart.  That Schadenfreude-ish person over at Haunted Ohio has written of some of the tragedies that ensued in “The St. Valentine’s Day Massacres,” and “My Fatal Valentine.” Mrs Daffodil urges any of her readers who suffer unrequited love to have a trusted friend open your Valentine’s Day post and burn any unpleasant communications.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

The Dress-Maker’s Lover: 1879

Cupid needlecase or etui c. 1759-69 http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O180909/etui-or-bodkin-chelsea-porcelain-factory/

The Dress-Maker’s Lover.

Cupid is at work again in our community, and this time he has rammed an arrow right through the swain, but it seems has only tickled the gay young dress-maker a little with the feathered end of his dart. The following poem written by the victim tells the whole story:

Only this one dear boon I ask,

That you will give me your a dress,

That in your smiles I yet may basque,

And gain new life at each caress.

 

The blushes mantle on your cheeks;

Deny me not, it’s dread foulard;

I’ve pressed my suit for days and weeks,

And sent you letters by the yard

 

Oft at your feet I’ve knelt and braid,

But you have cut me short and square;

It lace with you, but I’m a frayed

You will not make up to me fair.

 

It’s sashy pale has grown my face,

Though all things look most navy blue;

I’ll collar mine, or I will face

Whatever evils may ecru.

The State Rights Democrat [Albany, OR] 19 September 1879: p. 3

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  A Valentine’s effusion of the most cutting pattern…. It is obvious that the speaker considers himself incom-pleat without his be-stitching companion. Mrs Daffodil feels that he is waist-ing his time. A man who took such liberties with the language would be ill-suited to matrimony and without stay-ing power. He might wish to so-lace himself with Mr Hugh Rowley’s jokes:

Why is love like Irish poplin?

Because it’s half stuff.

Why is a deceptive woman like a seamstress?

Because she is not what she seams!

Puniana, Hugh Rowley, 1867: p. 213-4

Mrs Daffodil wishes her readers the happiness of loving and being loved on this Valentine’s Day.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Dr Graham’s Whirl-wind Courtship: 1850s

First Class, The Meeting–And At First Meeting, Loved, Abraham Solomon, 1855

A Very Short Courtship

Dr. Graham having passed a very creditable examination before the Army Medical Board, was commissioned an assistant surgeon in the United States army in 18__, and ordered to report for duty to the commanding officer at Fort M’Kavett, Texas.

There were no railroads In the western country at that time and the usual way of getting to Texas was by the Mississippi river to New Orleans, and then crossing the Gulf to stage It up through the State.

Dr. Graham was very desirous of examining the western country mineralogically, so applied and received permission from the War Department to go by way of Arkansas and the Indian Territory to his post.

On his arrival at St. Louis he shipped the greater part of his baggage by way of the river, and taking only what he could carry on horseback, started on his journey.

While in St. Louis, at the Planter’s Hotel, he formed the acquaintance of a gentleman, who, learning where he was going, gave him a letter of introduction to his brother, who was a farmer living on his route to Arkansas.

It is not necessary for us to follow him on his road, or tell what discoveries he made in the interest of science; sufficient it is that one day, toward dusk, he reached the house of the gentleman to whom he had the letter, and dismounted, knocked at the door and presented his letter to the judge (even in those days every one was a judge in Arkansas), who would not have needed it to have accorded him an open-handed welcome; for travelers were a God-send and news was as much sought after then as now.

After a short visit, he proposed to go on to the next town, about four miles off, where he intended to put up for the night. The judge would not listen to his leaving, and was so cordial in his desire for him to stay that he would have been rude not to have done so.

The judge, after directing one of the servants to attend to his horse, invited him into the dining room, where he was introduced to the wife and daughter of his host, and also to a substantial western supper, to which he did ample justice.

After supper they adjourned to the parlor, and he entertained his new-made friends with the latest news from the outside world. The judge brewed some stiff whisky punch, which Graham, socially inclined, imbibed quite freely. The old couple retired, and left their daughter to entertain him; and whether it was the punch, or what, at all events he made hot love to her, and finally asked her to be his wife and go to Texas with him, to which she consented. She being very unsophisticated and innocent, took everything he said in downright earnest, and with her it was a case of “love at first sight.”

But I am anticipating. During the night our friend, the doctor, woke up, and remembered what he had said, and it worried him; but he said to himself, after emptying his water pitcher:

“Never mind, I’ll make it all right in the morning. I must have made a fool of myself. She’s lovely, but what must  she not think of me!” and rolled over and went to sleep again.

Morning came, and upon his going to the parlor, he found the young lady alone, for which he blessed his lucky stars, and was just about to make an apology, when she said:

“I told mamma, and she said it was all right,” at the same time giving him a kiss which nearly took his breath away. “Papa is going to town this morning, dear, and you ride in with him and talk it over; but he won’t object, I know.”

“But, my dear miss, I was very foolish, and—“

“No, indeed; you were all right.”

“Well, I will go to my post, and return for you, for I must go on at once.’

“No, I can go with you.”

“You won’t have the time.”

“Oh, yes, I will. Papa will fix that. It would be such an expense for you to come back all the way here.”

“But I have no way of taking you.”

“I have thought of that; that does not make any difference. Father will give us a team.”

With nearly tears in his eyes he went in to breakfast, to which at that moment both were summoned; but, alas! appetite he had none. It was not that she was not pretty and nice; but he thought what a confounded fool she must be not to see that he wanted to get out of it. But it was no use. When the judge started for town, Dr. Graham was sitting beside him. The judge saved him the trouble of broaching the subject by starting it himself:

“I always, young man, give Nell her own way; so it is all right; you need not say a word.”

“But I’ve got to go on to-day.”

The old judge turned his eyes toward him. He had an Arkansas bowie in each, and one of those double-barrel shot-gun looks as he said:

“You ain’t trying to get out of it, are you?”

The doctor, taking in the situation, said, promptly, all hope being gone:

“No, sir.”

“That’s right. I will fix everything for you; give you that black team of mine, and a light wagon to carry your wife’s things.” (here the doctor shuddered) “and a thousand as a starter. You can be married to-night, and leave early in the morning. That will suit, won’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Graham, faintly. But on the judge turning toward him, he said, “yes, sir, certainly.”

“After you get fixed at your post I’ll come down and pay you a visit. I have been thinking about selling out and moving to Texas for some time; it’s getting crowded here, and things are a-moving as slow as ‘lasses in wintertime.”

Things were arranged as the old judge said. The marriage took place, and the army received an addition to its ladies in the person of the Arkansas judge’s daughter, and Dr. Graham has never regretted the obduracy of his father-in-law, or the amiable simplicity of his wife.

Marin [CA] Journal 27 March 1879: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Perhaps Mrs Daffodil wrongs young Mrs Graham, but “unsophisticated” and “amiable simplicity” are not the adjectives she would have selected.  A young lady whose Papa always gave her her own way was unlikely to have been satisfied with life on a molasses-slow Arkansas farm. She must have dreamed of the day that a dashing, sun-bronzed Army officer would come to call and partake of her father’s fatal punch. The notion of a carefully reared young lady being left to entertain a gentleman on her own also suggests a certain familial calculation.  Mrs Daffodil, for one horrified moment, thought she was witnessing the opening lines of a risque “farmer’s daughter” anecdote….  But the “hot love” was, we are assured by the context and the fact that the Marin Journal was a family newspaper, probably no more than an innocent spot of waist-encircling or tiny-hand-pressing. It is rather a relief to learn that it all worked out so well. Young ladies who are used to their own way often do not take kindly to martial or marital discipline. But one suspects that Nell was far from being a “confounded fool.”

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

A Valentine’s Adventure as told by a Letter Box: 1889

 The Queer Adventures of a Valentine: AS TOLD BY A LETTER-BOX.
 BY ELIZABETH PHIPPS TRAIN.

There is a popular and erroneous impression in general acceptance among people, that we, conglomerate atoms of inanimate nature, are, because of our passivity, senseless and uncomprehending. It is a mistake, and yet I care so little to prove our equality, in this respect, with human beings, that, were it not that I feel convinced of my own power to tell a tale superior in every respect to the quantity of unreadable trash in the shape of MSS. that is confided to my care, I should prefer to rust into my grave, rather than force myself into notoriety by demonstrating the fact by actual and incontrovertible evidence.

The story which I am about to relate extends over the space of a year, and embraces two fetes of St. Valentine. It is only a true little tale of ordinary human passions—love, jealousy, and hatred—not a powerful, thrilling tragedy with great dramatic climaxes and blood-curdling situations and dénouements, such as I read sometimes in the still watches of the night, before the critical eye of the professional reader scans them with merciless severity; but a short story of certain events in the lives of a few obscure, unknown individuals which have come under my personal observation.

It was a raw, gusty afternoon in February, the 13th day of the month, as I knew from the mass of embossed envelopes of all sizes and descriptions which had been shoved down my throat during the day. My jaws positively ached from incessant opening and shutting, and even my capacious abdomen was constantly filled to repletion, notwithstanding the kind and regular efforts of my friend, the collector, to lighten my load. The last deposit had been a box of such dimensions that, in the attempt to squeeze it into my weary mouth, the sender had nearly suffocated me, and I was sick and tired of the whole nonsensical business. The street lamps were being lighted, and the approach of night was heralded by the swift on-coming of the grey shadows of her outriders. The bare, gaunt branches of the leafless trees bent and bowed low in homage to the advent of the ebon lady, while aloft, in the dusky heavens, the faint light of a silver crescent and tiny, twinkling points of brilliancy showed that not on earth alone was honor being done her sable majesty.

I was tired to death, as I say, and was about closing my eyes, hoping that I might catch a few winks, when I heard a soft patter of steps gradually slackening until they finally came to a standstill by my side. I opened one eye slowly, and then, being rather pleased and conciliated by the prospect, unclosed the other. Before me stood, in evident hesitation, a slender, delicate maiden of perhaps eighteen years, poorly clad, but of a sweet, fair countenance, balancing, undecidedly in her hands, an envelope of the description above alluded to. There were many emotions legible on the shy, young face; a tender perplexity in the gentle blue eyes, doubt and timidity in the quiver of the pretty, curved lips, and embarrassment in the delicate flush on the transparent skin. There was apparent indecision in the action of the shabbily gloved hands which now raised the missive to my eager lips and anon drew it tantalizingly away. Evidently she could not quite make up her mind to taking the irrevocable step, and I was becoming quite fearful lest I should lose the opportunity which I desired of discovering to whom and of what nature this valentine might be, when my hopes were quite dashed by an incident which took place.

Down a side street came the clatter, clatter of a pair of high heels, a sound which, in her abstraction, the young girl failed to notice until it had almost ceased, when a loud voice proceeding from the owner of the noisy articles startled her out of her reverie.

“Hello, Annie! cold, isn’t it? Going my way or waiting for Paul Benson, eh?”

The words were accompanied by a significant wink and chuckle which not even the florid beauty of big black eyes, full, red lips and glowing cheeks could render other than coarse and vulgar. The other shrank and lost the dainty flush of embarrassment in a still, white heat of anger, and the contrast between the two girls was that of the vivid full-blown peony and the quivering mimosa.

“Neither the one nor the other, Miss Hardy,” she said, in a low, cold tone. “My way is entirely the opposite of yours. Good night,” and, slipping the missive quickly into her pocket, she passed on.

But the swiftness of her action was yet too slow for the eyes that watched her, and knowing the vacillating character of woman’s nature perhaps better than Florence Hardy, after deliberating a moment, moved into the shadow of a projecting door-way and waited. The receding figure of the girl soon diminished its swift pace, which grew slower and slower until it became a mere saunter which, after a few halting steps, stopped entirely. Evidently the anger aroused by the taunting words of the girl named Hardy had been dissipated by a more potent emotion and the temptation to send the dainty, white messenger on its way had overcome her fear of observation, for, turning suddenly, she walked swiftly back, opened my mouth with a soft but determined movement, thrust in the valentine without a moment’s hesitation and moved away.

Oh, how I longed for a voice, no matter how feeble a quality, to whisper in the small shell-like ear a warning that the black, lustrous eyes of her enemy were still watching her from the concealing door-way: I could do nothing to aid in this little romance, of whose secrets I was being made custodian, but resolved to satisfy my curiosity by a peep into the enwreathed and flower-decorated envelope which was bearing a message of love from the sweet, pure heart of the gentle maiden to some unknown and perhaps careless lover. Peering, by virtue of the privilege which I enjoy, through the cheap, thin paper of the cover, I saw— not one of the gaudy, high-colored effusions which are, on these fêtes, Cupid’ s stock in trade—but a small, square sheet of paper across one corner of which was tied with virginal ribbon a fragrant, lovely cluster of deep purple violets, while beneath, in a slender, girlish handwriting, were the following verses:
Hast ever sought a violet, love,
Deep in the forest’s heart?
Hast ever watched the tiny thing
Thus shyly growing apart?

Hast ever plucked a violet, love,
And laid it on thy breast?
Dost know the weight of perfume rare
By which its heart’s opprest?

So, like the violet in the wood,
Has grown this love of mine
For thee; I’d share its fragrance with
My faithful Valentine!

I was so interested in reading these lines that I forgot to notice the movements of the girl in the doorway, and soon the appearance of the collector warned me that I had been none too quick in mastering the contents of the envelope. He was a good-looking, jovial young fellow, with an eye to a pretty girl—as I had frequently remarked—as he pursued his duties and, while he unlocked the door of my heart, he whistled a merry tune which was broken abruptly as a loud, familiar voice accosted him:—

“Here, Mr. Jennings, wait a moment. I’ve been waiting for you the best part of an hour.”

“Good evening, Miss Hardy! What can I do for you? Got a valentine too big for the box, for your best man, and want me to put it in here?” motioning to the huge, striped ticking sack which lay on the pavement at his feet.

“No, not exactly. If I was going to send a valentine to my best man, I wouldn’t send it much further on,” with a bold, coquettish glance from the black eyes which made the young fellow color with pleasure. ‘The truth is, I want you to do me a favor. It’s rather against your rule, I guess, but twon’t do any harm, as it’s my own property that I want to get back again, and no one will be the wiser. You see”—coming quite close to him and laying a large, well-shaped and gloved hand on his arm—”I dropped a valentine into that box, an hour ago, to one of my old beaux and, come to think it over, I guess there ain’t much use in keepin’ on an old affair like that, when my feelings are all for someonè else, so I want you to get it back again. You’ll give it to me, won’t you?”

There was an eagerness in her tones which should have warned him that some deeper designs lay behind her apparently frivolous desire; and oh, how I yearned for a voice that I might testify to her base purpose! But alas! “The woman tempted me and I did eat.” Soon the dainty white envelope with its address of

“Mr. Paul Benson,

Care Messrs. Harding and Cole.

New York City.”

lay in the out-stretched hand, a few tenderly intoned thanks and Ralph Jennings’ lapse in duty had brought suffering and sorrow to one young heart, anger and wounded vanity to another, and the gratification of an evil desire to a third. By just such a trifling misdemeanor was the whole Pandora box let loose upon the world.

The next morning I was awakened early by the pressure of a hand upon my mouth, and, being very sensitive to personal influences, I felt such a shudder of repulsion at the touch, that I opened my eyes and found that the person who had so affected me was no other than the girl called Hardy. Now was my time for retaliation, and, quick as a thought, I brought my upper lip down upon her fingers with such a force that she gave a little scream, and muttering, “that vile box,” turned away. I glanced at the letter she had forced down my unwilling throat, and, to my great surprise, found the envelope the same as that she had abstracted the evening before, save for the addition of two small initials in the corner—A.C.

Determined to see if, indeed, the girl had repented of her evil act during the night, I peeped through the cover to discover if the original contents remained intact. Alas! what a change had been wrought. Instead of the dainty bunch of violets and the tender little plea for love, a coarse, common sheet of paper bore one of the vile caricatures, with its miserable attempt at versification, commonly known as “comic valentines.” Now I divined the creature’s wicked intentions, and did my best to foil it by contracting my person so that the ugly imposture fell down into my remotest corner. My efforts were in vain, however, for when the collector again made his rounds, he gathered it in with the others, and I was left, lonely and desolate, to bemoan its wretched transformation.

Days and weeks passed by, and the miserable trick played upon this little romancer so disgusted me with human nature that I quite lost my interest in reading the letters confided to my care. Often I saw the young girl called Annie pass and repass my house, and with pain and sorrow I watched the increasing lassitude and fragility of the slim, girlish frame. She probably worked in some shop, or perhaps sewed for her living— the latter I rather think, for I remember that she often carried a bundle, as of work. It was some weeks before I overcame my contempt of humanity sufficiently to care to peruse its affairs, but finally I resumed my interest in my old amusement, and one day, in May, was again made the recipient of a letter of Miss Hardy’s. Her already exhuberant manner had gained an. added boldness, and she bounced across the street and accomplished her errand with a swaggering gait and insolent air that were in great contrast to the languid pace and shy demeanor of her quiet, gentle little rival.

Ah! What a dreadful thing is this lack of speech, when one is a mute witness of wrong and evil doing! As I read the notice addressed in a coarse, round hand. to Annie Chase, I felt what a curse my dumbness had been in hindering me from righting, before it was too late, the wrong which had been committed. This was the announcement on the newspaper clipping which was on its way to the poor young sewing girl:

“Hardy-Benson. In New York City, April 19th, by Rev. Samuel Small, Florence Hardy to Paul Benson. All of N.Y.”

For a week she did not appear at all, and then, one morning, I saw her coming. Was it she, or was it her ghost , I wondered, that approached in the early morning sunshine? I could see the golden nimbus about her fair white face afar off, before I could distinguish the features or discover the terrible change in the countenance. I had thought her fading so fast that nothing could hasten the alteration; but one glance showed me the wide difference between even a feeble hope and utter despair. So wan, so white and spirit-like was the gentle, pitiful face, that I wondered there was strength sufficient in the fragile form to support it.

One night, in June, I saw the man whom she loved. It was a very warm—almost a hot—night, and she was toiling wearily up the street with a huge bundle in her arms, when, just under the light from the lamp above, she came face to face with a tall, fine-looking fellow of, perhaps, twenty-five years. The suddenness of the encounter betrayed her. She gave a soft, pitiful little cry, “Paul!” and then, her strength forsaking her, leaned against my iron frame for support. I could feel the painful quivering of the slight body, the delicacy and attenuation of the slender limbs—and he! Ah, you would have pitied him, too! the strong, stalwart young fellow, as he gazed from the height of his splendid manhood down upon the transparent beauty of the face, whose terrible alterations were so marked under the brilliant light of the lamp.

“Annie!” he cried, “My God! Annie!”—incredulously, as if he could scarce believe the evidence of his own senses, and then, as if moved by an irresistible impulse, he stooped suddenly and gathered her close to him, while, as he gazed hungrily at the altered face, I heard him mutter, “Damn her, damn her!”

For a moment she lay passively in his arms, and then her strength came back to her. She drew herself hurriedly away ere his lips had done dishonor to her pure, white cheek, and, as he whispered, “I know all, now, Annie, all; God forgive me!” she flashed one look upon him from the depths of her beautiful eyes—a look which was a blending of reproach, entreaty, forgiveness, but above all of enduring love—and fled into the darkness. This was almost the last time I ever saw her. Whether she was too ill to leave her home, or whether, fearing another similar meeting, she purposely avoided this street, I know not; but for a long, long time I heard nothing of her.

Business grows slack in the summer. People are out of town, and my burden of letters is considerably diminished. I care little to read the uninteresting epistles, made up of almost nothing, which are sent from the stay at-homes to their more fortunate absent friends. There is a stagnation of news in the hot season, too, which invests every item and accident with a fictitious value, and the cry of the newsboy dwells with undue stress upon events which, at another and busier season, he would deem quite unworthy of his notice. So it was that one hot day in August these peripatetic little venders made the air vibrate with one oft-repeated and almost unintelligible cry of—

“Ter—rible ax-dent-in a’n’ Albany hotel—woman ‘lopes from her home in N’York—the runaway couple meet with a ter-r-ible death in an elevator!”

I paid little heed to the cry until, as my old friend, the collector, stopped beside me, I heard him say to a man near by:

“Say, Jim, that’s a fearful thing about Florence Hardy.”

“What?” said the man thus addressed.

“Why, haven’t you heard? She ran away from Paul Benson with a man from Albany; they went to a hotel there, and going up in the elevator the thing gave way, and they fell from the fourth story. Fearful thing! I used to like the girl pretty well myself, at one time, but I guess she led poor Benson a life.” And the two men moved away together, leaving me horror-struck at this new event in the little drama to which I had been a sort of god-father.

Often after this I saw Paul Benson. I think he must have moved into my neighborhood, for he frequently stopped and put a letter into my mouth, addressed, evidently, to his parents, in a distant New England town, and, as I read these honest, manly epistles, I felt convinced that the writer was worthy of the love which Annie Chase had bestowed upon him. I noticed every day an increasing firmness in his tread and a more upright, noble carriage of the head and shoulders, as if a weight had been lifted therefrom. But of Annie Chase never a glimpse or a word. I could not tell whether she was living still or whether the gentle spirit had fled from too great a burden of suffering.

At last came round the 13th of February again; and again the aproaching fête was made evident to me by the superabundant accumulation of mail-matter in my interior. The eve of St. Valentine was this year quite different to that of the past. No wind howled dismally amid the bare branches; no fierce, cold blasts lay in wait about the corners to chill and buffet the wayfarer; to-night all was still and quiet, so still that every footstep was audible even at a great distance. I was becoming quite a connoisseur in footsteps and could foretell the approach of my regular contributors before they came into my range of vision. Suddenly I heard a firm, manly tread that sounded very familiar. I had guessed aright, for it was Paul Benson, indeed, who came swiftly onward in the silent night. He stopped beside me and searched for a minute in his pocket, taking therefrom a white something which he held a moment in his hands, then, glancing steadily around, he lifted it slowly to his lips and consigned it to my care. Eagerly I scanned the name it bore: “Miss Annie Chase.” She was then alive! I glanced through the paper and what did I behold! The identical valentine with its bunch of violets—faded and scentless now—and the tender little sentiment beneath which had been supplemented by an addition in a firm, masculine hand:
I thought to pluck a violet sweet,
But ere my tender clasp
Had seized the prize, it palsied grew
From the poisonous sting of an asp.

Again I’d pluck a violet sweet,
Say, has that love of thine,
Like these, thy emblems, faded quite?
Or, am I still thy valentine?

Now all this happened more than two years ago, and there has never come a reply to that valentine, neither have there been any more letters deposited within me from which I could learn the sequel of this little romance; but a week ago I saw coming slowly up the street two familiar figures, one of which pushed before it a well-blanketed perambulator in which a tiny morsel of humanity was sleeping. They were the figures of a man and woman; the former I easily recognized, but the face of the latter was so radiant and happy that in its new and unfamiliar expression I had some difficulty in tracing the sad and gentle beauty of Annie Chase.

Godey’s Lady’s Book: February 1889

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Ah, that fatal fascinator:  “A man from Albany…”  We could not help but read the tell-tale adjectives that presaged the fall of that “full-blown peony.” “florid,” “coarse, “vulgar.”  And, frankly, anything might be expected of one who used her feminine wiles to lure an innocent postman from the Path of Duty.

But, really, Mrs Daffodil (who has read entirely too many Valentine’s pot-boilers) has lost all patience with young men who are so lacking in confidence (despite their “firm, manly” ways) that they not only throw over the girl of their heart after ostensibly receiving a rude Valentine from said Beloved, but do not even have the nerve to inquire politely if there had been some mistake at the central sorting office.  Instead, they rush off and marry someone entirely unsuitable, furnishing plot tension, and delaying the happy ending (if happy ending there is) for several pages. Paul Benson was fortunate that his Annie did not go into a Fatal Decline on hearing the news of his marriage. Personally, Mrs Daffodil would have liked to have seen her cut him in the street for his foolishness. But that would have been a waste of a florid villainess and the chatty, sentient, and sentimental post-box.

 

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Modern Valentine Flowers: 1911

A violet valentine, courtesy of The Graphics Fairy. http://thegraphicsfairy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Victorian-Image-Violets-GraphicsFairy.jpg

Costly Flower Valentines

No one welcomes St. Valentine’s day more heartily than the florists unless it is the candy dealers. The modern valentine is a far cry from the lace paper and cardboard affair. Also it costs a lot more than the old-fashioned sort. The old time valentine was often a serious proposition—so serious that the sender never dreamed of inclosing his card, knowing that the recipient would have no trouble at all in guessing where it came from. The average young man sent one a year—that is, if he sent any at all. The modern way is different. Oftener than not the donor’s card goes along with the valentine, and if a leading florist is to be believed one young man will send half a dozen floral valentines.

This is speaking generally, of course. There are exceptions, as, for instance, a young man who the other day placed an order with a florist to be delivered to a certain young woman on St. Valentine’s morning by 8 o’clock. He was particular about the hour, wanting to be first in the field, he said. His valentine was to be of violets made into a heart-shaped design ten inches at its widest part, pierced with a slender dagger of solid gold bought at a leading jeweler’s. This was to be inclosed in a pure white satin paper box, tied with four-inch wide violet satin ribbon. The girl who didn’t like that valentine would be hard to please, the florist admitted, even though the donor’s card did go along.

Carved amethyst violet brooch http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/23504/lot/239/?category=list&length=10&page=25

 

Violets for the Girl

Violets, he said, are a popular valentine for the reason that they are a popular corsage decoration. They mean faithfulness, and it is easy to form them into a heart-shaped bunch. In one case instead of sending the usual long violet pin with the flowers, the florist put in a pin supplied by the customer, made of silver, topped with an enamelled Cupid.

“Corsages are in the lead for valentines, next come boxes of cut flowers, preferably roses, next fancy pieces combining flowers and china or silver or gold—the latter, though, usually going to older women,” said the florist.

“Some young men take the trouble to find out a girl’s pet flower and won’t take anything else. A 10-inch across bunch of lilies of the valley is ordered for one young lady and we have orders for gardenia, camellia, and orchid valentines made up in corsage size.

Pink carnations are the favorites of one young woman who will get two dozen of the finest we can send as a valentine.

“White lilacs are ordered for the valentine of a woman who is devoted to this flower, which is not easy to get at this season. I have the privilege of mixing white and pink lilacs if I can’t get really fine white ones.”

One of the most costly valentines ordered at this store is destined for a widow. This is made of the finest specimens of orchids, the sort shading from pink to lilac. It is a three-story affair, standing when finished about three feet high. The lowest round contains two gilded wicker oval baskets, between which rises a tall gilded rod adorned with two oblong gilded vases one above the other. Baskets and vases are lined with zinc and will hold water. When sent each receptacle will be filled with orchids and orchids will drop from one to the other, practically covering the whole frame.

Another orchid valentine is of the same order, but smaller, consisting of one oval basket with a handle following its widest part, and which covered with orchids gives the basket a two-story look.

China cupid in gondola Bonhams.com

Pink Roses Final.

“Valentines of silver gold or china receptacles filled with flowers did not originate with florists,” a Washington flower dealer said. “I don’t mean large pieces, but dainty, fine, often costly vases and small jardinières which may be used simply as art objects. One of these, in the shape of a gondola, a bunch of cupids sitting in the prow, the whole thing not more than nine inches long, represents a valuable kind of porcelain. I understand, and the article is almost a work of art. This, filled with violets, goes to a lady for a valentine. A silver box with a hinged cover, about 8 by 5 inches and 5 inches deep, was brought in last year to be fixed up with violets for a valentine. It was intended for a jewel box, I believe.

“All sorts of vases in all sorts of shapes are utilized to carry the flower valentine, some of them quite tall and not costly; others smaller and costing a stiff price. These, as a rule, go to older women. When fancy flower pieces are sent to young women the foundation is usually of fancy straw or wood.

“When a man comes in and orders a certain kind of roses and a good many of them sent to a young woman as a valentine I generally take a good look at him, for that sort of order oftener than most others indicates something really doing in the sentiment line. At other seasons to send roses to a girl doesn’t mean nearly so much as when they are sent on St. Valentine’s day. Roses by common consent mean love, and when a man picks out the deepest pink variety in the store—well, as I said before, it usually means something doing. Send his card with it? Yes, indeed.”

The candy dealers, too, have taken to using all sorts of china receptacles filled with bonbons for valentines. Some are low and flat; others two stories high; not unlike an airship, and each when divested of the candy is a pretty ornament for table or cabinet.

One variety of the two-story pattern has a hollow champagne bottle poised aloft and filled with bonbons. The lower part is decorated china and the bottle is removable.

German bisque sleigh and Cupid. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-German-Porcelain-Bisque-Cornucopia-Swan-Sleigh-w-Cherub-Flowers-/142240138203?hash=item211e2c43db:g:qYkAAOSw5cNYG836

In the leading confectioners’ exquisite example of Dresden and of Sevres china shaped as boats, pony carts, wheelbarrows, and automobiles are included in the novel candy holders provided for those able to pay pretty well for a valentine, and though the connection between sentiment and bric-a-brac is not very clear, at the same time this is the style of valentine the up-to-date girl is quite likely to prefer.

The Washington [DC] Post 12 February 1911: p. 6

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Violets, in the language of flowers, mean modesty, love, and faithfulness. If they are white, “candor” or “innocence.”  They have long been a staple of Valentine’s Day; they are also associated with half-mourning. There is a moral there somewhere, but Mrs Daffodil does not care to dwell on it.

One does wonder what the language of flowers has to say about a three-feet-high arrangement of orchids destined for a widow? While orchids signify “beauty” and “refinement” in the language of flowers, Mrs Daffodil associates them with the nouveau riche and “stage-door Johnnies” of the Music Halls. Perhaps the giver of the orchids intends the recipient to exchange her weeds for flowers.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

A Valentine Prospectus: 1871

Sweeping up on the Stock Exchange floor.

We transcribe, as a tail-piece, a singular valentine, in the shape of a prospectus of a public company in full working order, which was actually received last year by a worthy knight and gallant soldier, who, now a veteran, has left his blood in nearly every quarter of the habitable and inhabitable globe. The puzzles that occur in the list of “Corresponding Agents” are, it may be said with reverence, about as clumsy as they are transparent:—

 

 

The Dublin University Magazine, Volume 77, 1871

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  While the ideal marriage in England was a love-match, fully sanctioned by the proud, pragmatical parents, most upper-class marriages contained sordid elements of business in the form of marriage settlements and might well be framed on the order of a corporate merger. (Mrs Daffodil recalls vividly the mercenary negotiations in the case of Consuelo Vanderbilt and the 9th Duke of Marlborough.) One is shocked to find the bride-to-be in this passage referred to a “pecuniary liability.”

A lady who has a fortune at her own disposal sometimes sets all such prudential measures as settlements at defiance, and consigns herself and her belongings to the absolute disposal of her future husband. Believing, in the ardour of her affection, that no change from time or circumstances can ever alter the conduct of her devoted admirer towards herself, she resents every attempt on the part of friends to convince her of the necessity of any kind of self-protection. She is apt to infer that acts of prudence are simply acts of suspicion, and will not consent to any accordingly. That the latter course is sheer folly may be proved by every one not hopelessly under the influence of love-blindness. Far from misconstruing just measures, a really disinterested man is anxious that his bride-elect should receive every protection her guardians may judge necessary to her future welfare; at the same time it is only reasonable that the conditions imposed on himself should not be of too stringent a nature. Every man that marries undertakes a pecuniary liability, in the form of a wife, and should not be stripped of the means of meeting that liability. The higher in the social scale of society that observation is made, the more closely are honourable dealings apparent in the matter of marriage settlements.

Cassell’s Household Guide, 1869: p. 117

Mrs Daffodil notes that the address of the adored object is a German one. One supposes that the ponderous Teutonic humour amused the recipient.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.