FROM THE ARCHIVES:This editorial in 1940 mused on the origins of Valentine's Day. – JOE JOYCE
DESPITE ALL the plausible explanations that have been put forward, we remain uncertain as to why a Christian martyr of the third century should be regarded as the patron saint of the love-lorn.
The suggestion that Valentine is a corruption of galantin, meaning a lover, a gallant, leaves us cold. One might as well try to prove a connection between the saint and the galantine which figures occasionally upon the menu card. Furthermore, Valentines appear to have been connected with the worship of Juno in heathen times, long before poor St. Valentine was born, though they were not called Valentines in those days.
The insulting type is stated to have ante-dated the amorous, but the true lover’s message survived when artistic offensiveness disappeared; and we are glad to note that Valentines which have been loosed upon the world by an eminent firm of Christmas card manufacturers are mostly so chaste that a thousand of them would not bring a blush to the unrouged cheek of the most sensitive Victorian Miss.
It was in Victorian days that Valentines reached the zenith of their popularity. In the year of the Queen’s Coronation a favourite device was a floral design in vivid colours, which, when lifted up, became a sort of paper lattice work, revealing a portrait or message beneath.
The loved one had to be approached with great delicacy and circumspection at a period when, as Mrs. John Sandford wrote, in 1837: “The sentiment for women has undergone a change.
“The romantic passion, which once almost deified her, is on the decline; and it is by intrinsic qualities that she must now inspire respect.”
We would like to hear Mrs. Sandford’s views on the women of 1940, but we fear that they would not be half as scathing as the views of the women of 1940 upon Mrs. Sandford. That good lady favoured the clinging vine as a model, and wrote: “In everything that women attempt, they should show their consciousness of dependence. Women, in this respect, are something like children: the more they show their need of support, the more engaging they are.”
It will be noted that then, as now, the ladies fully realised that the innate vanity of man was his most vulnerable point. Only the superficialities have changed, and, though the modern age may profess itself content to have the romance of Tristan and Isolde summarised as “Boy meets Girl,” love’s old sweet song is burbling along in a shockingly old-fashioned manner.
The crooners would have been discovered for the frauds they are, and relegated to some bottomless pit of discord, were it not for the saccharine love -content of their sore throat solos. “Heart interest” still is the biggest box-office success, and we are sure that the revival of the Valentine is as inevitable as the return of the full moon under whose influence it must have been born.
[ iti.ms/AbFXRb ]