With the advent of the Penny Post 💌📮✨ the Victorian #ValentinesDay card business flourished. Prepare for a thread of cut-lace & ornately illustrated cards as well as cheaper comic valentines. ♥️
(Card c. 1884 by Walter Crane, bequeathed to the V&A by Miss Edith Hipkins).
(Card c. 1884 by Walter Crane, bequeathed to the V&A by Miss Edith Hipkins).
This card was part of 'The Language of Flowers' valentines series by perfumier Eugène Rimmel in the 1870s & 80s - it would have originally been scented with ‘Forget-Me-Not’. 🌸🌾👒 The paper lace lithograph tableau of a man & woman is most likely by Jules Chéret.(V&A, London).
A 19thC mock telegram from the ‘Lover's Banking Company’. It reads: 'I promise to pay you on Demand the entire Love of the Suppliant who sends this’ & is signed ‘Cupid'. (Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove). ♥️ 🏹🌹
Vinegar Valentines were cheaply made cards that usually featured an insulting rhyme or caricature. As the receiver (not the sender) was responsible for the cost of postage, the recipient often found themselves paying for the ‘privilege’ of being insulted by their ‘admirer.’ 📬🖤
Often the recipient’s age was the primary subject of satire. 👵🏻✉️ As in “Are you still nineteen?” Feat. A spinster w/ greying hair & an old monocled bachelor who “Must Settle Down Sometime, But Won't Throw Himself Away Too Early.“ (Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove).
✨ A personal favourite of mine is this (wonderfully passive aggressive) hand-painted valentine from 1830. 🌸🌿The message 🌼💐, delicately bordered by flowers reads:
“Indeed you are a little Prig
For whom I do not care one Fig. “
(Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove).
“Indeed you are a little Prig
For whom I do not care one Fig. “
(Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove).
A Vinegar Valentine feat. a woman pulled along by geese with male human heads. Cupid (somewhat menacingly) dances behind her. 🔥 ⚔️
‘With Cupid ready to assist you,
What mortal is there can resist you?
You drive the men like silly geese,
And leave them neither ease nor peace.’
‘With Cupid ready to assist you,
What mortal is there can resist you?
You drive the men like silly geese,
And leave them neither ease nor peace.’
The Complele [sic] Angler. 🎣 ✨( Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove). The message reads:
'You're hooked young man I think at last,
Young Cupid has made you fast.
Then should the lady chance to say
She doesn't mind then name the day'. 👰🏼
'You're hooked young man I think at last,
Young Cupid has made you fast.
Then should the lady chance to say
She doesn't mind then name the day'. 👰🏼
An 1845 Valentine with a 'Barometer of Love' ✨🌡 that goes from Esteem to Friendship to Love to ‘Enrapture, Unity & Bliss’. The shell reads ‘My spirit hath an atmosphere / Thats ruled by Thee alone / 'Tis ever sunshine when thou't near /& cloudiness when gone!’ ⛅️ (V&A, London).
