SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY.[i]
BY MARY MOORE.
Old times are
changed, old manners gone.
Lay of the Last Minstrel.
Valentine’s day in my grandfather’s
time; it was something worth looking forward to then; you should hear the old
gentlemen talk about it. The ice of many a courtship was broken; the heart of
many a maiden won through the medium of those emblematic pictures and flattering
rhymes sent on that licensed morn. Young
men—my grandfather among the number—were known never to have retired to rest at
all, but to have spent the night previous under their mistresses’ window, for the
purpose of gaining her first glance in the morning, and thus, according to the
old superstition, have the right of being her valentine for the rest of the day,
or, what was perhaps still more important, her husband for life. Young girls, in order to avoid the sight of a
disagreeable suitor, would shut themselves up for the entire morning; others,
by various strategems—peeping through little friendly holes in the window
curtains; sitting with their eyes shut for hours, until they heard the
wished-for step or well-beloved voice—endeavored to take in destiny, and cheat
the fates! Postmen were known to have
fainted beneath the weight of Cupids, doves, Hymen’s temples, and gold rings
their bursting bags contained. One
misanthropic man of letters committed suicide on Valentine’s eve by throwing
himself, bag and all, into a river near my grandfather’s house, leaving a note
on the bank stating his reasons for the act: hatred to marriage, and a desire
to save his fellow-creatures from that misery, as the wooer on the fourteenth of February was generally a fool by the
first of April.
By Valentine’s
day in the nineteenth century—the sober, intellectual, satirical, nineteenth
century—is a very different affair. “these
are the days of advance.” In our onward march of civilization we have trampled the
Maypole under our feet, dethroned its pretty queen, and turned Cupid out of
doors. “Strong-minded young ladies”
sneer at such “senseless things,” and youth itself will soon be as much out of
fashion as the rest. But yet, with all
these disadvantages to battle against, Valentine’s day, although the mere ghost
of its former self, still continues to have its old “match-making”
propensities; truth still lurks in those annual rhymes, and many a proposal
those love lines have contained has ended in smiles and blushes, wedding
favors, and bride-cake at Whitsuntide.
There’s my cousin Mabel and Minnie Grey, they of living examples of this
last fact.
Of course you have
never seen my cousin Mabel; but if you had you would certainly say she was
prettiest girl you had ever beheld.
Female critics of beauty, it is true, found fault with her nose as being
“somewhat too short,” and her mouth as “a little too large;” but then her eyes
were so blue and soft, her eyelashes so dark and long, her hair so rich and
bright, you forgot every other fault in looking at them; and as to her dimples,
they would positively have made Hebe jealous, could that young lady have seen
them. Yet Mabel, strange to say, with
all her beauty, had reached the mature age of eighteen without a lover. Her father, a country clergyman, had
jealously kept his fair blossom to nestle by his side, hidden from all “vulgar
eyes” in the old ivied parsonage of a retired little village; rarely, if ever,
allowing her to take part in any of the festivals and junketings given by their
neighbors; those pleasant, innocent “merry meetings,” where rural flirtations
are got up, and the partners of a dance so often become the partners of a
life. The consequence was, that when
Mabel came to spend her Christmas with us, she had not been a week away from
her leafy home before she danced exquisitely, flirted scientifically, and had
caused half a dozen young men to wear turn-down collars, and seriously contemplate
suicide.
Now, as my father
loves a full house, and declares “a merry Christmas” would be an utter
impossibility without merry guest and good cheer, with “that so plenteous,”
that, like the jolly Frankelein, at this time,
“It snowed in his house of mete and drinke,”
you may be sure Miss Mabel had every opportunity of
exercising her newly acquired accomplishments.
Teddy Green
proposed to her five minute after the first introduction, was refused, and has
never since been heard of. Jack Sharp, the
vicar’s son, enlisted as a private soldier, to the unspeakable grief of his
parents, because Mabel had expressed a liking for an officer. Ephraim Jones, an old friend of my father’s,
a tedious, proverbial bachelor of fifty, “full of wise saws and modern
instances,” forgot himself so far as to present Mabel with some verses of a
most amatory nature, and was observed to have had a most suspicious liking for
walking by moonlight for some time after. The number of healthy appetites she
ruined, the many sleepless nights she caused, are beyond my calculation; yet I
supposed the world has never seen a conqueror more careless of conquests than
my cousin Mabel. I often wondered that
in lighting so many flames in the hearts of others she never burnt her own
fingers. I began to think the old
saying, that “everybody has been in love once in their lives,” an utter
mistake, and that Mabel bore a “charmed life,” for here January’s last days
drew nigh, and her laugh was as merry, her dimples as pretty, and her eyes
brighter than ever.
“Come, come, this
won’t do, Mabel,” said my father; “it is positively unfair. Here have I displayed the finest assortment
of goods, with every wish to please, and you are going to leave me without
making a choice. If you are fastidious
over your ribbons as your lovers, I pity the shopman.”
“Liberty for me;
No man’s wife I’ll be,”
Sang Mabel, and we all gave her up as incorrigible.
“Can you write a
good feigned hand?” said Fred Pratt, entering the library where I was sitting
alone, indulging in what Mr. Weller calls “a referee.” “Not that I’m aware of,” said I. “Because, if you can,” continued Fred, “just
direct this envelop”—and he put down a bulky looking letter on the table. “I’ve been trying a new kind of penmanship with
whole morning, but I don’t think it will do”—and he showed me several
hieroglyphical specimens. “If you had a
Chinese or Egyptian postman, it might,” said I, examining them. “But what do you want to feign your hand
for? I hope, Fred,” I continued, in a
dignified manner, “you would not be guilty of so mean an action as writing an
anonymous letter; remember, ‘the man who can write an anonymous letter only
lacks the bad courage to grasp an assassin’s knife.’ “
“It—it—it’s only
a Valentine,” stammered Fred; “to-morrow’s Valentine’s Day.”
“A Valentine!”
I was never more
surprised in my life.
Fred was
certainly the most bashful man I had ever met—Goldsmith’s hero was bad enough,
but Fred was worse. Why, he could no
more have behaved as Marlow did to Miss Hardcastle, than he could have flown;
and yet here was Fred sending a Valentine!
How he ever got his “courage up to the sticking point,” is still a
mystery to me. “And who’s the lady,
Fred?” I inquired; “I never observed you admired any one in particular.”
“Mabel Grant, of
course,” said Fred, with cheeks in an alarmingly apoplectic condition.
“Mabel Grant!”
Here was another
surprise.
“Why, Fred, we
all thought you disliked her; you never joined in praising her—never danced
with her—seldom spoke to her; in fact never caught ‘the prevailing epidemic,’
as I imagined at all.”
“I thought her
far too beautiful and good; and myself too mean and unworthy ever to aspire to
her at first,” said Fred, in a husky tone; “but I love her so much now, I must
tell her all—or—or—die;” and he smote his forehead after the manner of men in
his condition.
“Come, old
fellow, don’t be downhearted,” said I, quite moved.
“I’ve no other way
of letting her know what I think and suffer but in this way,” continued he,
taking up the bulky letter.
“And a very good
way too,” said I, encouragingly. “What
sort of verses are they? Mind they’re strong.”
“I composed them
myself,” said Fred; “they express exactly what I feel;” and he took out the
Valentine.
Such a
Valentine! Bunches of forget-me-nots—clusters
of roses, which, on being raised up, disclosed the altar of Love—a bleeding
heart pierced with an arrow, lying upon it—with all the rapidity of a change in
a pantomime. A delightfully
healthy-looking little Cupid stood at the bottom of the page unrolling a scroll
on which were inscribed in golden letters these lines: —
“Doubt thou
the stars are fire;
Doubt
that the sun doth move;
Doubt
truth to be a liar;
But never doubt, I love.”
I said I thought I had heard the lines
before; but as Fred indignantly denied my suspicion, I withdrew the assertion.
“I would not
feign my hand in sending such a
Valentine,” said I.
“Wouldn’t you?”
said Fred, interrogatively.
“No; concealments
of that sort are only required when you send uncomplimentary penny ones. I should let her know who sent it; direct it
in your own writing.”
And he did, after
a little pressing, with much confusion, in a a hand that would have done honor
to a Brobdignagian, with a seal to match.
“I love her so
much,” he began again—but I was off to look for Mabel.
I found her
afater a short search sitting in her own room writing, with a sheet of paper before
her, which she hastily thrust into the table drawer as I entered.
“To-morrow’s
Valentine’s Day, Mabel; are you going to send any?” I inquired.
“Not I,” said
Mabel, with just the faintest tinge of a blush in her cheek. “I would not receive such a nonsensical
thing, let alone the sending; I have far too great a respect for the name of
Love, than to take it in vain in unmeaning rhymes.”
“Not always unmeaning,” I said. “I have known the vows fervently made in those
pictorial billet-doux, as fervently kept; it all depends upon the man, you
little sceptic.”
“You are
certainly going to send a Valentine!” interrupted Mabel, eagerly.
“Well, what if I
am?” said I, endeavoring to be dignified; “I always practice what I preach; I
see no crime in it.”
“No more do I,”
said Mabel, confidentially. “I am going
to send one, too, only I didn’t like to tell you; I thought you might laugh;”
and she drew forth from the drawer she had kept jealously shut, the most
splendid specimen in the paper-cutting line I have ever beheld—you couldn’t
have told it from the finest Valenciennes—the verses, delicately inscribed in
azure ink, looked as if they had been written by Titania with dew gathered by
fairy fingers from the cup of a bluebell.
“And who’s it to,
Mabel?” said I, in a friendly, careless manner—I was dying to know.
“Guess.”
“I can’t.”
“Try.”
“It’s no use, I
could never find out; you never showed you liked any one in particular.”
“Well, I don’t think
this one likes me,” said Mabel, with a sigh.
“He’s so hard to please,” she continued pettishly, “or so hard-hearted, I don’t know which. I don’t think he likes women, only I liked
him from the first, and as I’m going home next week, it’s no harm just to hint
it to him;” and she looked quite sad for a few minutes, but on lifting her
head, she saw something in the pier-glass opposite which seemed to console her
surprisingly , for after looking for a few seconds, she went on again quite
gay, “Don’t waste so much thought upon the riddle, cousin; do you give it up?”
“Yes—who is it?”
She came quite
close and whispered—“Fred Pratt!”
“Who?”
“Fred Pratt!”
I felt horribly
inclined to throw my arms about my cousin, and kiss her from pure joy—but, as
it might have alarmed her, I restrained myself, and calmly went to post the Valentine.
The auspicious
morn arrived, the sun (contrary to Fred’s expectations) did nothing original;
but rose at his usual hour in the east, accompanied by a few common-place
looking clouds—things proceeded in their accustomed way—perhaps a little more
laughing and whispering among the girls, until the clock struck nine, then a
great change became perceptible, tunes began to be hummed, indicative of
perfect ease of mind in the hummers—books diligently read, as if the salvation
of the readers depended upon them, conversations on important subjects, carried
on in the most careless and reckless manner; suddenly in the midst of it all,
like a clap of thunder, rat! tat! went the front door knocker. “It’s the postman! The postman!” screamed a chorus of voices—two
young men became immediately agitated, and left the room—Minnie Grey upset her
tea, and I broke a plate.
In came the
servant (I thought she would have been suffocated with her own importance)
bearing a large tray before her, on which were piled letters of every
description, from the imposing looking official dispatch, with its huge seal, that
must have consumed a stick of sealing-wax, down to the delicately scented,
exquisitely made “billet-doux” that
should have had a sylph for a postman, and a fairy for its sender. Such laughing and blushing—such anxiety in
spite of the pretty head-tossing, saucy pouting, and assumed carelessness—such curiousity
to find out the writing—such an innocent, foolish, happy time never was seen.
But where was
Mabel?
She had never
left her room; her Valentines, no small number, had been taken up to her. Of course, what took place between her and
them, no mortal can ever know; but, after a little time, we heard her door
open, and her half suppressed screams—for, between surprise and joy, she had
well-nigh fallen into his arms.
“Into whose arms?”
Fred Pratt’s of
course. Poor fellow, he had spent the whole
night on the landing, and had thus gained her first glimpse and first greeting
in the morning.
“I had no other
way of saying how much I loved you,” said he, half laughing and half crying,
like the good-hearted simple fellow he was: “I’ve been very unhappy ever since
you’ve been here.”
“Are you happy now?” said Mabel, looking desperately
pretty and coquettish, clad in her morning dress and blushes, as she laid her dimpled
hand on his.
He only answered
by kissing it passionately.
“I never thought
that you loved me,” said Mabel, pouting.
“You never showed it.”
“Why, I always
loved you,” said Fred, “from the very first, and—“
And what more
they said, we must leave to the imagination of those of my readers who have
been in the same position themselves.
My father says—and
he has had experience in such matters—that we may make up our minds to
wedding-favors and bride-cake at Whitsuntide.
[i]
Moore, Mary, “Saint Valentine’s Day,” Godey’s
Lady’s Book 1861, [publishing page missing, but magazine known to have been
published Philadelphia: Louis A. Godey], p119-122 corresponding to February
1861 edition of the magazine.
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