Historical Tidbits: Victorian Valentines
Daily Diary, Wednesday, February 14, 2024, Day 1261
Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels.
Over ten years ago, while doing research for my third novel in the Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, Bloody Lessons, I decided that since I had so much fun in researching Halloween for the prior book, I would see if I could include the holiday of Valentine’s Day in this one. Here are some of the things I learned in doing this research.
It didn’t take long to discover that Valentine’s Day was celebrated by 1880, but the question was how they would have done it. 1 My first question was, would people send cards, and, if so, would they have been hand-made or commercially made, and were they only given to sweethearts or was it common to give them to family and friends?
What I discovered was that while hand-made valentines had been popular in Europe for centuries, by the early 19th century valentines began to be made in factories in England. Victorian Americans embraced the holiday as well, and the first mass-produced cards made in this country were produced by a printer and artist Esther Howland, who started making them by hand in her home, employing her friends and family to help her. By the end of the 19th century, the manufacture of valentines had become entirely mechanized. Like New Years Day cards and Christmas cards, Valentine’s Day cards were something one sent to friends and relatives, not just sweethearts.
From this research I learned that Annie Fuller, my main protagonist, who had been in a Female Academy in the late 1860s, would have been familiar with making and exchanging valentines. But I also learned that in 1880, the time period when the book is set, stationers and department stores had French-imported and American-made cards available for sale—at a price that ranged from 5 cents to 5 dollars a card. It was also clear that people still made their own cards because one article in the San Francisco Chronicle in 1881 stated that: “The progress of art education in this country is readily seen in the improved styles of Christmas, Easter and Valentine cards.”
My next step was to figure out how to incorporate Valentine’s Day into the plot of Bloody Lessons, without sounding like I was just dumping information for the sake of showing what I had learned (an occupational hazard for historical fiction authors.)
For example, I have always associated valentine cards with elementary school (where I made cards to bring home to my mother and exchanged with my classmates the cheap store-bought ones with the silly sayings.) Since the plot of Bloody Lessons featured public school teachers, this seemed a perfect way to incorporate the Valentine’s Day theme by having the character Laura Dawson (one of many teachers in the book) decide to make cards for all her students. See the following excerpt.
“Laura held one of the sheets of embossed lace paper up to the oil lamp in the center of the table. ‘Kitty’s father gives her an enormous weekly allowance, and she insisted we buy all this. She said we were economizing because all of this cost much less than if we had bought the ready-made valentines at the stationers. This way we can make cards that are special for each child.’”
Having the book set in the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day also helped me satisfy those readers who were getting impatient with the pace of the developing romance between my two main protagonists, Annie Fuller and Nate Dawson. Not surprising, as the holiday approached in the story, both Annie and Nate found reasons to think about each other and their apparently stalled relationship.
At one point, Annie realizes that she has never gotten a valentine from a sweetheart and that: “She had a sudden desire to make one for Nate, to see how he would respond.”
In a later scene, Nate panics when he realizes that the card he got for Annie might not get the reception he hoped.
“The simple card he ended up buying showed a small boy giving his teacher an apple, with the caption, ‘Be Mine.’ Be Mine. This morning, when he reread the card before signing it, all he could think of was how possessive that sounded and that Annie would hate it.”
However, what I hadn’t discovered in my research back then was that there was also a tradition of sending mean Valentines!2
What I now wonder is, if I had known this, how might have I incorporated this in the plot!!!
Meanwhile, I hope that all of you have a lovely Happy Valentine’s Day!
If you enjoy my daily posts and would like to subscribe for free or become a patron (where you will get the pleasure of giving me the resources to spend more time writing and less time marketing) click the little button below. In addition, please do click on the heart so I know you’ve been to visit and/or share with your friends, and I always welcome comments! Thanks!
https://www.thoughtco.com/history-of-st-valentines-day-1800s-1773915
https://www.history.com/news/victorian-valentines-day-cards-vinegar
Thank you for the history lesson. I enjoy learning about traditions of the past and how they are carried out today. This year, instead of a store-bought card, I bought a beautifully hand-made card on Etsy to send to my god-daughter and her family. I'm glad that hand-made cards have not gone by the wayside.
Thank you ! Happy Valentine's Day to you!