August Magazine 2014 Becoming Psychic Magazine February 2014 | Page 23

The use of elaborately designed "pull out” cards spread from Europe to
North America. And the lavish, lace-trimmed designs with intricate cutout sections so beloved of the Victorians and Edwardians remain popular
with many people today.
An ordinary Victorian Valentine cost from a penny to sixpence. A really
elaborate one might be as much as half-a-guinea. Girls in a Valentine factory, worked from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. for between 5 and 15 shillings a week.
And, unromantically, the bronze powder they blew on to the borders of
the gilded Valentines often made them ill!
By 1890, servants began sending greetings to the master or mistress anonymously, of course - and the custom began to decline. However
World War I boosted Valentine sales as the boys away from home became
sentimental about the girls they've left behind. In 1926, Lady Jeanette
Tuck, wife of the greetings card pioneer, Sir Adolph Tuck, realized that
the Victorian lady, no longer young, would welcome the opportunity to
send, once again, a courtly token of affection. The custom has grown stronger ever since!
Today, you’re as likely to get a Valentine card from your brother as from your lover. The cards in the shops now include both sentimental, pretty cards and jokey ones. Some people continue to create their own often ingenious designs. Enthusiastic glue spattered,
paint-smeared efforts of young children make up in love what they may lack in artistic ability.
But essentially, a Valentine is a love letter. And love letters are as old as writing itself. One does not need the vocabulary of a poet to
convey emotion. An old postcard I found between the pages of a dusty novel from the thrift store bore a message to 'Dear Eileen” and
expressed that “.. should be p