Step up, all ye lovelorn swains, St Valentine’s Day looms on 14 February. Plenty of time remains to buy that saucy card, to compose those passionate verses in heroic couplets, to order that extravagant bouquet with red roses dominating, to book a discreet table at that absurdly expensive restaurant and to choose an intimate yet tasteful present for your breath-taking inamorata. Well, that was how I used to do it, when the boiling blood coursed through my young veins, but I am now hopelessly out of date. Surely even the modern girl expects some special pampering on Valentine’s Day – at least a box of chocolates and a more than usually strenuous bout in the bedroom, at the very minimum.
There is of course huge scope for embarrassment on this fateful day. It is not easy to carry off whispering sweet nothings without looking a bit of a chump. And those pet names – “sugar doodle”, “little lamb chop”, “sweetie pie” – are best kept under opaque wraps or you invite ridicule upon your blameless and well-meaning head. Plenty of people think it a laugh to add to your discomfort, often through practical jokes in dubious taste. I recall receiving a malicious parcel one Valentine’s morning containing spectacular crotchless red frillies and a highly compromising message – my protestations of innocence were disregarded and my dear long-suffering wife was not at all amused!
Would such a scene be repeated these days? I imagine the tattooed and pierced young woman of 2012, hair cropped and muscles rippling, forcing her abject lover to try on the red frillies himself at whip-point – or is this just another puerile erotic fantasy! We are such complicated beings that we end up contorting and upsetting the simplest events, even a straight-forward Valentine’s Day treat.
The origins of the festival are obscure. There are some 14 martyred Christians called Valentine (Valens being a common Roman name) of whom 3 are front–runners to being the saint. All that is claimed is that a martyred Valentine was buried on the Via Flaminia on 14 February in about 269 during the persecutions of the Emperor Aurelian. The date is maybe legendary too as it coincides with the Roman fertility festival of Lupercalia, observed between 13 and 15 February. So little is authentic about St Valentine that he was demoted from the Calendar of Saints by Pope Paul VI in 1969 and became a mere “local” saint. The saint had no connection whatsoever with loving couples and, among other things, was the humble patron saint of bee-keepers.
Anyhow his festival seems to have been observed to some degree and was reinvented in the medieval glorification of Courtly Love. The first known mention is in Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls:
For this was on seynt Volantynys dayWhan euery bryd comyth there to chese his mate.
("For this was on Saint Valentine's Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.")
The festival flourished and was celebrated by Spenser, Shakespeare and Donne as one for loving couples and by the late 18th century the penning of sentimental verses and the sending of hand-made Valentine cards had become fashionable. Relentless commercialisation followed by greetings card publishers, florists and now De Beers reckon it is an appropriate occasion to make gifts of diamonds – well they would, wouldn’t they? The Love celebrated was no longer Courtly.
The name itself became associated with Love, not least through the spectacularly successful career of Rudolph Valentino, the silent screen heart-throb whose wild stares and dark good looks enslaved a generation of flappers. When he died suddenly of pleurisy in 1926 aged 31, huge crowds of US female fans gathered in scenes of mass hysteria.
Britain’s heart-throbs were more sedate. Dickie Valentine warbled pleasantly to music-hall, big band and radio fans in the 1950s but we never produced a convincing Latin Lover. Valentine’s Day is often graced with the Sinatra version of the Rodgers and Hart 1937 classic “My Funny Valentine”
Your looks are laughable,
Unphotographical,
Yet you’re my Favourite Work of Art
So, prepare for 14 February, check your bank balance, practise breathing through your nose, tuck in your tummy, and (as they now always say) whatever your sexual orientation, enjoy a passionately memorable Valentine’s Day!
SMD
31.01.2012
Text copyright Sidney Donald 2012
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