Chapter VI: Pageantry (2)

Tombland Fair stands not quite alone as a memorial of ancient festivals held in honour of patron saints--one other day in the year stands forth in the calendar of juvenile and mature enjoyments, unrivalled in its claim upon our notice and our love. St. Valentine, that "man of most admirable parts, so famous for his love and charity that the custom of choosing valentines upon his festival took its rise from thence," as Wheatley tells us,--is yet, even to this hour, held in high honour, and most gloriously commemorated in this good old city, and in so unique a fashion, that a few words may not suffice to give a true delineation of it. The approach of the happy day is heralded, in these days of steam-presses and local journals, by monster-typed advertisements, gigantically headed "_Valentines_," or huge labels, bearing the same mystic letters, carefully arranged in the midst of gorgeously-decked windows, towards which young eyes turn in glistening hope and admiration; and at sight of which little hearts beat high with eager expectation. Not of Cupids, and hearts, and darts, and such like merry conceits on fairy-mottoed note paper, doth the offerings of St. Valentine consist in this good old mart of commerce;--far more real and substantial are the samples of taste, ornament, and use, that rank themselves in the category of his gifts. The jeweller's front, radiant with gold and precious gems, and frosted silver, and ruby-eyed oxydized owls, Russian malachite fashioned into every conceivable fantasy of invention, brooches, bracelets, crosses, studs masculine and feminine, chatelaines ditto, and not a few of _epicene_ characteristics, betokening the signs of the times,--all claim to rank under the title. The Drapers--especially the "French depots," with their large assortments on shew, in remote _bazaars_ appropriated exclusively to the business of the festive season, where labyrinths of dressing-cases, desks, work-boxes, inkstands, and _portfeuilles_, usurp the place of lawful mercery, and haberdashery for the time being yields place to stationery, perfumery, _bijouterie_, and cutlery, proclaim the triumphs of his reign in their midst. But supreme above all, are the glories that the toy-shops display, from the gay balcony-fronted repository for all the choicest inventions science, skill, or wit can devise, at once to please the fancy, help the brain, tax the ingenuity of childhood, or dazzle the eye of babyhood, downwards through the less _recherche_, but scarcely less thronged marts, a grade below in price and quality, to the very huckster's stall or apple booth, that shall for the time being add its quota of penny whips, tin trumpets, and long-legged, brittle-jointed, high-combed Dutch ladies, whose proportions exhibit any thing but the contour usually described as a "Dutch build." Nor these alone--the shoemaker's, with its newly-acquired treasures of gutta percha knick-knacks, flower-pots, card-trays, inkstands, picture-frames, boxes, caddies, medallions, and what-not that is useful and ornamental, in addition to shoe-soles with a propensity to adhere to hot iron, and betray by deeply indented gutters the impress of any new bright-topped fender on which they have chanced to trespass--all, all, are offerings at the shrine of good St. Valentine; how, when, and where, we have yet to see.

One peep behind these plate-glassed drop scenes--one visit to the toy-shop--it is an event--a circumstance to be chronicled--even the quiet, mild, and self-possessed proprietress of all the wealth of fun and fashion, use and ornament, and zoology, from the rocking-horse down to the Chinese spider, and Noah's ark to lady-birds, for once looks heated and tired; and one feels impelled to cheer the kind-hearted, gentle matron, by reminding her, that her toil will be repaid tenfold, by pleasant thoughts of the myriad shouts of welcome and heartfelt glee that, ere long, will have been hymned forth in praise of the perfection of her taste.

Her labours and toils would seem scarcely to surpass those of her purchasers. The perplexity and labyrinth of doubt and difficulty they find themselves in is truly pitiable; the annual return of a festival when every body, from grandpapa and grandmamma to baby bo, is expected to receive and give some offering commemorative of the season, causes, in time, a considerable difficulty in the choice of gifts, and added to the mystifications of memory as to who has what? and what hasn't who? produces a perfect bewilderment. The fluctuations between dominoes, bats and traps, dolls, la grace, draughts, chess, rocks of Scilly, German tactics, fox and geese, printing machines, panoramas, puzzles, farmy-ards, battledores, doll's houses, compasses, knitting cases, and a myriad others, seem interminable--but an end must come, and the purchaser and seller find rest.

But all this toil is but the prelude to the grand act of the drama; Valentine's eve arrived, the play begins in earnest. The streets swarm with carriers, and baskets laden with treasures--bang, bang, bang go the knockers, and away rushes the banger, depositing first upon the door-step some package from the basket of stores--again and again at intervals, at every door to which a missive is addressed, is the same repeated till the baskets are empty. Anonymously St. Valentine presents his gifts, labelled only with "St. Valentine's" love, and "Good morrow, Valentine."

Then within the houses of destination--the screams, the shouts, the rushings to catch the bang bangs--the flushed faces, sparkling eyes, rushing feet to pick up the fairy gifts--inscriptions to be interpreted, mysteries to be unravelled, hoaxes to be found out--great hampers, heavy, and ticketed "With care, this side upwards," to be unpacked, out of which jump live little boys with St. Valentine's love to the little ladies fair--the sham bang bangs, that bring nothing but noise and fun--the mock parcels that vanish from the door step by invisible strings when the door opens--monster parcels that dwindle to thread-papers denuded of their multiplied envelopes, with pithy mottoes, all tending to the final consummation of good counsel, "Happy is he who expects nothing, and he will not be disappointed!" It is a glorious night, marvel not that we would perpetuate so joyous a festivity. We love its mirth, the memory of its smiles and mysteries of loving kindness, its tender reverential tributes to old age, and time-tried friendship, amid the throng of sprightlier festal offerings, that mark the season in our hearths and homes, as sacred to a love so pure, so true, and holy, that good St. Valentine himself may feel justly proud of such commemoration.

How and when this peculiar mode of celebrating the festival arose it would be difficult perhaps to discover. In olden times, as we find by the diary of Dr. Browne, the more prevalent custom of drawing valentines on the eve before Valentine day was in vogue; but Forby's "Vocabulary of East Anglia" makes mention of a practice which doubtless has become developed in the course of time into the elaborate and costly celebration of the present day. He says, "In Norfolk it is the custom for children to 'catch' each other for valentines; and if there are elderly persons in the family who are likely to be liberal, great care is taken to catch them. The mode of catching is by saying 'Good morrow, Valentine,' and if they can repeat this before they are spoken to, they are rewarded with a small present. It must be done, however, before sunrise; otherwise instead of a reward, they are told they are _sunburnt_." He adds a query--Does this illustrate the phrase _sunburned_, in "Much Ado about Nothing"?

The universal respect in which the anniversary of St. Valentine is held, may perhaps be most justly estimated by the statistical facts that relate to the post-office transactions for that day, in comparison with the average amount of the daily transmissions; and each district has probably some peculiar mode of celebrating it,--but nowhere, we imagine, does its annual return leave behind it such pleasing and substantial memorials as in our "Old City." Douce, in his "Illustrations of Shakespeare," would have us believe that the observances of St. Valentine's day had their origin in the festivals of ancient Rome during the month of February, when they celebrated the "Lupercalia," or feasts in honour of Pan and Juno, sometimes called Februalis, on which occasion, amidst a variety of other ceremonies, the names of young men and maidens were put into a box, and drawn as chance directed. The pastors of the early church, in their endeavours to eradicate the vestiges of popular superstitions, substituted the names of _saints_ for those of the young maidens, and as the Lupercalia commenced in February, affixed the observance to the feast of St. Valentine in that month, thus preserving the outline of the ancient ceremony, to which the people were attached, modified by an adaptation to the Christian system.

Time, however, would seem to have restored the maidens to their original position. Brande has given many curious details of the various modes of celebrating the anniversary, in addition to the universal interchange of illuminated letters and notes. In Oxfordshire the children go about collecting pence, singing,

"Good morrow, Valentine,
First 'tis yours, then 'tis mine,
So please give me a Valentine."

In some other counties the poorer classes of children dress themselves fantastically, and visit the houses of the great, singing,

"Good morning to you, Valentine,
Curl your locks as I do mine,
Two before and three behind--
Good morrow to you, Valentine."

In other parts the first member of the opposite sex that is seen by any individual is said to be his or her "Valentine." This is the case in Berkshire and some other of the neighbouring counties. Pepys, in his "Diary," says, "St. Valentine's day, 1667. This morning came up to my wife's bedside, I being up dressing myself, little Will Mercer, to be her Valentine, and brought her name written upon blue paper in gold letters done by himself very pretty; and we were both well pleased with it. But I am also this year my wife's Valentine, which will cost me 5 pounds--but that I must have laid out if we had not been Valentines." He afterwards adds, "I find that Mrs. Pierce's little girl is my Valentine, she having drawn me, which I was not sorry for, it easing me of something more I must have given to others. But here I do first observe the fashion of drawing of mottoes as well as names; so that Pierce who drew my wife, did also draw a mottoe, and this girl drew another for me. What mine was I forget; but my wife's was, 'Most courteous and most fair.' One wonder I observed to-day, that there was no music in the morning to call up our new-married people, which is very mean methinks." The custom of presenting gifts seems then to have been practised.

In the "British Apollo," 1708, a sort of "Notes and Queries" of the day, we read,

"Why Valentine's a day to choose
A mistress, and our freedom lose?
May I my reason interpose,
The question with an answer close;
To imitate we have a mind,
And couple like the winged kind."

In the same work, "1709, Query.--In choosing Valentines (according to custom), is not the party choosing (be it man or woman) to make a present to the party chosen? Answer.--We think it more proper to say drawing of Valentines, since the most customary way is for each to take his or her lot, and chance cannot be termed choice. According to this method the obligations are equal, and, therefore, it was formerly the custom mutually to present, but now it is customary only for the gentlemen." In Scotland presents are reciprocally made on the day.

Gay has given a poetical description of some rural ceremonies used in the morning:

"Last Valentine, the day when birds of kind
Their paramours with mutual chirpings find,
I early rose, just at the break of day,
Before the sun had chased the stars away;
A-field I went amid the morning dew,
To milk my kine (for so should house-wives do).
The first I spied, and the first swain we see,
In spite of Fortune shall our true love be."

The following curious practice on Valentine's day or eve is mentioned in the "Connoisseur." "Last Friday was Valentine's day, and the night before I got five bay leaves, and pinned four of them to the corners of my pillow, and the fifth in the middle; and then if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure, I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk and filled it with salt; and when I went to bed, eat it shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote the names of our lovers upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay and put them into water, and the first that rose up was to be our Valentine."

The popular tradition, that the birds select mates on this day, is the last subject to be mentioned. Shakespeare alludes to it in the "Midsummer Night's Dream."

"St. Valentine is past;
Begin these wood birds but to couple now."

Cowper's "Fable," who cannot call to mind? and its moral may close our notice of St. Valentine's day.

"Misses, the tale that I relate,
This lesson seems to carry--
Choose not alone a proper mate,
But proper time to marry?"

The list of pageantries and festivals must now close, with an attempt to chronicle the glories of a modern "chairing day;" and the more imperative does it seem to find a place in history for this last stray sunbeam of mediaeval splendour, that it bids fair, amidst the growth of sobriety in this utilitarian age, to share all, too soon, the fate of its ancestors, who found their grave in the first "dissolution" and after-flood of Puritanism. There may be who would liken this relic of pageantry to a lingering mote of feudalism, that the penetrating broom of reform had done well to sweep from the pathway of a "free and enlightened people;" who would hint that the old custom is more honoured in the breach than the observance; and towards their opinion seems to incline that of the chief performers in the modern "_mystery_"--the M.P. himself, whose nerves, proprieties, and objections have unitedly rebelled against submission to these antiquated practices of this antiquated place. It is therefore scarcely what _is_, but what _has been_, that we have to commemorate in our detail.

When the onerous duty of selecting a representative of the people's voice, wishes, and will in the councils of the nation has been completed by the calm, deliberate, dispassionate, and disinterested decision of the enfranchised tithe of the city's populace, the successful candidates are, or _were_, wont to receive installation from the hands of their constituents by a "toss up," not, we would inform our countrymen of the "_sheeres_," (meaning all other counties save Norfolk, Suffolk, and Kent)--not that they engage in any little gambling speculation, such as is usually known under a similar name, but that they are required to submit to be made shuttlecocks for some few hours, for the amusement of the admiring multitude; and seeing that the fun and frolic thus afforded is, or _was_, the sole share of nine-tenths of the population in the transaction of electing the "unruly member" that is to speak the hopes, wants, dissatisfactions, and grumblings of a large city, it may seem somewhat hard to them that they should be deprived of it. The order of carrying out this provincial mode of installation, consists in forming a grand procession, as it is called, made up of as many carriages and horsemen as the stables of the city and neighbourhood, private and public, may contrive to turn out, the _colour_ and popularity of the candidate of course exercising its influence upon _quantity_ and _quality_. The days of velvet doublets and liveries of silver and gold being passed, the candidate makes no pretensions to display in the toilettes of the gentlemen--plain, sober black predominates throughout the mass; no shadow of a variation, save and except in the "dramatis personae," who take their stand upon the battledores provided for them, arrayed in full court costume or regimentals, as the case may be. To particularize more closely, it should be stated, that the battledores, as we have chosen to designate them, are wooden platforms, borne upon the shoulders of some two or three dozen men; the platform supports a chair elaborately ornamented, blue and silver, or purple and orange, as the successful candidates may be _blues_ or _purples_--Whigs or Tories. Besides the chair, the platform supports the fortunate M.P. himself, standing, aided in balancing himself in the elevated pinnacle of glory to which he has attained, by the back or elbows of the chair, which piece of luxury, we presume, must be intended solely as a symbol of the easy berth in prospect, since throughout the long sunny scorching perambulations of city streets and market-place, it may seldom, if ever, be ventured to be indulged in as a resting place. Meantime, every window, balcony, house-top, church-tower, and parapet-wall, has been lined with anxious and eager lookers-on--every space and avenue leading to or adjoining the line of march has been thronged; flags, banners, &c. &c., have been marshalled into the procession, whose pathway is cleared and protected by a locomotive body-guard of _posse men_, bearing horizontally in their hands long poles, which are presumed to act as barriers to the encroachments of the multitude without the pale. The line of procession once formed, in due order they make their triumphal progress, bowing, smiling, and trembling on their elevations, as they draw near to the thronging frontage of any loyal constituent, whose colours are a signal for the game to commence. Up, then, goes the M.P. high in the air,--once, twice, thrice, again and again, fortunate and clever if he comes down perpendicularly. Perfection and elegance in the peculiar _pas de seal_ requires much practice and many experiments; but as the _move_ is repeated very frequently, at very short intervals, during the progress round the city, possibly one experience may suffice in a life-time. The exhibition is occasionally closed by the bearers of the two candidates making a match with each other as to who can toss longest and highest, which done, the victimized shuttlecocks and the delighted spectators are permitted to retire. The origin of this very singular act of homage is not very clear; but as one or two recent outbursts of popular enthusiasm have manifested themselves in a similar form--to wit, laying violent hands upon a popular favourite and tossing him in the air, with neither platform or chair to lend grace to the proceeding--we must suppose that some traditionary virtue is attached to the act; and this supposition is somewhat confirmed by the fact that a superstitious practice of "lifting" or "heaving," very similar in its mode of operation, is still observed on Easter Monday and Tuesday in some other English counties. The men and women on these days alternately exercise the privilege of seizing and "lifting" any member of the opposite sex that they may chance to meet, and claim a fee for the honour. In the records of the Tower of London, may be found a document purporting to set forth how such payment was made to certain ladies and maids of honour for "taking" (or "lifting") King Edward I. at Easter, a custom then prevalent throughout the kingdom. Brande gives an amusing account of an occurrence in Shrewsbury, extracted from a letter from Mr. Thomas Loggan, of Basinghall Street. He says, "I was sitting alone last Easter Tuesday at breakfast, at the Talbot, in Shrewsbury, when I was surprised by the entrance of all the female servants of the house handing in an arm-chair, lined with white, and decorated with ribbons and favours of all kinds. I asked them what they wanted; they said they came to 'heave' me; it was the custom of their place, and they hoped I would take a seat in the chair. It was impossible not to comply with a request so modestly made by a set of nymphs in their best apparel, and several of them under twenty. I wished to see all the ceremony, and seated myself accordingly; the group then lifted me from the ground, turned the chair about, and I had the felicity of a salute from each. I told them I supposed there was a fee due, and was answered in the affirmative; and having satisfied the damsels in this respect, they retired to 'heave' others."

The usage is said to be a vulgar commemoration of the event which the festival of Easter celebrates. Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Warwickshire still retain the Easter custom.

Whether or not the notable Norfolk "chairing" takes its origin from the same is open to question; _possibility_ there is without doubt that it does so. Be it as it may, it must, we fear, be numbered among the departed joys of the poor folks.