An Irishman's Diary

'TOMORROW IS St Valentine's Day," as Ophelia sings during her descent into madness in Act IV of Hamlet. But, of course, St Valentine's Day is not what it used to be. I know this because – suggesting that nostalgia is not what it used to be either – the declining standards of February 14th are the subject of a long and heartfelt lament in Chambers' Book of Days,an almanac written 140 years ago.

“Valentine’s Day is now almost everywhere a much degenerated festival,” it sniffs – “now” being 1869 – “the only observance of any note consisting merely of the sending of jocular anonymous letters to parties whom one wishes to quiz, and this confined very much to the humbler classes.

“The approach of the day is now heralded by the appearance in the print-sellers’ shop windows of vast numbers of missives. . . each generally consisting of a single sheet of post paper, on the first page of which is seen some ridiculous coloured caricature of the male or female figure, with a few burlesque verses below. More rarely, the print is of a sentimental kind, such as a view of Hymen’s altar, with a pair undergoing initiation into wedded happiness before it, while Cupid flutters above, and hearts transfixed with his darts decorate the corners.

“Maid-servants and young fellows interchange such epistles with each other on the 14th of February, no doubt conceiving that the joke is amazingly good: and, generally, the newspapers do not fail to record that the London postmen delivered so many hundred thousand more letters on that day than they do in general. Such is nearly the whole extent of the observances now peculiar to St Valentine’s Day.”

The 1869 version does not sound much different from ours, except that in 2009, the festivities are no longer confined to the “humbler classes”; and along with the postmen, the newspapers these days also have reason to be grateful, thanks to the burgeoning market in Valentine personal ads (there’s still time to phone yours in, reader).

But what Chambers called “the true, proper ceremony of St Valentine’s Day” – apparently extinct by 1869 – was a lottery. A lovers’ lottery, to be exact: held for centuries on the eve of the 14th, it involved pairing off all the eligible (and sometimes not so eligible) persons in a locality, who were then obliged to exchange gifts, or perhaps more than that.

The lottery may have been a vestige of the Roman Lupercalia, also celebrated in mid-February and featuring a similar random pairing of lovers. Yet it was still going strong into the 1700s, at least, when the “very ancient custom” was noted by a French traveller in Britain who added: “It often ends in love.”

If it did not end to love, it could at least be profitable. Presents were sometimes given to buy out the obligation under which such a Valentine laboured. Samuel Pepys records that, as a result of different Valentine draws, the society beauty Frances Stuart once received a jewel worth £800 from the Duke of York and a £300 ring from a Lord Mandeville.

And suggesting that marriage did not disqualify participants, Pepys’s wife did well too. Of her Valentine booty in February 1668, he writes: “She reckons that she hath above one hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of jewels of one kind or other: and I am glad of it, for it is fit the wretch should have something to content herself with.” (Apparently, “wretch” was meant here as a term of endearment.)

That tomorrow’s excesses will be carried out in a saint’s name results from the early church’s policy of superimposing religious feast days on an existing pagan celebration. The fifth-century Pope Gelasius is even said to have retained the lottery for young people, except with each participant drawing the name of a saint rather than a lover, and devoting himself accordingly. Despite such cunning strategies, the church’s tactics to restrain the fertility festival have had only mixed success in the intervening centuries.

Which brings me back to Ophelia and her song. For some observers, it clinches the suspicion that, notwithstanding assurances to her father about how Hamlet “hath importun’d me with love/ In honourable fashion”, Polonius had every right to be concerned that the prince “hath given private time to you, and you yourself/ Have of your audience been most free and bounteous.” In other words, to put the suspicion bluntly, the poor girl is pregnant and Hamlet has left her in the lurch. Hence her demented singing about the seduction of a maiden: “Tomorrow is St Valentine’s Day/ All in the morning betime/ And I a maid at your window/ To be your Valentine./ Then up he rose and donn’d his clothes/ And dupp’d the chamber door;/ Let in the maid, that out a maid/ Never departed more.”

fmcnally@irishtimes.com