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Love is certainly in the air at Lymehurst Cottage (home of the Academy)!
In preparation for several salons and soirées on love and marriage that
I aim to present (and perhaps host at the Academy), I have for some time been delving
deep into romance during the ‘long eighteenth
century’ (with regard to my work, usually covering the late 17th
- early 19th centuries). I will perhaps provide one or two of these
events in summer this year (those that concentrate upon the Regency period); and
others (those on the Georgian
Era more generally) at around this time next year.
These events will investigate a
variety of topics relating to love and marriage in these eras – with
particular regard to Derby and the surrounding area – examining a range of
sources (including archaeological evidence and artefact collections; art and
illustrations; print culture and newspapers; novels and poems; advice manuals; memoirs
and diaries). In exploring attitudes towards love and marriage, they will consider the social, cultural, economic, and political settings of changing opinions and
behaviour; and what material remains tell us something about how
people expressed and felt romantic affection in the past. Events held on and /
or around Saint
Valentine’s Day will look at associated traditions of the day.
As today is Valentine’s Day, I shall provide a very brief a preview of work-in-progress. I am inevitably drawn to
antiquarian interest, so present a topical excerpt from an eighteenth
century theological (hagiographic)
work. I follow this with something a little more down to earth: late eighteenth-century newspaper correspondence regarding the tradition of prospective suitors drawing
lots for their Valentine!
*
In his Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal
Saints (published in the late 1750s), English Catholic priest Alban Butler (1710-1773) refers to early
17th century Swiss Valentine customs while writing of Saint Francis of Sales, Bishop of Geneva:[i]
He [Francis of Sales] severely forbade the custom of Valentines or giving
boys, in writing, the names of girls to be admired and attended on by them;
and, to abolish it, he changed it into giving billets with the names of certain
saints for them to honor and imitate in a particular manner.
In the Derby
Mercury newspaper, we read of traditions that seem to indicate continuing secular development of such 'Valentines' after the 17th century, in the form of drawing lots; clearly, not everyone agreed with perpetuating this 'ancient custom'!:
Derby Mercury, 7 March 1782 (above); 20 March 1782 (below)
As with other ostensibly ‘ancient’ customs (e.g., see the Halloween post), I cannot but ponder the extent to which antiquarian pursuits influenced the ‘revival’ of this practice – a topic that I continue to investigate. However, in this case the latter newspaper correspondent does not appear to be familiar with the move from secular (romantic) to ecclesiastical (saintly veneration) ‘billets’ in the early modern period referred to within Rev. Butler’s work.
I will again here return to the theme of love & marriage; but for now, I must return to the archives.
y
Notes
[i] Alban Butler & Bernard Kelly (Ed.) n.d. The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints, Vol. I. London: Virtue & Company Ltd., p.125.
