Ahh, Valentine’s Day: the perfect moment to tell your sweetheart how much you love them with a thoughtful card.
But what about people in your life you don’t like so much? Why is there no Hallmark card telling them to get lost?
Such cards were meant to shock, offend and upset their recipients. Not surprisingly, as with real Valentine’s Day cards, senders often chose to remain anonymous.
“As you wait upon the women
With disgust upon your face
The way you snap and bark at them
One would think you owned the place”
“Behold this pale little poet
With a finger at forehead to show it
But the way he gets scads
Is by writing soap ads
But he wants nobody to know it!”
The anonymous nature of the vinegar valentine meant that anyone could be an unwitting recipient. Some cards could poke gentle fun, but others could have quite dangerous results.
But who could be disliked so much that they would receive a vinegar valentine?
“You are the man who chuckles when the news
Comes o’er the wires and tells of sad disaster,
Pirates on sea succeeding-burning ships and crews,
Rebels on land marauding, thicker, aye, and faster
You are the two faced villain, though not very bold,
Who would barter your country for might or for gold.”
As vinegar valentines continued to be produced throughout the early 1900s, a new target became very popular – the suffragette.
“You may think it fun poor Cupid to snub,
With the hand of a Suffragette.
But he’s cunning and smart, aye, there’s the rub,
Revenge is the trap he will set.”
And the effects of vinegar valentines can still be seen, and felt, today. Anonymous internet trolls keep up the sniping spirit so prevalent in the Victorian era. Today’s vinegar valentines are extremely online. They are just as spiteful, but the difference is they are emphatically not restricted to one particular day in February.
