Roundabout
Season to Taste
By KATHARINE WHITEHORN
Whatever the cause, there is no doubt that St. Valentine is now riding high; and seeing all the cards displayed gave one a clear idea of the categories into which they fall. There are, of course, the straightforwardly sentimental, ones like 'To 1.rty darling husband' on a cushion of flowered, silk at 9s. 6d. a card. There are the less straightforwardly sentimental: I cannot believe that card labelled 'Pansies for Thoughts' that contains': in the verse inside, an instfuction to 'read between the lines, dear' does not sell at least partly on the innuendo. There arc the ones non-committal enough even to, sign with your own name: 'Here's a Valentine I got, To Show 1 like you such a lot.'
These, presumably, are much the same from year to year; the real variations come in the comic ones, which are almost all made on treacle-cutting, anticlimactical lines: 'Hoping the prettiest girl in town has a wonderful Valen- tine's Day. . . . Hoping you do, too,' or one, a whole little book, saying, `Do I think that you're witty and clever? Do I worship, love and adore you? etc. etc. . . . Not when I'm sober.'
Comic cards are not as new as one might think. The); start: from about 1840, well before the heyday of Valentines, which was the 1870s. Presumably the explanation, as one of the Hall-' mark men blu4fully. suggested from his own experience, is that if you are expected to send a Valentine, and feel an ass about it, a comic one is the best way out. Originally, it seems, the idea was to make the Valentine yourself; the problem here was that the people who make: lacy exotic ones are girls, but the people who like to receive lacy exotic ones are also girls. And this is where the professional fabricator came in. In a Strand magazine of 1895 there are some splendid .pictures of a Valentine firm at work : the .'sentimental' •room consisted of a lot of plump, dreamy-looking girls; the 'comic' section of four tough and melancholy. Men.
Last year comic cards accounted for about 60 per cent. of all sales, but it is obvious that spoof cards will not sell well indefinitely unless what is spoofed is also taken seriously, So it is with some Tad that the card people note, that the sentimental ones are on the up and up this 'year, just as religious Christmas cards are coming back into force again..,The only kind, of cards which are comic by nature,. spooling. nothing except honest emotion, are the peculiar! phenomenon of the last five years, the occasion: card. The .essence of selling any' sort of card is presumably to [mike a card so apt to a given. occasion that no one can resist it; but in prac- tice this means pursuing two apparently opposites trends: the increasingly enigmatic, that will touch with what seems to be art uncanny' accuracy on a personal situation, just hs vague, fortune-telling pronouncements do: this is the 'Sorry about last night' or 'Ours is a strange and wonderful relationship' type. The other Sort is the increasingly precise: cards not just for St., Patrick's Day and for birthdays, but for birth- days on St. Patrick's 'Day. It must be hard to, decide at just what point precision becomes un- economic; one has to balance the absolutely compelling effect of a Get Well Brother-in-Law Birthday St. Valentine's Card on those who have a sick brother-in-law whose birthday is on St. Valentine's Day 'against the small number of customers likely to find themselves so placed. But obviously ,there are still endless combina- lions yet to be tried: birthday cards for twins to send each other, for exaMple, or Happy Austerlitz cards for people who think .they are Napoleon. or a combined Bon Voyage and Get Well Card for seasickness.
There remains the teasing question of why people send cards at all; and laziness is not, I think, the answer. Cards get rid of shyness, for a start: just as you 'can make ruder or franker.' remarks in a foreign tongue because it always seems more veiled than the same remark in plain English, a remark on a card is that much less direct This, I am sure, Is why so many cards. show an ammal saying something: it is remote to say '1 love you' on a card, but one cartoon puppy saying 'I love you to another cartoon puppy commits you even less
When you examine the situations in which these cards are sent, it becomes apparent that for the most part they do not mop up situations which would otherwise require a letter. All the really difficult letters still have to be written: letters borrowing things, letters of condolence, letters explaining why one never turned up at the party at all or letters explaining that although one is, of course, not aware 'of a friend's broken heart, one wishes to suggest that drink and records are always available for the broken- hearted—all the ones that take any sort of finesse still have to be done by hand. All that cards do is create a whole lot of new occasions on which one sends a card instead of keeping quiet altogether.
And, in fact, there does seem to be a trend toward the sort of formality which involved doing something on occasions where one pre- viously did nothing. When I was small, I was taught that one sent cards or Christmas presents; now one seems to send both. And I have noticed that people have started, not just ringing up the day after a party to discuss the other guests, but to drop little thank-you notes—an appalling extra complication to life. It seems a shame, in the middle of all this, that it is one of the most useful cards that has gone out—the visiting card. Think how helpful it would be to exchange these at parties (though I suppose we would soon have cards showing a kitten saying, 'I'm Joe Smith, who are you?' instead of a plain printed name). Even hosts could well hand them around to ad- vantage these days; then at least you would know to whom to send my favourite occasion card of all: the one that says, 'MOB VIOLENCE NEVER SOLVED —ANYTHING' and then, over the page, 'BUT IT WAS A SWELL PARTY ANYWAY.'
'You mean yotire not even going to mention me in despatchoo'
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