Won't You Be My Valentine?

An Appreciation of An Obscure Art Which Flourishes in America on February Fourteenth

COREY FORD

"Visions of girls so fill your brain That nothing else it can contain;

You ought to know that behind your back They all set you down for a Jack."

—From Dippy on the Girl Question in the Batchelder Collection of Comic Valentines

"You think you trifle with men;

You've been engaged to more than ten;

But this we know for a fact,

They wooed to find out how you'd act"

—From A Juggler of Hearts, Ha, Ha, ibid.

WHO has not received one of these dainty missives on Valentine's Morn? Whose eyes have not danced with fun, whose day has not been made a little brighter as he ripped open an envelope addressed in a disguised hand, and read therein a verse laughingly addressed to "You Cheap TinHorn Sport, You" or "Oh! What a Pickle! ' What home has not been made a little brighter by the arrival in the mails on February fourteenth of a large coloured placard depicting a husband (apparently Frank Sullivan) seated at his desk fondling a stenographer who resembles William Howard Taft without his moustache, while his wife waits in the doorway with a large hook labeled "Divorce" and the verse below bears the solemn "Warning": ". . . ONE girl won't be dressed so toney, When you are paying ALIMONY."

Such gay sentiments are but typical of the light-hearted and insouciant manner of the Comic Valentine. Annually in February these harbingers of laughter wing their carefree way through the mails, touching with a butterfly grace the foibles of friends and relatives, prodding the infirmities of neighbours with such subtle insinuendoes as the climax of those happy lines to "A Dance-Hall Johnny": . . but really you make everyone

laugh, You're pigeon-toed and cross-eyed, too!"—an impudent but well-meant thrust which no doubt convulsed its recipient with hearty merriment.

Scorned by the Art Lovers of America, ignored by critics and connoisseurs, the Comic Valentine has never received the aesthetic appreciation which is its due. Indeed, many people have gone so far as to think them extinct, like the horse. For years these humble artists and poets have struggled against overwhelming odds, their only galleries the rear counter of a stationery store in the Bronx, their only reward the satisfaction that their work must have helped to break up a few friendships and, perchance, wreck a home or two; and it is in a belated attempt to bring credit to this neglected form of American Art that we have assembled here a few of the more outstanding specimens, culled from the famous Roger Batchelder Collection, unexpurgated. If our little effort can bring to these obscure artists perchance one such poke on the nose as they so richly deserve, then we shall be content.

THE drawings of the Comic Valentines we shall pass over as tactfully as possible, with but a brief word of appreciation for their imaginative colouring and varied subject-matter. The style seems to be based somewhat on the Comic Post-card school; and in the potato-shaped nose, prominent buckteeth, and other exaggerated portions of the victims' anatomy we see the definite influence of those funny cards of inebriated gentlemen drinking beer from a rubber nipple, or pursuing bathing-girls with parasols down the beach, which are sent home to the bunch in the office from Eddie, off on a tear in Montreal or Asbury Park. The illustrations, it may be added, are usually decorated with a heart, or hearts.

It is rather in the verses beneath these pictures that we discover the true spirit of the Comic Valentine. To be sure, these likewise derive slightly from the Comic Post-card; but to the witty sayings of the latter—"Having a Fine Time at the SFF-SHORE!" or "Follow the swallow (?) to MONTREAL, CAN-

ADA!!!"—the Valentine poets bring a new piquancy of expression and felicity of phrase not to be found elsewhere in American verse. Such classics as "A Cheap Tin-Horn Sport and Gambler" and "No Amount of Money Would Make You Acceptable," as indeed their titles suggest, have a certain lack of restraint which puts over their tender sentiments to admirable effect, and leaves no doubt in the mind of the reader that he is "such a rank and hopeless goose, That for you I'd have no use!" (From Can't You Lose Her, Poor Fellow? in the Batchelder Collection.)

THE Comic Valentine is not cramped in its range of topics for attack. Mothers-in-law, old maids, stenographers, henpecked husbands, bootleggers and gossips all come in for their just dues. Even the stage merits some deft satiric thrusts, notably the Movie Actress—who is advised that she would register with great success "the part of inmate in a home, For feeble-minded folk"—and the matinee idol, pictured before the footlights, for no apparent reason, in sou'wester, with a riding whip, a bulldog, and beneath it all the scathing verse entitled "Ye Would-Be Actor":

"In the movies your picture we see,

As a great actor you think you're immense, But the girls all say you're stuffed ivith hay, You're not ivorth the price of ten cents."

Nor does the sacred business of paternity come off unscathed. The Comic Valentine, rushing in anonymously where others would fear to tread, raises the delicate question by a portrait of a stork holding a baby in its bill, with a tag "For ?" and the cryptic verse:

"They say that on a certain day A little stranger came your way.

His squalls the proud father endures But tell us truly—is it YOURS?"

In like manner a brief verse disposes of "The Flirt" who "winks at every fellow, But when it comes to cooking, Your brains are very shallow," and another of "0, Miss Innocence," who no doubt considers herself "some chicken," but, "if the truth were really known, Has little left to learn!" On the other hand, the male sheik is destroyed in a particularly telling Valentine labeled "An Easy Mark," which presents the portrait of a crosseyed young man with practically no chin, a yellow cane, a bright blue derby (perhaps unintentional), narrow waist and tight green trousers ending several inches above the tops of his shiny yellow button-shoes. This brilliant illustration is titled, happily, "They Needn't Be Slick to Do the Trick" and reads as follows:

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Continued from page 43

"To hit the bullseye of your heart Needs little skill on a female's part. Any old thing in calico Can do it ivith ease, the very first go."

It is a curious fact that through all these Comic Valentines runs the same moral note, at times so crusading and persistent in its spirit that one wonders whether the placards are not secretly sponsored by the Anti-Saloon League or the Republican Party. Scandal-mongers, bootlegging, cigarette-smoking, bastardy and the evils of drink are all denounced enthusiastically in pointed verses and pictures. With an admirable lack of selfconsciousness, for example, the Comic Valentine descends with particular force on the "Chronic Roaster" in a venomous illustration which shows a lady with a long red nose and a slight moustache bending over a frying-pan and turning with her fork several smaller figures who are presumably friends of hers. According to the captions, they are roasting in "Scandal Oil," which is heated by an "Evil Spirit Lamp," which in turn is mounted, for further allegorical effect, on a brick labeled "Spite." Lest there be any lingering doubt of the intention of this portrait, the background is liberally posted with mottoes: "A Mean Woman," "You Never Have a Good Word for Anybody," and "You'd Roast Your Best Friends"; and the verse below takes evident satisfaction in predicting . . sure as Fate your time will come, When they will put you'on the bum'!"

But the most lurid and obliterating attack is reserved for the unfortunate victim of the Demon Booze. Here the imagination of the artist is brought into full play, and we see an inebriated gentleman in disheveled clothing, his collar flapping behind his ear and his hat awry, terminating abruptly at the waist in the long green coils of a venomous snake, which wind their way backward in successive loops to their infamous source in a whiskey demijohn. With a curious disregard for logic, the man is holding, aloft a foaming stein of beer and pointing to his left temple, evidently to indicate that it has gone to his head. Beneath this terrible moral lesson is a brief verse with the evangelical invitation:

"Get aboard, old⅜ man. Now don't delay.

You've hit it up, for many a day.

For the Water Wagon you're long past due.

Get aboard, or 23 for you!"

Surely in these carefree rhymes, devoid of the sophisticated subtleties and restraint which characterize the verse of, let us say, F. P. Adams or Dorothy Parker, we may find at last a true picture of the American mind. It is a fact that, with the possible exception of one or two ingenious poisons put up by the natives of New Guinea, the Comic Valentine has no rival in the field of destructive criticism.

It is with this in mind that I have been very busy the past few days addressing envelopes in a large, disguised hand; and what a laugh there will be when Dr. John Roach Straton, and Bishop Cannon, and Senator Borah, and Richard Halliburton, and Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt and a few other buddies of mine open their mail on February fourteenth.

What a laugh on February fifteenth, for that matter, when I open mine.