Tarzan blows jungle kisses to Jane. Amo, Amas, Alas, I love my Lass . . . For the information of anything from outer space, it is Valentine’s Day. It is probably too late to order red roses to be delivered to your loved one from the village shop. Hence the efflorescence at the stationer’s of (overblown and overpriced) cards bearing hearts and cupids, and the spike in the price of chocolates, improbable underwear and amorous dinners for two in the local restaurant. And hence the wave of crypto-romantic messages that breaks over our agony columns. For Valentine brings out the twee as well as the sexy. Even in this liberated age, the upper lip is stiff, and Britons find it difficult to wear their hearts on sleeves (except on this once-a-year day).
Valentine would have been puzzled. According to his problematic martyrology, he was a Roman priest who was imprisoned for helping Christians. He was converted. He restored the sight of the jailer’s blind daughter. And he was clubbed to death circa 270. What his sad fate has to do with our amorous Miss Piggy in classified ads is obscure. But it is old. Chaucer and Shakespeare refer to it. Pepys complains about the expense of buying gloves for his Valentine. Some connect it with the date when birds begin to mate. Others blame the vulgarisation, commercialism, the introduction of manufactured Valentines, instead of personal billets doux, and the introduction of postage and even flirty texts. Poets and novelists are more ambivalent about the pain and pleasure of love than the Valentine industry. But today is no time for ambivalence. Valentine is for romance, with no ifs, buts, quibbles — or false economy.