Valentine card: P.14416-R-71

Titles

Valentine card

Maker(s)

Publisher: Unknown

Entities

• Valentine card

Categories

• Print
• Album

Description

A lithograph with hand colouring on white wove paper. A lithographed border of a mock picture frame with reeded horizontals and verticals and baroque mouldings at the corners surrounds a second lozenge-shaped 'frame' at the centre which contains an ornate roundel within which is a half-length figure of a woman sitting in a chair seen in profile facing left and looking at a portrait of a man which she holds in her right hand. A verse is printed below: 'Beloved I needed not this boy / To keep thy memory dear / For in my grief and in my joy / Thy form is ever near, / So deeply graven on my heart / That only with my life 'twill part'. The verse suggests that this valentine was designed as a memorial to a dead lover or husband, or possibly to a dead son. The interior is blank. One of eight valentines from the same series which are mounted onto consecutive leaves of album P.14416-R. A hand-written inscription in graphite on the album leaf below P.14416-R-66 indicates that each was bought for 1 shilling and sixpence. This pricing was probably transcribed from the handwritten MS by second-hand bookseller, R.S. Frampton found on the back fly-leaf of album P.14416-R (See P.14416-R-L1), which records the first line of one of the eight followed by the price: 'To you my souls [sic] affection move [P.14416-R-72] & 7 other similar (8) for 12/0'. The '7 other similar' cards from the group of eight can be identified as: P.14416-R-66, P.14416-R-67, P.14416-R-68, P.14416-R-69, P.14416-R-70, P.14416-R-71 and P.14416-R-73. P.14416-R-36, a smaller card with only the inner lozenge-shaped frame, employs the same design and verse as P.14416-R-71, but with different hand colouring.

Legal notes

Bequeathed by Dr J. W. L. Glaisher, 1928