Vintage Vinegar Valentines

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Pretty much as soon as Valentines expressing sweet sentiments of love, friendship, and romance could be printed and delivered via post in the early 19th century, the anti-Valentine, or Vinegar Valentine, was born. In the United States and the...
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Pretty much as soon as Valentines expressing sweet sentiments of love, friendship, and romance could be printed and delivered via post in the early 19th century, the anti-Valentine, or Vinegar Valentine, was born. In the United States and the United Kingdom, around February 14, the besotted, whose most amorous feelings were usually suppressed by buttoned-up Victorian society, would send anonymous poems and gifts expressing their passion to their secret crush. (For popular girls, figuring out which suitor sent each Valentine was a delightful game.) But so-called Vinegar Valentines also let the aggrieved anonymously vent their true feelings, usually with comic drawings and poems. That guessing game? Maybe not as fun. Around the 1830s-'40s, Valentines were folded sheets of paper, sometimes sealed with wax stamps for delivery. The recipient had to pay for each letter they accepted and opened. And when one was surprised to unfold an insulting verse, the fact you had to pay to read it only made you feel worse. These folded-paper Vinegar Valentines, popular between the 1840s and 1880s, were cheap and widely mass-produced, but they're rare collectibles today, because their embarrassed recipients tended to throw them in the trash. What offenses might warrant a Vinegar Valentine? Well, a sender might scold the town drunk, the local lecher, the neighborhood gossip, a know-it-all, a vain dandy, a pompous twit, an arrogant saleswoman, or a terrible singer. ("When a pig's getting slaughtered, the noise it makes / Is sweeter by far than your trills and your shakes.") At times, the Vinegar Valentines punched up, knocking corrupt businessmen, brutal cops, and mean bosses. Some were sent simply to turn down romantic overtures. Some were playfully teasing; others were overtly hostile or just plain cruel, mocking the recipient as ugly, fat, poor, or hopelessly single (addressed to Old Maid, Spinster, or Bachelor). The most horrifying Vinegar Valentines recommended...
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