Valentine's for the Victorians (From Wiltshire Times)

Valentine's for the Victorians

1:35pm Tuesday 10th February 2009 in Chippenham By Craig Evry

A COLLECTION of Victorian Valentine’s cards will be put up for auction later this month.

Love will be in the air at Chippenham Auction Rooms on the Ivy Lane Industrial Estate on February 28, when the cards are due to be sold.

Auctioneer Richard Edmonds said the cards aren’t the slushy variety we have become accustomed to today, with one featuring dead game birds and blood with the slogan ‘Who will take me for a partner? And then win the game’.

Another card shows a woman in her room, saying ‘Will you walk into my parlour, said the spider to the fly. It’s the premier little parlour that you ever did spy’.

Others depict a pretty girl playing with a racquet and shuttlecock and a contemporary soldier accompanied by a poem.

Me Edmonds said: “Some of them are beautiful objects and nothing like what we buy and send today.

“They show a different type of Valentine and a different side to social history.

“We have over 100 lots of this ephemera all from the same source.”

Some of the cards are worth in the region of £60-£80.