St Valentine's Day Customs, From a Correspondent

In the Middle Ages it was customary for bachelors and maids to draw by lot valentines for the following year from members of the opposite sex.

For enlightenment on the practice of choosing valentines in the sixteen-sixties, we will turn to Samuel Pepys. It shows that it was customary for the first person of the opposite sex crossing the threshold of a house, to be the chosen valentine: there seems to have been wangling to ensure that the valentines were acceptable to each other. In some instances, valentines still seem to have been drawn by lot.

It also shows that persons of either sex could have more than one valentine, and that being a valentine could be expensive for the man. Choosing valentines was a light-hearted pastime, equally prevalent among the married as the single, but with the latter might be a preliminary to courtship and marriage.

There are few records of valentine observances in eighteenth-century England, but seemingly in cities generally, the jolly rites and ceremonies of choosing valentines were losing ground to the practice, first noticed by Pepys in 1666, of making or buying hand-painted paper, or painted or embroidered silk valentines, for sending anonymously to the chosen one of the opposite sex. In country districts there are numerous records of the old rites retaining their popularity during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, sometimes with amusing variations in certain localities.