By Madonna Dries Christensen
If you frequent antique shops, you’ve probably seen the sepia photographs pictured here. Cupid Awake and Cupid Asleep are their names. The photographer, M.B. Parkinson, worked in the New York City area during the latter part of the 1800s and early 1900s. His young model, Josephine Anderson, was the daughter of a friend, a single mother who worked and sometimes left her child in Parkinson’s care.
Josephine died in the 1970s.
Parkinson copyrighted his prints in 1897 and they were distributed by Taber-Prang Art Company of Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1908, The Ohio Art Company began selling metal picture frames in which the Cupid prints were displayed, some of them hand tinted. Sold at Kresge’s, Sears, and Woolworth’s, people bought the frames for the pictures. The Cupids were immensely popular and were seen in millions of homes across the country. In 1938, Ohio Art Company bought the copyright from Taber-Prang after their bankruptcy. Originally sold for a nickel or dime, the Cupid photos now command high prices, as much as $450 a pair in larger sizes.
Other vintage Parkinson prints are in circulation and nearly all of them have a child as the subject, including other Cupid prints. Cupid At Rest and Cupid Interested were copyrighted in 1906 by M. DeWitt. Cupid Waiting, and Cupid Watching were copyrighted in 1911 by Hughes and Lyday Company. There’s also one called Encore in which Cupid is holding a violin, and another called What Will You Have? Not so common are the Black Cupid prints issued by Schlesinger Brothers and by National Art and Frame Company. There are many Cupid Awake and Cupid Asleep reproductions, so if you’re into collecting, know what you’re buying; old or new.
Just who was Cupid and why is he associated with Valentine’s Day? There are dozens of version of how St. Valentine’s Day began. Here’s one from Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things by Charles Panati. In about AD 496, the Catholic Church took steps to ban the centuries old pagan festival honoring Lupercus, the God of fertility. At this February celebration, young men drew a teenaged girl’s name from a box. She would be his companion for pleasure for a year. When Pope Gelasius initiated the new festival, he chose Saint Valentine as its patron. Valentine was a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years earlier, in AD 270. Valentine had angered the emperor Claudius by secretly marrying young couples after Claudius had abolished marriage because married men did make good soldiers. Claudius tried to persuade Valentine to renounce his faith and was further angered when Valentine not only refused but wanted to convert Claudius to Catholicism. On February 14, Valentine was clubbed, stoned and beheaded.
Before his death, he supposedly fell in love with his jailer’s daughter, who had befriended him, and he signed his final note to her, “From your Valentine.”
In time, the Lupercalian festival gave way to the Christian celebration. Both men and women participated in the new game of chance, in which they drew the name of a saint, whom they were expected to emulate for a year. For men, this was not as satisfying as having a young girl assigned to them so they instituted the practice of giving handwritten affectionate greetings to women they wished to court. They did this on February 14th As Christianity spread, so did the practice of exchanging handwritten love notes. They became more and more decorative, and Cupid became a popular image on the notes because in Roman mythology, Cupid was the son of Venus, goddess of love. In Greek mythology, Cupid is known as Eros, son of Aphrodite. Birds were commonly used on love notes, stemming from a medieval belief that birds feather their nests and pick a mate in mid-February.
Americans began exchanging Valentine sentiments during the 1700s. In the 1840s, mechanical cards were popular. By pulling a tab, a figure or object appeared, or a three dimensional pop-up feature. About 1858, John McLaughlin, owner of a New York City printing company, introduced Vinegar Valentines, featuring sarcastic verses. Cartoonist Charles Howard created similar cards, which came to be known as Penny Dreadfuls (they cost a penny and the verses were dreadful). Mean-spirited, racy, racist, and sometimes obscene, these crude, unattractive, and insulting cards poked fun at nearly everyone: Civil servants, domestic workers, bookkeepers, teachers, librarians, or at lifestyles, habits, hobbies, religion, physical characteristics; masculinity, and femininity.
For some reason, people took to these cards, considering them nothing more than jokes. But since many were sent anonymously, it seems clear the messages were serious and intended to hurt the receiver. Adding insult to injury, during the 19th century, the receiver was obligated to pay the postage. During the early years of the 20th century, the Chicago post office refused to deliver some twenty-five thousand Penny Dreadfuls on the grounds that they were unfit to be sent through the US mail.
American artist and publisher Esther Howland is credited with producing the first mass-produced Valentines. Her lacy, elaborate cards cost from five to ten dollars, with some as much as thirty-five dollars. Less expensive cards became available, and children delighted in filling the mailbox at school with cards for classmates and teachers. A colorful card from 1913, given to teacher, Miss Sigrid Johnson, from Evelyn, reads: “Thy web of life in threads of gold, be wrought with joy in every fold.” In 1941, Richard Bowers gave Miss Brubaker a card reading: “Just a little Valentine; You’ll have others I’ve no doubt; In counting up your little friends, Please don’t leave me out.”
Today, frills and loving sentiments are still the mainstay of Valentines purchased by adults wanting to express their love and admiration for one another. Americans send an estimated one billion Valentines each year (that figure probably does not include millions of electronic cards now sent). Only at Christmastime are more cards sent (about 2.6 billion).