leading apes in hell*

In mid-Victorian England the custom of sending daintily printed valentines, overflowing with hearts, cupids and poetical posies was generally understood to consist of an exchange of missives between special loving friends... Yet beneath the sweet exterior and tender words of these lace-paper beauties lurked something far more sinister - the comic valentine!

These scurrilous printed sheets, entered into the humour of the common and middles classes, fun and mischief were their elements... In reality they were masterpieces of the grotesque, venomous in humour, spiteful and rude, expressing anything but love.

The Sentimental Slut

Sentimental single one, what causes thee to weep?
Crying, like a crocodile, and sighing very deep;

O! Say, is it Cupidity, that puts you in a flutter?
“O! No I’m in a dungeon cold, and scarce a word may utter:”
You're in a castle, in the air, and dreaming in broad day;
So, Sentimental Slut, awake, and drive those thoughts away;
“Imprisoned, by an uncle bold, who urges me to marry;”
Imprisoned, for your uncle holds the shawl for which you tarry.
“Red bloody deeds, indeed, he’s done; my loves he loves to stab,”
Read bloody books, indeed, you have; till read has made a drab.
“Sadly the wind it blew and howled, when spectre-warn’d - O! - shocking:”
Sadly you mind to sew the holes you have in either stocking.
“It warn’d, and said; what did it say? it warn’d as it was going”
The fire's out, your love-bird’s dead; and how the water’s flowing.
So, Sentimental Slut, adieu! - no more romantic pine -
For I do seek a lover true, - no dreary Valentine.

*“Leading apes in hell” was the traditional occupation for old maids and spinsters in the Victorian era.

Via Maud Newton