Valentine Greetings From A Few Long-Dead Authors

A bit of literary humor I simply couldn't resist.

I know there are probably thirty incarnations of this very premise floating around the internet as we speak—as I type and then later as you read this, I mean—and yet I must have my share in the conversation. It’s fun! There are many things in this world that are sad and scary and pressing and stressing but writing bookish jokes is excessively diverting, and I thought of the Baroness Orczy one while driving my kids to their grandparents’ and simply had to write that. And then it needed companions. So here we are. If you were in a relationship with one of these authors this is probably what they’d write to you to accompany a box of chocolates, if Hallmark cards had been invented in their lifetime.

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“My dearest love, the thought of being apart from you—whether separated bodily by a surging, seething, murmuring ocean, or metaphysically by the mental anguish of betrayal and deceit and nerves strained to their very breaking point—is like a dagger in my heart, and I shall have to kiss the stone walkway on our extravagant terrace to recover from the agony of such a concept.”

—Baroness Emmuska Orczy

“I wish you joy of the feast-day of St. Valentine, the patron saint of love— love, that sublime crucible in which the fusion of man and woman reaches divine consummation—and a man whose short and sacrificial life deserves further consideration. Let us pause to consider the brief history of St. Valentine, his life and work and persecution and martyrdom and burial, for at least thirty-two paragraphs.”

—Victor Hugo

“I am not at all in a humor for sending missives of affection on this day—I will have you know my pen is spoilt, and with it my humor for all affected nonsense and giving of presents—but my consideration for you dissolves all other nefarious annoyances. I will not say that I care for you more than for any frivolous holiday of sweetmeats and merry-making, but I will say that if I loved you less, I might purchase more saccharine store-bought sentiments for your post-box.”

—Jane Austen

“I sit to write this token of my love in the midst of a thickly curling fog—dismal, decrepit, the kind of fog at which even a fine aquiline nose would wrinkle in disgust. Dark and hinting at unspeakable evil, the twisted callousness that lurks in the most innocuous of men, this fog is the opposite of you, my heart's treasure. Do you believe in ghosts?”

—Sir Arthur Conan Doylel

“I cannot write anything of Valentine’s Day, for to-day is Sunday, and to think of romantic love would be a sin. I shall have my house slaves do it for me instead.”

—Martha Finlay

“I bought us some whiskey.”

—Ernest Hemingway

“It is Valentine’s Day? So it is. Shall we celebrate? I think we shall. Do you wish to celebrate it? I do. Perhaps we shall go to Paris? I am fond of Paris. Oh, you cannot spare the expense? I concur. Paris is costly. Then shall we stay in and consume bonbons? Yes, let us do that. Oh, you purchased no bonbons for— us to consume? VENGEANCE.”

—Alexandre Dumas

“The spirit of St. Valentine has touched me this night, and bade me declare myself to you— he is a portly, jolly spectre, a man so beset with smiles and joy that one might almost forget his martyrdom, and the horrors that touched his life—and so in short I must tell you how devoted I am to you, the angel of my better nature, and the one whose name shall be written over my heart when I lie beneath the cold unforgiving earth.”

—Charles Dickens

“Persons attempting to find a spark of sentiment in this heart of dried beef jerky shall be prosecuted and likely shot.”

—Mark Twain

“I have sent you a parcel of chamomile tea, dried lavender, some nicely ironed pocket-handkins, and a nice tin of biscuits. If you are good, and mind your manners, and sit up nicely to tea, I shall tell you a story to-night and sing you a lullaby as sweet as the songs of all the beasts on Christmas Eve, for I love you dearly, and I shall never oblige you to eat roasted lady-bird with grasshopper sauce again.”

—Beatrix Potter

“If you value your life, do not touch these chocolates— I can hardly speak of the utter vileness in which they were concocted.”

—Upton Sinclair