The Comic Valentine of mid-Victorian England

Beards

It was only after the Crimean War that beards became fashionable. At first there was considerable variation - an early style from the 1860s was to have long side- whiskers dangling down each side of the face like displaced spaniels’ ears, with a shaven chin in between.

A man of fashion runs, they say,
After all the girls in town,
He runs in debt, then runs away,
And such I must run down,
So my swell I am not incline,
To have you for a Valentine.

Both items
Comic valentine
Published by W S Fortey, Printer & Publisher
2&3 Monmouth Court, London
140 x 222mm (5½ x 8¾in)
Mid 19th century

Chignons

“The French women have always sold their beautiful tresses to decorate heads less favoured by Nature than their own; and even now the women of Brittany sacrifice that ornament for the sake of some silk kerchief of many colours at one of the periodical fairs.”

Your charms may be admired I know,
But not your style of dress.
Pray don’t expose too much below,
Above give something less.
Leave too that ugly chignon at home,
Would be a likely plan;
Then you may meet, when out you roam,
Some very nice young man.

Albums & Scraps	Victorian Albums Victorian Scraps Father Tuck's Complete Picture Maker
Saint Valentines Day	Lace-Paper Valentines Comic Valentines
Easter & Fairyland	Easter Frolics In Fairyland
Christmas & New Year	A Victorian Christmas A Christmas Menagerie
Printed Ephemera	The Calendar Reward of Merit The English Lotteries
Publishers	Victorian Greeting Card Publishers