Valentines

Valentine from Quentin Roosevelt to Flora Whitney with the word “platonic” underlined twice.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1916-02-13

President Roosevelt holds his big stick and points at a large heart that includes his face, which gets progressively smaller for each line of text. Caption: “If of me you’d cease to think my heart would shrink and shr-r-rink and shr-r-r-r-ink.”

comments and context

Comments and Context

Despite Theodore Roosevelt’s depiction in this cartoon in a more elaborate Rough Rider uniform than usual, and despite the imminence of his retirement and African safari, the drawing’s context is more mundane… and more obscure to readers more than a century later. The date of the cartoon — Valentine’s Day eve — is dispositive.

President Roosevelt holds a valentine that depicts the “Senate” trying to lasso Roosevelt who holds an “etiquette on international arbitration” scroll. The words on the valentine say, “There’s no use tryin’ to lasso us with a great big whoop and a lot o’fuss with our rope in the air we charge for fair and we’re never afraid of the ‘big stick’ scare.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-02-14

The bust portrait of “Miss Africa” appears over a heart on a Valentine’s card that states “Will You Be My Valentine?”, with two black putti.

Comments and Context

Seven and a half years after Theodore Roosevelt, practically in his first days as president, invited the black educator Booker T. Washington to the White House for dinner, Puck chose to traffic in the outrage and opposition to the act with this Valentine cartoon by Frank A. Nankivell.

Not even timely, but certainly gratuitous, the black Valentine must certainly have referred to that incident; during his presidency there were other interactions with blacks, including further meetings and consultations with Washington; and the insistence on the appointment of a black postmistress in a Mississippi town, also over the objections of white southerners. Roosevelt had received criticism (continuing somewhat to this day) for dismissing a regiment of black soldiers in an incident on a Texas army base; but anyone who thinks Roosevelt would have acted differently with an all-white regiment does not know Roosevelt well.

Former president Benjamin Harrison holds a bouquet of flowers and has a floral garland around his neck that Cupid has used to lasso him. In a poem, Cupid says, “I’ll help the boom of the happy groom, as his party’s Valentine.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1896-02-12

At center, Uncle Sam and President Cleveland shake hands, with a portrait of Liliuokalani, Queen of Hawaii, in the background. The surrounding vignettes feature a cast of characters, identified or referred to in the text as “Croker,” “Parkhurst,” and “Tammany” reform, “Iago Manley” and “Othello Reed,” “Peffer, Lease, Dana, Pulitzer, [and] Depew,” Harrison sitting in his over-sized top hat, and Thomas Collier Platt turning a crank that manipulates George R. “Malby” as “Speaker” of the New York State Assembly, David B. Hill sitting in an over-sized “Senatorial Chair N.Y. State,” and “McKinley” dressed as Napoleon I, riding a “War Tariff” rocking horse. Each scene includes “Valentine” text, such as this for “Peffer” and “Lease,” each holding papers labeled “Speech”: “From bleeding Kansas’s wind-swept plains, / Where whiskers take the place of brains, / You come with all your verbose strength / Of speeches of unending length. / Here, take the hint Puck gives – resign! / Let Mary be your Valentine”; and this for McKinley: “McKinley Bill! McKinley Bill! / Why do you ride that hobby still? / The cause of pool, combine and trust, / And idle mill-wheels red with rust. / Mistaken Man! We’ll never pine / For you to be our Valentine.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-02-14

President McKinley stands at center holding a large cornucopia and emitting rays labeled “Prosperity,” while around him are vignettes showing people from all walks of life – doctors, cabbies, club men, real estate agents, actors, nobility seeking rich American wives, tramps, children, and old maids, even “The Hungry Heathen” – all with valentine wishes for McKinley and the hope of prosperity for themselves.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1897-02-17

A young man and woman ride in an airplane. The man has his arm around the woman’s waist. Below them, angels trumpet a diamond-studded number “7.” Caption: A tour for St. Valentine’s Day. Saint Valentine Number.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1912-02-07

A young woman juggles hearts in celebration of Valentines Day.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1911-02-08

An old man labeled “St. Valentine,” carrying a “U.S. Mail” letter pouch, delivers valentines to “Col. W.D. Mann,” John A. “McCall,” Henry H. “Rogers,” John D. Rockefeller Jr., John D. “Rockefeller,” “Son McCurdy,” Edward L. “Hamilton,” and Richard “Pat McCurdy.” Caption: St. Valentine — Don’t be afraid to take ’em, boys. They’re valentines; not subpoenas.

Comments and Context

Even on Valentine’s Day, Puck pursued the scoundrels of the insurance industry and Standard Oil with barbs of criticism, and not the arrows of a Cupid. The figures in the doorway were prominent names before the scandal-hungry public in 1905 and 1906.

To readers today the diminutive figure at their feet might not be a familiar name. In many ways, however, Colonel William D’Alton Mann was powerful. Mann was the publisher of the magazine Town Topics, a respectable-looking and seemingly innocuous journal of high society, listing soirees and charity balls between its profiles of the polo-playing set. Eager readers did not have to read between the lines of conservative typefaces and formal portraits to partake of lurid slop and juicy innuendo.

At center a valentine card features President Roosevelt as Cupid. Around the outside are other valentines featuring two European leaders, American industrial and political figures, a Russian admiral, a writer identified only as “Tom,” and a Wall Street con artist.

Comments and Context

Whether it was a cartoonist’s creative crutch every year, or readers’ happy expectations, the easy formula of imaginary Valentine’s Day cards for political figures was a frequent feature in Puck and other satirical weeklies of the day. Frederick Burr Opper drew many of these over his years at Puck in the 1880s and ’90s.

In 1905 cartoonist J. S. Pughe took a turn, and notable is his use of personal characteristics — height, professions, perhaps a recent headline — more than a person’s political stance or an alleged indiscretion.

Uncle Sam sits in a chair with three putti or cupids handing him valentine cards that state “Assistance and Sympathy during the Spanish-American War.” The cards have come from “England,” “Germany,” and “Russia.” Caption: Uncle Sam — I didn’t know I had so many friends till I won that fight!

Comments and Context

European Colonial powers were happier with a weak Spain administering a far-flung and shaky empire than a strong United States joining the ranks of imperialism. After the American victory in the Spanish-American War, those powers sought to cozy up to the new member of the colonial club, as it were. 

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Senator Aldrich is shown delivering a valentine to President Roosevelt from the Standard Oil Company.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-02-14

President Roosevelt thanks Russell N. McAlister for the valentine. He thinks McAlister is a good boy and hopes he will become “a good and useful man.”

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1909-02-15