Valentine’s Day is coming up, and these days a young person’s mind turns to love or the rejection thereof. We say that because the sentimentality of the late nineteenth century is making something of a comeback. For example, take the Vinegar Valentine. Our friends at Atlas Obscura call these Victorian-era postcards “rude, cruel, and insulting,” which pretty much sums it up.
Personal postcard collections deserve to be better known than they are. For example, Alan M. Mclauchlan is a Canadian collector (Manitoba, Ontario, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police). We like the way he’s organized and you know he’s serious about his collection and the geography when you read the Latin quote he presents at the top of his website: Flumina amo, sylvasque, inglorius [“May I love the rivers and the woods, though fame be lost”].
