If you ever need or want to read old agricultural newspapers or magazines, it won’t be difficult to do so. The Farm, Field and Fireside collection is a digitized collection of historic U.S. agricultural newspapers and periodicals. It’s one of several digital collections available in the University of Illinois History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library that anyone with access to a computer can research or read online.
From the Farm, Field and Fireside collection website: “Together with the introduction of rural mail delivery, the telephone, and the automobile, farm newspapers played a key role in the modernization of rural America. The Farm, Field and Fireside collection contains historically significant U.S. farm weeklies published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”
One such publication was The Farmer’s Wife, published in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Farmer’s Wife provided information on a variety of topics of interest to country women, such as “methods of work” and “practical experience.” It also published romantic fiction. Just for fun, I picked a romantic short story (“A Valentine Conspiracy,” by Helen Frances Huntington from the February 1907, edition) and asked local romance novelist Lynn Crandall for her reactions to the story — its artistic merit, whether it stands the test of time, etc.
Crandall, the author of Silver Wings, and her fellow romance writer HiDee Ekstrom at Prairie Hearts (a Central Illinois chapter of Romance Writers of America) offered their thoughts and observations on this 105-year-old story. “A Valentine Conspiracy” is reprinted below, and the reactions from our local romance authors follow.
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The story
The far-reaching fragrance of Italian violets drifted abroad on the damp February air from the fine old Mortimer garden where Miss Lucia’s careful ingenuity kept flowers blooming throughout the long, sharp winter when all the rest of the Northern world was gray with frost. The two men riding down the broad sodden road that led past the garden looked instinctively toward the big white house behind the cedar hedge.
“Isn’t a wonder that Miss Lucia never married,” said Bernard Gray, the younger of the two men, whose blithe love affair had put him in a sympathetic mood toward the world at large.
“She certainly was not intended for an old maid.”
“I have always admired Miss Lucia greatly,” the other man answered. “She is a fine, full measured woman who would doubtless make a model wife and mother.”
“Yet here she is wasting her charm and goodness on an exacting old aunt, who doesn’t deserve half the devotion lavished on her!”
“Between you and me, Bernard,” said the older man in a confidential tone, “I have always believed that she loves Ben Arden.”
“That gloomy, plodding fellow!” Bernard exclaimed in disbelief.
“He was not always gloomy and dull. When Lucia was about eighteen Ben was a mighty agreeable, promising young fellow, and it certainly looked like they intended to marry, for Ben was a highly favored suitor. The Ardens were cheerful, happy-go-lucky people in good circumstances, but Lucia’s father didn’t exactly favor the match because he thought Ben too easy-going. Arden Senior was then one of the directors of the Medford bank in which he had several thousand dollars, beside his farm property which was worth six or eight thousand. When the panic wave of ’03 reached Medford there was a wild run on the bank, and then it was discovered that Arden was responsible for a seven-thousand-dollar shortage. In ordinary times he would not have been harshly dealt with, but just then people were mad with anxiety, so he was arrested and tried, but acquitted within a few weeks after he had made good the deficit by giving up his farm. He didn’t survive the disgrace, however, so Ben was left with the whole family on his hands.
“In the meantime, as soon as Arden’s disgrace got out, old Mortimer, who had never approved of his daughter’s choice of suitors, sent Ben his positive dismissal, and at the same time forbade Lucia to hold any further communication with Ben. She obeyed because she had been brought up in the strict old fashioned way that never questions parental authority, and Ben accepted his fate without a word. Within a year of the father’s death, two of the girls married, and soon after that the third made a good match, which left Ben alone with his invalid mother who begged him to buy back a little strip of the old home place, because she couldn’t bear the thoughts of living anywhere else. Ben strained every nerve to gratify his mother’s selfish whim, instead of leaving the place that had become hateful to him, and here he stayed for eleven lonely, pleasureless years, till his mother died.”
“And you think he has any idea that Miss Lucia still cares for him?” Bernard asked interestedly.
“No, I really don’t think so. They have never met since the break-up, as far as anyone knows.”
“What makes you think Miss Lucia cares, then?” the young man wanted to know.
“Well, about two years ago when Ben was snowed up in a midwinter snow storm, and we found him almost dead only half a mile from this place, I rushed in there for brandy and the way Miss Lucia received the news about Ben made me certain that she still loved him. But that’s her own affair, Bernard, remember. So don’t you let anyone else get hold of it.”
“Ben is going west in a few days,” said Barnard reflectively. “I consider him rather a poor stick for accepting his rejection so meekly. Why didn’t he insist on an explanation from Miss Lucia?”
“You seem to forget that he was under a tremendous disadvantage,” the older man observed drily. “His name was disgraced and he was without money and prospects. Lucia, who had plenty of well-to-do suitors, was almost a rich woman, as Medford counts wealth. Pride probably kept Ben from speaking.”
“The whole thing was a miserable shame!” was Bernard’s final verdict.
The more he thought of the story during the day, the more the pity of it impressed the young man, who was of romantic and daring disposition, and by-and-by there evolved from his reflections an idea which seemed so good to him that he determined to put it into execution at his earliest opportunity. The short day closed in with a soft warm gloom quite unusual to that season of the year.
“Tomorrow,” said Bernard to himself, as he set off through the damp dusk, “will be St. Valentine’s day. Nothing could be more propitious than a little valentine conspiracy. If it should fail of its purpose no harm will have been done and if it should succeed good old St. Valentine’s mission will be fulfilled.”
The brief touch of spring that had put winter to temporary night had induced Miss Lucia to leave her cold frames open for the night, for the benefit of her violet bed which was in luxuriant bloom and so exquisitely fragrant that Bernard had no difficulty in finding what he sought as he made his stealthy way across the wet garden which lay wrapped in moist darkness. He was obliged to rely upon touch instead of sight, for he dared not strike a match for fear of attracting attention to his thieving presence. When he had plucked enough violets to make a handsome bouquet he dried the dripping stems with his handkerchief and stole out of the garden as quietly as he had entered it. Once out in the open road, immune from detection, he struck a match and tied the flowers with a length of bridal white ribbon in which he had knotted a bit of verse clipped from a late magazine, which ran as follows:
“It matters not what season
Shall join these hearts of ours—
The winter’s ice and snow-time
Or April’s laughing showers;
December’s silver silence
Or Summer’s laughing June,
Ah, it matters not what season, dear
If it but cometh soon.”“I suppose that is really a man’s verse,” Bernard murmured contentedly, “but it suits the occasion and the case all the same.” He had sent a copy of that same verse to the girl he loved which endeared it doubly to him.
Ben Arden’s cottage had a light in one window by which the conspirator was able to see the bare little room in which the occupant puttered industriously. A locked trunk stood ready for the morrow’s exit, and an open travelling grip lay beside it.
“I wonder,” said Bernard to himself, as he cautiously hung the floral valentine on the door knob, “whether this will delay his plans or not.” Then he hurried homeward, full of happy anticipations.
The wind changed during the night and by morning a light flurry of snow swept down from the frozen North. Ben Arden rose early, made his solitary breakfast and concluded his packing before he unlocked the front door. A gray, chilly dawn greeted his first glance, but the breath of exotic fragrance that swept across his face made him forget the dreary outlook as his eyes fell upon the great bouquet suspended from the door knob by a fluttering length of ribbon.
“A valentine!” he said in a queer voice, as he untied the crumpled verse and read it. Then he lifted the flowers to his grave face and inhaled a long delicious breath of their fragrance. He knew unerringly where the flowers had come from, for no garden within fifty miles held Italian violets save that which belonged to Lucia Mortimer. Why had she sent that message after twelve years of unbroken silence?
For a long while Ben stood motionless in the open doorway, because the revived hope kindled a flame within him that defied wind and weather; and meanwhile all the slow, dreary years of toil and silence faded from his crowded memory and the buoyant grace of youth seemed to return with all its golden promises. If Lucia had only made the faintest sign that she still cared for him, he would have spoken when his mother’s death left him free to do so; before that his pride had forbidden it. They had met at long intervals at church and still more rarely on the village streets, but beyond a murmur of conventional greeting there had been no speech between them. He was so certain that he was less than nothing to Lucia that he had intended to leave Medford without so much as a word of good-bye.
It was difficult for Ben to wait for the slow morning hours to pass. When the clock struck ten he set off in turbulent gladness toward the place of his heart’s desire, Miss Lucia, wrapped in a long gray cloak, stood in the garden beside her denuded violet beds staring perplexedly at the big bold footprints of the unknown marauder. The airy snowflakes fell lightly on her uncovered head which was as richly golden as ever, framing her sweet, rather grave face with a white purity that heightened its beauty. A click of the garden gate made her turn her head and look at her visitor, who was not the pale, abstracted man she had sometimes seen from afar, but the happy, expectant Ben of long ago when he had been so inexpressibly dear to her. He had come to bid her good-bye, evidently.
She gathered herself, together with a tremendous effort and spoke first, seeing that he found it so difficult to break the long silence.
“Good morning, Mr. Arden,” she said quite as if she had talked with him daily. I hear you are going away.” How trite the words sounded and how furiously her heart beat within her tumultuous breast.
“So I intended until this morning when I found the message of your violets awaiting me,” said he in a voice that seemed to come from far away.
“Oh, why did we waste so many precious years,” she said at last as they turned to leave the snowy garden.
“We won’t even think of that,” was Ben’s cheery answer, for all the optimism of his sunny youth had returned to him as by a miracle. “Think of the long, golden future together. Oh my dear, my dear, I shall always bless this day for the precious message of your violets.”
Lucia’s crowded thoughts swerved from her absorbing happiness for a moment, to a clue that she had found beside her violet bed that morning, a damp square of white linen marked B. G. She had been unable to believe the incriminating evidence against Bernard to whom she would gladly have given every flower her garden possessed had he but asked for them. Now, in one illuminating flash, she understood his motive.
“I shall always love that big-hearted sweet-natured boy for this day’s blessing,” she said in her grateful heart.
Late that afternoon when Lucia was plucking the last of her flowers in a driving gale that threatened to become a blizzard, she saw a familiar figure swing down the road at a brisk young pace. “Wait a moment, Bernard,” she called in a supremely cheerful voice. “I have something belonging to you which you may like to take with you.”
Bernard knew at his first glimpse of her radiant face, that his hopes had in some way been fulfilled. While he waited for her to speak she took a neatly ironed handkerchief from her pocket.
“I found it beside my violet bed this morning,” she said demurely. “I suppose you value it enough to want it back for the sake of the person who worked those dainty initials.”
Bernard seized Miss Lucia’s hand instead of the handkerchief that she held toward him. “I plead guilty of your unspoken charge,” he said with boyish candor. “Haven’t you something to tell me?”
“Yes that you have made two lonely people a great deal happier than they ever expected to be—almost too happy,” was the glowing answer.
“Good old St. Valentine!” laughed Bernard joyously.
“He was not always gloomy and dull. When Lucia was about eighteen Ben was a mighty agreeable, promising young fellow, and it certainly looked like they intended to marry, for Ben was a highly favored suitor. The Ardens were cheerful, happy-go-lucky people in good circumstances, but Lucia’s father didn’t exactly favor the match because he thought Ben too easy-going. Arden Senior was then one of the directors of the Medford bank in which he had several thousand dollars, beside his farm property which was worth six or eight thousand. When the panic wave of ’03 reached Medford there was a wild run on the bank, and then it was discovered that Arden was responsible for a seven-thousand-dollar shortage. In ordinary times he would not have been harshly dealt with, but just then people were mad with anxiety, so he was arrested and tried, but acquitted within a few weeks after he had made good the deficit by giving up his farm. He didn’t survive the disgrace, however, so Ben was left with the whole family on his hands.
Lucia’s face swam with riotous color which he misinterpreted giving her no time to utter the startled question that leapt to her trembling lips, for in an instant he was beside her, with his arms around her telling her the story of those aching years, to which she listened with incredible gladness that far transcended the joy of her first youth, for the lesson of long deferred happiness had revealed depths of affection that her unclouded girlhood had never dreamed of.
Modern critiques
Local romance novelist Lynn Crandall enjoyed the story, but had some problems with the writing itself:
I enjoyed reading the story. It’s a nice romance, but in my opinion it definitely has a dated feel. The opening is not a hook, so to speak, that grabs attention and makes me want to read on. It goes on for a long time in description. Certain words used in the lede, such as “instinctively,” right off make me question the pov [point of view]. “The two men riding down the broad sodden road that led past the garden looked ‘instinctively’ … who knows that? And I question that it is known that both look instinctively. That type of writing is not something that would be appreciated in today’s writing. It seemed like narrative, but who is narrating? Romances more typically are told in a pov of one of the main characters and there is consistency throughout the story following the established pov, even if told in more than one pov.
Further into the story, while the writing is nice, there still isn’t a lot of action. A lot of information is implied with no solid foundation, prompting questions in my mind. When I’m questioning, I’m not much into the story. In general, sentences are run-on, which I found distracting.
Typically readers want to see growth in the main characters. There is that, which I found satisfying. It probably saved the story for me, but I’m a writer. I tend to dissect stories as I read.
So, though I don’t think the story would be published today, I enjoyed reading it. It was sweet and simple.
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Romance writer HiDee Ekstrom agreed that the story might not get published today, but her critique wasn’t entirely negative:
I really like the gist of the story — it was very sweet of the young man to want to help make things right for others. The story does seem dated and I don’t believe it could get published today as is, for several reasons. Some of the sentences are run-on and very distracting. Portions of the dialogue sound more like narrative than dialogue, even of a certain dialect. I find it interesting that the older man is never given a name — and yet he obviously is an important part of the story because his words motivate Bernard to do something wonderful. The characters are not stock but they aren’t as fully developed as they could be. The setting is effective but could be stronger. I think a good romance can be timeless as long as it is well written.
So that’s it — a modern look at an old romance story. Hope you have a happy Valentine’s Day.