AN ARTHUR MACHEN CALENDAR
On Valentines and Other Things: I think some substitute should be found for the vanished Valentine and its observances. Suppose we made February 14 a day on which we could do what we liked—of course without malice or injury to our neighbours. Suppose we made a regular wild day of it, and insisted on buying chocolate creams—and why not bullseyes?—at 8.15 p.m.; on having another glass of small beer after ten, on buying cigarettes openly at eleven.
The Piper: “My effort has always been to preserve what is good in the old traditions and to blend them with the more modern, natural method. I found when I became a manager that the old ways had crystallised into a kind of ritual—into a formula; while, on the other hand, the ‘natural’ people seemed to have forgotten that Shakespeare wrote poetry.
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