How do I love thee?” wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1850, reflecting on the depth of her feelings for her poet husband Robert. “Let me count the ways.” And by all means, everybody, put it in writing — at least once a year when Valentine’s Day rolls around. Today it’s easy to keep your romance alive. You don’t have to make your own valentines or write your own verse or hand-deliver them like your great-great-grandfather did. (Grandmother didn’t send any. It just wasn’t done.) Back in the 1840s, it cost thirty-seven-and-a-half cents to send a valentine from New York to Boston. An outrageous sum when you consider that you’d pay twenty-five cents for room and board in the fanciest hotel. No wonder they were hand-delivered. But soon postage rates dropped, Elton and Company of New York put out the first line of cards, and you could pledge your troth by mail. And those pledges keep coming.
It all began long ago in Rome — with Valentinus, a third-century priest who went to the aid of the martyrs persecuted by Emperor Claudius II. Apprehended, Valentinus refused to renounce his Christian faith and was summarily beheaded — on February 14, probably the year 270. During his imprisonment, he reportedly befriended a blind girl, the daughter of his jailer, and miraculously restored her sight — which put him on the road to sainthood.