February the 14th is St Valentine’s Day – when love, romance, friendship and affection are celebrated.
For Joan Lindsay it meant family, life transitions, love and loss; it formed a pattern that echoed across time. She chronicled this repetition in personal and creative ways and called it her ‘day of days.’
This installation presents a series of connections across time to show how Joan Lindsay experienced a spreading pattern of meaning and how St Valentine’s Day became a date of personal significance.
Ephemera, objects and a private collection of Valentine’s Day cards form the basis of Joan’s material memory, and her story is told through the place she loved – Mulberry Hill.
My Day of Days: Exhibition Guide
‘Miranda used to say that everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place.’
Repeat Pattern
'At Appleyard College, out of a clear sky, from the moment the first rays of light had fired the dahlias on the morning of Saint Valentine’s Day, and the boarders, waking early, had begun the innocent interchange of cards and favours, the pattern had begun to form.' - Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1967
Joan Lindsay’s written work reflected her interest in repetition and pattern, a metaphysical perspective that informed both her memoirs and fiction.
The word ‘pattern’ is used ‘repeatedly’ in her novel Picnic at Hanging Rock. We might instead call this idea synchronicity. As with the repetition of the date of St Valentine’s Day, Lindsay also recognised the echo of events that could reoccur at significant places.
For Joan, the meaning of St Valentine’s Day ‘rippled’ out, starting in her childhood, when her family gathered to explore a collection of old St Valentine’s Day cards.
As a child, Joan thought a ’mysterious man … appeared … and sent us these cards.’ The original album is long gone, but the cards have survived, pasted into the album on display.
In an article written anonymously for The Home magazine and published in February 1930, Joan described the 20th century as ‘hardheaded’, she claimed the modern world found St Valentine’s Day too nostalgic, sentimental and old fashioned – ‘the very name gives forth the faintly exciting and wistful aroma of old potpourri.’ Receiving an anonymous card sent from an unknown post box was described as a ‘delicious mystery.’
The article includes many personal reminiscences. One recounts the ‘misery of siting down to play with the “Valentine Book” and finding that some officious grown-up had gummed down the flowers and the dear little wreaths that you could put your finger through, fearing destruction by my childish hands.’
The day also featured in her schoolgirl poems and other juvenilia
Joan’s friend – Philip Adams – claimed that it was on St Valentine’s Day that Joan met her future husband Daryl Lindsay, but this is not substantiated by Joan’s memoirs. Although, it was the date the couple married in 1922.
The date continued to spread its pattern – its repeat.
In her memoir Joan states that it is the only personal date she remembered, and she opens her famous novel on this day in 1900.
Finally, as screenwriter Cliff Green recalls ‘Peter Weir is quite a superstitious film director and I believe we may have begun filming on St Valentine’s Day.’
St Valentine's Day
'He’s a darling – sends people gorgeous cards with tinsel and real lace.' - Irma to Mr Hussey, Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1967
During the nineteenth century St Valentine’s Day became a social craze.
In England, from the 1820s onwards, the giving of sometimes strange and highly decorated greeting cards reached fever pitch. Not only were cards printed and sold at most stationers – and imported to Australia – but advice manuals were published to help givers compose the perfect message.
Some cards were hand embellished with collaged and applied decoration, others hand inscribed with personal messages or drawings.
Highly popular and sentimental, the increased manufacture and distribution of printed material led to the overwhelming popularity of Valentines. Publishers vied with each other to produce the most impressive and eye-catching designs.
Today the exchange of cards is limited to lovers. But this was not always the case.
With her typical humour Joan Lindsay describes
‘Children as well as grown-ups, posted off their anonymousofferings of paper lace and tinsel …
In the matter of dispatching a Valentine, neither age nor sex was of account – the full-blown fairy exclaiming in silver letters “I love you forever” might be from Aunt Letitia or Cousin Adolphus, or even brother Harry, though you always hoped for the best.
Young and old joined in the fun, and Grandmamma herself was not above enjoying the card that bore the inscription “You are sweet sixteen to me.” -(The Passing of Saint Valentine, 1930)
Many of the cards in Joan’s album are mass produced, some are highly collectible and manufactured by well know printers such as Marcus Ward, who commissioned artists like Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway to create illustrations in the popular aesthetic movement style.
Many are three-dimensional, with pop-ups, flaps and moving parts. Many publishers also printed paper scraps and decals that were collaged together by the sender into an unique and personal card. These paper scraps included paper lace, decals of hearts, cupids, flowers, people, and birds, motifs often symbolising Spring and rebirth.
‘Miranda as usual had a drawer of her wardrobe filled with lace-trimmed pledges of affection, although Baby Jonnie’s home-grown cupid and row of pencilled kisses, addressed from Queensland in her father’s large loving hand, held pride of place on the marble mantelpiece.” – Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1967
St Valentine is the Patron Saint of affianced and engaged couples, bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, happy marriages, love, lovers, plague, travellers, and young people.
In ancient Rome the day was celebrated as Lupercalia, honouring the god Pan or Faunus, when rituals involving the sacrifice of goats were performed.
‘The Headmistress was probably the only person at the College who received no cards. It was well known that Mrs Appleyard disapproved of Saint Valentine and his ridiculous greetings that cluttered up the College mantelpieces right up to Easter …’ – Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1967
Relationships
Joan Lindsay studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria School and although she continued to paint throughout her life, writing became her main creative pursuit.
She first saw Daryl Lindsay while studying at art school, glimpsing him in the hall while she was in class. They later met at a tea given by a mutual friend.
This is how she described her first glimpse of Daryl
‘[a]s he passed the open door of our classroom, the student next to me remarked – “that’s Daryl Lindsay – just come back from London with some war drawings.” I LIKE THE LOOK OF Daryl Lindsay and made up my mind on the spot that someday – somehow – I would meet him’ – (Catalyst Papers – November 11 1968 Cat Under a Hot Tin Roof)
Their relationship was complex, as most long marriages are. With so many years together the couple’s creativity, sense of purpose and commitment to the arts held them together.
Joan was unconventional, a bohemian and was progressive in her views on sex and sexuality.
We have no written evidence of other love relationships, but Joan and Maie Casey were very close. It is unknown if their relationship was sexual, many believed it was.
Joan may have wanted to keep her relationships secret not out of prudery – but to allow for mystery about her life, she wrote ‘[w]hy do we have to understand everything? There are mysterious things that will never have a proper, factual explanation.’
As artist Rick Amor stated – ‘Joan was “strangely sexy” – happy within herself. Very popular when she was young.
‘I write sitting on the floor, surrounded by sheets of paper in a sort of fairy ring. It’s bliss.’
