Victorian Love's Greeting Card with Parasol Girl & Heart

The thousand-yard gaze this tiny Victorian girl maintains as she stares into the middle distance suggests she has already read all your letters and found them wanting, armed as she is with a folded blue umbrella tucked under her arm, a decorative purse dangling from her waist, and what appears to be a small envelope clutched in her gloved hand — because nothing says 'I dream of thee' like showing up with paperwork. Her enormous ruffled white bonnet, trimmed with a jaunty blue bow, does roughly 80% of the visual heavy lifting here, dwarfing her entire head and suggesting she lost a bet with a milliner. Clifton Bingham's florid poem about longing hangs in the heart-shaped background like a motivational poster in a therapist's waiting room, while this child has clearly arrived to steal your heart and also your lunch money.