Valentine's Day Party in Buckinghamshire

Abstract

In ET (Jul 89), Peter Williams reviewed ‘A Dictionary of Surnames’ by Patrick Hanks & Flavia Hodges (Oxford, 1988). One possibility not envisaged in that review, and probably not in the dictionary either, is the use to which LAURENCE URDANG has put surnames in the following poem, an echo of Longfellow composed to ‘celebrate’ St Valentine's Day, 1990. As part of his work, the writer alternates between Old Lyme, Connecticut, and Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, where every name italicized in the poem can be found in the local telephone directory.