The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 74

74 THE BOSTON GLOBE THURSDAY. FEBRUARY 14. 1985 A five-star dinner Homage to a valentine maker imported Danish Ham. .8.411. .12.951.

fiourmet Turkey ID. Lakes White American Cheese Cuisses de grenouille a la creme et ciboulette avec haricots blancs et trujfes by Alain Chapel paired red and haricot beans with frogs' legs and chives in a sauce made with butter, white wine, champagne, fish glaze, madeira and truffle juice. Tolibia Domestic Provolone $1,991. Tmt CMct Sported Danish Havarti Vermont Cheddar Wisconsin Cheddar NY. Cheddar Roger Verge brought a taste of Stoned Wheat 10 Hi southern France from his Moulin de Mougins with le poupeton de homard ail sauternes, in which EHtcthn Fttreirj 1 tirl Fserstq IMS.

lobster mousse was used to stuff FRANEY Continued from Page 73 p.m., a half hour before the "reception was to start. Beverly Sills, Carroll O'Connor. Burgess Meredith and a score of other luminaries from the worlds of fashion, business, wine and food added to the glitter. The chefs obligingly allowed themselves to be pulled this way and that to meet and be photographed with guests and other celebrities before ducking back into the kitchen to oversee the final preparations for the dinner, which featured one specialty from each. Robert Gaudin of Moet Champagne opened bottles with the swipe of a saber and assembled a pyramid of 600 crystal glasses, into which he and Beverly Sills poured bubbly "for the first time anywhere, we are using Moet Chandon Rose Champagne," he proclaimed as he poured the first bottle into the topmost glass to send the pink champagne cascading downward.

The black-tie dinner marked the first time the five chefs had been brought together to prepare a meal. A great deal of advance preparation had been done in France, and the food was brought to New York in vacuum-sealed pouches. Truffles perfumed many of the dishes. It was whispered that $900 worth of the delicacies had been used. The first course, from Paul Bo-cuse's restaurant in Collonges-au-Mont-D'Or near Lyon, exhibited a classic Bocuse technique: topping a dish served in a ramekin with a dome of pastry.

L'Emince de trujfes et ris de veau en Motgol- By Lynda Morgenroth Special to The Globe Esther Howland, the mother of the American valentine industry, was a genuine New England original a businesswoman sentimental and savvy, as appreciative of fancywork as of a favorable balance sheet. In the 19th century, she parlayed her delight in handmade European valentines into an operation run and staffed by women that became the highly profitable Worcester-based New England Valentine Co. From 1849 to 1880, in an era when there were few women college graduates and fewer women entrepreneurs, Esther Howland built a thriving business that eventually produced sales of $100,000 a year. A century later, Michele Order Litant, another Worcester native searching for a way to create something personal, adopted Howland as her spiritual mentor. Because she wanted to "work at home and still be in the business world," Litant started making and selling Howland-style valentines.

Litant lives with her husband, William, a communications, consultant, and 2V2-year-old son, Jo-siah, in the servant quarters of the Codman Estate in Lincoln. From April to October, Litant is the administrator of the Codman House, a museum owned by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA1. The rest of the time, she makes valentines in a home-based enterprise she calls Tea Crumpets. "I'm your basic sentimentalist I should've been born in the 19th century," Litant, 30, said in a recent interview. In 1980, while working as a public relations assistant at Boston's Museum of Transportation, she hatched a plan to make homemade greeting cards and, while doing library research, discovered the story of Esther Howland.

"Esther appealed to me immediately," said Litant as she served afternoon tea on the Codman House piazza. "I felt a bond with her. She was from Worcester, she was doing something creative and had her own business. A hundred, years ago, she was doing exactly what I wanted to do." Howland was born in 1828, the only daughter of Southworth Howland and his wife, Esther. Southworth Howland was Worcester's leading stationer and bookseller.

Esther Howland was graduated from Mt. Ho-lyoke College in 1847. That same year she received a lacy imported valentine who sent it has been lost to history. What is known, though, is that Howland was charmed by its lacy paper border, cutout paper flowers and the tiny envelope in the center that held a small (passionate?) note. Southworth Howland noted his daughter's enthusiasm and ordered some sample valentines from his company's British purveyor.

Meanwhile, Esther Howland tried her hand at making some at home and her brother, Allen, took her efforts on a selling trip, traveling by horse and buggy through Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. Howland's cards, were soon in greater demand than-the more prosaic American valentines and a home-based business was born. Quantities of lace paper blanks, embossed envelopes, colored pictures and trimming were ordered from abroad; a big sunny room in the Howland home was set aside and Howland asked sev eral of her friends to help make that first year's batch of hand-decorated valentines. Each young woman was assigned a special task and the multi-layered valentines were passed from woman to woman, years before Henry Ford was credited with the invention of the production line. By 1849, Howland was in business.

Ads appeared in the Worcester Daily Spy announcing, "Valentines. Persons wishing to select from the best assortment in the City are invited to call on S. A. Howland, 143 Main Street." Swains lined up to buy these sentimental bonanzas, paying up to $10 for the privilege. Eventually, Howland diversified, creating Christmas and New Year's cards, birthday cards, salutation booklets and May baskets.

More helpers were hired. More rooms in the Howland domicile were taken over. Howland was a strict employer, but took good care of her "girls," gaining their loyalty, affection and hard work. She managed the New England Valentine Co. until 1880 when she left to nurse her ailing father, selling her company to the George C.

Whitney a greeting card manufacturer. When Mr. Howland died in 1882, Esther Howland moved to Quincy to live with her brother, Charles. She never married and died in 1904 at the age of 75. "She spent her whole life building up this successful business and then gave it all up to serve her family," sighs Litant.

"I'm not sure that would happen today." In her Lincoln house-workshop, Litant carefully assembles variations of 18 designs inspired by the Howland originals she's studied at the Worcester Historical Museum and American Antiquarian Society. This year, she made more than 500 cards. The house is a cheerful, zany mass of sentiment doilies, Victorian stickers, satin and embroidered ribbons, intricate die-cut patterns and tiny artificial flowers are strewn about. And from all this comes cards that, Litant believes, do more than just convey the greetings of the day. "People like the quality and individuality of one-of-a-kind items, but don't have time to make valentines themselves," she said.

"My cards bring back memories for elderly people 'oh, we used to make cards like they always say and the younger people who see them for the first time like the antique look." Tea Crumpets valentines cost between $2 and $6. They're available at The Old Town Hall Exchange in Lincoln, Hay Scales Exchange in North Andover, and the YMCA English Garden Craft Shop in Westborough as well as from Annette Order, Litant's mother, who does a brisk business with her coworkers at the Woodbury Printing Co. in Worcester. There's a measure of gothic irony in the fact that Esther Howland, the woman most responsible for the development of the American valentine industry and our annual celebration of love, never married. But Michele Order Litant, as upbeat and romantic as her cards, takes Miss Howland's fate in "Oh, who knows' about Esther?" she said.

"The 19th century was an era when people didn't talk about everything they did." zucchini blossoms. The pale yel-low-and-orange blossom still was attached to a small zucchini that was sliced and spread out in a fan shape. The accompanying sauce, enriched with Sauternes, was built on vegetables and the cracked lobster shells. Jacques Maximin, chef at the Chantecler-Negresco in Nice, layered pureed spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes and topped them with thinly sliced rare saddle of lamb sitting in'a sauce of lamb reduction enriched with butter to give an even more emphatic taste of southern France in to tians d'agneau nlcois. Lenotre's dessert, Le Plaisir, a kind of charlotte layered with chocolate mousse and vanilla sauce and served with a chocolate sauce, did not suffer from its transatlantic journey.

In case Len-otre did not land, former White House pastry chef Albert Kumin had a substitute dessert ready. He also prepared a birthday cake for Bocuse's 59th birthday. In addition to the champagne before dinner, guests drank Moet Chandon Saran Nature Coteaux Champenois, a still white wine from the Champagne district, and two California wines: a Simi Char-donnay Reserve, Mendocino County 1980, and Simi Cabernet Sau-vignon Reserve, Alexander Valley 1979. Moet Chandon Brut Imperial Rose Champagne 1980 was served with the dessert. Hennessy X.O.

Cognac and Marie Brizard Anisette were served with the coffee. Franey, now a US citizen, has capped an early career as a chef in France and at the famed Le Pavilion in New York with a stint as creative and research director with Howard Johnson's. He has been a food columnist since 1976 for the New York Times, in which his "60-Minute Gourmet" is a popular feature. He has written several cookbooks with Craig Claiborne and several alone. "Low-Calorie Gourmet" is his latest book.

Franey had previously been awarded the Merit Agricole by the French government. Jiere Rosie O'Grady featured truf fles and sweetbreads in a sauce made with vegetables, stock, white vermouth and truffle juice and topped with a pasta dough. TEMPLETOfJ COLONIAL OAK FURNITURE FACTORY STORE (617) 939-5504 Jet. Rte. 2, Baldwinville Rd.

Exit, TEMPLETON, MASS. ROCK rffEMPLE" STUART, I MAPLE jCHERRY I PINE 45 off mfrs. list i 1L A ajgrts.6fjujar,ggj OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK Fashion Notes from TON 263-9717 Sending out a friendly valentine 160 GBEATROAD INTRODUCING MATERS WEAR MA Office Dresses CuiTS. ranw Party wear, Sw.msu.ts KIDS COOKING A Regular Feature on the FOOD PAGES Every Wednesday Inside The Boston Globe ROBINSON Continued from Page 73 But, Davis wrote, his findings indicated that "same-sex friendships are marked by greater sharing (both of personal confidences and practical assistance), a greater sense of stability and greater willingness to give the utmost." Some platonic friendships between men and women started out as romances. But, after romance faded, friendship bloomed.

Philio Wigglesworth, deputy director of the Governor's Office of Community Services, who said her best friend is a woman, nevertheless believes it could just as easily be a man. "It's interesting how they evolve," she said of male-female friendships. "The best boyfriends have the best potential for being close friends after a long amount of time. After 24 months, they may report back." Willard Cook, a student in New t-tV York, said that he counts several women among his best friends and that all of them had been mantic interests at one time. "With women, I tend to share more because, in some respects, I find women more intelligent and articulate about deeper feelings.

And with the opposite sex you don't feel information will be used against you." Psychologist Houston pointed out that, in male-female friendships, "sometimes physical attraction, even when people say it's not an issue, is still there. But it is possible in a relationship to feel sexually attracted to a friend but not want to sleep with him for fear of interfering with the friendship or with other relationships." Sally Jackson, who owns the Boston public relations agency that carries her name, said she has observed that a woman's attitude toward men and romance is strongly influenced by her first romance. She said her best friends tend to be men, a fact she attributes to a time in the late '60s when she was rebounding from a broken heart. "I answered an ad in the Harvard Crimson placed by four Harvard medical students who wanted a woman to cook for them in exchange for weekday breakfasts and dinners." She formed enduring, nonsexual bonds with all four. "They gave me a wonderful sense of reality and proportion.

When other broken-hearted female friends of mine became afraid of all men, I had the experience to know that danger does not lie in the gender." In addition, both men and women report that society still greets close male-female friendships with skepticism and that gossip often enshrouds such relationships with sexually charged innuendo. Despite the obstacles, however, platonic relationships between adult men and women appear to be on the rise. "Before, people saw male-female relationships as a package," Poussaint said. "You got love and friendship all in a package. Now you can get them separately." V- NITECAP: Maryellen Cabot of Beacon Hill has been named a member of the National Advisory Council of New York's School of the American Ballet, the teaching arm of the New York City Ballet.

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