‘Do you know how many people Hallmark cards employs?’ asked my husband. I didn’t, and nor would he, had he not just looked it up on Wikipedia. ‘Seven?’ I replied. ‘No.’ ‘A million?’ ‘Now you’re just being silly.’
The reason that the birthday card people had come up was because James Heale began his column in last week’s Spectator: ‘If there is a hallmark of Keir Starmer’s leadership, it is a willingness to bash the left.’ I had wondered aloud whether a figurative hallmark implied something of value, like the marks on gold and silver. I thought the name of the Hallmark brand suggested as much. ‘When you care enough to send the very best,’ is the Hallmark slogan. But it turns out that the company was begun by a man called Joyce Hall.
A literal hallmark has been stamped on gold and silver under the authority of the Goldsmiths’ Company since 1325. Since their headquarters was Goldsmiths’ Hall, the mark was called a hall mark. Figuratively, hallmark was seldom used before the mid-19th century, and meant ‘a sign of worth’. Now it simply means ‘a distinctive feature’. In that sense I prefer it to trademark or, just as bad, signature.
Marks abound. Landmark is often attached to a ruling, but in a more literal way labels the Landmark Trust, which since 1965 has preserved and let out historic buildings.
A mark that is often invoked, God save [or bless] the mark, owes its popularity to Shakespeare. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, Launce takes the rap for his dog Crab when he misbehaves under the table. ‘He had not been there – bless the mark! – a pissing while, but all the chamber smelt him.’
Beyond all that, I don’t think anyone knows the origin of the phrase. The Oxford English Dictionary states that ‘there is no foundation’ in the statement by E. Cobham Brewer in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1870) that it was originally used by archers. By the way, Hallmark employs 27,000 people.
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