Speed Dating Events

Of all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, ‘It might have been’.

Among the annals of marriage proposal, a special chapel of remembrance hung with rosemary and rue must be set aside for those which however deeply desired, are not fated to succeed. Many couples do not manage to make the step from private love to public commitment. They do not get the marriage act together, for any number of reasons.

A touching compromise is that arranged by Hemingway’s legendary lovers in A Farewell To Arms. He, a wounded soldier, and she his nurse are carrying on a clandestine love affair which would result in her dismissal and their separation if it came to light:

It was lovely in the nights, and if we could only touch each other we were happy. Besides all the big times we had many small ways of making love . . .

We said to each other that we were married the first day that she had come to the hospital, and we counted months from our wedding day. I wanted to be really married, but Catherine said if we were they would send her away . . .

`Maybe they wouldn’t.’

`They would. They’d send me home and then wed be apart till after the war.’

`I’d come on leave.’

`You couldn’t get to Scotland and back on leave. Besides, I won’t leave you. What good would it do to marry now? We’re really married. We couldn’t be any more married.’

`I only want to for you.’

`There isn’t any me. I’m you. Don’t make up a separate me .

`All right. But I’ll marry you the day you say.’

Tragically, the day never comes. Casualties alike of the war and of their love, the couple escape the hostilities only to face personal catastrophe. Catherine becomes pregnant and after a horrifying labour loses both her baby and her life. The novel ends as the desolate lover walks off alone into the rain, sole survivor of a doomed, unmarried love.

More commonly the near misses of aspiring suitors are pathetic rather than tragic. Some even raise failure to the level of comedy. Judge Samuel Sewall was a key figure in the early days of the US, when he served as one of the judges at the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692. His first wife bore him 14 children and then expired; his second wife died in May 1720. At the age of 68 Judge Sewall immediately embarked upon one of the most celebrated courtships in American history, his wooing of Madam Katherine Winthrop.

Clearly the judge got off on the wrong foot by telling Madam Winthrop, as he recorded in his diary, ‘my loving wife having died so soon and so suddenly, ’twas hardly convenient for me to think of marrying again’. When he then proposed marriage to her a mere two days later, she understandably turned him down flat.

But pioneer men were made of stern stuff. Undeterred, Sewall gave her a week to think it over, and left her a book of devotional verse to improve her mind (and his chances?) But only four days later he was back again, where he found that ‘Madam seemed to harp upon the same string’ as before, and refused him again — as well she might, having herself survived twelve `birthings’, been widowed twice, and at 56 years of age looking forward to a quieter life!

Next Sewall decided to appeal to Madam’s body rather than her mind, and gave her a piece of cake and some gingerbread. But he could not resist sending her subsequently a copy of `Mr Mayhew’s sermon, and Account of the State of the Indians on Martha’s Vineyard’. When he called on her the following day, Madam Winthrop had obviously decided that she had been too courteous with her persistent admirer. The time had come to give him the elbow. As the judge told his diary:

Madam Winthrop’s countenance was much changed from what ’twas on Monday, looked dark and glowering . . . had some converse, but very cold and indifferent.

Despite yet another rejection, Sewall continued to treat himself as the impending husband. He tried to make business arrangements with her, installed himself in her house to read another religious tract hysterically entitled ‘Dr Sibb’s Bowels Opened: Or, A Discovery Of The Union Betwixt Christ And The Church’, and demanded to know `when our proceedings should be made public’.

It is impossible to tally with any certainty the number of proposals made by this tenacious oldster as he kept pressing his unwelcome suit with yet more books of sermons and bags of sugared almonds. The turning-point came when Madam Winthrop told him bluntly that she had lost interest in the sexual side of marriage. At this he lost interest in her! But within a few months he had married one Mary Gibbs Shrimpton, presumably a woman of a more obliging disposition. His proposal to her is not recorded.

As this shows, a woman can sometimes have an embarras de proposals. It takes both luck and good juggling to get the right man in the right order. Thackeray’s ‘brilliant little woman’ Becky Sharp makes it the business of her life to catch a rich husband, preferably titled too, in the high society of Vanity Fair. As a governess in the house of Sir Pitt Crawley, Becky makes a conquest of the hideous old coot by her looks, style and deft management of affairs. Then she moves to another post. But when his ailing wife providentially dies, Sir Pitt wastes no time in trying to win back this treasure:

‘1 want to see you, Miss Becky,’ said Sir Pitt. ‘Come along a me into the parlour,’ and they entered that apartment together.

‘I wawnt you back at Queen’s Crawley, Miss,’ the Baronet said, fixing his eyes upon her, and taking off his hat with its great crepe mourning band. His eyes had such a strange look, and fixed on her so steadfastly, that Rebecca Sharp began almost to tremble . . .

`I tell you I WANT you. I’m going back to the Vuneral. Will you come back? Yes or no?’

Sharp by name and sharp by nature, Becky is not as a rule slow on the uptake. But in the agitation of the moment she is not clear about what is going on. The Baronet becomes more explicit, if not more elegant:

‘You must come back. Do come back. Dear Becky, do come.’ ‘Come — as what, sir?’ Rebecca gasped out.

`Come as Lady Crawley if you like,’ the Baronet said, grasping his crepe hat. There! Will that zatisfy you? Come back and be my wife. You’re vit vor’t. Birth be hanged. You’re as good a lady as ever I see. You’ve got more brains in your little vinger than any baronet’s wife in the country. Will you come? Yes or no?’

‘0 Sir Pitt!’ Rebecca said, very much moved.

‘Say yes, Becky,’ Sir Pitt continued. ‘I’m an old man, but a good ‘n. I’ll make you happy, zee if I don’t. You shall do what you like; spend what you like; and av it all your own way. I’ll make you a zettlement. I’ll do everything reglar. Look year!’ and the old man fell down on his knees and leered at her like a satyr.

Perfect! Everything that Becky has schemed for — a rich, landed, titled gent, besotted and antiquated in equal proportions. But it is not to be. Becky weeps ’some of the most genuine tears that ever fell from her eyes’. For never dreaming of such a stroke of luck, Becky has tried to scramble into the baronetcy from one rung lower down. She is already married — to Sir Pitt’s son!

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