`Suffer me, suffer me then,’ cried he with warmth, ‘to hasten the time when none shall longer harbour any doubt — when your grateful Orville may call you all his own!’

It’s all very well being crept up on, when the marriage moment takes both partners by surprise. But there’s no doubt that both women and men love a little more formality on this extra-special occasion. Romantics look back wistfully to the Good Old Days, when a proposal of marriage was a serious business, and taken seriously by all concerned.

For once upon a time, love came before the joys of sex so speedily delivered today. In those days the Ultimate Experience that maidens sighed for and blushed about was the offer of marriage. Masculine anxiety about ‘how to do it’ referred not to the intricacies of the primal act, but the necessity of making a proposal and making it a good one.

Any modern man could take lessons from Lord Orville, above. His is an absolute cracker of a proposal, old-style — a full-dress version as against the full-frontal that girls are favoured with today. He has courted Evelina, remaining constant through all the trouble that, as a heroine, she inevitably has to undergo. Finall he approaches to claim the hand of his ‘too lovely friend’ as Evelina herself tells it:

`My Lord!’ cried I, endeavouring to disengage my hand, `pray let me go!’

`I will,’ cried he, to my inexpressible confusion dropping on one knee, ‘if you wish to leave me.’

‘Oh, my Lord,’ exclaimed I, ‘rise, I beseech you, rise! — surely your Lordship is not so cruel as to mock me!’

`Mock you!’ repeated he earnestly; ‘no, I revere you! I esteem and admire you above all human beings! you are the friend to whom my soul is attached as its better half! you are the most amiable of women! and you are dearer to me than language has power of telling!’

I attempt not to describe my sensations at that moment; I scarcely breathed; I doubted if I existed — the blood forsook my cheeks, and my feet refused to sustain me. Lord Orville, hastily rising, supported me to a chair, upon which I sunk almost lifeless.

For a few moments we neither of us spoke . . . the moment my strength returned I was not proof against his solicitations — and he drew from me the most sacred secret of my heart!

Now isn’t that marvellous? Classic, in fact, his lordship dropping elegantly to one knee instead of thundering down on two, to the accompaniment of a cracking of cartilage whose report would drop a rhino at twenty paces. And the noble lord has got hold of the idea that the classic proposal should be garnished with lavish helpings of praise and compliment. You may not exactly demand that the chap should be muttering ‘it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should be made no less for the music of song than the madness of kissing‘, or ‘your slim-gilt soul walks between passion and poetry‘, but the odd bucketful of adulation is definitely de rigueur.

Lord Orville’s stylish wooing is all the more remarkable considering that the British upper crust are generally held to be rather poor at all the lovey-dovey stuff (stiff upper lips not being quite formed for the madness of kissing and all that). Their finest flights are supposed to be such as: What say, old gel? Make a go of it, shall we? Tie the knot, eh? with which one hunting peer of the Midlands says he won his countess many moons ago.

But Oscar Wilde believed that the British upper classes were good at it. His own luscious wooing of Lord Alfred Douglas, quoted above, suggests that he knew something of the case. At the very least, he did them the compliment of demonstrating how good they might be, if only they’d let themselves!

Few writers have handled the marriage proposal with more affection and panache than Wilde. His plays abound in the attempts of keen young men to secure the ever- wavering attentions of their bright young women. In his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest, proposing is established as the chief concern of the play and everyone in it, from the very first scene:

ALGERNON: How are you, my dear Ernest? What brings you to town?

JACK: Oh, pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring one anywhere? I am in love with Gwendolen. I have come to town expressly to propose to her.

ALGERNON: I thought you had come up for pleasure? I call that business.

JACK: How utterly unromantic you are!

Before very long the tables are turned on the heretic Algy.

He falls madly in love, and has to eat his own words. He also learns the truth of film-maker Truffaut’s statement:

In love, men are amateurs, women the professionals.

For Algy’s beloved, Cecily, is streets ahead of him wooing dance:

ALGERNON: I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you state quite frankly that you seem to me the vii personification of absolute perfection.

CECILY: Your frankness does you great credit. ALGERNON: Cecily, ever since I first looked upon your wonderful and incomparable beauty, I have daredlove you wildly, passionately, devotedly, hopelessly . .

You will marry me, won’t you?

CECILY: You silly boy! Of course. Why, we have be engaged for the last three months.

ALGERNON: (bewildered) But how did we become engaged?

CECILY: Well, ever since Uncle Jack first confessed to m that he had a younger brother who was very wicked any bad, I dare say it was foolish of me, but I fell in love with you.

ALGERNON: Darling. And when was the engagemen actually settled?

CECILY: On the 14th of February last. Worn out by you entire ignorance of my existence, I determined to end thy matter one way or another, and after a long struggle with myself I accepted you under this dear old tree here, The next day I bought this little ring in your name, an this is the bangle with the true lovers‘ knot I promisee you always to wear . . . And this is the box in which, I keep all your dear letters tied up with blue ribbon.

ALGERNON: My letters! But my own sweet Cecily, I have never written you any letters.

CECILY: You need hardly remind me of that! I remember

only too well that I was forced to write your letters for

you, always three times a week and sometimes oftener. ALGERNON: What a perfect angel you are, Cecily?

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