Speed Dating Events

A lover who is more than ready for the strike is Andrew Marvell. One of the most famous propositions of all time is the poetical reproach he addressed To His Coy Mistress some time in the swinging seventeenth century. The time and effort he’s invested in the seduction has led him to feel he’s overdue for his reward. Why doesn’t she come through?

This witty poem has had a comical history. It always appears in anthologies under ‘Love Poems‘, whereas in reality it’s a sparkling piece of aggro, obviously written in a fit of teeth-grinding frustration.

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime

He begins, nastily. It’s just like the way men start to call you ‘Darling’ when they’re getting ratty. And Marvell’s lady has really been getting up his nose. We haven’t got for ever for this, he goes on:

For at my back I always hear

Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.

What he means is that he’s not prepared to chase her any more. He has been fobbed off for what he considers far too long (about two weeks?) And from the lady’s point of view, `no’ was the only safe contraceptive in the days when rigid self-control and brilliant timing, or unappetizing devices of kidskin and sponge, must have made sex more of an ordeal than a pleasure!

But the poet has come to the end of his rope and found it frayed. Enough of the seduction — what about the real stuff? This is in fact no love poem but an ultimatum. `Come through or else’ is the message.

It’s not exactly new and original. The ‘we’re running out of time‘ ploy has a long and ancient history. It goes all the way back to the Greeks and it’s still in service. One of my girl-friends owes her existence to the historic moment when President Kennedy called Kruschev’s bluff over the Bay of Pigs. ‘The world trembles on the brink of disaster,’ her father told her mother. ‘A nuclear holocaust is brewing. Or worse. Come to bed tonight, in case we aren’t here tomorrow.’ Well, she did, and what do you know it still was, and what’s more, another little earthling was due for touchdown approximately nine months later.

Andrew Marvell has another lever, too. You will get old and ugly, he says, and no one will want you then. And what’s the point of hanging on to your virginity, if you’re only saving it for the worms:

For yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found, Nor in the marble vault shall sound My echoing song: then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity.

The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.

This final touch of the Edgar Allan Poes is surely enough to make every fibre of female flesh creep on your bones. But would it make you risk your little all, and leap into his second-best bed? It’s funny how often men can come out with something that is guaranteed to produce the opposite effect from the happy outcome (or in-come) that they are seeking.

Chief among those who want to have it both ways, and are determined anyway to have it some way is D. H. Lawrence. His emotional autobiography in Sons and Lovers is a revelation of his powers of persistence. Nevertheless he’s a skilless and self-absorbed seducer. He just keeps beavering away towards what he knows is out there somewhere, the consummation devoutly to be wished. Miriam is the long-term girlfriend and soulmate of the DHL character, Paul, and the luckless recipient of this heavy-handed pass:

In the darkness, where he could not see her but only feel her, his passion flooded him. He clasped her very close.

`Some time you will have me?’ he murmured, hiding his face on her shoulder. It was so difficult.

Not now,’ she said.

His hopes and his heart sank. A dreariness came over him.

`No,’ he said.

His clasp of her slackened . . .

But Lawrence has not earned his title as the champion of what he dubbed The Primary Relation’ for nothing. After an interlude of argy-bargy, Paul returns to the hanky- panky:

`We belong to each other,’ he said.

`Yes.’

`Then why shouldn’t we belong to each other altogether?’ `But —’ she faltered.

`I know it’s a lot to ask,’ he said,. ‘but there’s not much risk for you really — not in the Gretchen way. You can trust me there?’

The Gretchen way? Is this one the pillow-books haven’t taught us? At this moment, any romance flies out of the window. The lumpen introduction of the obscure but unmistakable reference to primitive contraceptive techniques gives the game away — love laughs at blocksmiths.

Maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on Paul for this limp and gauche seduction attempt. He had inherited what was, by this time, a dying form. The great hey-day of the seduction was the nineteenth century, when men were men and women didn’t know the difference.

The seduction proper, the real thing, was on its way out as soon as girls began to learn which way the grass grew. But it had had its hour. And it did ensure for male-female relations a certain finesse that would still be welcome today!

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