Speed Dating Events

Dobbin has suffered enormously while waiting for this. But now his time has come:

The vessel is in port. He has got the prize he has been trying for all his life. The bird has come in at last. There it is with its head on his shoulder, billing and cooing close up to his heart, with soft outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he has asked for every day and hour for eighteen years. This is what he pined after . . . God bless you, William! — farewell, dear Amelia. Grow green again, tender little plant, round the rugged oak to which you cling!

Every proposal of marriage asks for a once and future love. It’s an expression of hope that the hands which are joined today will link even more strongly as time goes by. Its acceptance is a silent answer to the Beatles’ jokey question:

When I get older, losing my hair,

Many years from now,

Will you still be sending me a Valentine,
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine,

If I’d been out till quarter to three,

Would you lock the door,

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I’m sixty-four?

As the song warns, ‘you’ll be older too’. But when a married couple are really travelling together, getting older becomes just one of the experiences which bring them closer. When two people succeed in making something lasting, the passage of time will only ripen and enrich the bouquet. And it must be nice to have someone around who remembers you before you had your false teeth, glasses and hearing aid!

Of course there’s no one like a reformed rake for extolling the joys of wedlock. Nobody who knew Robbie Burns in his roving days would ever have believed that he would settle down to being one of the folks that live on the hill. Yet this gallant of the glens, from whom no girl in the whole of Scotland was safe, wrote one of the warmest songs of married love. In the last verse, the wife looks back with mischievous glee on their life together, and forward with complete serenity to the final parting of their ways:

John Anderson, my jo, John,

We climbed the hill together, And many a canty day, John,

We’ve had with one another. Now we maun totter down,

John,

And hand-in-hand we’ll go,

And sleep together at the foot, John Anderson, my jo.

There’s something very attractive about a Scot, whether Sir Walter, the heroic Captain, or Randolph C. Maybe that’s why Robert Burns is top of the pops in the Soviet Union — they can’t have many writers as `canty’ as he is. His famous numbers like ‘My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose’ sound even better, if possible, in Russian than in Scots. And wherever in the world a couple are together enjoying their marriage, ‘John Anderson‘ cannot fail to strike a chord.

But of all the marriage proposals which catch up the future in the moment of sealing the bond, the most powerful comes at the climax of George Eliot’s Adam Bede. Adam is passionately in love with Dinah, a deeply religious girl who feels that she must devote her life to helping others. As she is about to go away to begin this work, Adam cannot help himself asking her not to go but to ’stay and be my dear wife’.

To his joy, Dinah confesses her love for Adam: ‘My heart waits on your words and looks almost like a little child . . But she is afraid that this is only a temptation to turn her from her path, and asks for time to consider. At last Adam goes to hear her answer:

What a look of yearning love it was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark-eyed man! She said nothing, but moved towards him so that his arm could clasp her round.

And they walked on so in silence while the warm tears fell. ‘Adam,’ she said, ‘it is the Divine will. My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same love, I have a fullness of strength to bear and do our Heavenly Father’s will, that I had lost before.’

Adam paused, and looked into her sincere and loving eyes.

`Then we’ll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us.’

And they kissed each other with deep joy.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life — to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

What indeed? And may every couple embarking on the hope and the promise of marriage together be spared to enjoy this kindness of fate!

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
The Hope and the Promise continue…

• Make your Love Proposal Short and Simple
• The Hope and the Promise
• Farewell, Beloved part 2
• The Forces Against, Roses, Passion, Music part 1
• Marriage, Romantics the Way It Used To Be
• The Art of the Proposition, Enshrines Classic Marriage Proposal part 3
• Don't Marry to This Person
• The Art of the Proposition, Enshrines Classic Marriage Proposal part 1
• Farewell, Beloved part 3
• Masculine Marriage Proposals part 1