Speed Dating Events

A marriage proposal is a special, sacred moment. But like all beautiful things it has an intricacy which is not immediately apparent. It is, in fact, not so much one moment as a series of moments, one inside another like Chinese boxes, each one giving on to all the others until the very last.

For inside the simple question, ‘Will you be mine?’ there are a thousand other questions for the man and the woman alike. Will you, can you, they ask silently, be to me all that this most special relationship implies? Can we love, comfort, honour and keep one another, forsaking all other, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part? However much you might be in love, this is still a daunting list of requirements. American couples who make up their own marriage services often leave out the nasty bits. As Bertrand Russell said of the Ten Commandments, there should be a further instruction, ‘only six to be attempted’.

Yet it is in the hope of being worthy of this great undertaking that people want to make the ultimate commitment. The proposal and acceptance of marriage are the lovers‘ way of showing that they have reached the culmination of life’s greatest adventure. They have come to the end of the search for the other half of their soul.

Many songs and stories have celebrated the unique closeness of married partners. Husband and wife can enjoy a sweetness and security unknown to the fevered band of Bed-hoppers Anonymous. As a famous and beautiful actress, Mrs Patrick Campbell had more than her share of the compulsion of the casting couch. She knew what she was talking about when she hailed with relief: ‘the deep, deep peace of the double bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise longue’.

Marriage is, after all, meant to be enjoyed. It’s not illegal or immoral, it doesn’t make you fat, and the Surgeon General has not yet determined that it is harmful to your health. It could even be good amid the trials and tribulations of founding the New World, according to one of the pioneer women. Anne Bradstreet, America’s earliest woman writer, paid this tribute in about 164o to her partner in married love:

To MY HUSBAND

If ever two were one, then surely we;

If ever man were loved by wife, then thee. If ever wife were happy in a man,

Compare with me, ye women, if you can . . . Thy love is such I no way can repay;

The heavens reward thee manifold, 1 pray, That while we live, in love let’s so persever,

That when we live no more, we may live ever.

Mistress Anne and her husband had a long and happy marriage. And that, after all, is what we’re all hoping for at the moment of the betrothal. We don’t like to think that our marriage is just the first step on the road to the Divorce Courts!

So important is the unspoken question — not just ’shall we be married?’ but also ’shall we make each other happy?’ — that writers will often glance forward from the proposal into the future to answer it. One faithful soul who fully deserves the reward of happiness in marriage is Dobbin in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair. He has loved Amelia long and hopelessly all his life. Eventually concluding that his love will never prosper, he goes away.

Dobbin’s departure brings Amelia to her senses. Although shy and frail, she is not too timid to call him back to her side. As Dobbin is the quintessential Englishman, his great moment occurs appropriately enough in a downpour of rain. But even all the waters of the sea are not enough to quench the ardour of the reunion as his ship comes in:

As the gentleman in the old cloak lined with red stuff stepped on to the shore, there was scarcely any one present to see what took place, which was briefly, this —

A lady in a dripping white bonnet and shawl, with her two little hands out before her, went up to him, and in the next minute she had altogether disappeared under the folds of the old cloak, and was kissing one of his hands with all her might; whilst the other, I suppose, was engaged in holding her to his heart (which her head just about reached) and in preventing her from tumbling down. She was murmuring something about — forgive — dear William — dear, dear, dearest friend — kiss, kiss, kiss, and so forth — in fact went on under the cloak in an absurd manner . . .

`It was time you sent for me, dear Amelia,’ he said.

`You will never go again, William?’

`No, never,’ he answered, and pressed the dear little soul once more to his heart.

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