Speed Dating Events

‘I want to ask you a question.’

‘What?’ I said, in a small unpromising voice. ‘How would you like to be Mrs Buddy Willard?’

‘Man proposes, God disposes’, runs the proverb. And women have to put up with the mess they both make of it’, as one of England’s premier duchesses observes in her irreverent moments. Since society and custom have traditionally favoured men with the right of proposing, all too often women are no more than sitting ducks — and there are some terrible bird dogs around.

It is a myth that women are the ones who are wild to get married, while the noble male has his mind loftily fixed on higher things. Men unthinkingly expect to marry, to replace painlessly the services of their mother with the more extended range of functions that a wife can provide. Therefore they get really nervous when they realize that it’s not just going to happen — or rather, that it seems to behappening to all their chums and not to them. Hooray Henries are converted overnight into Desperate Dans, who now get you up a corner at a party to confide gloomily that they’ve missed the boat, all the good ones have gone, anddo you think they ought to have a go at old Sarah before that wally Henderson snaffles her up?

In such moods men will propose to anything. One young Warwickshire squire spent all his time with his horses and hounds, and his conversational level was about on a par with that of his four-footed friends. Not surprisingly, his efforts to get a girl to share his life went unrewarded. After recognizing his failure he was in danger of moving from the equestrian class to the neurotic, in G.B. Shaw’s memorable division of English society. He was overheard at the County Horse Show, frenziedly outlining to his thoroughbred mare all the reasons why he’d make a terrific husband, and concluding with:

Dammit all, Tosca, YOU’D have me, wouldn’t you?

Yet whether impelled by desperation or deep self-love, men still go on proposing. You may heartily agree that they need all the practice they can get but, as with sex, you’re likely to have serious reservations about being the party practised upon. What woman can enjoy being at the mercy of a guy whose fumbling inexpertise raises incompetence to the level of an art? Yet this is what happens, all the time.

Fearless and painstaking research has uncovered a vast number of Truly Awful Proposals. Some of these specimens are so choice as to qualify as anti-proposals. How would you feel on the receiving end of any of these?

‘I’ll marry you, I know I’m stuck with you for life‘
‘I’ve decided we should marry — for tax purposes’
‘We have to get married —I’m sick of buying you things
and having to be nice to you all the time!’

As this shows, your researcher never failed to boldly go where no man has gone before, in asking women about men asking them to marry. It can now be reported that in all the above cases, every single one of these dreadful drongos was accepted!

It’s not easy to be a star of the marriage moment. Being a real star, even a movie hero of zillions of women’s romantic fantasies, doesn’t mean you can do in your own life what you do so superbly on celluloid. The amazing Peter Finch had as his first love a beautiful Australian socialite called Sheila (really). He took her out dancing to create the right atmosphere — ‘Peter simply was the most gorgeous dancer,’ she says — but when it came to the point, all he could do was blurt out:

We must get married!

Yet even this effort makes Finchie look like a king of chivalry against Richard Burton. The Welsh wizard, far from proposing to the most famous of his wives, assaulted Elizabeth Taylor with a barrage of insults from the word go, of which ‘Miss Tits’, ‘fat little tart’ and ‘she’s so dark she probably shaves’ are among the more fragrant samples.

The real enemy of promise among proposing males is a massive masculine arrogance. This means a complete blindness to the rights and needs of the woman, even when they are protesting that they love her above all the world.

Henry James made a study of such a man in The Bostonians. Basil Ransom’s ‘love’ for Verena Tarrant means a determination to get her away from her parents, from the life she leads with her lesbian friend Olive, and especially from her work in the emerging movement for women’s rights in America. She resists his attentions, even goes into hiding to get away from him, but he catches up with her just as she is about to address a public meeting. He knows at once that he is on the point of victory:

He saw that he could do what he wanted, that she begged him, with all her being to spare her, but that so long as he should protest, she was submissive, helpless . . .

`Dearest, I told you, I warned you. I left you alone for ten weeks; but could that make you doubt it was coming? Not for words, not for millions, shall you give yourself to that roaring crowd. Don’t ask me to care for them or for anyone! You are mine, not theirs!’

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