Paperback
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
This lavishly illustrated tribute includes marriage proposals spanning seven hundred years, all delivered in the form of love letters. Each of these enchanting missives illustrates the unique sensibilities of the time period in which it was written, from the commanding negotiations of the Gothic age to the beautifully written declarations promising eternal devotion of the Renaissance and beyond.
Unabashedly nostalgic — not to mention irresistibly romantic — Will You Marry Me? transports modern-day lovers to a time gone by, when ordinary people and historical figures alike poured their hearts onto the page for their soul mates. Jonathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, Friedrich Nietzsche, and King Henry VIII (to Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour) are represented in this diverse and enormously entertaining collection.
Will You Marry Me? is for members of any generation, from those who are hopeless romantics at heart to amateur history buffs who long for a glimpse of the past. Whether there is a proposal in your future or just the wistful dream of a secret admirer, this timeless collection combining history and romance is one to cherish.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781451629217 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Touchstone |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2011 |
| Pages: | 128 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.40(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Gothic
Letter writing did not become a general practice before the discovery of America.
Not that the art of writing is new! The tombs of Egypt yield bronze pens of the best workmanship, but the Pharaohs have left no private correspondence. The parchments found in the pyramids are bills and accounts of household matters.
The earliest letter of proposal that can be traced was probably the epistle King David sent to his general Joab, when Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, had taken the royal fancy.
It is a grim proposal by proxy.
David to Joab, sent by the hand of Uriah the Hittite
1035 BC
Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him that he may be smitten, and die.
Seeing that such use was made of the technique of writing, it is not astonishing that the Greeks, when it was introduced into their country about that time, looked upon it as something evilthe way alchemy and astrology were looked upon later in history. Many of the early letters pertaining to royal marriages bear out the sinister meaning of the word runic. Archives of the courts still reveal cartloads of information illuminating the dark ages when kingdoms could only be acquired by war or marriageequally crueland when it was customary to get rid of enemies, wives, or husbands by poison.
One of these letters, though not a proposal in the strict sense, throws so much light upon the way marriages were proposed and settled at the time that it seems to belong here to paint the background.
Isabella of Angoulme, as a young child, had been engaged to Hugh de Lusignan, a Norman nobleman, and given into his custody. When she was twelve, King John of Englanddemanded her hand in marriage, and her father, preferring a king as a son-in-law, took her away from Lusignan. To appease his fury, the first daughter of John and Isabella was, from the cradle, engaged to him.
King John was not easy to live with. Far from faithful himself, he was jealous and had a habit of hanging his wifes admirers at the head of her bed. When he diedpoisoned by a monk for trying to rape the abbots sisterIsabella quickly robbed her infant daughter of her fianc and married him herself. Her letter to her young son Henry III neatly explains how she did it all in pure, unselfish, motherly devotion.
Isabella of Angoulme, Queen Dowager and Countess of March and Angoulme, to King Henry of England
AD 1220
We hereby signify to you that when the Earls of March and Eu departed this life, the Lord Hugh de Lusignan remained alone and without heirs in Poictou, and his friends would not permit that our daughter should be united to him by marriage, because her age is so tender, but counseled him to take a wife from whom he might speedily hope for an heir; and it was proposed that he should take a wife in France, which if he had done, all your land in Poictou and Gascony should be lost. We therefore, seeing the great peril that might accrue to you if that marriage took place, married the said Hugh Earl of March ourselves; and God knows that we rather did it for your benefit than our own. Wherefore we entreat you, as our dear son, that this thing may be pleasing to you, seeing that it conduces greatly to the profit of you and yours; and we earnestly pray that you restore to him his lawful right, that is Niort, the castles of Exeter and Rockingham, and 3,500 marks which your father, our former husband, bequeathed to us; and so, if it please you, deal with him who is so powerful, that he may not remain against you, since he can serve you well...and if it shall please you, you may send for our daughter, your sister, by a trusty messenger and letters patent, and we will send her to you.
Isabella was beautiful and mischievous. She did not send her daughter but kept her as a sort of hostage, to put pressure on the king, her son. She intrigued against him and put all sorts of difficulties in his way.
The plight in which Margery Brews, who later became Mrs. John Paston, found herself when she wrote the following letter is an example of what marriages mostly were concerned with in the fifteenth century, among wealthy commoners as among royalty.
Unto my right well-beloved Valentine, John Paston Esqu., be this bill delivered:
1477
Right reverend and worshipful and right-beloved Valentine, I recommend me to you full heartily, desiring to hear of your welfare, which I beseech the Almighty God long for to preserve....And if it please you to hear of my welfare, I am not in good health of body nor heart nor shall be till I hear from you.
And my lady my mother hath belabored the matter to my father full diligently, but she can no more get than ye know of; for which God knoweth I am full sorry. But if ye love me as I trust verily that ye do, ye will not leave me therefore. For if ye had not half the livelihood that ye have for to do the greatest labor that any woman alive might, I would not forsake you.
No more to you at this time, but the Holy Trinity have you in keeping. And I beseech you that this bill be not seen by none earthly creature save yourself.
And this letter was indited at Topcroft, with full heavy heart
BY YOUR OWN
Margery Brews
Arthur, Prince of Wales, eldest son of Henry VII, was engaged to the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon. Her parents, Ferdinand and Isabella, postponed the marriage for two years, till the bridegroom had completed his fourteenth year and the bride was fifteen.
They were married in November 1501, and five months later Catherine was a widow. Henry VII was so afraid that he would have to pay back Catherines dowry and would lose the alliance with Spain that he urged the engagement of his second son, Henry, to the young widow. That the boy was only eleven at the time and Catherine seventeen did not hinder the father and Catherines friends both in England and in Spain from campaigning for a speedy celebration of the marriage. Special permission had to be obtained from the pope, who was glad to give it because he hoped the union would strengthen the Roman Church in England. Young Henry resisted for a while and registered doubts about the validity of such a marriage, but he married Catherine in the end.
Arthur, Prince of Wales, to Catherine of Aragon
1499
Most illustrious and excellent lady, my dearest spouse,
I wish you very much health....I have read the sweet letters of your Highness, from which I have easily perceived your entire love for me. Truly your letters traced by your own hand have so delighted me and have rendered me so cheerful and jocund that I fancied I beheld your Highness and conversed with and beheld my dearest wife. I cannot tell you what an earnest desire I feel to see your Highness, and how vexatious is to me this procrastination of your coming...let it be hastened that instead of absent we may be present with each other, and the loves conceived between us may reap their proper fruit....
From our castle of Ludlow, 5th of October 1499Copyright 1940 by Helene Scheu-Riesz
Table of Contents
Contents
INTRODUCTION
GOTHIC
David to Joab, sent by the hand of Uriah the Hittite (1035 BC)
Isabella of Angouleme to King Henry of England (AD 1220)
Margery Brews to John Paston (1477)
Arthur, Prince of Wales, to Catherine of Aragon (1499)
RENAISSANCE
Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn (undated, before 1533)
Henry VIII to Jane Seymour (1536)
Archduke Charles of Austria to Queen Elizabeth of England (1567)
Queen Christina of Sweden to Prince Karl Gustaf (1644)
BAROQUE
John Russell to Lady Frances Rich, Countess of Warwick (about 1662)
Thomas Otway to Elizabeth Barry (1682)
John Hervey to Elizabeth Fulton (1695)
ROCOCO
Richard Steele to Mary Scurlock (1707)
Jonathan Swift to Mrs. Howard (1727)
EMPIRE
Hodge the Plowman to his Sweetheart Joan (1741)
James Boswell to Isabella de Zuylen (1764)
Laurence Sterne to Eliza Draper (1767)
Friedrich Schiller to Charlotte von Lengefeld (1789)
Sir Walter Scott to Charlotte Carpenter (1797)
Field Marshal von Blücher to Frau von S. (1795)
Emperor Napoleon I to Archduchess Maria Louise of Austria (1810)
Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, to Lady Augusta Murray (1820)
Prince William of Prussia to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar (1828)
COLONIAL
Samuel Sewall to the widow Gibbs (1722)
Samuel Parr to Jane Morsingale (undated)
Thomas Walker to Jeremiah Moore (1760s)
Abraham Lincoln to Mary Owens (1837)
THE VICTORIANS
William Hazlitt to Sarah Stoddart (1808)
Charles Lamb to Fanny Kelly (1819)
Robert Schumann to Friedrich Wieck, for his daughter Clara (1837)
Prince Otto vonBismarck to Herr von Puttkamer, for his daughter Johanna (1846)
Thomas Carlyle to Jane Welsh (1823)
Victor Hugo to Adele Faucher (1822)
Johann Nestroy to Frälein Koefer (1855)
Count Leo Tolstoy to Sofia Behrs (1862)
Anton Bruckner to Josefine Lang (1866)
Friedrich Nietzsche to Mathilde Trampedach (1876)
Adolf Stoecker to Anna Krueger (1864)
August Strindberg to Frieda Uhl (1893)
August Strindberg to Friedrich Uhl (1893)