Category: Marriage Proposals

“How to Maintain a Flourishing Husband”

When I was about to be married, the women of my church threw me a shower, at which each of them gave me a favorite recipe to put in a cookbook for our new home. And though I still use Marion’s directions for teriyaki chicken, and though Sandy’s roasted veggies are still a favorite at our house, the real treasure in that cookbook isn’t the recipes. It’s the marriage advice each woman wrote down alongside her recipe.

Since this June has been all about marriage here at Regency Reflections, I thought I’d pass on the best of that advice – the advice that’s proved the most true in this first decade of my marriage. And since it comes from a woman who’s currently in the middle of her fourth decade of marriage – my mom, Betsy Barber – you can trust that it has more wisdom than anything I could come up with out of my short experience.

So, here they are, the words I see every time I turn to my mother’s recipe for the perfect pie crust:

 For those of you who haven’t had thirty years practice interpreting my mom’s handwriting, here’s what it says:

1. Constant prayer

2. Frequent, joyful sex

3. Regular time spent together

4. Continual forgiveness, continual repentance.

5. Conscious support of his career and hobbies

6. Encourage 10X more often than any critique.

And there at the bottom, added in after the original composition, is my favorite part: “Remember – if it’s good for Adam, it is good for you.”

That’s the part that I hadn’t read anywhere else in my marriage prep, and it’s the part I still wish more people talked about when they talk to married couples: since you’re one flesh, what’s good for one of you – what builds one up, what encourages one, what heartens one – benefits the other. Anything that helps my husband helps me. If something makes him a better Christian, if anything gives him joy, if anything delights his heart, it’s to my benefit that he has it, because it means I’ll be married to a better, happier, godlier man.

And the same is true the other way around. If something encourages me, if something builds me up, it’s to Adam’s benefit to see that I get it, because then he enjoys a marriage to a happier, healthier, godlier wife.

I could go on about the other points on that list, but this blog entry is supposed to be kept at a reasonable length. Suffice it to say: all the points on that list are good . . . especially the second one. 😉

Question for You:

What’s your best piece of advice for a new bride?

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Originally posted 2012-06-27 10:00:00.

An Alternative Elopement

Wanting to spare the heroine from an arranged marriage to an ogre, the hero suggests that he marries her and they elope. The heroine agrees, since she has had a tendre for the hero since she was a schoolgirl. Unfortunately, the 1754 Hardwick Marriage Act has stiffened the laws of marriage. The heroine hasn’t yet reached her majority and they can’t take the time to obtain a special license in London. Waiting for the banns to be called is out of the question, as that will take three weeks and the parents and ogre suitor will catch up with them long before then, even if they can obtain parental permission for the under age—under twenty-one—heroine. Their only alternative is to elope to Gretna Green in Scotland.

Unfortunately again, Scotland is close to four hundred miles away. They must hire a post chase or go on horseback and, because the journey will likely take more than a week to accomplish, they will have to stay overnight before they are married, unacceptable to these two proper—other than eloping—young people. The situation appears hopeless.

Except it isn’t. The hero has some friends amongst the fishermen who have told him about carrying an eloping couple to an alternative marriage location.

Eloping in Style

In approximately fifteen hours of sailing,
the eloping couple can reach one of the Channel Islands, mainly the Island of Guernsey. Evidence presents us with the knowledge that boats waited at Southampton, Hampshire, to carry eloping couples across the channel. Logic says Plymouth, Falmouth, and a few other southern ports just might have provided the same service.

Guernsey is closer to France than England. Although it belongs to England, many of the laws differ from those of England. The marriage laws are one of those even today.

So many couples eloped to Guernsey that tracking the history of residents of the island has proven difficult, for distinguishing those who simply arrived in St. Peter Port to get married in haste, from those who lived on the island and married in the same parish, isn’t easy two hundred years later. Genealogists have focused on whether or not couples later baptized their children in that same parish in order to trace ancestry to Guernsey.

Nowadays, one does not need a license to marry in a Church of England ceremony on Guernsey. One does need a license for a civil ceremony on Guernsey.

So if your couple finds themselves hundreds of miles from Gretna Green, they can hop onto a fishing boat, or perhaps the hero’s yacht, and sail across the Narrow Sea to a channel island. First, however, he might wish to ensure that the heroine doesn’t get seasick on the way.

Laurie Alice Eakes

Originally posted 2012-06-25 06:00:00.

On Courtship

Authoress Amelia Opie

Whoever thinks romance and love matches didn’t exist before the 20th century ignores a lot of evidence to the contrary. If women of all strata of society from seamstresses to young ladies of the ton read novels which featured heroines pitted against alluring yet somewhat menacing men, where virtue and love triumphed in the end, this means they must have had a desire for romance. They not only took to reading but to writing novels themselves. Selina Davenport’s 1824 novel Preference, is a typical romance with a properly happy ending. She wrote 11 novels between 1814-1832. Other female authors of the period besides Jane Austen who wrote about love triumphing were Amelia Opie, Maria Edgeworth, and sisters Anna Maria and Jane Porter.

The evangelical writer Hannah More wrote, “Is a woman in low spirits? Let her console herself by writing a novel. Is she ill? Bored? Unhappily situated? Let her pour it all out into a novel.”* Do I detect a little sarcasm?

 

Almack's

Despite a young woman’s yearnings for love and romance, the regency period was governed by rules of etiquette. Numerous books were written to young men and women on the subject of how to behave in public—especially with the opposite sex. After the licentiousness of the Georgian era, the Regency period saw a rise of Evangelicalism, which stressed that women were the arbiters of morality, and it was part of their duty to make sure they didn’t tempt men, or fall victims to men’s baser instincts. Whereas in high society it was common for a man to have a mistress, an unmarried young lady must keep herself chaste and above any appearance of misbehavior. On the Marriage Mart, a woman’s purity was her highest asset.

For this reason courtship for a young lady meant being chaperoned whenever she went out (and, of course, never receiving a gentleman caller on her own). A gentleman had to ask for an introduction to meet a young lady he was interested in. After her official coming out into society, a young lady enjoyed the grown-up entertainments of balls, assemblies, concerts and other musical events, all to see and be seen. But everything was done in public. A young lady could never be alone with a young man who was not a family member or otherwise closely associated with the family.

Although parents desired a “suitable match” for their children, this did not mean strictly arranged marriages—for the most part. There is ample evidence in novels and correspondence of marriages based on love and mutual respect.

Princess and Prince at the opera National Portrait Gallery London

The most important love match of the era was that of the Prince Regent’s daughter Charlotte to a minor German prince, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Even though her father and the British government had been negotiating her marriage to Prince William of Orange (the future king of the Netherlands), Princess Charlotte met young Leopold in the Czar’s entourage when the czar and his sister came to London during the summer of 1814. Eventually, the princess broke off her official engagement to the Dutch royal prince, causing all kinds of diplomatic furor and married her German prince on May 2, 1816, to the enthusiasm of the British people. They understood a love match. From all accounts it was a happy—though brief—marriage, since she died shortly after giving birth to their first child after only a year of marital bliss.

Matchmaking as shown in Emma also shows that romance was alive and well in the regency era. Jane Austen wrote, “Anything is to be preferred or endured, rather than marrying without Affection.”

Vauxhall Gardens

 

 

* Our Tempestuous Day by Carolly Erickson, William Morrow and Co., 1986, New York

Originally posted 2012-06-18 05:00:00.