May 20
Today in the History of Love. In 1756, Frederick North, a young (barely 24) but highly promising member of the British Parliament (he would eventually become the prime minister) married an even younger (barely 16) Anne Speke, the daughter of a wealthy country gentleman from Somerset. One contemporary chronicler described Anne as “a Somerset heiress of more than four thousand pounds a year.”
But the jokes that circulated in society circles concerned the couple’s notable lack of good looks. A certain Lady Harcourt said that the pudgy Lord North was “beautiful in comparison to the Lady the world said he is to marry.” The couple’s daughter later conceded that her mother was “plain in her person but had excellent good sense … a singular mildness and placidity of temper” and “conversational powers by no means contemptible.” North’s biographer, Alan Valentine (Lord North, 1967), says that portraits of Anne show “a face of refinement and a charming figure.” But the couple themselves seemed to enjoy the joke. Years later, North himself described the two of them as the ugliest pair in London.
Be that as it may, Valentine’s conclusion seems true: “North’s marital good fortune proved to be less in lands and inherited wealth than in the character and devotion of his wife. … Ten years later, Lady North was addressing her husband, on the rare occasions when they were separated long enough to excuse a letter, as ‘My Dear Love.’” They had seven children.
Quotation of the Day. From John Donne, “Elegy II: The Anagram,” 1595. “Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.”
Word of the Day. Consortium: The aspects of a marriage that meet the reasonable expectations of marriage itself, such as affection, cooperation, companionship, assistance, financial aid, and sexual relations.
Poem of the Day. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 130.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
That in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.