Some highly idiosyncratic courtships are to be found in the lives of famous men during this period. One of the least passionate was that of the Duke of Wellington. He loved Ritty Pakenham at the age of twenty-four, but did not marry her until he was thirty-six, after serving most of the years overseas. During that time he never wrote to her, nor she to him. When informed that Kitty's feelings for him were unchanged, and that his friends regarded him as her lover, he felt it to be the honourable thing to marry her. The rules laid down that a gentleman could not release himself from a situation of this kind; the woman had to take the initiative. Queen Charlotte welcomed Kitty Pakenham at Court, and according to Philip Guedalla's The Duke this conversation ensued:
'I am happy to see you at my court, so bright an example of constancy. If anybody in this world deserved to be happy, you do. But did you really never write one letter to Sir Arthur Wellesley during his long absence?"
'No, never, madam,' answered Kitty.
'And did you never think of him?'
'Yes, madam, very often."
'But fortunately,' says Guedalla, 'his enquiring Sovereign never asked how often he had thought of Kitty. Hardly, it would seem, with embarrassing frequency.'
Napoleon, on the other hand, was a far from lukewarm lover, and appears to have been fired by the ideas of the Romanticists. At the age of forty he decided to wed Marie Louise of Austria, and forthwith began to act half his age. He dressed in the height of fashion, took dancing lessons, rode and hunted to bring down his girth, and gazed at Marie Louise's picture many times a day. When the lady left Austria he took great pains to Say It With Flowers every day, not the easiest feat in a day before flowers could be telegraphed. Writing letters put him in such a state of excitement that he could not spell, or read what he had written, so that his love letters had to be penned, in the end, by his secretary.
The most hysterical wooing, too well known to need more than brief mention, was the Prince Regent's pursuit of that entrancing but disappointingly virtuous widow, Mrs Fitzherbert. The threat of self-destruction was FlorizePs trump card, or so he hoped. First, for her sake, he indulged in all manner of crude histrionics-beating his brow, popping his eyes, tearing his hair and writhing on the floor. He threatened to carry her off by force to America. Then, when she remained unimpressed, he drank three pints of brandy, which would have killed a person less habituated to strong liquor. Still the lady was unmoved. As she was about to leave for the Continent he sent a message to her saying that he had stabbed himself. Dubiously, Mrs Fitzherbert said she would attend his bedside only if accompanied by a lady of impregnable character; the Duchess of Devonshire accepted the part. The Prince had an injury of some kind, with blood oozing from one side of his body. It has been suggested that the surgeon 'faked' the injury; it has also been suggested that the Prince cautiously mutilated himself after first studying the principles of phlebotomy. Mrs Fitzherbert nearly fainted at the sight of blood, and possibly at the reek of brandy. Then, weakly, she consented to a betrothal and with the aid of a borrowed ring the two plighted their troth. Almost immediately afterwards, no doubt suspecting that she had been duped, she left the country.
The Prince later married Mrs Fitzherbert secretly and in due course they were estranged. To pay off his debts he agreed to marry Caroline of Brunswick, and in the best royal tradition, he undertook to accept her unseen. Lord Malmesbury, who began life with the name of Harris, went to look over the lady, and saw fit to gloss over her many grossnesses. Not even her best friends had told her of her principal shortcoming, though Malmesbury dropped hints about soap to her women.
When he met Caroline the Prince said hardly a word, turned and withdrew to a far part of the apartment, saying, 'Harris, I am not well. Pray get me a glass of brandy.' Caroline inquired, 'My God, is the Prince always like that?'
Garibaldi is possibly the only man to have picked out a wife by telescope, on an unknown shore. One day, on the quarterdeck of his vessel off Brazil, he decided to seek a wife in order to dispel his melancholy. Casting his spyglass on the houses ashore he saw a young girl, and at once ordered sailors to row him to land. He had some difficulty in finding the right house and, stopping at one door to inquire, was invited to take coffee. Inside was the girl, Anita. 'We both remained in an ecstatic silence gazing at each other,' said Garibaldi; then at last he told her she must belong to him. 'I seemed to have some magnetic power in my insolence,' he boasted.
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