Everything should be done with the pump. Flowers, a diamond gleaming in the candlelight, and kneeling down on one knee. And of course a touching speech. Meanwhile, he did everything upside down and then disappeared for a few days. Was that the worst proposal of the century?
It was probably the most mismatched pair imaginable. He? Almost forty-year-old Polish nobleman, a sailing captain with many adventures, a successful writer. She? Eighteen-year-old girl from a working class family.
Her father was a warehouseman, but he orphaned the family. She herself had to take a job as a typist to help support her younger siblings. Unlike the women with whom Joseph Conrad flirted so far, she had no sophisticated manners, didn't speak French, and ... she wasn't even very pretty (at least that's what her husband said in his letters to friends).
Remember to always take the time to get to know your future significant other
Józef Konrad Korzeniowski, known to the whole world under the name of Joseph Conrad, met his future wife Jessie George in 1894. As Maya Jasanoff explains in the book "Joseph Conrad and the birth of a global world" , it probably happened when he had his debut novel typewritten. It was with "Almayer's Madness" that his career began.
Joseph Conrad (photo:public domain)
Conrad proposed in 1896, and before that ... he had met his future wife only five times. This amount of time spent together did not give the slightest chance to meet the person with whom you were to spend the rest of your life. However, this did not dampen the writer's matrimonial enthusiasm.
Take her to a special place and create a romantic atmosphere
Jessie was far from the salon lionesses that Conrad had encountered so far. She did not receive a thorough education, was unfamiliar, could not flirt and play party games, but the writer dared to ask the girl the most important question.
That day they spent the morning at the National Gallery in London, and when they left:
[...] addressed her. Look, he said, I'm long dead and I'm not going to have children. But I think so, he added, shrugging his shoulders, that maybe it's worth it for us to spend a happy few years together?
It is hard to imagine a woman who would not be overwhelmed by this insanely romantic speech. After all, it is full of confessions of the most sincere love and promises of eternal attachment.
Though the future husband had not promised that he would throw the whole world at her feet, or that he would care for her (not to mention that he had not said he loved her at all), Miss George promised her hand to the man. Interestingly, Jessie found Conrad a weirdo, but she appreciated that he was the first adult male to take an interest in her.
Be just for her and show how happy you are that she agreed
After Miss George had accepted the writer's proposal, the newlyweds went to lunch together to celebrate. It was an amazing meal. Instead of enjoying their new status and making plans for this near and quite distant future, Jessie and Conrad ate in almost total silence, perhaps due to great embarrassment. But that wasn't the worst of it. As described by Maya Jasanoff :
Conrad fired a slingshot "with enormous pain on his face" and did not speak for several days, leaving his stunned fiancée worried that "he had already regretted his own proposals" .
National Gallery. The place that Joseph Conrad chose for his exceptionally… romantic marriage proposals (photo:Yorick Petey, license of CCS SA 2.0 Fr)
And they lived happily ever after
It would seem that this marriage is doomed to failure. Conrad was acting weird again on their wedding day. On March 24, 1896, the writer with two friends and a whole group of Jessie's closest relatives appeared at the registry office. As we can read in the book "Joseph Conrad and the birth of a global world" the bridegroom was strict about his wife's family. Later, however, in his quirks, he outdid himself.
He had no intention of taking care of the woman he had just married and celebrating the newly-wed. In the evening he sat down for correspondence and decided that he must send all letters on the same day.
Conrad went to the post office at two o'clock in the morning instead of doing what the young couple would normally do on the wedding night.
The tomb of Joseph Conrad, where he rests with Jessie (photo:Pam Fray, license CC BY SA 2.0)
Despite all the differences and all the problems along the way, the decision to marry Miss Jessie George was one of the best the writer had made in his life. Tormented by demons from his past, melancholy and impaired health, he needed exactly the woman like her.
Jessie didn't just give him an almost motherly concern. It also took over the most mundane concerns of everyday life. Most of all, however, she was a devoted wife who supported her husband at every step.
Read also why Conrad renounced his Polish name
Source:
Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on:
- M. Jasanoff, Joseph Conrad and the birth of a global world , 2018 Poznań Publishing House.
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