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Springfield and the rock

by Jamie Snashall on April 6, 2008 in Befuddled Foreigner

As I said one day last week, in spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love.  Here’s one of the most revered presidents in US history, Abraham Lincoln, wooing his wife-to-be, Mary Owens, in 1837:

This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business after all…I’m afraid you would not be satisfied.  There is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would be your doom to see without sharing in it.  You would have to be poor without the means of hiding your poverty.  Do you believe you would bear that patiently?…What I have said I will most positively abide by, provided you wish it.  My opinion is that you had better not do it.  You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more severe than you now imagine.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin describes his marriage proposal as “one of the most curiously unappealing ever penned” in her book Team of Rivals.  I’m grateful to my colleague David for sending on the quote.

Whether or not Lincoln set the tone for what usually accompanies a marriage proposal – jewellery – I’m really not sure.  But I’ve been astonished by the size of the diamonds on women’s fingers here.  At first, I thought it was perhaps a ‘male/female’ thing, but checking with non-US female colleagues demonstrated that, no, it’s another case of bigger-is-better in America.  (None of this discussion on the size of a ‘rock’ should be mistaken for the bigger-is-better extravaganza of The Rock, the action film by explosion maestro Michael Bay with all its talk of beige Volvos and prom queens.)

Diamonds are forever indeed – and judging by the size of the gem, the guy buying it will be paying it off forever.

Written by Jamie Snashall · Filed Under Befuddled Foreigner 

Jamie Snashall grew up in Tasmania – that little island to the south of Australia – which made him something of a befuddled foreigner in his own country. The English novelist LP Hartley once said "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there," and many Aussies would think that that perfectly describes Tasmania, a former British penal colony for the nineteenth century convicts who were too bad for Sydney. Banished at the age of 13, he ended up in the nation’s capital, Canberra, where he became a political junkie, worked as a very civil servant for some years before jumping into the political arena as media and policy adviser to Julia Gillard, who has recently become Australia’s first female deputy Prime Minister. His weaknesses are U2, Star Wars, Thai food and red wine, preferably all mixed up together. In his spare time, he is trying to finish a TV sitcom about a college student and civil servant who are roommates. When not writing this blog and working on his sitcom, he is allegedly enrolled in the Mid Career MPA program.

Comments

One Response to “Springfield and the rock”

  1. Lesley on April 7th, 2008 5:42 pm

    Your fellow Tasmanian and Gillard office colleague is intrigued that a young man’s fancy has turned to love as spring appears!

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