PROPOSALS, ACCEPTANCES, AND REFUSALS.

Evening Star, Issue 11725, 7 April 1902, Page 5

PROPOSALS, ACCEPTANCES, AND REFUSALS.

I St, Valentine's Day was the birthday of Lady Sarah Lennox, one of that strange gallery of subordinate mortals which fills up many pages of English history. She was one of the very few women who have refused an offer of marriage from a king—for that she cud refuse George 111., in spite of her subsequent disappointment, there can be no doubt. It is oue of the coronation stories, and as such has a special interest just now. George the Third was a young man when he fell in love with Iris beautiful cousin, and he was so deeply m love that; ho could not resist talking of the subject at the drawing room. A friend tolJ him that she and Lady Sarah Lennox were going away, and the King expressed a hope that they would be back for the coronation. " They talk of a wedding," said he, " There have neen many proposals, but I think an English mutch would do better than a foreign one. Pray tell Lady Sarah Lennox I say so." There are proposals and proposals, but royal offers of marriage are not often more direct than this, and in refusing to encourage the young King Lady Sarah certainly achieved for herself tho distinction of having rejected her Sovereign as a husband, however she mav have repented in the days when she would dress as a haymaker to catch a glimpse of George tlie Third in the Park. There are not many womon of whom it (an be said that they have refused to share a throne. Two peers who sit in the House of Lords have some right to be proud of the fact, if they know iC that a relative of theirs whom they probably did not know was known as the only woman who refused offers of marriage from two Primo Ministers. They are the Earls of Bradford and Chesterfield, both of whom are related, Ehe one directly and the other indirectly, to the Miss Forester who, in her youth, refused an offer of marriage from Lod Palmerston. Miss Forester was a sistor of a late Countess of Bradford, and after refusing Palmerston became the bride of the Earl of Chesterfield. The Earl died'., and us his widow she declined a pioposal of marriage from another Premier —Lord Beaconsfield.

An odd story comes to mind of a proposal of marriage in which Lord Bcaconslield met with "more encouragement. "' I may commit many follies in my life," the future Premier wrote in his youth, "but 1 never intend to marry for love "; and tao businesslike way in which, according to the gossips, his engagement came about sij.'o-ests that lie raeaut what lie wrote, lie had written of Mrs Wyndham Lewis, the wife of a member of Parliament, as "a pretty little woman, a flirt and \ rattle; indeed, gifted with a volubility .1 should think unequalled, mid of which T can convey n oidea"; yet it was Mrs Lewi;; who, seven years' after, became Mrs .Disraeli. Mr flisraeli called one. day, the stcry goes, when the widow did not wish In see him; and, observing him from ;in upper window. Mrs Lewis asked the maid to say that she was not at home. _ The maid hastened downstairs, but the visitor was too quick for her, and his coat and hat were liiing up in the hall when the mail explained that her mistress was out. "1 didn't ask for your mistress," said Disraeli, "but I'm going to wait until she comes back, so please make me some tea." Thus began the love story which made an M.P.'s widow a Premier's wife, and the two grew so fond of each other that Lady Beaconsfield, m she once declared, always pulled the string for "Dizzy's shower bath." Perhaps of all refusals of marriage, the experience of Mr Buskin was the most pathetic. Mr Buskin—poet, painter, and prophet- -was like mere ordinary men in at feast one thina, that he fell in love and lound love with sorrow. At seventeen he; fell in love with a French baron's daughter, to whom lie wroic several sonnets, but his demotion was unrequited; and later in life he betrothed himself to a young lady pupil, who a' r ain, declined to marry him. Buskin had .'protested to her that he loved no one in earth or heaven better than herself, and Jhe voung tatlv, v.bo was intensely rcbgious, was offended. They parted, and when some time afterwards, she lay dyi,„. Mr Buskin asked if ho might see her one'e more. "You may come if you win tell me vou love God better than you love me " the voung ladv wrote back in-different words, n'mi Mr Buskin did. not go. The rejection of his proposal, it may be said, was iiis own fault, and Buskin sacrificed hi> love, no doubt, to his innate honesty. So probably .lid Pitt, who, when society was waiting for him to many Miss Lden, wrote a touching letter from Downmg street in which he put out of court a union wlucu his friends bad eagerly looked forward to. •■ it ,an hardlv, I think, be necessary to sav," ran his* letter to Lord Auckland, '•'that the time f have passed among your familv has led to my forming sentiments of ve-rv real attachment towards thtm ail, ond of'much more than attachment towards one whom T need not name. I have sutfered myself," Pitt went on, to overlook them too long, but, having now at length reflected as fully and as calmly as 1 am able on cverv circumstance that ought to come under inv consideration (at least as mucn for her sake as for my own), I am compelled to ■sav that I find the obstacles to it decisive and insurmountal.l'. It was Pitt'« private sorrow, and the •tt-er which revealed it to the world is interesting as perhaps the only "love letter which we know to have been written from Downmg street.—" A.M." in 'St. James's Gazette.