I’ve posted this photo before, but I loved it – and it seems appropriate, because today is the 30th anniversary for my Dad and Mum, a.k.a Our Vicar and Our Vicar’s Wife. Join with me in wishing them a hearty congratulations!
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| (l-r) Colin, Anne, Peter, me (playing outside: Sherpa) |
And perhaps we can cheer them on their day by recommending our favourite married couples in fiction? Mine are either Ian and Felicity from Denis Mackail’s Greenery Street or Dahlia and the narrator in A.A. Milne’s early sketches, collected in Those Were The Days.
(Incidentally, this is my 1502nd post – I was intending to do a little celebration for my 1500th, but obviously it just passed me by…)
What a lovely family! Congratulations!
Congratulations to both your parents and to you.
Congratulations to all of you.
Congratulations!
Thanks Si and friends for your congratulations (and for posting something before 8.00 a.m. – though I suspect it went up late last night!)
Morning being spent in garden seeking to make it presentable to family and friends visiting over next couple of weeks.
Fictional married couples – will think about that.
XXX
Lovely! Many congratulations to OV and OVW.
Congratulatinos to your parents, Simon – what a lovely picture!
Married couples? I'm unreasonably fond of Nick and Nora Charles from "The Thin Man", actually!
Or indeed Tommy and Tuppence Beresford in Agatha Christie's books who progress from a pair of young flappers to a venerable old couple over Christie's lifetime.
(and that should of course have said Congratulations – must proofread before hitting publish!)
I don't know kaggsy – we rather like the idea of 'congratulatinos' – it has a pleasant Italian feel to it!
LOL!!
Congratulations to your parents, and may they be blessed with many more years together!
That's a great photo :) Happy anniversary from Brussels!
Happy Anniversary to everyone – and wishing you many more happy years of marriage and blogging! One of my favorite married couples is Amelia Peabody and her husband Emerson in the Elizabeth Peter's series. Always a good read.
How lovely! I don't think that the population of Canada would mind me extending a heartfelt "Congratulations!" on behalf of everyone. Does this mean cake?
Congratulatinos! (said she, liking Kaggsy's typo too). My immediate thoughts were for Nick & Nora Charles too – but have been beaten to it.
Oh, what a lovely photo! Congratulations and all the best for the future.
One of my favorite fictional married couples is from Georgette Heyer's "A Civil Contract." The marriage begins most unromantically but the development of the relationship between Jenny and Adam is lovely. And, though you didn't ask this, I think my favorite clergyman in fiction is Canon Avril in Margery Allingham's "The Tiger in the Smoke." Though Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote might edge him out.
Mary Grover
Congratulations to Our Vicar and Our Vicar's Wife!
Simon, you have asked this question about literary marriages before, and I think I answered then Lord Peter and Harriet Vane. But I have thought about this in the meantime and would like to propose Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet from Bleak House. I love how Mr. Bagnet always defers to his highly efficient and indomitable wife’s better judgment (“Old girl, tell him my opinion of it”). Theirs is an obviously successful and loving union.
Many congratulations to OV and OVW.
Favourite married couples in books? For a laugh, Mr and Mrs Collins in P&P, although admittedly that's a tragi-comic rather than inspirational idea of wedlock. A modern day tragi-comic pairing would be Irene and Stuart Pollock in McCall Smith's Scotland Street books. Poor old Stuart is more like a prisoner of war in that marriage than a full and equal partner. How awful that more positive examples are not leaping to the front of my mind. I suppose literature, like drama, requires some problem or tension to work and, as a result, the happiest marriages are those that arrive at the end of a book. I hope fellow commenters can suggest some very good marriages that also make for good reading.
Well, congratulations from deep in Ontario Cottage Country, where I'm at the local library to pick up all the news of the world, such as OVW and OVWH's 30th.
Hmm, favourite married couples in fiction. Excellent challenge, Simon. Well, I just finished reading Gone with the Windsors, a fictional account of my totally UNfavourite couple in history (David and Wallis). Horrible of me to even mention them in the same comment.
Have to think about that, and get back to you in a few days. Meanwhile, Sarah's grandparents in DE Stevenson's Sarah Morris books.
Fave couples have to beProfessor and Mrs Emerson from the Amelia Peabody series, closely followed by Uncle Quentin and Aunt Fanny! Congrats, congrats! (I like that you're receving congrats too – well done Simmington on not accidentally driving them apart etc.) Ahem. I mean, congrats on blog number billion. Woop de la woop! (As no-one said, ever.)
I take it ALL back now Kaggsy has reminded me of Tommy and Tuppence! Couple in a million. And I'm entirely convinced that OV and OVW would be sensational 1930s spies. Where's a crime writer when you need her?
Oh dear, our secret is out!
Congratulations to OVW and OV! 30 years, very impressive.
Simon, you asked this question before about favorite literary married couples. Last time I answered Lord Peter and Harriet Vane. But I would like to amend that. Now I choose Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet from Bleak House. I love how Mr. Bagnet always defers to his efficient and indomitable wife (Old girl, tell them my opinion of it”). It is clear that she is the one who wears the pants in the family, but Mr. Bagnet will only admit to this indirectly, "She's Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion," said Mr. Bagnet, looking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. "And there's not such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained."
Ruthiella
Hi Ruthiella – for some reason your comments were going to spam – I have resurrected this one!
And somehow you have 2 versions of the same comment… weird or what?
Thanks Simon. I kept trying and trying and my comment would not save! Well, there is no harm in wishing your parents a happy anniversary twice! :)
Congratulations, Simon, on so many enjoyable blog posts, & belated congratulations to Our Vicar & Our VGicar's Wife. What a lovely photograph of you all.
I thought of Lord Peter Wimsey & Harriet Vane as my favouriter married couple, but then I remembered Claudia & David from the books by Rose Franken – not grand literature, but books I loved as a young married woman in the 1960s & ones I re-read every decade or so. I suppose they are quite twee, but I delight in stories about a happy marriage with the inevitable ups & downs which only serve to strenghten the bond. Every time I read them, I find myself laughing, crying & feeling a warm glow. What more can one ask for?!
Ah, had some time to think about this and found this: http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/~Christy.Doran/Wellesley/Alum/heilbrun2.html
I am inclined to agree with the following:
'Setting out some years ago to write an article on the portrayal of marriage in literature, I was more than a little astonished to find that good marriages are even rarer in literature than in life. Mostly they don't exist, certainly not as part of the major plot. If a good marriage can be expected, it will take place beyond the end of the novel, examined by neither the participants nor the reader. Those marriages which pop up on the periphery of other stories are either stagnant, warlike, or both.
I found, as I recall, two literary evocations of happy marriges: one in Dickens's ''Bleak House,'' the other in Jane Austen's ''Persuasion,'' wherein the Crofts share the seagoing life, as Admiral Croft's rank entitles them to do, aboard a warship. The hero of ''Persuasion,'' Anne Eliott, rode out with them one day in a carriage. ''My dear Admiral, that post!'' Mrs. Croft cried out, warning of an impending collision. ''But by coolly giving the reins a better direction herself they happily passed the danger; and by once afterward judiciously putting out her hand, they neither fell into a rut, nor ran foul of a dung-cart; and Anne, with some amusement at their style of driving, which she imagined no bad representation of the general guidance of their affairs, found herself safely deposited by them at her cottage.''
Admiral and Mrs Croft win the prize then!