'I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer' by Mary Beth Horton: Should I marry someone I cannot love? Please advise...

It happens all over the world, where humans are perplexed and often made miserable by knotty problems thrown their way by life.

People in trouble fret and question, desperately hoping for answers. They lie awake at night, wondering what on earth to do. The lucky ones can confide in a good friend or family member, but what if there isn’t one? What if the problem is embarrassing?

That’s the moment men and women alike might think of writing to a total stranger – as they have done for generations.

You probably think that ‘agony aunt’ (or uncle) columns in newspapers and magazines are a modern invention. Not so.

The American historian Mary Beth Norton has unearthed an astonishing collection of ‘letters on love and marriage from the world’s first personal advice column’ – written to a British periodical, dating all the way back to the end of the 17th century.

It was only 50 years after the English Civil War, William and Mary were on the throne, masked highwaymen were still a menace to travellers, upper-class men wore elaborate wigs…and people wrote to the very first personal advice column about sex, love, courtship and marriage.

It all began when a printer called John Dunton had a lightbulb moment – long before electricity was discovered. Why not publish a weekly paper that would answer questions sent in by the men who thronged London’s coffee houses?

In The Athenian Mercury he and two male helpers would answer on a wide variety of subjects, such as nature and medicine.

Within a few weeks the first intimate questions began to arrive: ‘Should a person marry someone they cannot love?’ And ‘Is a woman worse off in marriage than a man?’

Maybe those sturdy, bewigged chaps sipping their coffee were softer than they looked. They wanted advice.

Then came another unexpected development – a woman wrote asking ‘whether her sex might not send us questions as well as men’. Quick off the mark, the canny Dunton promised they would ‘answer all manner of questions sent to us by either sex’.

And they flooded in. When mocked or criticised for ‘pitiful’ letters, he and his colleagues staunchly defended personal advice: ‘Many questions not only have an influence on the happiness of particular men and the peace of families, but even the good and welfare of larger societies…which consists of families and single persons.’

Hooray for that! After writing in the Saturday Mail for 18 years, I know that advice columns remain a force for good. It’s obvious that people really need them – and the mixture of practical sense, kindness (and a few necessary kicks) they provide.

Does human nature change so very much over time? Reading through these letters from long-dead men and women I marvel at how much they echo my own postbag.

The world is full of young women taken in by men who didn’t make their intentions clear. No wonder this one wrote to the Mercury: ‘When a man courts us, how shall we know whether it’s for marriage, or for diversion, or any other reason?’

They warn her that the only way to know for certain is if he actually marries her, so hurry to the chapel! Another lady ‘in love’ wants to know ‘how she may decently convince’ the man of her passion.

Dunton & Co are frank: ‘To be plain with you we find men to be an ungrateful sort of animal in such cases’ – a criticism many women who write to me would agree with. Again, the counsel is caution.

Then what of the passionate young man who can’t restrain himself: ‘Is interrupting repeated discourse by repeated kisses rude and unmannerly and more apt to create aversion than love?’

The reply is glorious: ‘Not so hasty, good sir! The truth is, kissing is a luscious diet…He must therefore remember to feed cautiously, as if he were eating melons. Moderation is an excellent thing…Kiss as well as talk, with discretion.’

Wise, because when the kissing stops, conversation is essential.

A recurring theme is young men worried about being inflamed by their passions.

John Dunton expostulates: ‘Lovers are ungovernable creatures!’ No wonder he has to warn against ‘ruin’ – for in an age of dodgy birth control, unwanted pregnancy was an ever-present danger. Has there ever been an age when sex didn’t cause great trouble?

An ordinary young woman worries that the richer ‘gentleman’ who ‘pretends great kindness’ is only after one thing: ‘If I consent…I’m sure he’d expect some greater favour than I should be willing to grant before marriage.’ In other words, ‘impure freedoms’.

The reply is sharp and true: ‘If women generally think their lot is hard by reason of their subjection to their husbands…how much harder must be theirs who depend for their bread on the lust of any man, his absolute will and pleasure…’

The lengthy answer shows a knowledge of the ways of the world that’s frankly feminist in tone.

One woman calls herself ‘an old maid’ at 30, and it’s also a shock to read the frankness of this lady – ‘I am a virgin (at least I pass for such)’ – who now wants a ‘platonic passion’.

Women looking for husbands were as common then as, in fact, they are now, and to one such, Dunton gives pragmatic advice: ‘Don’t be too picky in your choice, lest you should get none at all.’ Pick an honest man, is his usual counsel.

Of marriage, he advises ‘both sides must make allowances’, and he tells a man unsure of which woman to choose: ‘You must base [passion] chiefly on such of her qualifications as time can never efface, not on beauty which is but a flash, but on prudence, generosity and sweetness of disposition.’ Such good sense.

Today nobody would ask advice about the financial prospects of a suitor, nor would young people be expected to defer to their parents, as they were then.

Times change, certainly, yet this book offers ample proof that we do not change that much with them. The problematic marriages, the ‘ghosting’ of would-be lovers, the children born out of wedlock, the lonely longing for love…

Surely such issues will cause aching hearts for ever.