Notes & Queries response - Is there a way I can tell if a relationship is right for me?

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Engagement Banquet at Aijtimaeat Kathira Market, painted in situ, in cold oils, by George Groves, in 1824, recently sold at Christie's for £5million and change, plus commission at both ends.

The following day I met the painting's former owner, Mark Beaudoin. (It was not a chance meeting – we live in the same neighbourhood and consistently bump into each other). He parted with the artwork out of financial necessity in 2008 for the measly sum of £750,000. The painting depicts the engagement dinner of Miss Violet Auld - a distant grandmother of Beaudoin's, many generations removed, on his mother's side of the family. Also reluctantly present is her husband to be, Douglas Edden. His apparent regret at taking matters as far as they had gone is overlooked by the artist, who specialised in painting mass gatherings as if they were landscapes. The banquet, as the title of the painting states, was held on at Aijtimaeat Kathira (Many Meetings), once a thriving centre of commerce, located on the eastern fringes of the Sahara desert, twenty miles north of what was, at the time, the small town of Aljammaka. The latter of the two settlements has grown significantly since then, while the former has regressed to a grubby backwater. Prior to his completion of the painting, Groves had made two unsuccessful attempts at two other engagement banquets, hosted by different couples. These preliminary works have not survived. He blamed their failure on the behaviour of oil paints in arid climates where they will either remain in a liquid state, or will dry-out too quickly and then “cake off”. Fortunately he happened to be resident in what was, with no shadow of a doubt, the greatest marketplace of its era. He was able to lay hands on a supply of pigments that behaved more predictably under the local conditions and that were largely unknown to European painters. The sources of the indigo and jade that he used in the painting have never been established. The market has long gone and the trade routes along with it. Many of the artist pigments that were once sold there were likely harvested en-route, from mineral deposits at secret locations scattered throughout the desert.

I guessed that Beaudoin would have been aware of the auction in advance. He would have seen the steep reserve price for the painting and would have morbidly kept one eye on the upwardly-evolving sale predictions. I had made a mental note not to mention any of this to him, though, in the end, he raised the subject with me himself.

“We'd have gone under if we hadn't sold it,” he rationalised. “And it's not like it's a portrait or anything. Violet's there only as a couple of dabs of paint. As a family heirloom it's always had one foot out the front door. Well, you know the story. I expect I've told you all about it at some point.”

I did indeed know the story. I had heard it not from Beaudoin's lips, but rather had read about it anecdotally in John Aburrows' excellent book – The Wedding March, subtitled Georgian and Victorian Journeys Across the Sahara, in Search of Marital Bliss. Aburrows presents a comprehensive history of the Seven Stations of Engagement, which was a kind of companion to the Grand Tour, attempted by betrothed couples prior to their wedding, as a means of stress-testing the bonds of their relationship.

Unlike the Grand Tour that was predominantly a cultural and horizon-broadening excursion along well-trodden roads, undertaken by young gentlemen of means, in relative comfort, the Seven Stations was a 500-mile guided trek across the fringes of the Sahara desert, with all of its inherent dangers, characterised by unremitting hardship and hostile, monotonous terrain. It was inspired by the experience of a tailor named George Parkyn, and his fiance, Enda Leverton, who had become lost in the desert and who had walked to civilisation. Their story captured the imagination of the English public. Their wedding in London, which was held at St Paul's Cathedral, drew enormous crowds.

The Seven Stations were thought to place such a terrible strain on the previously untested bonds of love that, typically, couples would preface the journey with a few weeks at one of the conservatoires in Vienna, where they would be schooled in the virtue of patience. Beaudoin's ancestor, Violet Auld, spent two months at the Eggenberg School with her fiance, Douglas Edden, where it is recorded that they had several arguments.

The starting point for the journey proper was at Taẓewayt (a staging post that has done little during the intervening decades to improve its lowly situation) where guides could be hired and supplies gathered. Before setting out, it was customary to visit one of the local fortune tellers. These women, who are less desert mystics and more accomplished cold readers of people, continue to play an important role in the negotiations between tribes. The purpose of the consultations was to ensure that each couple set out on the most appropriate path, which were signposted by naturally-formed strata of different-coloured minerals, winding through the rocky desert topography. The Yellow Road (altariq al'asfar) was the easiest of the three routes. The Purple Road (tariq 'urjiwani) followed an intermediary course. The Red Path was the most difficult. All three of these trails were later dynamited, in fragmented fashion, by various warlords during a spate of tribal conflict that continued throughout the 1970s and spilled over into the 1980s.

Violet Auld and Douglas Edden were advised that their relationship would not endure anything other than the Yellow Road. They, of course, opted for the Red Path.

The fated couple departed Taẓewayt in late February of 1824 (probably on the 18th or the 19th). Auld was required to leave the city through the Nanny door, which was reserved for goats, women and children.

Their unnamed guide raised his camel switch, which had been cut from the new growth of a sycamore and held it aloft until one of the red larks that thrive in this part of the Sahara perched on the end. Then they were away, first to Althalatha, named after an oasis of three tall palms that all bend in the same direction, and are considered to be symbolic of the three wise men who visited Christ in the stable.

Nearby is the Lord Ark – a massive formation of red sandstone that is said to be the literal ark that was sailed by Noah and his family during the biblical flood.

All present on the expedition would have been dressed in robes that allowed any sand blown in their direction to filter through a guttering of internal and external pleats, forming a thin trail in their wake, as if they were hourglasses leaking their contents.

At the market of Aijtimaeat Kathira, which marked the mid-point of the journey, the couples were expected to collaborate in the planing and hosting of a banquet for at least fifty guests. These feasts were held outdoors in cul-de-sacs within the market. An ex-pat community of English gentry, who had fallen on hard times, were forever angling for invitations. They became such a nuisance that a great many were banished from the town and subsequently expired in the surrounding desert. As was customary at these banquets, the local king presented Auld and Edden with a silver florin embossed on one side with the image of a lion. Included with this pre-emptive wedding gift was an envelope addressed to the royal palace. Couples who did not go through with their marriages were expected to return the coins.

Aijtimaeat Kathira, with its extensive trade connections, was regarded by Europeans as a place where civility had taken route. It was therefore considered an appropriate place for couples whose relationship had broken down, during the early stages of the journey, to part company. The Lost Wives Quarter of the market was home to a shifting population of English women who had been abandoned by their ex-fiancees. Most eventually returned to England, usually in the company of a male family member, or a suitor who, having been notified of the end of an engagement and had gallantly raced to the rescue. Such was the fate of Violet Auld who was escorted home by one James Keast, who she married the following year, in England.

The fate of Douglas Edden is less certain, though it seems likely that he came to a bad end. He was witnessed leaving Aijtimaeat Kathira early one morning, in late March, lagging behind a caravan bound for uncertain parts. He was never seen or heard from again.

Had Auld and Edden completed all seven Stations of Engagement, they would have arrived at Buhayrat Alsayf – the Summer Lake oasis, where their journey would have ended. Presents from well-wishers would have been waiting for them, under armed guard, in one of the landyard nooks.

If they were following tradition to the letter, they would have purchased a piece of desert glass, etched with a design, that was to their mutual liking. They would have inserted the glass into one of the holes in the honeycombed sandstone, that is common all around the oasis. For a small price, a local would have coated the backs of Edden's left hand and Auld's right hand with a powdered red dye. They would have held these hands up, pressed together, side by side, in front of the glass lens where the sun would burned a pattern, that was something between a brand and a tattoo, into their flesh – a design that could only be made whole when the pair were together.

It was a prismatic tattoo of this type that reunited the bodies of Bernard and Sarah Plumley, who both drowned following the sinking of the Titanic.

I hope this is of help.

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This is my response to a question that appeared on the Notes & Queries page of The Guardian website on the 9th April, 2023.

The Guardian is apparently no longer happy to host my comments on their site, so it is appearing here instead.

This blog is obviously not affiliated with The Guardian. Its reference to a question that appeared in Notes & Queries is presented here under the terms of fair use.