In celebration of Valentine’s Day, this week’s Their Stories post features two dating profiles that end up a perfect match. Love is in the air!
Unidentified Portrait from the Thomas Bouckley Collection. Collection of The Robert McLaughlin Gallery.
Portrait #1
Photo received by Matchmaker Dolly, with completed application as follows:
Name: Donald Bence Arthur
Age: 57
Height: 5’ 5”
Weight: 168 lbs.
Hair: mostly brown
Eyes: depends on shirt colour; sometimes green, sometimes blue
Background: Scottish/Hungarian
Occupation: semi-retired shoemaker with small mobile unit (pulled behind bicycle from town to town)
Hobbies: baking, alpine gardening and painting en plein air, mostly chimneys in winter… but also fences, (any season for the right price)
Favourite Sports: ribbon dancing, competitive whistling and caber toss
Best Attribute: a natty collection of footwear
Worst Attribute: cigar breath has occasionally been mentioned
Views on Children: don’t mind as long as it’s from a great distance
Spiritual Beliefs: I would prefer not to be matched with anyone who owns a ouija board.
Unidentified Portrait from the Thomas Bouckley Collection
Dolly matched Donald with Portrait #9.
Name: Eleanor Mondegreen
Age: 65
Height: 4” 1” (seated), 5’ 3” (upright)
Weight: (including boned corset, petticoats, bloomers, woolen dress with brass buttons) 180 lbs. (buck naked, 135)
Hair: yes
Eyes: not bad, getting harder and harder to read in dim lighting
Background: actually, just an old bedspread the photographer hung up
Occupation: proud nurse with the VON for decades until a terrible ruckus, fisticuffs really, with a patient who disputed my insistence that the hymn ‘Keep Thou My Way’ contained the phrase “gladly, the cross-eyed bear”.
Hobbies: tatting
Favourite Sports: darts
Best Attribute: a sense of whimsy
Worst Attribute: cannot keep a secret for love nor money
Views on Children: it’s all a backward glance at this point
Spiritual Beliefs: I would prefer not to be matched with anyone who owns a ouija board.
Follow-up Notes:
Three years after their marriage, Donald became fully retired by which time Eleanor had tatted herself a 20th century wardrobe. They lived long and happily. Dolly’s greatest success story.
By: Carin Makuz
