A TALL MARRIAGE.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 858, 7 September 1871, Page 3

A TALL MARRIAGE.

A marriage in very " high " life was celebrated at St Martin's-in-the-Fields, London, on Saturday morning, June 18th, and is thus described by the " Pall Mall Gazette ";

When giant meets giantess then comes the tug of love. A marriage between two-persons, whose combined height—to use the arithmetical method generally adopted by newspapers when the bride and bridegroom are of advanced age or of particulariy tender years —would approximate to that of two lamp-posts placed one upon the top of the other, is an event which cannot be properly appreciated save by such an enterprising soul as Barnum. Something similar may be common enough in Patagonia* but in this country it is an incident almost as rare and interesting as the birth at the Zoological Gardens ef an infant hippopotamus. For the celebration of the ceremony it was only right that the Eoyal parish church of St. Martin's-in-the-Felda should be the place chosen; and those happy beinga who this morning saw sixteen feet of humanity made one flesh will be able with reason to boast to their posterity that they were witnesses of a sublimer sight, or as Americans would say, a taller spectacle than any Eoyal family in the inhabited world could offer. Giants are known to be weak, especially in the knees, and from the days of Polyphemus they have always been very susceptible of the tender passion. But poor Polyphemus could cast but a single sheep's eye, and could not find, anybody taller than Galatea upon whom to cast it. Our giant, who was thisjmorning married in our Eoyal parish was more fortunate. He andhis giantess met, at a public exhibition, and loved. The giant proposed, and was accepted, and this morning Misß Anna Swan, the " tallest person known to exist," was joined together in wedlock with Capt. Martin Van Buren Bates, whose Christian name may have suggested the idea of conferring such distinction as has been conferred upon St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. It would be

an unwarrantable liberty to pronounce an opinion about the cause which has produced so remarkable a union, and besides, it would be too late; for by this time they have taken one another for better or worse, for- shorter or taller.

The hour fixed for the solemnity was 11 a.m.; and the affair having got wind, there was, long before the momentous questions were.put by the priest, a goodly company of those spectators to whom any kind of wedding is always gratifying, »nd a monster wedding a joy for ever. Perhaps crowned heads or dwarfs would have commanded a larger concourse; but multitudinous, nevertheless, were the eyes which gazed anxiously towards the door for the bridegroom's coming. At a quarter to eleven exactly he arrived and walked composedly up to the altar. He did not wear the Uniform t of that corps of Anakim iu which he is understood to hold a captain's commission, but art ordinary dress, if We exclude a very blue tie. At ten minutes to eleven loud whispers, succeeded by dead silence, announced the approach of the bride, who pale of face, and clad in a few acres of "white samite, mystic, wonderful," and with her veil thrown back—moved, as majestically as her circumstances or circumferences admitted of, up the nave**stood in front of her affianced husband, and looked down upon him from her superior eminence (for Bhe exceeds him in yards) with the ghastly smile proper to the occasion. She had been pre* ceded by the " two-headed nightingale combination," whose misfortune naturally caused a buzz of comment and much hilarity. The service was •read amid a reverential scene of whispering, giggling, climbing over pews ', and when it was over the usual signing of names appeared to occupy much more than the legitimate time. As the reasons could not be the length of the names, which by no means correspond with that of the owners, one is diiven to the conclusion ■that the children of Anakim, like some other great folks, find writing a laborious and difficult operation. At last, however, the pair of Titans emerged from the vestry and strode arm ; in arm, followed by a sympathising "combination," and accompanied by the strains of the Wedding March, to meet the plaudits of the outside crowd. At 11-15 all was over. It were rash to dip into the future; but one cannot help seeing that if, when giants marry giantesses, the result is giants and rgiantesses, there has this day been taken a step which will" ruin tha business."*