Persons who have Monies to lend, as well as those who have Occasion to borrow, may both be accommodated at Dover Street aforesaid.
These handbills being largely circulated, and advertisements being inserted in the principal newspapers at the same time, the establishment enjoyed its full share of notice. At a masked ball given by Mrs Cornelys,[46] on the 16th of July 1776, one of the characters was a Jew, with a label in his hat inscribed with the words “Marriage Treaties,” who delivered to the company the following card:—
The Marriage Broker
Accommodates Ladies and Gentlemen with everything in the matrimonial way which their Hearts can wish for (Virtue and Money only excepted), and that at first sight of the Parties, having fitted up a variety of very commodious Apartments.—He deals either in the ton or City Stile. If a difficult case, apply to our Attorney General, who attends me here in Person. N.B. I only charge five Guineas poundage per couple.
Marriage Treaties.
Ye Nymphs forlorn, who pine away in Shades!
Ye mournful Widows, wailing for—Brocades!
Coxcombs who sigh for—Mode! and sighing Wits!
Bucks of St. James’s! and ye Half-moon’d Cits!
Ye old and young—the ugly and the fair!
To Hymen’s Shrine haste, sacrifice despair.
Let Law divorce, tyrannic Husbands rail,
Hence dare their Ire!—for here’s enough for sale.
Let Virtue’s mask the Wife awhile pursue,
Here’s fresh Supply—here Wives of ev’ry Hue!
Black, white, red, grey—the bright, the dull, the witty!
Here’s Dames for Courtiers, misses for the City!
In the August number of the Town and Country Magazine, 1776, a correspondent who signs himself “Lothario,” wrote a letter to warn the public against the Dover Street Marriage Office. It states that, having paid his five guineas, he had his name entered on the list of candidates for matrimony, and that in due course of time he received a letter, intimating that a lady, conforming minutely to the conditions for which he had stipulated, wanted a husband exactly like himself. The lady, after some formalities, gave him an appointment in Gray’s Inn Gardens, describing her dress; and in order that she might not be mistaken in the gentleman (for till then the parties had not seen each other), she desired that he should have a large nosegay in his hand, bound round with a blue ribbon, which he was to present to her as an introduction to their conference. Unfortunately the lady turned out to be an old acquaintance of the gay Lothario, and by no means the sort of person he could have desired for a wife. This exposition of the matrimonial swindle was answered by the company, with the following advertisement in the Morning Post, October 17, 1776:—
To the Candid and Impartial.
ON perusing the Town and Country Magazine of August last, Page 408, there appears a Letter in which the Author throws out a very illiberal, unjust Assertion, viz., that any new Plan or Scheme that is offered to the Public is founded upon Imposition; and then goes on to recite an elaborate Tale of his having paid five Guineas to the Managers of the Marriage-Plan, and of his obtaining the promise of a Wife with £10,000 on declaring himself worth treble that Sum. Now the Managers of that Undertaking are called upon to assert, that they are equally unacquainted with the Villa or with the Lady he mentions (not but it would be their Pride and Boast for such as resolve to return to the Paths of Virtue and Honour); and they further declare that every Line of this Letter that reflects the least Dishonour on them, and that does not set their Undertaking in the fairest Point of View, is utterly groundless.
Note, The Managers of said Plan, in Dover Street, finding that the Payment of five Guineas has been thought by some too much on the Commencement, have resolved to reduce that Payment to the Sum of two Guineas for the Future to each Gentleman who may apply; and to give the World some Proof that the Managers are no Deceivers, they will return, on Demand, the three Guineas overplus, to such who have paid the five above mentioned.