The record is incomplete, as records generally are, and the two principal witnesses have never agreed on the year.1 Neither kept a diary at the time, no third party thought to write anything down, and the documentary evidence that survives was composed for other purposes entirely. What follows is therefore a reconstruction rather than a chronicle: an account assembled from memory, from such correspondence as the parties can still retrieve, and from the ordinary human wish to have the story come out well.
[Two or three sentences: where you actually met, what the occasion was, and who spoke first. If the two of you remember it differently, say so — the disagreement is better than the resolution.]
[Three or four sentences covering the long middle: the cities you lived in, the work that took up the time, one habit or standing arrangement that belonged to the two of you, and whatever obstacle the years put in the way. This is the part guests will not already know.]
[Two or three sentences: who asked, where, whether it was a surprise to the other one, and what was said in reply. A single concrete detail — the weather, the room, the wrong thing somebody said first — will carry the whole passage.]