How to Create the Perfect Wife

HOW TO CREATE
THE PERFECT WIFE

H
OW
T
O
C
REATE
THE
P
ERFECT
W
IFE

B
RITAIN’S
M
OST

Ineligible
B
ACHELOR

AND
H
IS

Enlightened Quest

TO
T
RAIN
THE

Ideal Mate

W
ENDY
M
OORE

BASIC BOOKS

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Copyright © 2013 by Wendy Moore

Published by Basic Books,

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Designed by Timm Bryson

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moore, Wendy, 1952-

How to create the perfect wife : Britain’s most ineligible bachelor and his enlightened quest to train the ideal mate / Wendy Moore.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-465-06573-8 (e-book)

1. Day, Thomas, 1748-1789.

2. Authors, English—18th century. 3. Marriage—Great Britain—History—18th century. I. Title.

PR3398.D3M66 2013

823'.6—dc23

2012048149

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Peter, my perfect other half

CONTENTS

ONE       MARGARET

TWO       LAURA

THREE       SOPHIE

FOUR       ANN AND DORCAS

FIVE       SABRINA AND LUCRETIA

SIX       ANNA AND HONORA

SEVEN       ELIZABETH

EIGHT       SABRINA

NINE       ESTHER

TEN       VIRGINIA, BELINDA AND MARY

ELEVEN       GALATEA

Finding My Foundling

Acknowledgments

Illustration Credits

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ONE

MARGARET

London, spring 1769
  

S
pring sunshine warmed the ancient brick walls of the courtyards and chambers in London’s legal quarter. The jet of water that leapt up thirty feet from the fountain in Fountain Court sparkled in the light before splashing noisily into its basin. The seasonal warmth coaxed the blossoms to burst out on the trees and the young law students to burst out of their rooms and saunter in the gardens beside the river. But for one law student the arrival of spring brought gloom, not cheer.

Thomas Day read the letter from his fiancée in Ireland with incredulity. He had said goodbye to Margaret Edgeworth the previous autumn with every expectation they would be married this coming summer. All through the winter, Day had bent dutifully over his law books in earnest anticipation of his approaching wedding. Now Margaret had written to tell him that she wanted to break off the engagement and Day was mortified. Reeling in a mixture of horror and humiliation, he sank into a deep depression.

In truth the news should hardly have been surprising, for the romance had been shaky from the start. Although he was yet only twenty years old, Day had been romantically disappointed on at least one previous occasion and had been understandably wary of forming a new attachment. So when he first met Margaret, the younger sister of his ebullient Irish friend Richard Lovell Edgeworth, a year earlier there had been no immediate
attraction. At loose ends after leaving Oxford University the previous year, Day had jumped at the chance to travel to Ireland for the summer with Edgeworth and Edgeworth’s young son, Dick. On arrival at the Edgeworth ancestral home amid the flat fields and black bogs of County Longford, Day had greeted Margaret with initial disdain, and she had likewise shown scant interest in her brother’s young friend. It seemed, indeed, that the two were opposites in every conceivable way.

At twenty-two, Margaret was considered one of the most attractive, intelligent and sophisticated women in the county. Brought up with a keen awareness of her long ancestry within one of Ireland’s powerful Anglo-Irish families, Margaret had been introduced into the drawing rooms of landed society at an early age. Confident and refined, she had a gift for witty conversation and a reputation for impeccable style. One acquaintance would later say that if Margaret appeared on his doorstep dressed in rags and holding a begging bowl he would still have felt impelled to address her as “Madam.”

Two years her junior, Thomas Day was not the most obviously eligible of bachelors. Although he was certainly clever, undoubtedly well educated and shortly due to inherit a considerable fortune, Day’s personal attractions were decidedly marred by his comical appearance and unconventional manners. Tall and well built with curling black hair and large hazel eyes, he might have been considered handsome were it not for his stooped shoulders, the severe marks of smallpox that pitted his face and his general dishevelment. Scornful of the contemporary custom for cropped hair covered with a neatly curled wig, Day left his long hair lank and tangled. Eschewing fashionable dress, he wore plain, drab clothes that were invariably crumpled and askew. Even his close friend Edgeworth had to admit: “Mr. Day’s exterior was not at that time prepossessing, he seldom combed his raven locks, though he was remarkably fond of washing in the stream.” And as his unorthodox approach to personal hygiene might suggest, Day showed no regard for accepted etiquette.

At the dinner table Day’s manners were considered so vulgar that they appalled Edgeworth’s father. Whether Day merely slurped his soup or went so far as to rest his muddy boots on the table was left unsaid, but certainly Edgeworth senior took “a violent prejudice” against Day “in consequence
of something in the manner of his eating and sitting at table, which appeared unsuitable to his rank in life.” Over tea in the parlor Day made no attempt at small talk, preferring either to sit sulkily silent or to stand and declaim his dogmatic views loudly and at length.

Yet for all his slovenly appearance and boorish manners, there was evidently something about the youth that appealed to some men—Edgeworth for one—and occasionally some women. Day’s commitment to enhancing human rights had struck a chord with fellow radicals, while his determination to help those worse off than himself had earned him many admirers. University friends at Oxford and fellow law students in London treated Day as something of an absentminded philosopher or a romantic rebel. He seemed not quite of his time. His espousal of chivalric virtues and classical heroes harked back to a past age; his opposition to class-ridden systems and traditional hierarchies seemed to anticipate a distant future. Certainly his ideas were out of pace with the consumer-driven, celebrity-obsessed, fashion-mad culture that was predominant in Georgian Britain.

At first, therefore, Day and Margaret appeared to have nothing in common. Repulsed by her brother’s loutish friend and his daring ideas, Margaret kept out of his way as much as politeness allowed. Equally contemptuous of his friend’s elegant sister and her polished manners, Day gave Margaret a wide berth. To Day, Margaret represented “a sort of being for which he had a feeling of something like horror,” according to her brother Richard. And so for the first few weeks in the large country house the pair had maintained “an awful distance.” But as they had spent more and more time together during uncomfortable meals and awkward social occasions over the early summer of 1768, they had gradually discovered some mutual interests.

Margaret found herself intrigued by the eccentric Englishman. She too had been disappointed in love—by a dashing but unsuitable English army officer—and Day offered a refreshing contrast to the fawning beaux who usually competed for her attentions. Managing to overlook his lack of grooming and poor social skills, she was moved by the powerful monologues Day delivered on improving the lot of humanity and had to admire his philanthropic plans. Drawing Day into conversation, Margaret’s “easy
manners, and agreeable conversation” had managed to “unbend” Day’s aloof conduct, said Edgeworth.

At the same time, Day became entranced by his clever and attractive hostess. He discovered a shared interest in literature and nature as well as finding a few differences of opinion over the importance of etiquette and “aristocratic habits.” According to Edgeworth, watching wryly from the sidelines, his smart little sister could always run rings around Day when arguing her point; it was only when he was alone with Day that Edgeworth found “Mr. Day’s eloquence prevailed.” As in the best of romantic comedies, the cut and thrust of verbal sparring led to heated passions.

At the beginning of August, Day cautiously proposed to Margaret and she tentatively accepted. When the pair announced their intentions to the assembled family, Margaret’s brother had been as surprised as her father was horrified. Edgeworth senior refused point-blank to give the marriage plan his blessing, having taken resolutely against the scruffy English youth “from Prejudices too ridiculous to mention,” in Day’s words. But Margaret determined that she would go ahead regardless, and so the pair agreed that they would marry as soon as Day reached twenty-one the following summer. Postponing his return to London so that he and his future spouse could get to know each other a little better, Day stayed on in the Edgeworth country home as the summer faded. In retrospect this had not been such a good idea. For as Day outlined his vision of marital bliss, Margaret’s ardor began visibly to cool.

Inspired by an admiration for the Stoics, the ancient Greek school of philosophy devoted to noble virtue and self-sacrifice, Day intended to live a frugal existence in a secluded rural retreat devoid of all comforts or diversions with only his future spouse for company. Impassioned by the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Geneva-born philosopher who urged a return to nature, Day believed that with the right partner they would both find joy and fulfillment in this austere isolation. And to gild his picture of happy married life, Day patiently explained to his fiancée that the “childish Passion call’d love” was only a figment of the imagination that no rational being should indulge. As Day told a friend at the time: “Love I am firmly convinc’d is the Effect of Prejudice & Imagination; a rational Mind is incapable of it, at least in any great Degree.” Day believed that the woman
he married should want to spend her life with him out of a strictly logical attachment—or an “Idea of Preference for me.” Initially, through August, Margaret had been swayed by this image of a simple life in a rose-covered cottage with a saintly helpmeet. By September, as the days shortened and the autumn chill set in, she had got cold feet.