How to Create the Perfect Wife (32 page)

On both sides of the Atlantic, whatever their views on independence, people were contemplating the ending of the 150-year relationship with all the tangled emotions of the separation between a child and its parent. Having given birth to, nurtured and protected the colonies, many Britons saw America as an ungrateful teenager storming impetuously out of the parental home. “America is our child,” wrote the literary hostess and writer Elizabeth Montagu, “and a very perverse one.” Like the unruly offspring of parents inspired by Rousseau, America was turning from a benign and malleable creature into something uncontrollable and threatening.

During the Christmas break from legal studies over the winter of 1774–75, Day resumed his continental travels. But his visit was cut short suddenly
in February 1775 when he received the devastating news that his old friend Dr. Small, who was only forty years old, was seriously ill. Day left Brussels immediately to be with his friend. Darwin and Boulton sat helplessly at their friend’s bedside at Boulton’s home, Soho House. Small died on February 25, probably from malaria contracted when he was living in America. Day arrived a few hours too late to say goodbye to his friend. He was bereft. He had never known his father; he had never much liked his stepfather. The shy and sympathetic doctor had come closest to a father figure for him. According to Keir, Day would grieve for Small for the next two years. There is no doubt that Day lamented the doctor sincerely although, in his usual matter-of-fact tone, only a month after Small’s death, Day told Boulton to “give a sigh to the dead, but think not too often about it” and added: “Our life is too short, & too miserable, to permit a long indulgence of sorrow.”

The loss of the doctor, who had provided the still calm hub at the center of the whirling Lunar wheel, threatened to send all of their lives out of kilter. Writing to convey the news to James Watt, Boulton was so distraught he could hardly put one word after another: “My loss is as inexpressable as it is irrepareable. I am ready to burst.” Boulton confided that if he had not had his own family, he would consider following Small to the “Mansions of the Dead.”

Yet Small’s death also seemed perversely to galvanize the Lunar fraternity. It was Small who had urged Boulton and Watt to join forces to perfect the steam engine. Now the pair threw all their energies into the project. It was Small who had encouraged Day’s quest to find a wife, even introducing Day to potential candidates he met along the way. Since his rejection by Elizabeth Sneyd, Day had told himself and friends that he was a confirmed bachelor. But the death of the doctor now concentrated his mind on his own mortality—and posterity. Life was indeed too short to wallow in misery. He had failed to find the woman of his dreams in Lichfield, London or the Continent. Finding himself dazed and adrift in Lichfield, after Small’s funeral, Day called on his forgotten apprentice. And now he saw Sabrina with fresh eyes.

After nearly a year learning her trade as a dressmaker, Sabrina had grown close to the Parkinsons; Day would refer to them when writing to Sabrina as “your friends.”
But at some point, in late 1774 or early 1775, her happy apprenticeship had come to an abrupt end. It seems that the dressmaking business had gone bankrupt; Day described it as having “failed.” Far from sympathizing or providing a timely loan as he had to Boulton and others, when Day had met the Parkinsons for the last time he had castigated them for defying his instructions to induce “industry & frugality” in their young apprentice.

Although the couple had previously assured him that Sabrina was completing her chores whenever he quizzed them, Mr. Parkinson then “very ingeniously confessed”—in Day’s words to Sabrina—“that you had never done any thing but what was perfectly agreeable to yourself.” Disappointed in his teenage pupil, once again, Day had sent Sabrina away—although where she stayed is unknown. But when Day met Sabrina in Lichfield soon after Small’s death in early 1775 he was pleasantly surprised by the changes he perceived in her.

Now that she was on the brink of eighteen, Sabrina was an attractive, self-assured and refined young woman. The admiring glances she had grown accustomed to receiving on her outings in Lichfield must have made her aware of her physical attributes. During her time at the Parkinsons’ dress shop she would have come to know the most flattering cuts and the most attractive hairstyles. With her slender figure, pretty features and auburn curls, she may even have modeled new designs for customers. Taking tea on the palace terrace or in Dr. Darwin’s drawing room, she would have put into practice the polished manners she had acquired at boarding school.

Day had cast Sabrina aside four years earlier when she was thirteen, a slip of a girl who regarded him with a mixture of fear and affection, and he had scarcely seen her since. But now that he appraised the attractive and demure young woman before him—a butterfly who had hatched from her cocoon—Day admitted that “I thought you improved, & felt my former dispositions recur.” The fact that this improvement had taken place under other teachers and in his absence gave him no pause for thought. After all his failed romances and his tireless travels, Day was more convinced than ever that he would never find the woman of his fantasies among his own ranks. But suddenly it occurred to him that he had missed the obvious solution.

He had chosen Sabrina—or at least acceded to Bicknell’s choice—and had tried his best to shape her to meet his ideals; even though he had sent her away he had retained rigid control over her life. Perhaps all she needed were a few finishing touches—a little more careful sculpting—to complete her transformation. Day now dared to imagine that his experiment might work after all. Flinging aside his determination to remain a bachelor, he decided that the girl he had taken from the Foundling Hospital might still become his perfect wife. His mission to educate Sabrina was back on track. “I therefore determined,” wrote Day, “to behave with less caution than I had hitherto done & to make one decisive trial.” Naturally, of course, he did not communicate his real motives to Sabrina.

His hopes resurrected, Day conveyed Sabrina to his friend Keir’s house, behind his glassmaking factory near Stourbridge about twelve miles from Birmingham. Here he sat Sabrina down and spoke to her “more explicitly” than ever before. “I told you if you would now behave to please me, I would finally take you to live with me,” Day later said. “I explicitly told you I had no confidence in your behaviour & therefore was determined to make a full and sufficient trial whether you were capable of conforming to my ideas.” Still he made no mention of his true purpose.

Later he would vehemently insist, “I solemnly & positively assert that I never gave you the least hint that I thought of making you my wife.” Quite what Day expected Sabrina to think of his proposal that she could come to live with him was left unclear. She was presumably meant to believe that this was simply his usual prescriptive application procedure for the position of housekeeper. But even if he did not enlighten her about his real intentions, he did make plain that she was now embarking on a final test that would decide her future once and for all. In his usual cold and clinical manner, Day warned Sabrina that if once she violated his commands then “I would make no further experiments upon you, or ever see you again.”

Sabrina consented immediately to undertake Day’s trial. Even if she now possessed the body and poise of a young woman, she retained a childlike trust in Day and a childlike innocence about his motives. Since he had been the most significant adult figure in her life since the age of twelve—her teacher, her guardian and her benefactor—this was scarcely
surprising. Even now, as she existed in a state of limbo after her dressmaking job had come to an end, he was maintaining her financially. For all his aloof and imperious ways, Sabrina remained devoted to him and was delighted to be granted another chance to win back his esteem and praise.

Where Sabrina lived during this final stage of her training and ultimate test is unknown. It is most likely that she stayed with the Keirs in Stourbridge, where Day could visit her on his frequent trips to the Midlands and be certain that in the intervening periods his pupil remained under constant surveillance. At the time Keir was busy fashioning intricate glass articles—including scientific instruments for his friends’ experiments—and attempting to produce synthetic alkalis for industrial use; it made perfect sense that the “mighty chemist,” as Watt described him, should oversee this most singular of experiments. Edgeworth would reveal only that Sabrina was staying with a mutual “friend” while Seward noted that Day now saw Sabrina only when witnesses were present. Day would later advise Sabrina to “consult & be guided by” Keir “& your worthy friend Mrs. K.” And the fact that Sabrina would later regard the Keirs “with great resentment” suggests they certainly played an important role in her destiny.

Now nearly forty, the former army captain had been married for four years and was devoted to his beautiful wife, Susannah. She was either pregnant with or had recently given birth to a son, baptized Francis, in 1775. The arrival of an eighteen-year-old with proven domestic skills would have been a welcome addition to the Keir household. Equally, it is not known how long Sabrina’s final trial lasted; it may have been only a few months or as long as a year. But what is clear is that this time Day was grimly determined to succeed in his efforts and that Sabrina was equally desperate to comply.

If Day’s tests and strictures had seemed exacting and pedantic the first time, now they were positively perverse. Previously he had taught her to read and write, to add and subtract, to understand the solar system and to appreciate the laws of nature in accordance with Rousseau’s ideas. She had learned to consider the poor, to put her own needs after those of others and to value plain and simple living. All these were lessons that had stayed
with her. Then she had been a child, readily absorbing information and ideas, and eager to please her teacher. It was only when he had forced her to labor long hours at domestic chores that she had begun to rebel. Now Day made no attempt to enlarge Sabrina’s education or inspire her with new ideas; she had gleaned all she needed from books and lessons. He was quite simply hell-bent on remolding her character to fit his exact and specific idea of the perfect wife.

This was no longer a naïve youthful experiment to educate a young girl according to the progressive teachings of Rousseau. This was now a systematic program of indoctrination designed to subvert completely another human’s will to his own; it was a battle of wills bent on breaking her spirit as surely as a rider might break in a horse, or a slave-master his slave. The philanthropist who could not pass a beggar without parting with his money, the nature lover who felt he did not have the right to stamp on a spider let alone mistreat a horse, the humanitarian who opposed slavery because it was the “absolute dependence of one man upon another,” was utterly convinced he had every right to keep a young woman subject to his total command and groom her to meet his desires. As Eliza miserably told Professor Higgins after her transformation in Shaw’s
Pygmalion:
“I’m a slave now, for all my fine clothes.”

As before, Sabrina proved an enthusiastic and obedient pupil. She was quick to embrace Day’s radical views, to abhor slavery, to despise luxury and vanity, to condemn music and dancing and to ridicule polite manners and fashionable airs. Equally she was keen to conform to his expectations of the perfect woman, to wear whatever clothes he suggested in the manner of his choosing and to style her hair in his preferred way without adornment. Having devoted the past few months to copying the latest Parisian fashions, now Sabrina submissively dressed according to Day’s puritanical tastes. She even assured him that she would be content to live a bleak, comfortless existence with Day as her sole companion and his improving lectures as her only diversion.

Over the weeks and months Sabrina evidently excelled in her progress. “She surpassed all his ideas,” wrote one acquaintance, “she even surpassed all his hopes.” His instincts had been right all along. The only sure way to find the perfect wife was to create her for himself. Delighted with his protégée
on his frequent visits from London, Day filled voluminous letters extolling Sabrina’s virtues to Edgeworth in Ireland.

When Edgeworth heard that Day had become “attached” to Sabrina once again he was at first surprised, and then perturbed and, before long, deeply troubled. Day’s prediction that he would rarely see his friend after his marriage to Honora had proved wholly accurate. Although it was Day who longed to live in humble isolation and marital bliss, it was Edgeworth who had now achieved that dream. Living in his rambling ancestral home amid the flat and featureless County Longford landscape, Edgeworth was gloriously happy with his adored Honora and ever-expanding family. Since there were few neighbors and fewer diversions they were “much alone,” wrote Edgeworth, but did not “feel the want of society” because they were so absorbed in their “great and
untired felicity.” The
happiness was entirely mutual. Supervising improvements to the house and estate, Honora said that they did not disagree over the planting of a single shrub. “If it is happy for us, which it certainly is, to agree in such trifles as these,” she told a friend, “how much more happy is our agreement in sentiments, opinions & tastes of the greatest consequences.”

The Edgeworths had created a completely equal, harmonious and loving relationship, utterly different from the rational, one-sided arrangement Day had once proposed to Honora. At one point, when Honora realized she had dropped her wedding ring in the fields, she ordered forty laborers to sieve the newly raked earth until it was found. Normally so cool and collected, she swore she would not lose the ring again except with her life. The only blot on the couple’s horizon was Honora’s recurrent ill health and ominous cough. While she suffered stoically, Edgeworth maintained his characteristic optimism.

Life was not quite so joyful for everyone in the family. Dick, now eleven, had been packed off to a new boarding school where his fearless determination endeared him to his schoolmates but infuriated his teachers. He was still a prodigy of the Rousseau system. Maria, now six, had accompanied the family to Ireland but was miserable and defiant with a father she barely knew and a stepmother who was beautiful but aloof. Maria tried in vain to shatter the newlyweds’ joy by trampling in fury on some newly glazed hotbed frames and impishly cutting out squares from an aunt’s
sofa. Although she was soon won over by her father—always bubbling with life—she looked with terrified awe on her stepmother, whose retribution for perceived misdemeanors, from the children at least, was always swift and severe.