How to Create the Perfect Wife

by Wendy Moore

  Even Edgeworth thought that this relaxed reception was “something singular.” But ever eager to laud Day’s “virtues” he reasoned: “His superior abilities, lofty sentiments, and singularity of manners, made him appear at Lichfield as a phenomenon”—Day was certainly that—while his “unbounded charity to the poor, and his munificence to those of a higher class, who were in distress, won the esteem of all ranks.” Consequently “his breeding up a young girl in his house, without any female to take care of her, created no scandal, and appeared quite natural and free from impropriety.” Before long, wrote Edgeworth, “all the ladies of the place kindly took notice of the girl, and attributed to Mr. Day none but the real motives of his conduct.” Although, of course, Day’s real motives were kept to himself.

  In fact, Day’s easy assimilation into Lichfield society is no mystery. In Georgian Britain money and status opened doors and closed eyes. Just as Day had bamboozled officials at the Foundling Hospital with his well-spoken accent and educated air, so he inveigled himself into Lichfield parlors. And if his imperious manner failed to silence chattering mouths, his generous donations to worthy causes sealed lips.

  Acceptance at the Bishop’s Palace was crucial to Day’s entry into Lichfield polite society. Even for those with little or no religious belief, the Church of England played a central role in English country life. “Every stranger, who came well recommended to Lichfield, brought letters to the palace,” explained Edgeworth, since the Reverend Seward’s home was “the resort of every person in that neighbourhood, who had any taste for letters.” Day certainly came well recommended, both by Darwin, Lichfield’s most popular doctor, and by Edgeworth, who was already established as a favorite guest at the palace.

  Edgeworth had met Anna Seward on his first visit to Lichfield, when he had dazzled Darwin with his electrical marvels in 1766. He had electrified Seward too. When Edgeworth last visited, a month or so before Day’s arrival, Seward had written feverishly that the palace was graced by a “whole cluster of Beaux, one of them no common Beau, the lively, the sentimental, the entertaining, the accomplish’d, the learn’d, the scientific, the gallant, the celebrated Mr Edgeworth.” His path smoothed by Edgeworth and Darwin, Day strode confidently up to the palace gates with his little orphan at his side.

  Initial introductions went well. Day was welcomed with open arms by Canon Seward, who was regarded as something of a social climber, and his wife, Elizabeth, who may have sized up Day as a potential suitor for her wayward daughter, Anna. Although Day was no religious enthusiast, his literary pretensions along with his handouts to the city’s poor and needy helped to ease his entry into church circles. Before long, said Edgeworth, Day was “intimate at the palace.”

  At the same time, the Sewards were enchanted by Sabrina. Quite how Day introduced the thirteen-year-old orphan, who was rather intimate in his household, remains unclear. He may have lied and described her as his apprentice maid—as he told Sabrina—though that did not explain her inclusion on social visits or excuse her lack of chaperone. Whatever story he spun, Sabrina was “received at the palace with tenderness and regard.” According to Edgeworth: “She became a link between Mr. Day and Mr. Seward’s family, that united them very strongly.” Day had successfully stormed the palace, but his acceptance was not worth the paper his letters of introduction were written on without the approbation of Lichfield’s acknowledged social queen.

  From the start Anna Seward was fascinated by the “eventful story” that she soon divined was taking place in the house on the other side of Stowe Pool. As an avid reader of romantic novels, she could hardly resist the unlikely tale of the unworldly young man and his devoted little orphan. She would later write “it would be inexcusable to introduce any thing fabulous; to embellish truth by the slightest colouring of fiction, even by exaggerating singularity, or heightening what is extraordinary” in describing those events. But then the “circumstances of Mr. Day’s disposition, habits, and destiny were so peculiar,” as she had to admit, that she had no need for any exaggeration.

  Meeting Sabrina, Seward was entranced. She was a “beauteous girl” with a “glowing bloom,” dark eyes and chestnut tresses, she wrote. Quick to recognize the sentimental value of an orphan, she had already described her beloved Honora as “a little orphan child,” even though her father was alive and well. How much more exciting was it to embrace a genuine foundling, with all the mysteries of her birth to conjure with. She immediately took Sabrina under her wing. Thomas Day was equally intriguing.

  First impressions were not promising, however. “Mr. Day looked the philosopher. Powder and fine clothes were, at that time, the appendages of gentlemen. Mr. Day wore not either,” she wrote. But while others were repulsed by Day’s slovenly appearance and eccentric manners, Seward regarded these rather as signs of a free and untamed spirit. Although she could be as vain as the next woman about her appearance, Seward had no patience with changing trends; contrary to the fashion for women to wear extravagant wigs or to cover their hair with thick gray powder, she took pride in wearing her luxuriant, auburn hair naturally loose. She could even forgive Day’s loping, ungainly figure.

  “He was tall and stooped in the shoulders, full made but not corpulent, and in his meditative and melancholy air a degree of awkwardness and dignity were blended,” Seward observed approvingly. Despite his heavy eyelids and the marks on his face of the “severe small-pox” that he had suffered as a child, Anna admired Day’s “sable hair, which, Adam-like, curled about his brows” and was beguiled by his “large hazle eyes,” which flashed expressively when he delivered his impassioned monologues.

  A portrait of Day, painted by Joseph Wright while Day was staying in Stowe House in 1770, is an accurate likeness, according to Seward. Wearing a gold satin jacket, which he had presumably brought back from his travels, now rather straining at the buttons after his reunion with English cuisine, Day leans casually against a pillar, his shoulders wrapped in a scarlet mantle, staring soulfully into the distance. Although he is only twenty-two, his fleshy features betray the beginnings of a double chin, but Wright has tactfully masked the signs of smallpox on Day’s pink cheeks. Lost in philosophical contemplation, he holds an open book in his left hand; it was almost certainly Rousseau’s Émile.

  Living in Liverpool at the time, Wright was still struggling to establish himself as a portrait painter. His remarkable group portraits, A Philosopher giving that Lecture on the Orrery, in which a lamp is put in place of the Sun, and An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, showing children enthralled by home science lessons, had been exhibited in 1766 and 1768. Wright had probably been lured to Lichfield by Darwin, his friend and doctor; he painted a portrait of Darwin at about the same time as that of Day. It was probably through Darwin that Wright obtained the commission to paint Day.

  In fact Wright produced two large, almost life-sized, oils of Day for a fee of twenty guineas each (today about £3,000, or $5,000). Although almost identical they are two different pictures—not copied one from the other. One was probably painted to order for Edgeworth—he later placed the portrait of his friend above the sofa in the sitting room of his home in Ireland; the other was presumably for another friend. But in contrast to Wright’s portrait of Darwin, who is seated at a desk with his arms folded in business-like fashion to denote the professional man of the age, Day stands in the open air against a dark sky in a meditative pose to suggest his communion with nature and poetical sensibility. With his outdated costume—the open-necked shirt evokes the seventeenth rather than the eighteenth century—and his dreamy gaze, Day appears to be a man from a past age lost in another world. Observing the “tempestuous, lurid, and dark” sky of Wright’s portrait, Seward typically let her imagination run away with her when she added that “a flash of lightning plays in Mr. Day’s hair, and illuminates the contents of the volume.” There is no lightning in Wright’s painting. But the stormy skies would certainly prove ominous for their relationship.

  Day’s renowned avers
ion to mixed company and undisguised contempt for the female mind did not augur well considering Seward’s keen literary ambitions and her faith in sexual equality, if not female superiority. His religious skepticism and frugal lifestyle were not obvious ways to impress the vicar’s daughter who liked to host convivial tea parties. As Seward noted, Day was “a rigid moralist, who proudly imposed on himself cold abstinence, even from the most innocent pleasures” who was marked by a “tincture of misanthropic gloom” and displayed “a proud contempt for common-life society.” Yet in other ways they were kindred spirits. They were both afflicted by difficult relations with their parents; they had both suffered unfulfilling romantic experiences; and they both poured these frustrations into poetry. And so Seward was drawn to the “youth of genius,” and she pronounced Day to be “less graceful, less amusing, less brilliant than Mr. E. but more highly imaginative, more classical, and a deeper reasoner.”

  Since Honora, the usual target for her affections and audience for her secrets, had been sent to Bath that summer in the hope the spa waters would restore her precarious health, Seward and Day became close friends and confidants. Before long Seward was divulging the secrets of her various romantic trials, and Day was describing the details of his eccentric marital project. Initially, at least, Seward was captivated rather than shocked when she heard about the astonishing educational experiment that was taking place on her very doorstep. Had she not, after all, been engaged in her own educational program in helping to tutor Honora Sneyd? Although their ideas about the desired attributes of womanhood were distinctly different, Seward and Day were both committed to grooming their particular vision of a perfect woman.

  Seward, too, was an admirer of Rousseau. When Rousseau’s novel Julie, or The New Héloïse was first published, she had asked Honora to translate the book into English for her. Having learned French at a local day school run by a French couple, ten-year-old Honora had read the steamy passages aloud while Anna listened with breathless appreciation; the reading sessions must certainly have proved educational. When Émile appeared, Anna read the English translation and declared the writing “exquisitely ingenious.” She probably already knew of Edgeworth’s efforts to apply the educational theory on young Dick. It was only later that she would describe the idea of putting Rousseau’s system into practice as “wild, impracticable, and absurd.”

  On Day’s repeated trips to the palace over the summer, Seward listened with rapt attention as he described his “aversion” to contemporary women’s education, which he blamed for “the fickleness which had stung him.” Day was still smarting from his rejection by Margaret; Seward realized the young poet was scarred by love as well as smallpox. Although Seward believed that it was better to be ditched at the church door than to “plight at its altar the vow of non-existing love,” she found that Day was still determined to marry. And as she encouraged him to reveal all, she marveled at his recipe for the perfect spouse. She would later describe his plan with relish: “He resolved, if possible, that his wife should have a taste for literature and science, for moral and patriotic philosophy. So might she be his companion in that retirement, to which he had destined himself; and assist him in forming the minds of his children to stubborn virtue and high exertion. He resolved also, that she should be simple as a mountain girl, in her dress, her diet, and her manners; fearless and intrepid as the Spartan wives and Roman heroines.”

  Of course, as Day had concluded, there was “no finding such a creature ready made; philosophical romance could not hope it.” And so, as Seward reported: “He must mould some infant into the being his fancy had imaged.” Unwisely, perhaps, Day now divulged the whole story of how he had procured Sabrina from the Shrewsbury Foundling Hospital and then embarked on her training “with a view to making her his future wife.” Recounting the tale much later, Seward described the contract Day signed with Bicknell pledging him “never to violate” his orphan’s innocence. Enthralled by Day’s scheme, Seward surveyed his “bachelor mansion” from her dressing room window with interest to see what would happen next.

  His acceptance at the palace secured, Day made haste to introduce his pupil to Darwin at the other end of The Close that encircled the cathedral. Escorted by Day across the little Chinese-style bridge that spanned the moat in front of the doctor’s house, Sabrina was warmly welcomed and became a favorite guest with the whole family. But there was little gaiety in the Darwins’ house that summer. Darwin’s wife, Mary, or Polly as he called her, had been ill for several years and despite her husband’s ministrations—and liberal quantities of opium and brandy—died on June 30, 1770.

  Darwin was devastated. He had married Polly, the daughter of a Lichfield lawyer, when she was seventeen and he twenty-six, in 1757. In one love letter, urging her to marry him quickly, he had jokingly claimed to have found a book of recipes. One recipe, he wrote, was entitled “To make Love.” Darwin copied it out: “Take of Sweet-William and of Rose-Mary, of each as much as is sufficient. To the former of these add Honesty and Herb-of-grace; and to the latter of Eye-bright and Motherwort of each a large handful: mix them separately, and then, chopping them altogether, add one Plumb, two springs of Heart’s Ease and a little Tyme.” But when he came to a recipe called “To make a good Wife,” Darwin told Polly: “Pshaw, an acquaintance of mine, a young lady of Lichfield, knows how to make this Dish better than any other Person in the World.” Darwin had successfully mixed the ingredients for his perfect wife. Now he wept over Polly’s corpse before tearing himself away to visit patients in an effort to “abstract my mind.”

  The following morning he returned for a last look at her, and wept again as he reread their love letters and compared her lively portrait with “the palid Hue of her dead Features.” Left a widower at the age of thirty-eight, with three sons aged four, ten and eleven, Darwin invited his sister Susannah to take charge of his household. But there was little time for grieving. With his young family, his busy practice and his relentless scientific research, the doctor soon filled his hours—and his bed.

  Although both Seward and Darwin had been let into the secret of Day’s plans regarding Sabrina, neither made any attempt to enlighten her. Both were effectively complicit in his scheme. But their willingness to turn a blind eye to Day’s errant conduct perhaps owed less to complacency and more to the need to suppress the inconvenient truths in their own lives. For behind the elegant doors of Darwin’s house and the Bishop’s Palace scandal skulked. That summer, just as Day and Sabrina settled into Stowe House, rumors were beginning to percolate around The Close concerning the overly friendly relationship between Anna and one of the cathedral’s lay vicars.

  John Saville had arrived in Lichfield from Ely in 175 5, a shy but good-looking youth of nineteen, who took up a post as one of the vicars choral. A lay position with no religious duties or clerical outfit, the job entailed singing in cathedral services. Since he was already married, Saville had moved into one of the medieval cottages in the Vicars’ Close, near the cathedral, with his wife, Mary, who was a year younger. The young newlyweds soon produced two daughters; indeed they may have married because Mary was already pregnant. An intelligent young man, with a keen appreciation of music and a melodic tenor voice, Saville was naturally invited to gatherings at the palace where he was often called upon to sing or play. He may even have given young Anna music lessons. But the intimate friendship that gradually evolved between Seward and Saville was regarded as going beyond the normal duties of a musical tutor by his furious wife.

  After her disappointment with earlier suitors, Anna drew close to Saville in her early twenties and before long she was deeply in love. Following one musical soirée in 1764 she enthused: “The ingenious Mr S-, whose fine voice and perfect expression do so much justice to the vocal music of Handel, was at my side in warmly defending the claims of that great master.” Whether Saville was equally smitten, or simply felt powerless to resist Anna’s unstoppable dynamism, would never be clear. With Anna it was always all or nothing: unbound
ed loyalty and all-encompassing friendship or venomous enmity and utter rejection. Certainly she was not going to let a wife and two daughters stand in the way of her desires; she would later describe Mary Saville as “the vilest of Women & the most brutally despicable.”

  Not surprisingly, by 1770 Mrs. Saville had become fed up with the amount of time her husband was spending at the palace and suspicious about the activities that detained him there. Rumors suggesting that the friendship between Anna and the tenor had gone beyond a mutual love of music began to spread. An anonymous letter to the Reverend Seward—which may have been written by Mrs. Saville herself—alleged that Anna and Saville shared an unseemly intimacy. In short, Anna was being accused of adultery.

  Anna Seward knew that she could never marry Saville, unless, of course, he became a widower. For the vast majority of people in Georgian England marriage meant literally “till death us do part.” A legal divorce, allowing remarriage, was impossible to obtain without a private Act of Parliament that required vast amounts of money and powerful connections and would prompt unthinkable scandal—most especially for a lay vicar and a vicar’s daughter. Yet she would not give him up either. Furiously denying any suggestion of improper conduct to her parents, Seward insisted that Saville—or Giovanni, as she liked to call him—should remain a guest at the palace. It was the beginning of a love affair that would last thirty years—until death did indeed them part—in defiance of opprobrium from parents, friends, neighbors and even Church of England authorities. In her inimitable style, Seward would always refuse to acknowledge any hint of wrongdoing and imperiously insist on her right to pursue her desires. “He cannot be my husband,” she would tell one disapproving friend, “but no law of earth or heaven forbids that he shou’d be my friend.” She would always maintain that the relationship was purely platonic—and it is entirely possible that it was—yet she would celebrate the undying devotion between herself and Saville in fifteen love poems in which she changed their names to Evander and Emillia. In alternating voices, the poems describe the jealousy and anguish of two lovers who are separated by circumstances beyond their control yet pledged eternally to stay faithful to their “long-disastrous love.” Forever forbidden from consummating their love, the pair will only be “Clasp’d in each other’s arms” in the “bed of death.”