How to Create the Perfect Wife

by Wendy Moore

  The sight of American businessmen, and plantation owners from the West Indies who styled themselves Americans, walking the streets of Georgian London with black slaves was familiar to all. Indeed it was not uncommon to see American law students strolling through the courts and lanes of the Temple with a slave at their heels. So as British troops moved to confront the rioting protesters in Boston in the summer of 1774, Day decided to make a courageous stand.

  William Flexney, the publisher of The Dying Negro, had been clamoring for a reprint of the popular poem. As the appetite for battle between Britain and its rebellious colonists intensified, so Day and Bicknell sharpened their quills to fortify their verses. The first word set the tone. Instead of the passive “Blest with thy last sad gift—the power to dye,” the poem now began: “Arm’d with thy last sad gift—the power to die.” The resigned lament in the fourth line, “The world and I are enemies no more,” became an explicit rallying cry: “Where all is peace, and men are slaves no more.” And working through the poem the pair augmented the language to create a more strident, militant and confrontational stance, which culminated in an extra two pages containing a shocking warning. The first edition had ended with the shackled slave calling on heaven to sink the ship on which he is about to die as he utters his pitiful lament “remember me!” But now Bicknell and Day added fifty-four more lines—forty-four of them were Day’s—in which the slave foresees a bloody vengeance being exacted on his tormentors. There was no ambiguity in the message to their American friends in the words: “I see your warriors gasping on the ground; / I hear your flaming cities crash around.” But just in case there were any lingering doubts, Day added a long dedication to precede the poem, which spelled out his views on American calls for liberty in no uncertain terms.

  Day addressed this eight-page dedication to his enduring hero Rousseau, who had begun his Social Contract with the transcendent words: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Day acknowledged in his dedication that he had not actually asked the philosopher’s permission to make his homage, an oversight he would come to regret. In a blistering attack on the American campaigners Day proclaimed: “For them the Negro is dragged from his cottage and his plantane shade; by them the fury of African tyrants is stimulated by pernicious gold; the rights of nature are invaded; and European faith becomes infamous throughout the world. Yet such is the inconsistency of mankind, that these are the men whose clamours for LIBERTY are heard across the Atlantic Ocean!” He ended his assault with a stark challenge: “Let the clamours of America prevail, when they shall be unmixt with the clank of chains, and the groans of anguish: let her aim a dagger at the breast of her milder parent, if she can advance a step without trampling on the dead and dying carcases of her slaves.”

  Day had leveled an unequivocal charge of hypocrisy against the American revolutionaries fighting for their liberty. Having delivered the explosive second edition of The Dying Negro to the printers just as his law studies ended for the summer, Day packed his bags to head off for a sightseeing holiday on the Continent. But first, he had to visit his own little hostage in Sutton Coldfield.

  Coming to the end of three years at boarding school in the summer of 1774, Sabrina had grown into a popular, charming and accomplished young woman of seventeen whose slender figure, chestnut ringlets and lively brown eyes turned heads. Having applied herself diligently to her lessons, she had “gained the esteem” of her teachers. So when she saw the familiar stooped figure loping through the school gates, she may have thought her long program of improvement was finally over. She may even have harbored hopes that she would be taken back into Day’s heart and home. She was wrong. Instead Day brusquely informed her that she was being bound in a new apprenticeship to a couple, the Parkinsons, who were mantua-makers, that is, dressmakers. Day had selected this occupation on the grounds that dressmaking was, as he later told her, “a trade which I thought exposed you to no temptation, while it would teach you habits of industry & frugality more than you could learn in any other situation.” It was a curious choice to say the least.

  While originally a “mantua” denoted a formal woman’s gown usually worn over hoops and split at the front to reveal petticoats underneath, by the second half of the eighteenth century “mantua-making” had come to mean dressmaking in general. Mantua-makers were usually commissioned by wealthy and middle-class clients to produce bespoke clothes from patterns often copied from the latest designs in London or Paris. Since needlework was a staple lesson in most girls’ education, working as a mantua-maker was regarded as a respectable job for daughters of the rising middle classes and certainly one step up from becoming a domestic servant.

  Yet given Day’s averred hatred for fashion and declared determination to protect Sabrina from all frivolity and vanity, his decision seems bizarre. The idea that the teenage Sabrina should faithfully copy the extravagant designs of French couture in exotic silks and printed cottons while inwardly despising any interest in fashion seems irrational—even for Day. She would be producing precisely the kind of garment he had earlier instructed her to throw on the fire. But, of course, she had no say in the matter. She was effectively his chattel to be passed on as he pleased.

  Day delivered Sabrina to the Parkinsons at some point in 1774. It is unlikely that there was a formal apprenticeship agreement, for Day made plain both to Sabrina and to the Parkinsons that she remained “under my protection.” Day paid the Parkinsons for Sabrina’s board, gave them explicit instructions that she should work hard at her chores and—as usual—she should be denied any indulgences or comforts. Sporadically keeping in contact with the couple and with Sabrina, Day maintained his command and continued to appraise her conduct. Naturally this was a thankless task. “During this time I always had a disposition to like you,” Day told her later, “which was always checked by my opinion, that you would not take the trouble of acquiring the qualities I could wish & therefore my ideas & behaviour were various; I sometimes taking some pains to improve you & correspond with you, at other times totally giving up the idea and paying you no attention whatever.” He had no intention of loosening those invisible chains.

  It is probable that the Parkinsons ran a dressmaking shop in or near Lichfield, since Sabrina now renewed her links with friends there including Anna Seward, Erasmus Darwin and the Savilles. Happily returning to familiar territory, she retraced her steps to The Close. At the Bishop’s Palace, she was welcomed back by Anna Seward for teas on the terrace and musical evenings provided by her ever loyal John Saville. According to Seward, Sabrina had matured considerably since she had first arrived in Lichfield. The gauche little orphan who had hidden shyly behind her “protector” at social events four years earlier had turned into a “feminine, elegant, and amiable” young woman who comported herself with grace and could hold her own in conversation. Sabrina was “beautiful and admired” and “made friends wherever she went,” wrote Seward.

  The fact that this metamorphosis had been effected largely during her last three years’ attendance at an orthodox girls’ school rather than her eighteen months being coached and tormented by Day did not escape Seward’s notice. “This young woman proved one of many instances that those modes of education, which have been sanctioned by long experience, are seldom abandoned to advantage by ingenious system-mongers,” she remarked. Despite Day’s best intentions, Sabrina had emerged from school as a polished young woman at ease in polite society.

  At the other end of The Close, Sabrina revived her visits to the growing Darwin household. Mary Parker, the nanny to eight-year-old Robert, had just given birth to her second daughter by the doctor. Despite their illegitimacy the two little girls were brought up within the house—in defiance of Lichfield gossips—where they were doted on by their father. Around the corner, in the Vicars’ Close, Sabrina renewed her friendship with Elizabeth Saville, who was nearly eighteen. Known as Eliza to her friends, she was still living with her embittered mother but trooped next door for singing lessons with her
father.

  Keeping Sabrina in the Midlands was both prudent and convenient for Day. He could maintain his supervision over her progress when visiting his Lunar friends, as before, and they could keep him informed of her conduct whenever he was away. James Keir, in particular, performed this function. Now happily married, to Susannah Harvey—“a beauty” in the words of Dr. Small—and living behind his glass factory near Stourbridge, Keir maintained a vigilant watch on Day’s young apprentice. It is likely that Keir handled the payments to the Parkinsons; certainly he managed any awkward questions. At the same time, Small continued his paternalistic interest in Day’s romantic fortunes and continued to recommend suitable candidates for marriage. The fact that Keir and Small were both financially indebted to Day did no harm in ensuring their discretion over his connections with Sabrina.

  Working with her needle beside a window during the long summer hours, and by candlelight as the days shortened toward winter, Sabrina learned to craft lavish silk gowns, cotton petticoats and flimsy muslin caps to designs supplied by well-heeled customers. Often the rich silks and printed cottons with which the dressmakers worked, imported from France and Belgium or sent from mills in the Midlands, cost far more than the fees they could charge for making up the clothes. As an apprentice Sabrina was unpaid for her labors. Yet her working conditions were certainly better than those of many of her fellow foundlings who were even now enduring long hours in overheated, deafening and dangerous mills nearby. In fact, her apprenticeship proved significantly easier than for many young girls in similar trades.

  From the first, the Parkinsons treated Sabrina with kindly indulgence. Perhaps out of deference to Sabrina’s well-spoken and wealthy patron, or conceivably out of confusion over the true nature of his relationship with their pretty young apprentice, the couple ensured that her sewing duties were relatively light and frequently excused her from the domestic chores that she was expected to perform. Day would later reprimand the Parkinsons for failing to induce “industry & frugality” in their charge. Indeed they appear to have acted like the fond parents of a favorite daughter, or foster parents doting on an adopted orphan. Since Sabrina was very probably better educated and certainly better connected than they were, this was hardly surprising. It must have been difficult to insist that Sabrina perform menial chores on her knees in the scullery between her social outings to the palace and the doctor’s house. It would have been awkward to force her to labor over dresses for customers with whom Sabrina was on tea-drinking terms. Living in comfort and harmony with the kindly Parkinsons and resuming her close friendships in Lichfield, Sabrina was probably happier than she had been for many years.

  All the same she remained in a dubious position. Although she was ostensibly working toward independence as a dressmaker in her own right, she was still financially dependent on Day. And while she now enjoyed the liberty to manage her own social life and friendships, everyone in her social circle knew that she was invisibly connected with her absentee guardian. He still pulled the strings. She remained effectively Day’s property, and he directed her fate just as surely as any master his slave.

  Showing no regard for the Lichfield gossips, Day left Sabrina and crossed the Channel in July 1774 for a three-week tour of Holland. Sending letters back to Bicknell and his mother, he revealed no better liking for the Dutch and their lifestyle than he had for the French. The drinking water was “bad,” the landscape “disagreeable,” the country houses “detestable” and the women, as ever, not to his liking. “The Dutch ladies are, to my taste, not a little disagreeable,” he solemnly informed his mother. “They are so intolerably nasty and gluttonous, stuffing themselves all day with bread and butter and tea, then retiring to discharge their superfluities at the little house, without any decency, or even taking the trouble to shut the door.” There was no chance of finding his flawless female there then. Equally the Dutch women may have wondered why the scowling Englishman was skulking around the “necessary house” when they wanted a little privacy.

  To Bicknell, Day wrote a typically high-handed letter insisting that they should retain editorial control of The Dying Negro rather than sell the rights to Flexney for a sum that Day hinted was as much as a hundred guineas, a little more than a hundred pounds. If true, this was a colossal sum for a single poem—worth about £13,000 ($20,000) today; Fanny Burney would receive £20 (£2,600 today) for her novel Evelina in 1778. Bicknell, who was frequently short of cash, had evidently accused him of being “too scrupulous” about profiting from their literary success. Day replied by describing two men, one a “man of real genius” and the other a “man of inferior talents” who “mistakes his part, and endeavours to sustain a character he was not born to fill.” There was little doubt which of these characters Day believed he was. But for form’s sake he continued: “Among which ever of the two the authors of the Dying Negro may find a place, I cannot now determine: but I own I could not easily reconcile my mind, after having talked of stoicism and J. J. Rousseau, the dignity of human nature and disinteredness in public, to thank any set of persons for presenting, truth, virtue, humanity, and J. J. Rousseau, with an hundred guineas.”

  Despite his pomposity, Day was engaged on a rather less noble collaboration with Bicknell in the summer of 1774. While Day was in Holland, Bicknell was putting the finishing touches to another anonymous pamphlet. It seems that Bicknell was the instigator and probably wrote the bulk of the work, but the resulting text contains all the hallmarks of Day. With breathtaking arrogance, they published a satirical attack on plans to provide music lessons at the London Foundling Hospital.

  The idea to create a music school within the orphanage was put forward by Dr. Charles Burney, a musician who eked out a living by teaching music to the sons and daughters of wealthy families. Inspired by similar initiatives on the Continent, Burney proposed that he and a friend should be employed to give music lessons at the Foundling Hospital. The foundlings had long been renowned for their stirring singing performances, and Burney believed that some of the most talented singers could be trained to earn a living by their voices. But less than a week after the music school opened on July 28, the governors abruptly closed the venture on the grounds that it did not comply with the charity’s legal remit. Deeply humiliated by this sudden reversal, Dr. Burney was further mortified when a jeering pamphlet appeared the following month.

  Published under the pseudonym Joel Collier and dedicated to the governors of the Foundling Hospital, Musical Travels Through England was a brazen parody of Dr. Burney’s acclaimed book on the history of music based on his travels throughout Europe, The Present State of Music in France and Italy, which had been published three years earlier. In the best Georgian bawdy manner the narrator reveals that he changed his name to Coglioni—Italian for testicles—to pursue a career in music. Traveling through England he meets Dr. Dilettanti, who cuts his meat, eats and has sex to the rhythm of a metronome, and spies on Signor Manselli having sex with two young women when, at the point of climax, an “immediate explosion of the most musical intonation I ever heard, issued from behind.” While the tract poked fun at the emasculation of British values by continental influences—a favorite Day theme—it heaped scorn on the idea of a music school where orphans could be trained to “sing and play Italian airs.” Appealing to the Georgian lust for spiteful satire, it sold so well that two new editions would be published over the next twelve months.

  After the usual mystery over the identity of the author, it would be many more years before Bicknell was named as the chief writer, but it was almost certainly written in collaboration with Day. With its reprise of the arguments espoused by the pair under their previous guise as “Knife and Fork” in their juvenile poem on politeness and its attack on Day’s pet hatred of music lessons for children, which he believed a frivolous luxury, the pamphlet bore the telltale signs of a joint venture. Yet since Day was formally still a Foundling Hospital governor, and had furthermore illicitly abducted two foundlings, the work was hypocritical
indeed.

  Poor Dr. Burney was so humiliated by the attack that he almost gave up writing his latest book on music, A General History of Music. According to one acquaintance, he spent £200 buying every copy of the pamphlet he could find—although another source suggested it was actually Bicknell, in remorse, who later attempted to buy and burn every copy. Certainly today they are rare indeed.

  By the time Day returned to London for the autumn term at Middle Temple in October 1774, the second edition of The Dying Negro, with its fierce assault on Americans fighting for liberty, was selling fast. Although it was still anonymous, there was now no secret as to who the authors were. As the quarrel between Britain and its thirteen colonies grew increasingly fraught, so the question of American independence divided families and friends.

  Within the Lunar club, Wedgwood, Keir and Darwin wholeheartedly supported American independence while Boulton sided with the British government, albeit largely for commercial reasons. Still they continued their convivial scientific dinners. The Club of Thirteen, however, was terminally split. David Williams recorded sadly that “a spirit of discord pervading the country affected the little society formed at Dr. Franklins.” One of the main sources of that discord was the controversy sown by Day over slavery. Although Wedgwood and Bentley were among the most vociferous battlers against slavery, they put aside their concerns in order to support the independence cause. Only Day stuck firmly to his principles—on America at least—and refused point-blank to back American independence while Americans still depended on slaves.

  Arguing his case with the young American revolutionaries at Middle Temple, Day won a powerful convert to the abolition cause. John Laurens enrolled as a student at Middle Temple in October and moved into lodgings with John Bicknell’s brother, Charles, also a lawyer, in Chancery Lane. The eldest son of a wealthy family from South Carolina, nineteen-year-old Laurens lost no time in joining with his compatriots in demanding independence. Like many of his friends, Laurens owed his comfortable lifestyle to his family’s connections with slavery. His father, Henry Laurens, had sold thousands of Africans in his slave-importing business in Charlestown and plowed the profits into plantations in South Carolina and Georgia, which were all worked by slaves. But through his developing friendship with John Bicknell and through him with Day, John Laurens began to question not just his family’s but his country’s reliance on the slave trade.