How to Create the Perfect Wife

by Wendy Moore

  Rejecting one disappointing suitor after another, Esther despaired that she would ever meet her ideal man. She told friends that she was probably best suited to “the Single State.” Repulsed by ostentatious wealth and shallow frivolity, Esther feared she would never find a man who shared her distaste of greed, vanity and fashion. While her friends seemed interested only in snaring a rich husband and stocking their wardrobes, Esther wanted to live a simple, frugal life surrounded by her books and devoted to charitable works. She would demonstrate her philanthropic ideals by promising a bequest for a young girl, a foundling, who lived in Aunt Esther’s home in Wakefield. In a world of shallow diversions and rampant consumerism, it was certainly a challenge to imagine a suitor who would appreciate Esther’s devotion to a traditional notion of virtue, her reverence for classical history and her passion for poetry. Who could possibly fit the bill?

  From the moment that Esther cast eyes on Thomas Day she knew she had found her perfect partner for life. The only problem was convincing him. Esther had first met Day in 1774 through an introduction engineered by William Small. The doctor had chanced upon Esther, most probably on one of her visits to Birmingham, in the early 1770s. She sometimes stayed with relatives in Temple Row, a few doors from Dr. Small’s home, and may even have consulted the doctor about her health. When the matchmaking doctor encountered the delightful Esther he could scarcely contain his excitement.

  Cautiously Small had made inquiries about her character through friends in the north and even surreptitiously obtained some copies of her letters. His findings confirmed his wildest hopes. Esther’s benevolence was widely celebrated in Yorkshire while her letters revealed a mind of superior intelligence. With the excitement of a chemist who had just isolated a new element or a doctor discovering the elixir of life, Small wrote to Edgeworth to announce his discovery. He told Edgeworth “he believed he had at last found the lady perfectly suited to Mr. Day; a woman, who was capable of appreciating his merit, and of treating the small defects in his appearance and manners as trifles beneath her serious consideration.”

  Tentatively Small mentioned his discovery to Day. According to Edgeworth, the doctor waited until Day had finally severed his attachment to Sabrina. But since Day only reignited his interest in Sabrina after the doctor’s death—according to Day’s own account—that would have been impossible. It was therefore before Day had embarked on his second trial of Sabrina that Small had first broached the subject of Esther. With characteristic suspicion, Day had quizzed the doctor closely over the young heiress’s attributes.

  First Day demanded to know whether the talented Miss Milnes possessed the plump, white arms he so admired. Small, with his professional eye for female physique, affirmed that she did. Did she then wear the long petticoats required by Day’s stringent dress code? Uncommonly long, Small agreed. But was she also sufficiently tall, strong and healthy to endure Day’s anticipated retirement to a humble country cottage? In exasperation, the physician retorted that Esther was actually quite short and not particularly robust. But how could Day, the doctor demanded, expect that an attractive, cultivated and charming woman with a large fortune and views that matched his own be formed “exactly according to a picture that exists in your imagination?” But this, of course, was precisely what Day expected.

  With a keen awareness of time running out, Small persisted: “This lady is two or three and twenty, has had twenty admirers; some of them admirers of herself, some, perhaps, of her fortune; yet in spite of all these admirers and lovers, she is disengaged.” There was still, however, one overriding objection: Esther’s fortune. Determined that he would never allow financial considerations to taint his choice of a bride, Day argued that he could not marry an heiress. But the astute Small had an answer there too. “What prevents you from despising the fortune, and taking the lady?” he asked coyly. Beaten into submission Day grudgingly agreed that he would meet the inestimable Miss Milnes. And so at some point in 1774 he had ventured into Yorkshire to make her acquaintance.

  Besieged by bachelors baying for her money and lovesick admirers swooning over her hand, Esther had almost given up hope of finding a suitable suitor. When Thomas Day walked into her life she could hardly believe her eyes. She was immediately entranced by the wild-haired and unworldly young poet. Pleasantly impressed by his disdain for her fortune, she was delighted by his devotion to the pursuit of virtue, his progressive ideas on human rights and his benevolence to charity. Having read his antislavery poem, The Dying Negro, she wholeheartedly embraced his political ideals and his literary passions. She was even beguiled by his determination to live in romantic isolation with only books and a wife for company. Esther knew beyond any doubt that she had found her ideal partner. “My affection for you was the spontaneous effusion of my heart,” she would later tell him. She added, “you alone realised all my ideas of Perfection, became the Universe to me, & in you, I found an Object capable of filling my whole soul.”

  Anyone but the most obtuse perfectionist could see that they were ideally matched. Day, of course, remained to be convinced. He had to concede that, but for her diminutive stature and occasional ill health, Esther fulfilled all the physical requirements, intellectual abilities and personal characteristics of the sublime woman for whom he had hunted halfway across Europe. Yet still he hung back. He had been betrayed before by the caprice of women who offered him their hearts only to humiliate him by rejection. It must have seemed scarcely possible that after all his efforts at education he would find his ideal woman waiting patiently on his doorstep. It had to be a trap. In the meantime, he had embarked on his second attempt to train Sabrina.

  Caught in a quandary, Day wavered between Sabrina, his ivory girl, his Galatea, whom he had painstakingly molded to meet his precise requirements, and this vision, this Minerva, who gazed on him with adoration and fulfilled very nearly every one of his criteria as if by magic. Stunned into indecision, Day was cordial but cool whenever he met Esther; he treated her with “no more than esteem & friendship,” she would later say. But once he had finally given up Sabrina as a lost cause, at some point in 1775, Day felt ready to pay Esther a little more attention. And now that she knew that the field was clear, Esther was keen to respond.

  Friends watched with bated breath. On the rare occasions when Day had reason to travel north he made the diversion to Esther’s home with her uncles in Yorkshire to pay court to the heiress. Among Wakefield’s distinguished residents in the villas lining the town’s broad streets, the Milnes family was known as merchant princes and their mansions as palaces. But since Day spent most of his time in London, still languidly toying with his legal studies, Esther took pains to throw herself into his company whenever she could visit the capital.

  They met sporadically for conversations on literature and philosophy over tea in chaperoned drawing rooms. In between these brief encounters they exchanged poems. At one point Esther sent Day some verses she had written on female seduction—a theme always guaranteed to command his attention—inspired by a reportedly true story of a woman who died “of a broken heart” after being debauched by a libertine. In response, Day wrote a poem to Esther addressed “To the Authoress of ‘Verses to be Inscribed on Delia’s Tomb,’” which began “Sweet Poetess” and went on to bewail “ruined innocence” and laud “virtuous love.” In one verse Day earnestly inquired, “Lives there a virgin in the secret shade, / Not yet to shame by perjur’d man betray’d?” to which Esther must have silently screamed yes, yes, there is! But stubbornly skeptical that Esther could meet his high standards, Day refused to make any further commitment.

  Remaining selflessly devoted, Esther counted out the years in teaspoons while Day kept his options open. He still sent paternalistic letters and annual payments to Sabrina, secreted in her Birmingham boardinghouse. In the meantime he scanned the horizon for other potential partners. At some point in 1775 he wrote another of his many poems on unrequited love addressed to a woman he called “Hannah,” whom he was destined to “love
in vain.” Keeping Esther on a long rein, therefore, Day continued his law studies and threw himself into politics with renewed gusto.

  Mixing with American firebrands at Middle Temple, Day staunchly maintained his antislavery stance. The third edition of The Dying Negro, published in 1775, reiterated Day’s dedication to Rousseau with its excoriating attack on American slave owners. But caught up in the revolutionary zeal as American students celebrated their homeland’s first military victories in the second half of 1775, Day abruptly changed sides and backed independence. Just as George III sent a huge invasion force to quell the uprising at the end of 1775, Day declared his unequivocal support for the American cause. The campaign against slavery would have to wait.

  Day greeted the dawn of 1776 by publishing a fiercely pro-American poem, Ode for the New Year, which depicted Britain as an unnatural mother who had turned on her offspring and “drinks her Children’s gore!” He followed with an even more combative poem, The Devoted Legions, in support of the colonists. But timing was never Day’s strong point. Unfortunately, his spirited defense of the American cause in his two new poems and his blistering attack on the revolutionaries who owned slaves in the dedication in The Dying Negro were now circulating at the very same time.

  As the British fleet anchored off New York and Americans stiffened their resolve by issuing the Declaration of Independence in July 1776, Day sauntered along to a meeting of the Club of Thirteen. Although the club’s original number had dwindled since Franklin had fled back to America the previous year, a solid core still gathered on Sunday evenings at Thomas Bentley’s house in Chelsea. On this particular evening Bentley was bubbling with excitement. When the group was duly assembled, Bentley announced that he was planning a trip to Paris where he hoped to meet his hero Rousseau. Bentley wanted to present the liturgy that David Williams had written for his multidenominational services in the Margaret Street chapel, which had recently opened. But knowing that Rousseau was notoriously reclusive, Bentley was worried he might be turned away. Day came up with a brilliant solution. He gave Bentley a copy of The Dying Negro with its passionate dedication to Rousseau as a sure passport into the writer’s refuge.

  A few weeks later Bentley climbed the stairs to Rousseau’s garret with his precious cargo of books and pamphlets. When the door was opened by Thérèse Levasseur, Bentley was turned away, just as he had expected, but was allowed to leave his parcel. Two days later Bentley returned and was overjoyed when he was welcomed in to meet the venerated philosopher. But his delight quickly turned to horror as Rousseau launched into a tirade over one of the publications that Bentley had left. It was not Williams’s controversial liturgy that had stoked the writer’s ire but Day’s antislavery poem with its eight-page dedication to Rousseau.

  Rousseau was livid that Day had taken the “improper liberty” of writing the dedication to him without his permission and even more incensed that the homage attacked the American fight for independence, which Rousseau fully espoused. A flustered Bentley defended Day by arguing that the poet had written the tribute before he had realized the justice of the American cause but was now an enthusiastic supporter of the rebels. Rousseau replied crisply: “He should not write upon subjects that he does not understand then.” When Bentley left, Rousseau sent his “most respectful compliments” to Williams and added pointedly “and my compliments to Mr Day.”

  Back in London, Williams heard of the encounter in a letter read by Mrs. Bentley and begged her not to tell Day. Williams was convinced, he explained, that if Day heard Rousseau’s derogatory comments it would end their friendship because “my poetical friend will not bear the apparent preference.” At the next meeting of the Club of Thirteen, Williams arrived to see Bentley already deep in conversation with Day. One look from Day told Williams the worst. Day shunned his company and never spoke to Williams again. Furious and humiliated, Day was mortified that Rousseau, the inspiration for his controversial educational experiment and the fount of all his political ideas, had scorned his adoring words. But if Day had been spurned by Rousseau, he was ready now to turn his mind once more to his matrimonial destiny.

  There was still time for one more diversion. Leaving Esther to wait in vain in Wakefield and Sabrina to languish in solitude in Birmingham, Day continued to play the field. On one of his visits to the Midlands, Day encountered Darwin’s niece Elizabeth Hall, who was the daughter of the physician’s eldest sister, Elizabeth, and her late husband, the Reverend Thomas Hall. Elizabeth, who turned twenty-two in 1776, lived in West-borough, Lincolnshire, where her father had been rector until his death in 1775 at which point her brother, also Thomas, had taken over the rectorship. Day may have met Elizabeth while she was visiting her Uncle Erasmus some time after her father’s death. A silver paper tray, which Day ordered from Boulton’s factory to be sent to the doctor’s house in Lichfield for “Miss Darwin” in December 1776, was perhaps intended for Elizabeth—even though her surname was Hall. Enamored by the vicar’s daughter, Day proposed to Elizabeth before the end of summer 1777. Once again, however, his petty restrictions on female conduct scuppered his romantic chances.

  The story of Day’s fourth engagement (not counting Sabrina) would only be revealed more than a century later in a letter from Erasmus Darwin’s granddaughter, Emma Galton, to her cousin, the naturalist, Charles Darwin. “Mr. Day was at one time engaged to our cousin Miss Hall,” Emma confided to Charles, who was then writing a biography of their grandfather. But Day objected to Elizabeth wearing a pair of diamond earrings that had been a gift from her grandmother, Emma explained. Although Elizabeth was particularly fond of the earrings because of their sentimental attachment she faithfully promised she would never wear them again. This, however, was not good enough for Day. “No wife must ever have earrings in their possession,” Day sternly commanded his fiancée to which she indignantly replied: “Then our intended marriage must never take place.”

  The sudden breach bounced Elizabeth into making a hasty marriage with Roger Vaughton, a landowner living at Ashfurlong House near Sutton Coldfield, who was sixteen years her senior. The couple married on September 17, 1777. According to Emma Galton, Elizabeth accepted Vaughton “in a hurry,” which might be taken to imply that she was actually pregnant by Day; her first child was baptized ten months after the wedding although baptisms could easily be delayed to hide inconvenient details. But it is more likely that the haste was necessary to protect Elizabeth’s reputation after being betrothed to Day. It was “not a brilliant marriage,” Emma Galton claimed, although it was certainly a fruitful one; the Vaughtons had thirteen children.

  The actual date when Elizabeth broke off her engagement to Day is hard to pinpoint. It must have been shortly before September 1777, when she made her hurried marriage. Day was pressing Matthew Boulton to pay the interest on the loans he had made—perhaps to finance his anticipated wedding—in early 1777. He later complained of feeling ill—his usual response to being rejected—during most of that summer. Day told Boulton that sciatica “added to an old sprain” had been “near crippling me all the summer” in a letter in December 1777 by which time he was “perhaps nearly recovering.”

  Reeling from yet another rejection, Day surfaced in the new year of 1778 to give serious consideration to his future. He was not getting any younger—he would turn thirty that summer and his assorted ailments were a reminder of mortality—so if he wanted to marry and father an heir there was little time to lose. At last it occurred to him that after all his years of searching for the perfect companion, perhaps after all she was waiting patiently for him in Yorkshire. When next he met Esther—by chance, according to Keir—Day finally asked her whether she would be willing to renounce all her comforts and company to live with him in isolated penury devoting her life to doing good works.

  Esther, of course, ecstatically agreed. She had waited four years for him to appreciate her virtues. Yet even now, Day being Day, he hesitated. After all his disappointments Day was determined that there would be no going back
and no rejections this time. He therefore subjected Esther to the most rigorous examination and detailed inquisition in long interviews and lengthy letters to test her mettle for her future position.

  As Day dallied, his friends were confounded. “With Mr. Day there were a thousand small preliminaries to be adjusted,” wrote Edgeworth—back in England now with Honora and his young family—“there was no subject of opinion or speculation, which he did not, previously to his marriage, discuss with his intended bride.” Any other man, said Edgeworth, would have concluded the courtship in a few months. “In fact, I believe, that few lovers ever conversed or corresponded more than did my friend and Miss Milnes,” he wrote. According to Keir, Day was “very explicit on the subject of his future mode of life” during “frequent opportunities of conversation.” It was a grueling interrogation designed to test Esther’s resolve to the limits.

  As Day stubbornly laid down his demands and outlined his plans for the future Esther seemed desperate to please him. During their courtship she wrote: “what made you so dejected last night. . . . Was I all all [sic] concerned? Why was I not wth you to raise yr drooping spirits? Is there upon Earth a power so delightful as that of soothing the eases & alleviating the sorrows of those who are dearer than ourselves?” Her own spirits had also “been rather in a low key,” she confessed.