by Wendy Moore
262 As John Graham told his mother: John Graham to his mother, Mrs. Graham, September 22 and August 29, 1805, Lambeth Archives, IV/4/50 and IV/4/48.
263 “If your sons marry to please you”: RLE to Sabrina Bicknell, August 28, 1808, BL Add. MS 70949 f 280.
263 Grandchildren followed swiftly: I am indebted to Jacky Worthington for her help in tracing John and Henry Bicknell’s descendants and to the Bicknell family descendants for their interest in my book.
264 A portrait of Henry in later life: Portrait of Henry Edgeworth Bicknell by Charles Baugniet, 1853, NPG D31757. Portrait of John Laurens Bicknell by Charles Baugniet, 1845, Wellcome Library.
264 leasing a house for himself and his new wife in Grooms Hill: Hughes New Law List, 1809, p. 47; Rates Books, Greenwich West, from 1814, at GHC.
264 Worried they wouldreturn to Ireland before: Sabrina Bicknell to Frances Edgeworth, June, 9, 1813, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/9.
264 Maria smuggled him a furtive letter from Greenwich: Maria Bicknell to John Constable, February 24, 1816, in Constable, vol. 2, p. 178. For the full story of Constable’s relationship with Maria Bicknell see Gayford, Martin, Constable in Love: love, landscape, money and the making of a great painter (London, 2009), pp. 295–302.
265 Constable, at one point, told Maria: John Constable to Maria Constable (née Bicknell), January 21, 1825, in Constable, vol. 2, pp. 372–73.
265 her son Henry lost three children; John was severely ill again: Sabrina Bicknell to RLE, April 21, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/10.
265 The following month, she thanked Edgeworth: Sabrina Bicknell to RLE, May 13, 1817, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/12.
266 Throughout his long and grueling illness: Edgeworth, RL and M, vol. 2, pp. 445–53.
267 “By this loss I am deprived of my oldest friend”: Sabrina Bicknell to ME, June 30, 1817, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/13.
267 Maria began the task of sorting through his letters: ME to Sabrina Bicknell, August 17, 1817, BL Add. MS 70949 f. 271.
268 the housekeeper she called Bicky: Wood, p. 123.
268 Sabrina was asked to become godmother: Susan Sabrina Burney was born on February 25, 1818, and baptized December 21, 1818: St. Alfege baptism register, LMA. Sabrina described her as her goddaughter in her will.
268 and the draft manuscript of her father’s memoirs carfully stowed in a sturdy boxfile: Edgeworth (1971), pp. 75–99. On her way to London ME stayed with various friends to whom she showed the manuscript of her father’s memoirs. Étienne Dumont, a Geneva-born writer and editor who was an old friend of RLE, “hates Mr. Day in spite of all his good qualities,” according to ME. She wrote: “He says he knows and cannot bear that sort of man ‘who has such pride and misanthropies about trifles and who raises a great theory of morals upon an amour propre blessé.’” Lady Louisa Lansdowne, her hostess in Wiltshire, took an opposite view. “She admires and loves Mr. Day as much as Dumont dislikes him,” Maria wrote but added shrewdly: “Had she seen him she would not have endured his manners however 24 hours.”
268 “a little, dark, bearded, sharp, withered, active”: Butler, M, p. 3.
268 she wrote to Sabrina in Greenwich with a request to meet: ME to Frances Edgeworth, October 13 and 15, 1818, in Edgeworth (1971), pp. 109–11 and 121–22. Sabrina’s reply is related by ME to her stepmother. ME stayed in Hampstead with the poet Joanna Baillie and her sister Agnes, who were nieces of the surgeon John Hunter. Her visits to Essex and to Greenwich are described in her letters home.
270 “enraged” again when a magazine retold the story: The offending article may have been a column in the journal La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, published the previous month and headed “Curious particulars of Mr. Day, the author of ‘Sandford and Merton,’” which replayed the details from Seward’s Life of Erasmus Darwin at length. La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine, September 1818, pp. 105–6.
270 Day had “made her miserable—a slave &c!”: Edgeworth, RL and M, vol. 2, p. 114.
270 There was nothing in the document: Sabrina Bicknell to ME, October 29, 1818, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/15.
271 “from a number of orphans, one of remarkably promising appearance”: Edgeworth, RL and M, vol. 1, p. 209.
271 “crack-brained absurdities,” which shocked nineteenth-century sensibilities: Quarterly Review, July 1810, p. 523.
271 a fine new house around the corner from the school: Greenwich Rates Books at GHC. The terrace is now called Gloucester Circus and the house is numbered 29. For information on building Gloucester Circus see Bonwitt, W., Michael Searles: a Georgian architect and surveyor (London, 1987), pp. 20–22; Bonwitt, W., “Gloucester Circus,” in Transactions of the Greenwich and Lewisham Antiquarian Society, vol. 10, pp. 21–30.
271 “as fully competent as Mrs. Bicknell was”: John Constable to Maria Constable, January 21, 1825, in Constable, vol. 2, p. 373.
271 Denning, who painted Sabrina’s picture in 1832: “Mrs Bicknell,” by Richard James Lane, after Stephen Poyntz Denning, lithograph, 1833 (1832), NPG D22174; Richard James Lane, account books, NPG MS 56, vol. 1, pp. 34 and 36; S. P. Denning to Richard James Lane, April 1, 1833, in RJL, correspondence, NPG MS 61, vol. 1, p. 22. My thanks to Alexandra Aault, assistant curator at the NPG, for helping me to verify the sitter of the portrait as Sabrina Bicknell.
272 “so strong a likeness I should have recognized it”: FB to Charles Parr Burney, May 3, 1836, in Burney, vol. 12, p. 890.
272 “She is, alas! much changed”: Wood, p. 123. The sale of the contents and fittings is described in the auction catalog of the Burney School, May 14, 1839, in Miscellaneous papers relating to Greenwich, BL (Rare Books).
273 “I see grey hairs upon brows”: Wood, pp. 306 and 326–27.
273 Sabrina died at her home in The Circus: Death certificate of Sabrina Bicknell, September 9, 1843, GRO, 1231703–1; Will of Sabrina Bicknell, Prob 11/1986. Sabrina’s grave is plot no. 4371 in square 108. Her son John Laurens Bicknell is buried on the right of her grave and her granddaughter Mary Grant Bicknell is to the right of her father.
274 John Laurens Bicknell survived his mother by only two years: Death certificate of John Laurens Bicknell, August 9, 1845, GRO 1408910–1.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABBREVIATIONS
AS
Anna Seward
CB
Charles Burney Jr. (1757–1817)
ED
Erasmus Darwin
EM
Esther Milnes
ERO
Essex Record Office
FB
Fanny Burney
FHA
Foundling Hospital Archives
LRO
Lichfield Record Office
GHC
Greenwich Heritage Centre
JB
John Bicknell
JJR
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
JK
James Keir
LMA
London Metropolitan Archives
LRO
Lichfield Record Office
MB
Matthew Boulton
ME
Maria Edgeworth
MT
Middle Temple
NPG
National Portrait Gallery
RLE
Richard Lovell Edgeworth
SJBM
Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum
SOG
Society of Genealogists
SS
Sabrina Sidney (later Bicknell)
TD
Thomas Day
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
Barrington Family Papers, Essex Record Office
Burney Family Collection, The James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Burney, Fanny, Fanny Burney Notebooks, in the Berg Collection (Henry W. and Albert A. Berg) of English and American Literature, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foun
dations
British Library Add. MSS
Darwin Papers, Cambridge University Library
Edgeworth Papers, National Library of Ireland
Egerton Papers, British Library
Foundling Hospital Archives, London Metropolitan Archives
Greenwich Heritage Centre (Burney School documents)
Heinz Archive and Library, National Portrait Gallery, London
Lambeth Archives Department (Graham family correspondence)
Lichfield Record Office
Middle Temple Archives, London
Pearson Papers, University College London Special Collections
Royal Society of Arts (Letters of Richard Lovell Edgeworth)
Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, Lichfield
Sir John Soane Archives, Sir John Soane’s Museum, London
Soho Archives (Boulton Papers and Watt Papers), Birmingham Reference Library
Staffordshire Record Office (Edward Sneyd and Ann Sneyd papers), Stafford
William Salt Library (Letters of Thomas Day and Anna Seward), Stafford
BIOGRAPHIES OF THOMAS DAY (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)
Keir, James, An Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Day, Esq. (London, 1791)
Kippis, Andrew, “Thomas Day” in Biographia Britannica (London, 1793), vol. 5, pp. 21–32.
Seward, Anna, Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Darwin, chiefly during his residence in Lichfield, with anecdotes of his friends, and criticisms on his writings (London, 1804)
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Sadler, Sir Michael, Thomas Day, an English disciple of Rousseau (Cambridge, 1928)
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Rowland, Peter, The Life and Times of Thomas Day, 1748—1789, English philanthropist and author, virtue almost personified (Lewiston, NY; Lampeter, 1996)
WORKS BY THOMAS DAY REFERRED TO IN THE TEXT (IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER)
TD and JB, The Dying Negro (London, 1773)
TD, The Devoted Legions (London, 1776)
TD, Ode for the New Year 1776 (London, 1776)
TD, The Desolation of America (London, 1776)
TD, Fragment of an Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes, written in the year 1776 (London, 1784)
TD, The History of Sandford and Merton, A Work Intended for the Use of Children (3 vols., London, 1783, 1786 and 1789)
TD and Esther Day, Select Miscellaneous Productions, of Mrs Day, and Thomas Day, Esq in verse and prose . . . , ed. Lowndes, Thomas (London, 1805)
TD et al., Tracts in Prose and Verse, ed. Lowndes, Thomas (2 vols., Dover; London, 1825–27)
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(Texts that are mentioned only once are given in full in the endnotes but not here.)
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