How to Create the Perfect Wife (18 page)

In Shaw’s play
Pygmalion,
Professor Higgins bets that he can transform the coarse-spoken, rough-edged Eliza from “a draggletailed guttersnipe” into a duchess within six months. His honorable friend Colonel Pickering insists that Higgins should inform Eliza of his plan. “If this girl is to put herself in your hands for six months for an experiment in teaching, she must understand thoroughly what she’s doing.” Grudgingly Higgins agrees. “Eliza: you are to live here for the next six months, learning how to speak beautifully, like a lady in a florist’s shop,” he tells her. “At the end of six months you shall go to Buckingham Palace in a carriage, beautifully dressed.” When Eliza moves into Higgins’s house she is taken under the wing of the capable housekeeper Mrs. Pearce, who does her best to ensure that the professor comports himself with decorum in the flower girl’s presence. Even so, Pickering cross-examines Higgins on the propriety of allowing a young woman to share his roof. “I hope it’s understood that no advantage is to be taken of her position,” presses Pickering. Higgins answers: “What! That thing! Sacred, I assure you. You see she’ll be a pupil; and teaching would be impossible unless pupils were sacred.”

Generous to a fault, Thomas Day was resolved to commit twelve months to train Sabrina for her role—double the time the fictional Higgins would spend on Eliza. But unlike Higgins, Day remained as determined as ever to keep her in the dark about his plans. If he gave her any information at all, it was to say that she was apprenticed to him as a servant; certainly this was the fiction he would later maintain. And unlike Eliza, now that Day had cast off Lucretia, Sabrina would be living with him alone. As Edgeworth made plain, Sabrina lived with Day in Lichfield
“without a protectress.” With no experience of the outside world, this was of no consequence to Sabrina; she was completely trusting in her kindly teacher. As she climbed the stone steps to the front door of Stowe House she had no idea that her trust would be tested to the limits over the coming months.

Inside Stowe House a wide entrance hall opened on to three handsome reception rooms. To the left, a cozy library contained a delicately carved chimney piece. At the far end of the library a door led into a spacious dining room that looked out onto the stables and gardens at the back. And completing the circuit of the ground floor, a door opened at the other end of the dining room into an elegant drawing room overlooking Stowe Pool. From the library a hidden staircase descended to the kitchen and laundry room in the basement. From the entrance hall, a grand oak staircase ascended past a stained-glass window depicting the Judgment of Solomon—an apt scene for a foundling’s home—and proceeded up to two more floors containing six bedrooms.

Exploring her new home, Sabrina would have seen her reflection—a slim, pretty, auburn-haired girl on the verge of puberty—in the vast arched mirror set into the dining room wall. Standing in the drawing room looking out over the lake she would have seen the three spires of the distant cathedral perfectly framed in the central sash window. In the morning, when the sun rose behind the house, she could watch the fishing boats sliding across the sparkling water. In the evening, when the sun set behind the cathedral, she could see the wild ducks flying in to land on the dark still pool. But there was precious little time to admire the view.

As before, in Avignon, Day employed few, if any, servants. He may have hired men to tend the grounds and look after the horses, but there were no domestic staff living in the house. He was determined to live as frugally as possible, without fancy food or comforts, and his personal needs were few. But since Day anticipated that his wife would perform the bulk of the household chores in their country hideaway, he regarded housework as a vital part of Sabrina’s training. So with Lucretia now gone, the task of managing the large four-story house fell squarely on Sabrina’s slender shoulders. It was a long, tiring climb up those dark stairs from the basement to answer Day’s calls in the library and to carry his plain meals to
the dining room. It was even more exhausting to trudge up the two flights of stairs to clean and air the bedrooms. Day was determined to get his money’s worth from his £50 donation to the Foundling Hospital.

On top of her increased housework, Sabrina’s lessons continued unabated. Now that she had mastered the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, Day concentrated on explaining the mysteries of the natural world and sharing his knowledge of the arts. So far he was still following the regime laid down by Rousseau in
Émile.
For as Rousseau recommended, once Émile found his Sophie he should teach her “everything he knows, regardless of whether she wants to learn or whether it is suitable for her.” This curriculum spanned philosophy, physics, mathematics and history—“everything in fact,” said Rousseau—although he conceded that women needed only “a nodding acquaintance with logic and metaphysics.” Flourishing in her one-to-one tutorials, Sabrina progressed well.

With her chores and her lessons, life in Stowe House was scarcely less arduous than Sabrina’s former regime in the Foundling Hospital. But even when these duties were fulfilled there was no time for rest or play since Day was impatient to introduce his promising pupil to old friends and new acquaintances. Eager to gain approval for his chosen bride, he escorted Sabrina on a giddy round of social visits to Lichfield’s most affluent and influential residents. Before they left the house Day took care to ensure that his little novice was turned out in the modest and maidenly style that he favored. Her dress must be simple and unadorned, her arms and neck modestly covered, her face scrubbed clean without cosmetics and her auburn ringlets left loose and free. Her appearance adjusted to his satisfaction, Day set off on the path that skirted Stowe Pool with Sabrina at his heels.

The arrival of the wealthy young bachelor, who turned twenty-two that summer, with a girl of thirteen in tow might be expected to raise eyebrows in even the most liberal of neighborhoods. According to the unwritten code of conduct that constrained Georgian society like a corset it was strictly taboo for a respectable woman to be left alone with a man under any circumstances unless they were formally engaged; and even then a chaperone was usually mandatory. Even exchanging letters between a single man and a single woman was frowned upon. The entire plot of Fanny
Burney’s novel,
Evelina,
hinges upon the heroine’s horror at her (mistaken) belief that her hero asks her to collude in a private correspondence.

An unmarried man openly setting up home with an adolescent girl without servants or other chaperones would usually result in his being branded a despicable rake and her being shunned as his kept mistress. Yet far from attempting to conceal his dubious domestic arrangements, Day went out of his way to parade Sabrina around Lichfield’s best-appointed drawing rooms. What was even more bizarre was that Day’s conduct was apparently condoned without a murmur of dissent.

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.