How to Create the Perfect Wife (27 page)

A letter from Day awaited him. After a winter in Paris, he had returned to Lichfield and ascertained the answer to the question his friend most wanted to hear. They arranged to meet in the village of Woodstock near Oxford. Edgeworth had probably been visiting his wife’s grave at Black Bourton nearby. Immediately Day informed his friend that Honora was still single—and what was more she was “in perfect health and beauty; improved in person and in mind, and, though surrounded by lovers, still her own mistress.” Edgeworth needed no more encouragement. He had failed to stem the force of the Rhône; he had tilted at windmills in vain.

Heading straight for Lichfield, he rushed to the Sneyds’ house where he found the drawing room crowded with friends and acquaintances. In a trance of mixed fear and excitement, Edgeworth threaded his way through the room. Later he would say that friends told him that the very last person he came to was Honora. “This I do not remember,” he wrote, “but I am perfectly sure, that, when I did see her, she appeared to me most lovely, even more lovely than when we parted.” When Edgeworth asked Honora to marry him, she, of course, agreed.

Scandalizing many of their friends and relations, the couple refused to wait the conventional year of mourning. They were married a few weeks later, on July 17, 1773, by the Reverend Seward in Lichfield Cathedral. A glowering Major Sneyd, fuming over the hasty marriage and furious with the brash Edgeworth, reluctantly gave his daughter away. His son-in-law William Grove, the husband of Honora’s eldest sister Lucy, was equally horrified by the surprise match and made his views well known. Honora’s sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, sat glumly unsmiling throughout the ceremony; indeed Elizabeth had fallen into a “strange gloom” immediately after the marriage had been announced. By refusing to bow to her father’s views, Honora had incurred the wrath of most of Lichfield society. “They
call her behaviour undutiful, & spare her not for presuming to judge for her self & for being too wise to sacrifice her felicity to her Father’s, & Mr. Groves, & the World’s idle prejudices,” wrote Anna. But Seward, as chief bridesmaid, and Day, joined in the celebrations with enthusiasm.

After the ceremony the party adjourned to Major Sneyd’s house for a wedding breakfast, and at noon a beaming Edgeworth helped his bride into his sporty phaeton and dashed away. Edgeworth, at least, had secured his ideal wife; perfect in his eyes, she needed no changes or improvements. Honora, for her part, was equally confident that she had found her ideal husband—the perfect gentleman—and she now enjoyed “the utmost happiness.” Eager to escape the disapproving sneers in Lichfield, the newlyweds headed immediately for Edgeworth’s estate in Ireland, taking his three young girls with them—Dick being sent to another boarding school—and proceeded to live in blissful harmony in their country retreat. Having abandoned Rousseau’s educational dogma but still attached to the philosopher’s natural approach to learning, Edgeworth now devoted his spare hours to educating his daughters—and many future children—with his special brand of tolerance, insight and verve.

Left behind, their friends waved them off with mixed emotions. Both Seward and Day had lost their closest friends and confidants. Although Anna professed herself delighted that “the two fond Lovers” had found happiness, she was well aware that she was unlikely ever to enjoy such bliss for herself. Her beloved Saville had now left his family home and moved into the house next door to it. Although he had reignited his relationship with Anna they would never be free to marry; indeed his wife continued to shop for him and launder his clothes. Destined therefore to live a single life, Seward was inconsolable at the loss of “my Honora” as she admitted to a friend: “she is happy. I bless Heaven that she is—but she is
absent
, &
I must mourn.
” From now on Honora was effectively lost to her.

All her life Anna would invoke Honora in poetry; Honora’s name appears on almost every page of her published poems. Seward regarded Honora’s marriage as the ultimate betrayal. She would never forgive her for breaking the “vows” they had made and abandoning her for a mere man. In future poems she would lament that Honora’s “plighted love is
changed to cold disdain” and addressed her former soulmate as “false Friend!”

But Seward was disappointed with Day too. He had abruptly ended her matchmaking plans by failing to measure up to Honora’s aspirations and had made himself a laughingstock in his efforts to woo Elizabeth. There would be no more jovial correspondence with “Monsieur Le jour.” Her strongest ire, of course, was reserved for Edgeworth, who had stolen the “matchless prize” from under her eyes. She would accuse him of scandalously stealing Honora from the heroic John André and—when Honora’s health began to fail—of coldly neglecting his wife.

Day suffered more stoically. He went to stay with his Lunar friend Dr. Small in Birmingham, from where he wrote a melancholy letter of congratulations to Edgeworth in August. Although he sent the “sincerest wishes” for Edgeworth’s happiness, Day glumly observed that his intimate relationship with his old traveling chum was now likely to fade. Previously they had shared all their confidences, Day reminisced. “When you experienced vexations, you sought a comforter in me, and I hope sometimes succeeded: to me you entrusted your uneasiness, your hopes, your fears, your passions.” Likewise Day had confided in Edgeworth all his romantic trials—with Margaret, Honora, Elizabeth and, of course, Sabrina. “To you, when my hopes were more active, and life a novelty, I entrusted all the fantastic emotions of my own heart—schemes of happiness, which a young man conceives with enthusiasm, pursues with ardor, and sees dissipated for ever, as he advances.” But Edgeworth’s marriage and move to Ireland “must necessarily make us of less active importance to each other,” he reasoned.

While Edgeworth would now find companionship with his “amiable friend in a wife,” Day expected to spend his time “roving about the habitable earth, not in pursuit of happiness, but to avoid ennui.” His pride wounded from his failed romances and his ludicrous attempts to transform himself, Day proclaimed that he felt “an indifference to all human affairs, an aversion to restraint, and engagement, and embarrassment, continue to increase in my mind.” Day was happy that his friend had finally achieved his perfect marriage. There were no hard feelings, he assured Edgeworth. “With what pleasure shall I, when I meet you again, contemplate that
happiness, which you say you so fully possess!” And with a dramatic flourish he now declared that fate had marked him out for “an old bachelor.”

It seemed that Day had abandoned his marital aspirations forever. And yet, he knew, there was still one person who had been carefully molded to suit his rare and particular expectations who waited in anxious anticipation for his visits.

Stormy weather.
Thomas Day by Joseph Wright in 1770, portrayed in gold waistcoat and red mantle against gathering clouds while living at Stowe House in Lichfield. The book in his hand is probably Rousseau’s
Émile.

Core members of the Lunar Society
Richard Lovell Edgeworth

Dr. Erasmus Darwin

James Keir

Jean-Jacques Rousseau provided the inspiration for Day’s educational experiment.

Day’s women.
The poet Anna Seward was an early ally and confidante of Day.