How to Create the Perfect Wife (41 page)

If Day had helped Sabrina with a grudging miserliness, she was not alone. After ten years living the fantasy life he had so long envisaged he was more curmudgeonly and miserable than ever. Railing at the ungrateful poor, he vented his fury on Esther and their friends. He grumbled incessantly to Edgeworth, wrote lecturing letters to Esther’s girlfriends and sent curt demands for repayment of loans to Boulton. Boulton paid up, but their friendship was ended. Day even lashed out at his publisher, John Stockdale, threatening in July 1789 not to deliver the final instalment of
Sandford and Merton
until he was paid the balance owing. Their mutual friend Keir had to smooth ruffled feathers. To the delight of Day’s fans, Harry and Tommy’s adventures continued, and the third book appeared in the shops in August. But Day would never see his book reach its pinnacle of success.

A month later, on September 28, 1789, Thomas Day was riding from Anningsley to Barehill when he was thrown from his horse and killed. Having reared, fed and tamed the horse himself, in accordance with his belief in animal rights, Day died a victim of his own benevolence, friends lamented. It was Day’s commitment to Rousseau’s gentle system of education—for animals if not for children—that finally destroyed him. He was just forty-one.

Esther, who had been staying at Barehill, rushed to the scene, but Day never regained consciousness. Far from feeling liberated from her program of perpetual correction, she was inconsolable. She told Edgeworth she was “overwhelmed” by the “weight of sorrow.” From the moment she first met
Day, she said, “I seemed born to love & admire him; every circumstance about him was so peculiarly pleasing to me.” According to one report Esther never again enjoyed a day’s health, while another recorded that she spent the rest of her life in darkness, never opening the curtains during the day and only venturing out at night.

Friends—or those few who remained—were nearly as bereft. “He was dear to me by many names as friend, philosopher, scholar, and honest man,” wrote Erasmus Darwin. When Edgeworth received the news he was numb with shock. Looking at the portrait of the podgy young man in his gold suit and red mantle that hung above the sofa in his sitting room and thinking back to the day he had first met the scruffy, lank-haired youth, Edgeworth remembered predicting that they would be lifelong friends. They had traveled together, lived together, competed for the same women, collaborated in bringing up Dick and educating Sabrina, and for all their differences they had indeed remained true friends. They had been, wrote Maria, “two friends, so different in tastes, yet so agreeing in principle; so opposite in all appearance, yet so attached in reality.”

After a frantic search among Day’s papers, the only will that could be found was that from 1780 largely devoted to excising Sabrina from his life. Day’s accounts revealed a cool £20,000 less than expected. He had given away most of his fortune. Even if he had begrudged every penny, Day had been a genuine philanthropist in an age when charity was rare and a true enthusiast for social reform long before his time. What remained of his fortune, along with Anningsley, was left to Esther, and since she still retained her own independent income she was able to live comfortably.

There was, of course, no provision for Sabrina in Day’s will, but Esther charitably continued her £30 allowance. Writing to Edgeworth, Esther explained that Day had not been “lavish” toward Sabrina in the hope that she would “exert herself.” But Esther had no such qualms. “When I reflect that the circumstances which deprived Miss Sidney of Mr Day’s confidence, were the means of all my happiness, she appears to me doubly entitled to
my
pity & assistance,” she wrote. “You will perhaps my dear Sir think me very romantic, when I say, that I feel peculiarly interested about her from the belief that she once really loved the ever lamented Object of my fondness & veneration. Then without any fault of her own she has
been peculiarly unfortunate, for as to the state of her husbands affairs, she is certainly acquitted of all blame.”

The small band of Day’s remaining friends competed to laud his virtues. One obituary described him as “the advocate of human kind” while another sang his praises in verse: “For never poet’s hand did yet consign / So pure a wreath to Virtue’s holy shrine.” But it was not long before a contrary view surfaced. In reply to one hyperbolic eulogy, an anonymous correspondent wrote to the
General Evening Post
of London to correct “a little misinformation.” Although Day was certainly a philanthropist, the writer noted, he frequently complained that those he fed would “cut his throat the next hour” if it benefited them, he had eschewed luxury to the point where he was “generally slovenly, even to squalidness” and had said that he lived in his retreat to avoid the “stink of human society.” Furthermore, Day had forced his wife to sever all contact with her relations and sacrifice her comforts to his “unsocial spleen.” The letter was signed C. L. But it took little ingenuity for Day’s acquaintances to recognize the barbed pen of Anna Seward. Once Day’s confidante, now embittered by his treatment of Sabrina and friendship with the despised Edgeworth, Seward relished her chance for revenge. But she would keep the bulk of her powder dry for a later date.

Well aware that Day’s reputation hung in the balance, his family and friends moved quickly to counter further attacks. Indefatigable as ever, Edgeworth launched into writing a memoir. Inevitably, given his fond reverence for Day, he wanted to celebrate his friend’s charitable acts and progressive philosophy. But at the same time, being Edgeworth, he intended to paint a frank and faithful picture of his friend’s eccentricities, irregular ideas and—not least—his bizarre quest to secure marital bliss. Edgeworth planned to donate the profits of the book to Sabrina. “I propose publishing Mr Days life to be prefixed to a volume of his letters,” he told his sister Margaret, “and I believe I shall give the Sale of the Book to Mrs Bicknel.”

Edgeworth had half completed his book when he heard that Esther had asked Keir to write her husband’s life. The rival biographers exchanged notes. It was clear they took entirely different views on committing their friend to memory. Anxious to bury any mention of Day’s
wife-training project, Keir bluntly told Edgeworth it would be “impossible” to mention Sabrina in any memoir. Edgeworth promptly laid down his pen and sent his notes to Keir with the comment: “The anecdotes which I send you are very few; but they are all that I could select to suit your plan, as we differ so materially in our ideas of private biography. You believing, that nothing but what concerns the public should be published; I thinking, that to entertain mankind is no inefficacious method of instructing them.” Edgeworth added, “with the same materials you will do much higher honour to your friend’s memory.” The emphasis on “your friend” was significant; Keir’s portrait would not be somebody recognizable to Edgeworth. To Darwin, Edgeworth complained: “What can the life of a private man consist of, but of private circumstances?”

Darwin agreed. When Keir sought his advice, Darwin urged that it would be “a great omission” in a biography of Day not to relate “so singular an affair as the education of his two foundlings.” Now Keir admitted that obfuscating the truth would be problematic because “it could be easily contradicted,” but he feared it would be equally difficult “to reconcile the making mention of this affair with the delicacy of Mrs. Day and of Mrs. Bxxx.” Drafts shuttled between Keir, Darwin and Esther like an unwanted present.

When Keir’s biography was finally published in 1791 it was a dull rendition of a saintly hero who resolved from boyhood to dedicate his life to the greater good—just like Day’s fictional creation Harry Sandford. Never once deviating from these aims, Day deployed his literary talents “in the cause of humanity, freedom, and virtue” and devoted his fortune “to the service of his fellow creatures.” Although strangers sometimes found his manner and remarks severe, Keir admitted, Day was really a kindly genius who loved to jest and enjoyed the company of children.

As to Day’s relationship with two particular children, Keir described Day’s “experiment on female education” with a careful economy with the truth. Without naming Sabrina or Lucretia or mentioning the Foundling Hospital, he said that Day “received into his guardianship two female children” and proceeded to educate them “during some years” and admitted coyly that it was “not improbable” that he “might entertain some expectation
of marrying one of them.” As the poet Robert Southey would later remark, Keir’s biography “omitted all its most remarkable circumstances.”

Yet just as Day’s friends sought to protect his reputation after his death, so Day’s future biographers would almost universally endeavor to promote him as a model of virtue—an ideal man. He would be lauded for his commendable efforts to abolish slavery, to campaign for wider suffrage and to promote American independence as well as his pioneering children’s writing while his rather inconvenient wife-rearing experiment would be brushed under the carpet as merely a youthful aberration or a farcical sidetrack.

A year later, on June 12, 1792, Esther died. The medical cause of her death, at thirty-nine, was not recorded, but friends were in no doubt of the reason for her demise. “I think with you that she died of a broken heart,” wrote Stockdale to Keir while the
Gentleman’s Magazine
reported that she “fell a victim of conjugal affection.” Despite all the criticisms, the arguments and the continual program of improvement that she had endured, for Esther at least, Day had proved the perfect partner. Without him she had no reason to live.

Blithely unaware of Keir’s biography, Sabrina clung to her obscurity. She had taken up Charles Burney’s offer of a place for her eldest son, which Burney had since extended to include both boys as well as a position for Sabrina, and moved with her sons to his school in Hammersmith in 1791. As John and Henry, aged five and four, squeezed behind their desks in the crowded schoolroom, Sabrina, now thirty-four, established herself as Burney’s housekeeper and secretary. Proving herself capable and efficient, she soon became popular with generations of schoolboys as well as with all the Burney family. It was the beginning of a relationship with the extraordinary Burney clan that would change her life.

Although their father, Dr. Burney, had been born into fairly humble origins, the Burneys were a talented and engaging family who survived misfortune and scandal to achieve enduring success. Fanny braved the ignominy of writing fiction to win lasting fame for her breezy and witty novels; Charles redeemed his earlier disgrace at Cambridge by achieving scholarly
acclaim; and their half sister Sarah Harriet followed in Fanny’s footsteps and published five novels. Samuel Johnson, a family friend, enthused: “I love all of that breed, who I can be said to know, and one or two whom I hardly know I love upon credit, and love them because they love each other.” Hester Thrale, another family friend—at least at first—declared: “The Family of the Burneys are a very surprizing Set of People.”

For Sabrina the surprise was chiefly that the Burneys took her into their hearts and their homes without a moment’s hesitation over her remarkable past. Meeting Sabrina for the first time in October 1791, Fanny was delighted with the new addition to her brother’s household. “His wife was here on Sunday, with Mrs. Bicknell, whom I had never seen before,” she wrote. “I was extremely pleased with her. She is gentle & obliging, & appears to be good & amiable.” Few letters would be exchanged between Fanny and her brother from now on without fond remembrances to Sabrina; one such ended, “never forget for us Mrs. Bicknell—as we shall never forget her ourselves.”

As an integral member of the Burney household, Sabrina provided vital support not only to Charles but also to his wife. Frequently ill with a series of vague symptoms, probably connected to manic depression, Sarah was known in the family as Rosette—or more commonly “poor Rosette.” At times of severe depression Rosette sometimes insisted on living apart from Charles; at other times her behavior was evidently manic. During one such episode Charles’s sister Susan reported that Rosette was “in her best humour, wch is overpowering enough but when one considers how she
can
appear, her noise and incessant rattle is even welcome.” Susan was alarmed, however, when Charles poured a glass of medicine for Rosette, which she tasted and then flung out of the window.

Sabrina provided Rosette, who was two years her junior, with comfort and companionship during her recurrent depression, which often necessitated visits to the spas at Bath or Clifton, while at the same time giving sympathy and practical help to Charles. Since Rosette was frequently incapacitated or absent through her medical problems, Charles came to depend increasingly on Sabrina both in his business and his home; she was the pillar that propped up their difficult marriage.

When Charles moved his school and family from Hammersmith to Greenwich in 1793, Sabrina and her sons came too. That summer, Sabrina accompanied the Burneys to the spa at Clifton, but this time it was Charles’s turn to fall ill and the role of nursing him fell to Sabrina. Burney would be plagued all his life by gout and headaches, which were not helped by his anxiety over his wife and his continuing addiction to fine wines and rich foods. While Rosette returned home, obviously needing to be alone again, Sabrina tended Charles for the ensuing month. When Sarah Harriet called on Charles in August, she came as “a sort of
assistant-nurse
to Mrs Bicknel” who had been “confined to the closest attention to him,” she wrote. By this point, Rosette was now “very ill” in Greenwich, “in her old way.” Anxious about her brother, Fanny begged him to ask Sabrina to write her a few lines and added: “I shall always love Mrs. Bicknel for the tender care she has shewn upon this occasion. Pray remember me to her very kindly.”

Another time, when Rosette’s problems recurred, it was Charles and his son who were dispatched to Bath while Sabrina stayed behind to look after Rosette and manage school business. In a postscript on a letter to Rosette, Charles asked Sabrina to forward all letters “which appear to be Bills” to his hotel. It was signed “your affectionate friend, C Burney.”