How to Create the Perfect Wife (58 page)

239
   
a small mention in the London newspapers: Whitehall Evening Post,
April 3, 1787;
European Magazine,
April 1787, p. 296.

239
   
Bicknell was buried in the family vault:
Burial register, St. Dunstan-in-the-West, April 2, 1787, LMA.

239
   
Bicknell had left no will:
No will has been discovered. It is likely he did not feel the need to write one since he was in such dire financial straits.

239
   
“She had absolutely nothing”:
Burney, French Exercise Book (Berg).

240
   
“To have been more bounteous”:
Seward, p. 38.

240
   
This sum was matched by Edgeworth:
RLE to Sabrina Bicknell, August 28, 1808, BL Add. MS 70949 f. 280; Esther Day to RLE, January 21, 1790, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470.

240
   
Mrs. Bicknell “always refused to love” her:
Burney, French Exercise Book (Berg).

241
   
Burney had been admitted to Cambridge at nineteen:
Venn, J. A.,
Alumni Canta-brigienses,
part II, 1752–1900 (Cambridge, 1953), p. 459;Troide, Lars, “Burney, Charles (1757–1817),”
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(Oxford, 2004) online edn., accessed April 14, 2008; Scholes, Percy A.,
The Great Dr. Burney
(Oxford, London, New York, Toronto, 1948), pp. 344–48. Hester Thrale later asked Burney Senior whether a scene from his daughter’s novel
Evelina,
describing an attempted suicide, had been “founded on fact.” The doctor had “changed Colour” at the assertion. Thrale, Hester Lynch,
Thraliana: the diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale (later Mrs Piozzi) 1776–1809,
ed. Balderston, Katherine C. (Oxford, 1942), vol. 1, p. 360.

241
   
Her reply to Burney:
Sabrina Bicknell to Charles Burney, May 16, 1787, Burney Family Collection, The James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

242
   
“more graceful, more attractive, much more eloquent than ever”:
AS to Sophia Weston, February 4, 1789; and AS to George Hardinge, October 19, 1788, November 19, 1788, and March 5, 1789, Seward (1811), vol. 2, pp. 234, 176, 195 and 250. The story of Seward’s prompting to raise funds through Hardinge is told through the above letters.

243
   
He grumbled incessantly to Edgeworth:
TD to unknown correspondent (part of letter), n.d. (after 1782), BL Add. MS 70949, ff. 275–78; TD to Mary Evans, July 29, 1787, BL Add. MS 52540, ff. 25–28; and TD to MB, June 8, 1785, Soho Archives, Boulton Papers MS 3782/12/115.

243
   
Day even lashed out at his publisher, John Stockdale:
TD to John Stockdale, July 28, 1789, cited in Stockdale (2005), pp. 205–6; Keir to TD, September 29, 1789, in Moilliet, A., p. 100.

243
   
he was thrown from his horse and killed:
Keir, pp. 97–98; Edgeworth, RL and M, vol. 2, pp. 103–5.

243
   
she was “overwhelmed” by the “weight of sorrow”:
Esther Day to RLE, January 21, 1790, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470.

244
   
According to one report Esther never again enjoyed:
Death notice of Esther Day,
Gentleman’s Magazine,
1792, p. 581; Seward (1804), pp. 35–36. It was not, in fact, true that Esther never left her house again; she met with the Edgeworths in later years.

244
   
“He was dear to me by many names”:
ED to Robert Darwin, in Darwin, p. 81.

244
   
When Edgeworth received the news:
Edgeworth, RL and M, vol. 2, pp. 103–5. Elizabeth Edgeworth was on the point of giving birth to RLE’s twelfth child. They named the baby Thomas Day Edgeworth.

244
   
the only will that could be found:
Notes by Milnes Lowndes on finding Day’s will, ERO, D/DBa L96/10. JB’s brother, Charles Bicknell, was also involved in looking for Day’s will, presumably as TD’s lawyer.

244
   
Esther explained that Day had not been “lavish”:
Esther Day to RLE, January 21, 1790, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/3.

245
   
One obituary described him as “the advocate of human kind”: Gentleman’s Magazine, 1789,
p. 958.

245
   
an anonymous correspondent wrote to the
General Evening Post: Anon (AS) to the Editor of the
General Evening Post,
October 11, 1789. The letter is given in full in Seward’s collected letters so presumably it was found among her papers after her death. Seward (1811), vol. 2, pp. 329–31.

245
   
“I propose publishing Mr Days life”:
RLE to Margaret Ruxton, n.d. (1789), Edgeworth Papers, MS 10166/65.

245
   
The rival biographers exchanged notes:
RLE to ED, 1790, in Edgeworth, RL and M, vol. 2, pp. 133; RLE to JK, January 6, 1790, and March 31, 1790, and RLE to Esther Day, December 18, 1790, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/1, 5 and 8.

246
   
“a great omission” in a biography of Day:
JK to RLE, March 31, 1790, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/5 [citing Darwin’s view]; JK to ED, March 15, 1790, in Moilliet, A., pp. 108–9.

246
   
Keir admitted that obfuscating the truth:
Notes on manuscript, ERO, D/DBa F68/4. Esther further amended Keir’s draft to remove a reference to “one pupil”—Lucretia—having married “without consulting her protector” and to Bicknell having been “entrusted from the beginning with the secret of the intention & execution of the experiment on female education.” Any mention of a secret plan would have indicated that Day had fully intended to marry one of the girls.

247
   
As the poet Robert Southey would later remark:
Rowland, p. x.

247
   
“I think with you that she died of a broken heart”:
John Stockdale to JK, 15 June 1792, cited in Moilliet, A., p. 115;
Gentleman’s Magazine,
June 12, 1792, p. 581.

248
   
“I love all of that breed”:
Samuel Johnson to Hester Thrale, November 14, 1781, in Johnson, vol. 3, p. 373; Hester Thrale cited in Burney, Charles,
The Letters of Dr. Charles Burney,
ed. Ribeiro, Alvaro (Oxford, 1991), vol. 1, p. xxv. General background on Fanny Burney and the Burney family is from Harman, Claire,
Fanny Burney, a biography
(London, 2000) and Chisholm, Kate,
Fanny Burney, her life
(London, 1999).

248
   
“His wife was here on Sunday, with Mrs. Bicknell”:
FB to Charlotte Ann Francis (her sister; later Broome), October 10, 1791, in Burney, vol. 1, p. 70. The postscript is in FB to CB, June 16, 1803, in Burney, vol. 6, p. 474.

248
   
Frequently ill with a series of vague symptoms:
For references to Rosette’s illness see Burney, vol. 7, p. 52n; vol. 1, pp. 81–82 and 82n; and vol. 2, pp. 378–79.

249
   
When Sarah Harriet called on Charles:
Sarah Harriet Burney to Mary Young, August 2–4, 1793, in Burney, SH, pp. 9–10.

249
   
“I shall always love Mrs. Bicknel”:
FB to CB, August 8, 1793 in Burney, vol. 2, p. 182.

249
   
In a postscript on a letter to Rosette:
Charles Parr Burney to Rosette Burney with postscript from CB to Sabrina, January 17, 1799, Burney Family Collection, The James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, OSB MSS 3, box 7.

249
   
When the artist Joseph Farington came for dinner:
Farington, vol. 6, p. 2054.

250
   
“living all but openly with a woman in his own
house”: Hester Lynch Piozzi (née Thrale) to John Salusbury Piozzi Salusbury (her stepson), July 27, 1810, in Piozzi, vol. 4, pp. 296 and 298n. Mrs. Piozzi wrongly believed that CB was editor of the
European Magazine,
which had published gossip about her. She also described CB as “a habitual Drunkard.” The editors of her letters erroneously suggest that Sabrina went to live with CB and Rosette after his retirement to Deptford rectory in 1813. She remained at the Burney School.

250
   
“They understood between them very well”:
Burney, French Exercise Book (Berg).

250
   
A sleepy town beside the Thames:
Background on Greenwich history is from Platts, Beryl,
A History of Greenwich
(London, 1986); Lysons, Daniel,
The Environs of London
(London, 1792); Aslet, Clive,
The Story of Greenwich
(London, 1999); Silvester-Carr, Denise,
Greenwich: a history and celebration of the town
(Salisbury, 2005).

250
   
Situated in a redbrick mansion:
Background information on the Burney School is from various documents in the Burney School Folder at Greenwich Heritage Centre. The fees are mentioned in a letter from James Watt to James Davies Kington, October 17, 1811, copy GHC. The reference to birch rods is from Farington, vol. 3, p. 35n.

251
   
On the ground floor and upper levels:
Details of the house are from descriptions by Fanny Anne Wood, CB’s granddaughter, and an auction catalog of 1839 before the house was demolished. The latter is within an album of Greenwich archive material held in the British Library (Rare Books). The catalog was available from John Laurens Bicknell, among others. Miscellaneous papers relating to Greenwich, BL; Wood, p. 61.

251
   
Bills that survive for two pupils:
CB to Robert Gray, December 28, 1805, in George IV,
The Correspondence of George, Prince of Wales, 1770–1812,
ed. As-pinall, A. (8 vols., London, 1970), vol. 5, pp. 285–87. The two boys were orphans whose tuition was paid by the Prince of Wales, the future King George IV.

251
   
she complained that she could not take a day off:
Sabrina Bicknell to Frances Edgeworth, June 9, 1813 and same to Maria Edgeworth, October 29, 1817, Edgeworth Papers, MS 22470/9 and 15.

252
   
she should translate from French a new book:
Edgeworth, RL and M, vol. 2, pp. 341–43. The book was
Adèle et Théodore, ou les Lettres sur l’Éducation,
by Madame de Genlis. Genlis’s book had been acclaimed as a more moderate version of Rousseau’s educational ideas. The poem ‘Advice to a Lady” is by George, Lord Lyttelton. See Lyttelton, George,
The Poetical Works of George Lord Lyttelton
(London, 1801), pp. 56–62.