How to Create the Perfect Wife (24 page)

As master of ceremonies Edgeworth was in his element. Not only was there nothing he loved better than a party, he was also a nimble dancer and a sprightly athlete. He had drawn swooning debutantes to admire his dancing skills as a student on vacations in Bath; years later at the age of sixty he would still be able to jump clear over a dining table. And, of course, he had good reason for high spirits. For since Day had been rejected by Honora, Edgeworth felt that “the restraint, that had acted long and steadily upon my feelings, was now removed.” He could admire the woman of his fantasies with “unabated ardour”—although again he was forgetting the rather more awkward restraint of his marriage. Nonetheless, as the shadows lengthened at the end of a glorious day, it was easy
to understand Edgeworth’s pleasure in watching his closest friends enjoy “a summer’s evening [that] was spent with as much innocent cheerfulness, as any evening I can remember.”

It was as the air of a country dance faded away that Major Sneyd strode up to inspect the revels with his second youngest daughter Elizabeth on his arm. Pretty, lively and lighthearted, with large brown eyes, a rosy complexion and a ready laugh, Elizabeth presented a charming contrast to her elegant and reserved older sister Honora. In effect, she was Lucretia to Honora’s Sabrina. As all eyes turned to survey the newcomer, stepping out in Lichfield for the first time, Honora quickly took her arm and steered her toward Edgeworth. Concerned that Elizabeth would become prey to unwanted attentions, Honora asked Edgeworth to partner her sister for the first dance.

Observers were divided as to which of the two sisters was the more desirable, Edgeworth later noted—though, of course, there was no doubt in his mind. Elizabeth was better educated, more knowledgeable, more sophisticated, more vivacious and wittier than her older sister and yet—Edgeworth observed as he spun her around the dance area—she was less graceful, less skilled at dancing, and did not possess the strength or agility of mind that he so valued in his adored Honora. Anna Seward naturally agreed. Elizabeth was “very pretty, very sprightly, very artless, very engaging,” she admitted, yet “countless degrees inferior to the endowed and adorned Honora.” If Edgeworth and Seward were not overly impressed then somebody else certainly was. Watching the dancers gloomily from the wings Thomas Day suddenly took notice of the attractive newcomer with the charming smile.

As his eyes followed Elizabeth being spun expertly across the grass by his friend Edgeworth, Day noted with approval that she tended rather to plumpness and danced a little clumsily. Quickly rousing himself to make the newcomer’s acquaintance, he discovered to his delight that Elizabeth listened meekly when he expounded his views and concurred politely when he described his more outlandish ideas. For all her fashionable attire and sophisticated education, Elizabeth seemed admirably impressed by Day’s scorn for money and titles and his philanthropic ideals. Whoever
won the silver arrow in the archery contest that day went unrecorded, but Cupid’s arrow had certainly found its mark.

Having grown up with cousins, in a well-connected family living in Shrewsbury, Elizabeth—or Bessy, as she was known—had undergone a distinctly more worldly upbringing than her sister Honora. Elizabeth had enjoyed the typical education of a country gentleman’s daughter, endowing her with the refined manners and courteous conversation that were common currency in upper-class salons. As she grew older, Elizabeth had spent winter seasons in London and Bath, mixing in elite social circles, and summer vacations hobnobbing with the Shropshire gentry. Well dressed, well mannered and well bred, she had been formally presented at the London assemblies that served as marriage markets for single girls and eligible bachelors. In short, Elizabeth was the absolute opposite of the simple, natural, peasant girl of Day’s fantasies.

Yet regardless of her apparent unsuitability for the vacant position in his life, over the next few weeks, Thomas Day courted Elizabeth Sneyd with a zeal that astounded his friends. During the long summer days and fine evenings, the pair conversed intently on walks around The Close and sat together at supper parties on the palace terrace. Anna Seward captured one such gathering in late July when the “dear Quartetto” of Darwin, Edgeworth, Saville and Day entertained their female admirers. “Our rambles upon the Terrace have been
very
animated these last 7 or 8 evenings,” she told a friend, with “Mr Edgeworth enlivening us by a wit extensive as the light of the Sun . . . Doctor Darwin laughing with us . . . I1 Penseroso Saville sighing & singing to us” and, last but not least, “Mr Day
improving
our minds while he delights our imagination.”

Watching his friend fall under Elizabeth’s spell with astonishing speed, a dumbfounded Edgeworth reported, “Everybody perceived, that Miss Elizabeth Sneyd had made a greater impression in three weeks upon Mr. Day, than her superior sister had made in twelve months.” Day was plainly captivated. Not only did Elizabeth listen demurely when he launched into one of his long lectures, she was entranced by his novel ideas on education, philanthropy and even marriage.

Far from being shocked when Day described his quest to find a perfect wife and his sorry efforts to train a young orphan for this role, Elizabeth was fascinated by the tortured poet who “appeared to her young mind the most extraordinary and romantic person in the world,” according to Edgeworth. She was even enthralled by Day’s vision of living apart from society with a devoted wife so much in love that “the rest of the world vanished, and lovers became all in all to each other,” wrote Edgeworth. Elizabeth began to fancy that “if such a man loved her with truth and violence,” she would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to fit that role. Of course, if she believed that Day thought love belonged in marriage, she had obviously not been listening quite attentively enough. Buoyed along by this rapidly escalating romance in the sultry summer days, within weeks of their first meeting Day asked Elizabeth to marry him. At last, he was sure, he had found a woman ideally suited to become his wife. It was his third marriage proposal in three years, not including his plans for Sabrina.

There was only one obstacle to a potentially perfect match. Surveying her gauche, unkempt and ill-dressed suitor with a well-practiced eye, Elizabeth replied that she would consent to marry Day if he would just spruce up his appearance and polish his manners. Although she assured him that she considered such airs and graces to be just as frivolous and ridiculous as he did, she argued coyly that Day could not in all fairness criticize the typical accomplishments of a refined gentleman unless he could prove that he was capable of acquiring them for himself.

Besotted by his new love and persuaded by her perverse logic, Day now thought that perhaps it was his lack of elegance and social graces that had led first Margaret Edgeworth and then Honora to reject him. For, obviously, it could hardly be his personality or his singular outlook on life. And so he agreed that he would dedicate himself for the next year or so to learning the requisite talents of a polite gentleman. Just as Day had tried to mould Sabrina to fit his vision of pastoral simplicity, now he submitted to being groomed to suit his prospective spouse’s idea of fashionable urbane manhood.

In the same way that artists, writers and philosophers hotly debated their preferred model of the perfect eighteenth-century woman, so opinion
leaders agonized over the ideal Georgian gentleman. All agreed that the swaggering, staggering, full-blooded libertine of the seventeenth century had had his day just as surely as had the formal courtly behavior expected of high-ranking men in Restoration Britain. At the dawn of the eighteenth century, periodicals like
The Spectator
and
The Tatler
led the way in calling for changes in male behavior and appearance to suit the rational, reasonable, egalitarian modern age. Just as advances in science and technology were expected to improve the lot of society, so the Enlightenment demanded a more civilized man.

Equally at ease in town or country, in male or mixed company, with dukes and duchesses or dairy maids and drovers, this new breed of “polite gentleman” combined inner virtues of honesty, altruism and benevolence with outward elegance and gentility. But as the piles of articles, guide books and sermons devoted to outlining acceptable behavior might suggest, achieving this ideal was easier said than done. For although the emphasis was placed on demonstrating a more natural and sincere style of behavior, in practice this meant having to follow a fiendishly complex code of conduct.

In essence, the perfect Georgian man was expected to be well read without parading his knowledge, benevolent without exhibiting his generosity and courteous without being showy, and all his outward behavior—whether in dress, movement or conversation—should reflect this modest and discreet persona. Elaborate rules governed every aspect of public conduct, whether at the dinner table, on the dance floor, in the drawing room or in the street, in order to achieve this apparently effortless elegance. In conversation, the polite man should be witty and inclusive, should never dispute another’s viewpoint and should certainly never introduce lewd or offensive topics. In dress, the polite man should be neat, clean and elegant without excessive adornment or fuss in order to obtain the desired medium “between a Fop and a Sloven.”

Negotiating this tricky tightrope walk usually required years of study. Georgian boys from well-heeled families learned the basics of gentlemanly conduct in school, supplemented their lessons by reading essays and conduct books and smoothed off any rough edges by taking dancing lessons. Typical conduct guides described how to stand (with feet turned out and
one hand inside the waistcoat), to bow (with hat in hand, one knee bent and eyes downcast) and to walk (with head high and arms free) along with helpful pictures of the ideal poses, as well as detailed instructions on table manners and how to dance the minuet. Dance masters not only taught young men the steps to fashionable ballroom routines but also how to walk, stand, sit and bow with grace and poise. “It is the graceful Motion of the Body in Walking, reaching out the Hand, Bowing, or performing other common Actions of Life, in a free, easy, and genteel Manner, that distinguishes the well bred Person from the Clown,” one dance tutor explained.

Inevitably there were men who openly flouted these written and unwritten rules. At one extreme groups like the “macaronis” flaunted foppish manners and dress. Others, inspired by Rousseau, argued that men should express their natural feelings with open displays of emotion even to the point of trembling and weeping. But as this “culture of sensibility” gathered pace, it too attracted critics who ridiculed men for bursting into tears at the sight of a limping dog.

By the second half of the eighteenth century the debate over proper manliness had reached a crescendo with writers falling over each other to celebrate or satirize “sentimental” heroes in tear-jerking novels. As novelists took their art to absurd levels, readers were often unsure whether to laugh or cry. Laurence Sterne had fun depicting a French peasant who is inconsolable over the death of his donkey in
A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy
in 1768. The Scottish writer Henry Mackenzie enjoyed a similar romp through the emotions in his 1771 novel
The Man of Feeling
in which his luckless hero Harley weeps repeatedly at his endless misfortunes. But the Irish writer Henry Brooke took the sentimental novel to new levels in
The Fool of Quality
, which crammed as many affecting scenes and melancholy mishaps as humanly possible into five volumes published between 1765 and 1770. Brooke’s odyssey tells the story of Henry Clinton, the younger son of an earl, who is banished to live among peasants for a natural education à la Rousseau. Rejecting fashionable fripperies and false etiquette he wins hearts and minds through a series of selfless acts and heroic deeds. It was Day’s favorite novel.

Most of Day’s friends readily accepted his argument that he despised artificial rules of etiquette and contrived appearances in favor of finer feelings.
But this did not wash with Elizabeth Sneyd. She might be willing to support Day’s liberal views and subscribe to the idea of his romantic retreat, but she did not want to be seen on the arm of a dirty and disheveled misfit who stumbled clumsily into drawing rooms, slurped from his soup bowl at the dinner table and offended polite conversation. And so to satisfy his new fiancée Day agreed to return to France, the acknowledged finishing school for the fashionable man about town, to learn the airs and graces he so patently lacked. Elizabeth, however, was not to escape without some sacrifice herself. As her part of the bargain, she solemnly promised not to visit the heinous capitals of fashion, London and Bath, or indulge in any other society events and to apply herself to a course of reading prescribed by Day.

Leaving Elizabeth to her books and her thoughts, Day left Lichfield on August 17, 1771—exactly two years after he had removed Sabrina from the Foundling Hospital—and set sail for France with his trusty companion Edgeworth. Helplessly in love with Honora, Edgeworth had convinced himself that a long holiday abroad was the only way to subdue his passion. Rather than be tempted into an illicit liaison that would subject Honora to scandal and immerse his already faltering marriage in further turmoil, he chose to flee. He had become “insensibly entangled” once before—the outcome then had been Dick and an unhappy marriage—and he could not risk it happening again.

In a snatched conversation before he left, Edgeworth urged Honora to marry even if she could not obtain her perfect husband. Sending his disgruntled wife back to live with her parents and sisters at Black Bourton, Edgeworth took with him the unruly Dick, now seven, and an English tutor, in order to continue the boy’s progressive education. And arriving in Paris for a brief stopover, the travelers decided to call on their idol Rousseau.

Having returned to Paris the previous year, in defiance of his exile for the banned books
Émile
and
The Social Contract,
Rousseau had gradually assimilated himself back into French intellectual society. Now fifty-nine, he lived quietly and simply in a few cramped rooms on the fifth floor of an apartment building in an unfashionable quarter of the city near the Louvre with his lifelong companion, Thérèse Levasseur. Although he was widely
revered across Europe and America for his radical views, Rousseau scratched out a meager living by copying music and accepted few visitors while he worked on finishing his
Confessions.