How to Create the Perfect Wife (38 page)

Although they were still young and in relatively good health, the Days remained childless. But even though they would never have children of their own, Thomas Day now applied himself diligently to educating the children
of the nation. Even though he had banned Esther from writing poetry, he would achieve lasting fame as a writer of children’s books. And it was Edgeworth, the prime mover as ever, who had revived Day’s interest in education.

Edgeworth remained convinced that children’s education needed radical reform even though he acknowledged that his efforts to apply Rousseau’s theories to Dick had proved disastrous. After suffering miserably in boarding school, Dick had joined the merchant navy at the age of fifteen, but finding naval discipline no less severe, he deserted ship in India in 1783 and returned to England in disgrace. Unreliable and lazy—a child who never grew up—Dick would become permanently estranged from his father, who cut his eldest son out of his will apart from a nominal sum. He would eventually settle in America, where he married and had children, but lived a life of dissipation and died young in 1796, aged only thirty-two. His father shed few tears. Ultimately Dick would provide Jane Austen with the model for the “very troublesome, hopeless son,” Dick Musgrove, “who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead” in her novel
Persuasion.

Determined not to spoil his other children as he had spoiled Dick, Edgeworth had returned to Ireland with Elizabeth in 1782 and dedicated himself to supervising his young family’s upbringing. Although he now insisted that his children respond to discipline and learn elementary skills like reading and writing in formal lessons, he remained faithful to the Rousseau principle that children learn best through experiment and discovery. Whether he was building a wall or attempting an explosive experiment, Edgeworth gathered his growing brood to watch and answer questions appropriate to their age. “He would sit quietly while a child was thinking of the answer to a question, without interrupting, or suffering it to be interrupted, and would let the pupil touch and quit the point repeatedly,” wrote Maria, his eldest daughter. When the shuffling bystanders had given up hope of a response, their father’s patience was rewarded “with a perfectly satisfactory answer,” and the pupil would glow with pride at Edgeworth’s praise.

As Maria grew older, she helped her father to educate the younger children, and they would later jointly write an education manual,
Practical Education,
setting down the approach they had found most successful. An immediate best seller when it was published in 1798, the book would be acclaimed as one of the most significant works on education ever. Child-centered and down-to-earth, the book recommends an ideal learning environment based in the family home, with a playroom containing educational toys, models, books, maps and scientific apparatus. The book devotes the first thirty-five pages to the importance of toys to children’s development and emphasizes that a child much prefers a simple wooden cart “to carry weeds, earth, and stones, up and down hill” to the finest model coach or dolls’ house.

As part of his lifelong interest in education, Edgeworth had written some short stories for children in 1778 with his then wife Honora when she could not find any books to teach her youngest to read. He had planned to publish a series of books for children and had the first in the collection, titled
Harry and Lucy,
printed privately, in Lichfield in 1779. Inspired by this venture, Day had offered to contribute a story. When Honora died two years later, the grief-stricken Edgeworth abandoned the project, but Day continued to write. Before long, his short story had grown into a full-length book, which Day called
The History of Sandford and Merton
,
A Work Intended for the Use of Children.
It was published in three volumes, the first in 1783, the next in 1786 and the last in 1789. The Edgeworths were among the first to write specifically for and about children, but it was Day who won lasting fame for his children’s book.

Written in simple words with plentiful dialogue,
Sandford and Merton
tells the story of two boys, Tommy Merton, the pampered son of a rich plantation owner who lives a life of indolence and selfishness, and Harry Sandford, the honest son of a poor farmer who works hard, treats animals and fellow humans with kindness and enjoys a simple life. A local clergyman, Mr. Barlow, is given the role of teaching the two boys—much in the way that Day had undertaken the task of teaching two girls though with rather better results. With Barlow as the boys’ wise mentor and Harry as the model pupil, Tommy gradually sees the error of his ways and evolves into a virtuous, generous and plain-living gentleman. During their adventures, the boys meet a variety of characters who treat them to a string of fables and cautionary tales, drawn from classical stories and other sources,
which illustrate the path to virtue, as well as offering them lessons on such skills as making bread, building a house and using magnets. With its firm moral stance and sentimental tales, the book combined Day’s belief in the traditional values of industry, stoicism and honesty with his attachment to the idea of sensibility.

Sandford and Merton
became an immediate success and would remain one of the best-selling and best-loved children’s books for more than a century. Hundreds of thousands of boys—and girls—throughout the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth would be captivated by Day’s hero Harry and dream of meeting its celebrated author. Once, when Day visited the Midlands, he was mobbed by young readers who came to gawp at the writer of their favorite book. Tommy and Harry’s adventures would be eagerly consumed in turn by writers from Robert Southey and Leigh Hunt to Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde and P. G. Wodehouse. Leigh Hunt declared the book “a production that I well remember, and shall ever be grateful to” while Southey insisted that it should be read by all “with profit and pleasure.”

Standing on the bookshelves of almost every Victorian nursery, Day’s children’s novel would be reprinted 140 times by 1870, with translations in French and German; a new edition was published as recently as 2009. The book was not only one of the first aimed at children, it launched an entire new genre in adventure books for boys that helped to stiffen British resolve in the face of danger whether in the playground or on the battlefield.

Inevitably the popularity of
Sandford and Merton
would eventually wane. Dickens would lead the way with a vociferous attack in 1869 on the story that had “cast its gloom over my childhood.” Three years later, schoolboys everywhere could guffaw in relief at a spoof version of the book,
The New Sandford and Merton,
although Day’s novel would continue to hold sway for several more decades before it was declared well and truly out of date and out of step.

It was a remarkable achievement. In his book, Day had created two boys who exactly fitted the mold he had so long aimed to fill. And although the book focuses almost solely on the education of boys, at one point Day even introduces a perfect girl, Sukey Simmons, who befriends Harry. Orphaned
in childhood, Sukey has been raised by her uncle, just like Esther, but in a decidedly Rousseauvian fashion. While young, Sukey was woken by candlelight in winter, plunged into cold baths and made to ride or walk dozens of miles daily but had also been taught to read “the best authors” in English and a few in French. Through this “robust and hardy” education Sukey acquired “an excellent character” in Day’s words. Even if Day had failed to educate his two female pupils to adopt his singular ideas, in fiction he would finally fashion the children of his dreams. Furthermore, Day’s enduring literary success would ensure that his views on innocent virtue and stoical courage would be inculcated in innumerable boys and girls throughout the nineteenth century.

Busy educating the nation’s children, Day gave little thought to his early educational experiment. If he did, according to Keir, he would now scoff at his earlier naïveté in pursuing “schemes, which, on account of the im-practicality of their execution, were sometimes the subject of his own pleasantry in his maturer age.” In other words, Sabrina’s ordeal was now the subject of a joke. But when Edgeworth wrote to tell him that he was thinking of adopting a peasant boy in order to educate him as a gentleman in a bizarre imitation of Day’s attempt to educate Sabrina, Day was aghast at the idea and strenuously warned Edgeworth against the notion.

Plainly speaking with bitterness born of his own experience, Day protested: “If we chuse to make a lady out of what fortune has intended for a serving wench, or a gentleman out of the materials of a blacksmith, we certainly have a very good right.” But the child would grow up to “consider you as doomed to supply all its wants,” and Edgeworth would have to “maintain for a gentleman him whom you have taken as a beggar.” With an eye to his future reputation Day added gravely: “Or will you much relish, towards the decline of your life, the having manifestoes to publish about your own conduct, and to apologise to your fellow-creatures for not being a dupe, or an idiot?”‘ Wisely, Edgeworth dropped the scheme and concentrated on educating his own family.

But one person at least had not given up on Sabrina.

TEN

VIRGINIA, BELINDA AND MARY

  
Five Ways, Birmingham, May 1783
  

F
ar from the dizzying world of politics and publishing, Sabrina had grown into her twenties with only an occasional cold letter and her yearly £50 allowance from Day. Since her final rejection by him in 1775, she had spent eight years living in anonymous boardinghouses and family homes across the Midlands. For a while, after moving from the lodging house in Birmingham where Day had first placed her, she obtained work as a lady’s companion in Newport in Shropshire. For an educated, single woman of slender means, becoming a companion to a wealthy woman or a governess to a well-to-do family were the only two respectable options. Part-chaperone and part-maid, the job of lady’s companion meant being at the command of a mistress day and night. In theory this was a step up from working as a domestic servant; in practice it was often harder work than being the lowliest maid.

By 1780 this unenviable position had come to an end, and Sabrina had moved back to the outskirts of Birmingham. At that point Day had felt the need to write a will, which was almost entirely devoted to exonerating himself from any additional responsibility for his former pupil. Although he made sure to leave ample security for his mother, stepfather and Esther
after his death, Day stipulated that “Sabrina Sidney an Orphan now living near Birmingham” should continue to receive her £50 allowance only so long as she remained single. If she married she would receive the £500 dowry Day had promised back in 1769, but only on the condition that the money “be accepted by her as a perfect acquittal of every promise engagement or contract which I have made with her or on her behalf.” Day appointed his trusty friend Keir to ensure his orders regarding Sabrina would be carried out. But even if Day could cut Sabrina out of any inheritance, he could not cut her out of his life.

Charming and graceful with an easy manner and a ready rapport, Sabrina had continued to visit old friends in old haunts and attract new admirers in new places. “Wherever she resided, wherever she paid visits, she secured to herself friends,” wrote Anna Seward. She often stayed with the Darwins on visits to Lichfield—at least until Darwin moved to Derby after marrying a second time in 1781—and she was a favorite guest with the Savilles too. In August 1780, she had been invited to the baptism of John Saville’s grandson, the first child of his daughter, Sabrina’s friend, now married as Eliza Smith. “We are unable to fix the time till Sabrina comes,” Saville told a friend. “She is expected in a few days.” Judging from the need to await her arrival, Sabrina was probably the baby’s godmother; the baptism duly took place on August 25 when the baby was named Saville Smith.

With all traces of Sabrina’s foundling past forgotten or obscured, she faced the world as a self-assured woman of independent means. According to Seward, “she passed the dangerous interval between sixteen and twenty-five without one reflection upon her conduct, one stain upon her discretion.” Yet although Day was at pains to keep her out of his sight he maintained a hold on her life—and her marital fortunes. When in her early twenties Sabrina received a marriage proposal from an eligible young suitor she made the mistake of seeking Day’s advice.