How to Create the Perfect Wife (40 page)

Plainly anxious to absolve himself from any suggestion of immorality or mistreatment, Day asked Sabrina now to affirm his testimony of events in a declaration to Keir as an “irrefragable memorial” of his conduct “not to be disputed or set aside hereafter.” Day sent his letter in an unsealed wrapper to Keir with the clear intention that he should read it too. It was plain that Day had come under attack for his treatment of Sabrina—certainly by Esther in their quarrels and most probably by Edgeworth too—from his plea to Sabrina that if she made a statement to Keir “I may at least have a friend in the world who understands the series of my behaviour towards you, & one person who will not abuse me for a conduct, the generosity & disinteredness of which, I believe few will imitate.”

As to her proposal to marry Bicknell, Day sniffily pointed out that as Sabrina had asked for his consent rather than “my advice or opinion,” she had obviously already made up her mind. Since Bicknell was “a man of undoubted sense and an affectionate disposition,” she should count herself lucky that he “chuses you, from an hundred others your superior.” But from the moment she married, Day stressed, she would be dependent solely on her husband. This letter, he told her, would be their last communication. He wished her “from the bottom of my soul every degree of good & happiness which the frail condition of human life admits.” And with those final words, and an almost audible sigh of relief, Day said goodbye to his protégée forever.

If Sabrina had wanted more affectionate wishes and enduring concern she was sorely disappointed. When she had had the chance she had decided not to marry him; whether by defying his instructions or by running away, she had rejected Day. Now that she had chosen another man he felt entirely within his rights to cast her off forever; there was no possibility of friendship or any other connection. He had taken her into his life when she was just twelve and had no say in the matter; now that she was twenty-six he could drop her without a backward glance.

The following year, on April 16, 1784, Sabrina walked up the aisle of St. Philip’s Church in Birmingham and married John Bicknell. Bicknell’s sister
Catherine and Day’s advocate Keir were the witnesses. In a small but significant assertion of her past identity and independence from Day, she signed her name in the register as Anna Sabrina Sidney. And then she adopted her fourth and final name: Sabrina Bicknell.

On the very same day, Day signed a bond to pay Bicknell the £500 dowry—worth more than £60,000 in today’s terms—which he had promised to Sabrina; under Georgian law this immediately transferred to her husband. Financed by this windfall, the newlyweds moved to Shenfield, a village in Essex that was fast developing as a handy country base for professional men with jobs in the city. And contrary to Edgeworth’s worries and Seward’s insinuations, the marriage proved both companionable and fruitful. In eighteenth-century terms, for most married people, that was perfection indeed.

Sabrina gave birth to two sons within the next three years. The eldest, born in late 1785 or early 1786, was baptized John Laurens Bicknell, in memory of Bicknell’s recently killed American friend. The second, born on December 18, 1786, was baptized Henry Edgeworth Bicknell, the middle name coming from Sabrina’s lifelong friend and supporter. There was no such homage to Day. Despite Day’s conviction that Sabrina fell short of matrimonial ideals, Sabrina made “an excellent wife,” in Edgeworth’s view, while Seward described her as “one of the most affectionate, as well as the best of wives.”

Writing regularly to Edgeworth in Ireland, Bicknell described his life with Sabrina and the little changes in their sons, “with all the delight of the most happy husband and father.” And even if Sabrina had married Bicknell out of prudence, she seemed contented too. One of her friends later said she “could hardly have been happier with the man of her dreams—a husband who idolised her” and brought her “joy and delight”; or at least that was the view Sabrina wanted to pass on to her sons.

At first Bicknell prospered in his career; marriage seemed to suit him. Applying himself to his legal work with renewed zeal, he was appointed a King’s Counsel, one of the most senior members of the bar. When Boswell visited the King’s Bench in 1786, he was introduced to “Counsellor Bicknell” by their mutual friend, William Seward. At the same time Bicknell shared his literary interests with Sabrina. They were both subscribers
to the first collection of poems published in 1786 by Helen Maria Williams, a fellow campaigner against slavery.

Yet the responsibilities of marriage and late fatherhood did little to temper Bicknell’s youthful excesses. Instead of saving money toward his sons’ future, Bicknell spent most of what he earned on fine living and gambled away the rest at the card table. His health was no better than his luck. Sabrina’s perfect marriage—or the closest she would ever get to it—was short-lived.

Just as they were coming up to their third wedding anniversary, Bicknell suffered another stroke, and a few weeks later, on March 27, 1787, he died. His death warranted only a small mention in the London newspapers in which he was finally given credit for cowriting
The Dying Negro
as well as being named the chief author of the less honorable
Musical Travels
under the pseudonym Joel Collier. Six days later, on April 2, 1787, Bicknell was buried in the family vault of St. Dunstan-in-the-West in Fleet Street, just a few hundred yards from Middle Temple and his family home in Chancery Lane.

After less than three years of married life Sabrina was alone again—only now she had no income and two small children to bring up on her own. Henry was three months old while John was barely one. Sabrina was unwell herself, perhaps as a result of giving birth to Henry or from the shock of her husband’s death. But worse was still to come. Bicknell had left no will. Although this might seem an odd omission for a veteran lawyer, Bicknell had presumably felt there was no need to write a will, since he had nothing to bequeath except debts. He had left Sabrina penniless—nothing remained of his legal earnings or the £500 she had brought to the marriage—and there were several creditors demanding payment. Bicknell had squandered a fortune in less than three years. The commissioner of bankrupts was effectively bankrupt.

A widow at the age of thirty, with two infants and no means of support, Sabrina was entirely dependent on the kindness of friends and strangers. “She had absolutely nothing,” said one acquaintance. It was in just such circumstances that women had given up their children to the Foundling Hospital, but since the charity had long since ceased to accept orphans, only the parish workhouse remained as the last resort for destitute mothers
and their children. Sabrina had spent the first twelve years of her life dependent on charity; she was determined her sons would not suffer the same fate.

For many women in Georgian times, locked in miserable or abusive marriages, widowhood came as a happy release and even brought financial independence. Although wives were legally obliged to hand all their property and earnings to their husbands, widows were entitled to keep all they owned and earned. But for those women left destitute by a husband’s death, widowhood could bring penury since no state provision existed apart from pitiful parish relief or the workhouse. Many widows had no option but to beg on the streets or turn to prostitution to feed themselves and their families.

Despite having severed all communications before her marriage, Day now grudgingly reinstated Sabrina’s annual allowance but reduced the amount to £30 with a clear injunction that she must find work to boost her income. “To have been more bounteous must surely have been in his heart,” wrote Seward, “but it was not in his system.” This sum was matched by Edgeworth, who even offered to educate one of her sons and take her into his household for a year. Sabrina declined the offer, presumably unwilling to move to Ireland. While £60 a year was still several times the salary of a housemaid, it was far from sufficient to support her young family in any comfort or to pay for the education of her sons. The Bicknell family were even less help.

At sixty-six, Bicknell’s mother Sarah was a steely matriarch who guarded the family coffers and reputation with an iron grip. Well aware of Sabrina’s past, since she had looked after her on Day’s return from Avignon, Mrs. Bicknell had never accepted her daughter-in-law into the fold. The taint of illegitimacy retained a pungent smell, and, according to one of Sabrina’s friends, Mrs. Bicknell “always refused to love” her. With four sons struggling to make a name for themselves in the law, Mrs. Bicknell was determined to put the needs of her immediate family first. Bicknell’s brothers likewise steadfastly ignored Sabrina’s plight. Anxious to ensure Sabrina and her boys would not become a burden on their resources, the Bicknell family found her a job as a maid in a village school. She was all but neglected by those who might be regarded as having the clearest duty to help her, and now it was people she barely knew who came to her aid.

Just a few weeks after Bicknell’s death, Sabrina received an unexpected letter. Charles Burney, the son of the composer Dr. Charles Burney, who had tried to introduce music lessons at the Foundling Hospital, wrote to offer a free place for Sabrina’s son John at the school he ran in Hammersmith. Evidently bearing no grudge for her husband’s satirical attack on his father, Burney had learned of Sabrina’s misfortune through William Seward, the old schoolfriend of Bicknell and Day. A gifted classical scholar, who knew Bicknell from London’s literary scene, Burney would have been well aware of Sabrina’s irregular past. Just a few months younger than Sabrina, with a son the same age as her eldest, he had every reason to sympathize—since Burney was himself no stranger to scandal.

Having distinguished himself at Charterhouse School, Charles Burney had been admitted to Cambridge at nineteen. A few months later he had been expelled after thirty-five of the university library’s priceless books were discovered in his room. A heavy drinker and inveterate gambler, Burney had been selling the books to service his debts. As Burney was sent home in shame, his father threatened to disown him while his sister, the novelist Fanny Burney, was said to have found him on the point of shooting himself. He was lucky. An earlier Cambridge book thief had been transported to a penal colony for his crime; Charles Burney was merely banished to the University of Aberdeen to finish his degree. Returning to London still cloaked in disgrace, Burney took lowly teaching jobs, first in Highgate and then in Chiswick, where he charmed and married the headmaster’s daughter, Sarah Rose. On his father-in-law’s death, Burney took over the Chiswick school, which later moved to Hammersmith. It was here that Burney now offered a place for young John.

Her reply to Burney, on May 16, 1787, is the earliest surviving letter in Sabrina’s own hand. In a neat, rounded script and impeccable English grammar, Sabrina confessed that she had been “very unwell” since the death of her “dear dear lost friend.” She thanked Burney profusely for his “great & friendly offer to me & my dear little boy” and added that she had often heard her late husband “express great regard & respect for you & your abilities.” Regretting that her son was as yet too young for school—John was little more than a year old—she looked forward “with impatience” to the date when he could take up his place. In the meantime Sabrina had no choice but to accept the menial job the Bicknell family
had arranged. With baby Henry looked after by a nurse and John playing at her feet, she worked on her hands and knees to feed and clothe her boys.

In October the following year Sabrina managed a few days’ holiday to visit Eliza Smith in Lichfield. Now also a widow, with two children, Honora and Saville, to support, Eliza lived with her father and used her singing talents to make ends meet. Coached by Saville, Eliza sang at concerts at Lichfield, Birmingham and Bath. It may well have been the first time that Sabrina introduced John and Henry, now two years and one year old, to her Lichfield friends. Inevitably there was a trip to the palace. Having not seen Sabrina for several years, Anna Seward pronounced her “more graceful, more attractive, much more eloquent than ever” although she could not resist the rider “though less beautiful.” But when Seward learned of Sabrina’s situation, she was appalled.

Unable to resist some well-intentioned meddling, Seward dashed off a letter to a lawyer friend, George Hardinge, who was solicitor-general to Queen Charlotte and a former acquaintance of Bicknell, with an appeal to help his “sweet unfortunate” widow. Asking Hardinge whether he knew the “romantic circumstances” of Sabrina’s youth, Seward lamented: “It is hard to be dependent upon the bounty of friends, especially after having married rather from discretion than from choice.” Seward issued an acid condemnation of the Bicknell family. Bicknell’s brothers were “prosperous, and tolerably affluent,” yet it was “strangely unfeeling that they should suffer so amiable a sister-in-law to labour for her daily bread, in a situation scarce above that of a common servant, and much more harassing.” Seward assumed—perhaps through Sabrina’s delicacy—that Sabrina’s job was akin to an assistant teacher; Fanny Burney would describe her as a “maid.” But Seward saved her darkest thunder for Day, who dispensed two-thirds of his income to the local poor but left his former pupil with scarcely enough to survive. “Yet lives there one whose still more bounden duty it is to consider her as his child,” she wrote, but “gloomy stoicism, and sour-headed infidelity” caused Day to “defy the claims of obvious duties.”

Hardinge rose splendidly to the challenge and raised a remarkable £800 from Bicknell’s fellow barristers within a few months. This nest egg, worth more than £100,000 or $165,000 in modern terms, ensured a regular income for Sabrina as well as a capital sum for her sons’ inheritance. Reporting
his success to Seward, Hardinge could not resist adding the revelations he had gleaned of Bicknell’s “bachelor voluptuousness.” Horrified and fascinated in equal measure, Seward replied: “I suppose Mr Day knew it not, or, with his general abhorrence of sensuality, he had spared to mention him with so much esteem.” And she added: “but, Lord! what a pale, maidenish-looking animal for a voluptuary!—so reserved as were his manners!—and his countenance!—a very tablet, upon which the ten commandments seemed written.” Her children’s welfare now assured, Sabrina looked forward to the day when she could take advantage of Charles Burney’s kindness.