How to Create the Perfect Wife (9 page)

As Day pored over Rousseau’s words, suddenly everything became clear. With his contempt for luxury and fashion, his infatuation with peasant life, his preference for washing in streams and his fondness for roaming the countryside on foot, Day realized that he was the incarnation of Émile. And now that he was about to turn twenty, the age that Émile discovers his Sophie, the time was right for him to meet his ideal woman to share his planned life of isolated misery. Raising his eyes from the pages, his gaze alighted on Margaret. All she needed was a little instruction to fulfill the desired role. Margaret, of course, had quite other ideas.

As the unlikely romance lurched from comedy to melodrama over the ensuing months, Day bared his feelings in a long letter to John Bicknell. “I have been disappointed in a Manner to a feeling Heart the most dreadful,” he wailed when Margaret called the whole thing off in September. He had been deceived because “I loved an imaginary Being,” he wrote with uncustomary insight. In his trough of despair he even considered remaining a bachelor for life since, he noted, he could father children out of wedlock—“& their Illegitimacy will have no Effect upon their Rationality”—and satisfy his physical urges elsewhere. As Day put it, “if the whole female Sex cannot furnish one single rational Woman, I must make use of them in that Manner for which alone Nature has perhaps intended.”

Yet there was a third way. And in his highly revealing letter to Bicknell, Day first unfolded his startling plan to create the perfect wife. Speaking of Margaret, Day wrote: “This Lady was brought up in the midst of the World; early introduc’d to its Customs, attach’d to its Follys; she is disgusted, or believes herself so; yet in all Probability there are some Prejudices which stick so deep as never to be eradicated.” Since it seemed,
therefore, impossible to bend a woman brought up within polite society to fit the required role, he now proposed to “try another Experiment” and groom a likely young girl for the task.

That this was not just a rhetorical argument or a flight of fancy, Day made plain. “There is a little Girl of about thirteen, upon whose Mind I shall have it in my Power to make the above mention’d Experiment,” he revealed to Bicknell. “Her Understanding is naturally good I believe, her Temper remarkably tender & affectionate; she is yet innocent, &unprejudic’d; she has seen nothing of the World, & is unattach’d to it.” Precisely who this girl was, who was so detached from the outside world, and how Day believed he possessed such power over her fate, he did not vouchsafe.

Thinking through the practicalities of his scheme, Day asked Bicknell whether he thought it might be possible “to prevent the Impressions of Prejudice & Folly in a Mind like this?” He added: “Will it be possible to fortify it in such a Manner, that the Pleasures of the World will make no Impressions upon it, because they are irrational.” And crucially he wanted to know: “Will it be impossible entirely to exclude the Idea of Love,” since “Love I am firmly convinc’d is the Effect of Prejudice & Imagination; a rational Mind is incapable of it, at least in any great Degree.” Evidently Day desired Bicknell’s opinion not just as a man of the world but as a man of law, for he pressed: “Is my scheme practicable? If practicable by what Means?” Frustrated and impatient, he demanded an answer by the time he returned to England.

Finally, on the last sheet of his eleven-page letter, Day asked Bicknell to perform two mysterious tasks before his return to London. For the first of these “Commissions” he wanted Bicknell to visit his saddler, in Holborn, and arrange for “the Saddle & proper Appendages” to be sent to his home at Barehill. This was evidently a contraption he had already ordered—probably a pillion saddle to enable him to bear away his young girl in the manner of a medieval knight. The second request was to call on Day’s tailor, also in Holborn, and order two new suits to be made and sent to Barehill. According to Day’s precise instructions these were: “One a Green with light Gold Embroidery, about the Button Holes, as light as possible; the other a plain white or lightish colour’d Suit, Coat, Waistcoat & Breeches, & also an embroider’d Waistcoat adapted to them, as free from tawdriness, & Frippery as possible.”

Given Day’s scorn for new clothes of any description, especially with such dandified details as embroidery, this was quite an astonishing mission, as Day himself acknowledged. “You are surpriz’d at this, but I do assure you I have no Reason for having laced cloaths, but to convince myself, & other People I have [reasons] which make me wear plain ones.” Whether this order was a last-ditch attempt to impress Margaret or a calculated move to impress figures in authority over his teenage nymph, Day did not reveal.

Naturally Day divulged nothing of his bizarre scheme to train a teenage bride to Margaret, or indeed to her brother. When Margaret suddenly decided to hedge her bets and send Day home with an agreement to marry each other unless either found an alternative by the following summer, Day hurriedly buried his plan. Sailing back to England with his expectations high in October he seemed to have forgotten the idea entirely.

Back in London, Day moved into lodgings with Bicknell in the vicinity of Middle Temple and applied himself to his law books through the winter of 1768 to 1769. In his spare time he cemented his new acquaintance with Erasmus Darwin and was welcomed into the circle of Darwin’s scintillating Lunar friends.

Day might well have accompanied Edgeworth on one of his excursions to the Midlands in 1769. On one of these visits Edgeworth decided to test-drive his latest mode of transport: a one-wheeled chaise pulled by a single horse in which he perched precariously on a low-slung seat about two feet above the ground with his feet placed either side on wooden boards that collapsed upward whenever they met any obstacle. He had fashioned this latest chariot so that he could speed along the narrow country roads and even through water—with his legs protected by leather attachments shaped like bellows—looking for all the world like a future Hells Angel astride a prototype Harley-Davidson as he startled sheep and scattered ducks.

Stepping into the sparkling spotlight shed by the Lunar circle, Day was its newest, youngest and—without doubt—its oddest member. First formed in the late 1760s, the group was initially a loose network of like-minded men who met to discuss advances and perform experiments in mechanics, chemistry, medicine, geology and a diverse range of other areas
grouped under the term “natural philosophy”—or what would later become known as science.

Forming a twin nucleus with Darwin at the center of this circle was Matthew Boulton, the son of a metalworker, who had left school at fourteen and built up a vast manufactory at Soho, near Birmingham, producing luxury silverware and metal trinkets. Both loud, generous, genial characters, Darwin and Boulton gradually drew others into their orbit. An early member was the Staffordshire potter Josiah Wedgwood, who had painstakingly accumulated a small fortune through hard work at his growing business. Yet it was William Small, a quiet, retiring Scottish physician, who had recently set up in medical practice in Birmingham after teaching mathematics in America—including to a young Thomas Jefferson—who formed the linchpin of the group; effectively he became its secretary.

Later this core was joined by James Watt, busy trying to improve the design of steam engines in Glasgow, and James Keir, another Scot and a fellow medical student with Darwin who had just moved to Lichfield after ten years in the army. With their diverse backgrounds, interests and political views, this group of talented and gregarious men would become pioneers in assorted scientific fields and cheerleaders of the Industrial Revolution in the Midlands. A recent recruit into this ingenious community, Edgeworth memorably described the group as “such a society, as few men have had the good fortune to live with; such an assemblage of friends, as fewer still have had the happiness to possess, and keep through life.”

The Lunar gatherings provided a lively diversion while Day looked forward confidently to his nuptials with Margaret. His friends shared his grief, but not his surprise, when the wedding plans were called off in spring 1769. Dr. Small, in particular, who was nearly a generation older than Day, sympathized deeply with him and took a fatherly interest in his marital hopes. Margaret, however, had no regrets. A year later she would marry an Anglo-Irish army officer, John Ruxton, who shared her tastes in fine living.

For Day, if nothing else, Margaret’s letter, which put an end to his marital hopes, confirmed his opinion that the entire female population was fickle. Now that he was convinced that he would never find the woman that he sought within contemporary society, there was plainly no alternative
but to create her for himself. And so as he approached his twenty-first birthday in June he returned to the daring scheme he had sketched out to Bicknell and made arrangements to put his plan into action. Just as Edgeworth was attempting to produce his own version of Émile, so Day would groom his own Sophie.

It was a cold, wet summer with frequent squalls and thundery showers. But the rain did nothing to dampen Day’s enthusiasm. On June 22, 1769, when he turned twenty-one, Day gained both his fortune and his independence. He was now master of the house and estate at Barehill, and he took control of a comfortable income of £1,200 a year—today worth nearly £200,000, or $324,000. Out of this fortune, Day had to pay his mother her annual widow’s pension of £300. Since she, or more likely his stepfather Phillips, had complained this was insufficient, he increased her allowance to £400 and allowed them both to continue living at Barehill. But more important than his financial independence, Day was now free of any interference from his mother or stepfather. He was the author of his own destiny, and he lost no time in putting his audacious plan into action.

First he needed a collaborator to help him carry out his stratagem. Since the scheme was highly unethical if not downright illegal, he reasoned that a lawyer might prove useful. He dismissed the idea of telling Edgeworth, who was likewise studying law at Middle Temple inn; Edgeworth’s status as a married man would later prove vital, but for now he was kept entirely in the dark. Instead Day asked John Bicknell, his closest friend and fellow lodger, to help enact his experiment. Having studied law for a full eight years, Bicknell was finally on the point of qualifying as a barrister. Sworn to secrecy, he readily agreed to the plan. Now all Day needed was to find a suitable young girl.

In licentious Georgian London there was no shortage of pliable young girls in search of a kindly male benefactor. Wide-eyed country maidens stepped down from the coaches at London staging inns every day naïvely seeking their fortunes. Often as young as twelve or thirteen, they made easy pickings for pimps and brothel madams eager to lure them into a career in the buoyant Georgian sex industry. Few people batted an eyelid at the custom of single, or married, men of means maintaining such a teenage
mistress in a convenient metropolitan hideaway. But this would not do for Day.

Day, of course, had set his sights on finding a simple, pure, innocent maid unsullied by the vices of urban life and untainted by the ideas of contemporary society. He wanted to be certain of her virginity; it was unthinkable that she might have been seduced by a lascivious rake or a country plowboy before he had the chance to exact his marital privileges. She should be physically healthy and hardy enough to withstand his planned lifestyle in cold, comfortless austerity. She must be young enough to comply with his training without question or resistance, yet old enough so that he would not need to wait too long before they could lawfully wed. With parental consent, girls could marry from the age of twelve; boys from fourteen. Obviously, however, he did not want any meddlesome parents withholding consent or asking awkward questions. Nor did he want to embark on his project in the full glare of gossipy London. It was a tall order to find a girl who would satisfy such an exacting list of specifications. But Day knew exactly where to look.

A few days after his birthday, in the last week of June, Day set out through the driving rain with his trusty friend Bicknell in tow. With the long summer holidays stretching ahead, Bicknell entered into the jaunt with enthusiasm. The pair traveled north on the muddy roads for two or three days, most probably on horseback, stopping overnight on the way. At last they arrived at the little market town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire. Nestling near the border with Wales and almost encircled by the River Severn, the compact walled town provided a pleasant setting for its prosperous residents. Here the two young men crossed the Severn, scaled a winding lane and arrived at the door of a fine three-story, redbrick mansion.

Built as a country branch of the Foundling Hospital in London, the Orphan Hospital at Shrewsbury enjoyed a commanding view of the river as it wound around the town below. The orphanage had opened six years previously to accommodate the overflow of abandoned babies then being deposited at the doors of the charity’s London headquarters. Surrounded by fields and orchards, the vast building housed more than 300 children—most of them girls.

Viewed from the town, the imposing mansion presented an elegant façade, but inside the decor was plain and the furnishings simple as befitted its lowly occupants. Yet for all its utilitarian uniformity, the orphanage provided a caring regime where the children were better fed and better treated than many of their young counterparts struggling to survive in the harsh outside world of overcrowded cities and impoverished villages. Taught to read and to do simple sums but not to write, most of the children were being trained in spinning and weaving in the orphanage’s own woolen manufactory to prepare them for an apprenticeship in the mills of the nearby Midlands and North. Others learned household skills in the laundries and kitchens in readiness for jobs in domestic service.

At its peak, in 1766, the Shrewsbury orphanage had housed nearly 600 boys and girls, in segregated dormitories and classrooms, looked after by more than forty staff. But since the London charity had closed its doors to abandoned babies in 1760 when its money ran out, and had subsequently increased pressure on its branch hospitals to apprentice those remaining orphans, the numbers had rapidly dwindled. Now only 357 children remained in the Shrewsbury home, and these were being parceled out to apprenticeships as fast as the governors could process them.