A PHILOSOPHICAL ROMANCE
A Man in Possession of a Good Fortune and in Want of a Wife homas Day was a serious-minded, philosophical A PHILOSOPHICAL young man, who exhibited a distaste for fashionable society at an early age. He was taken by the theories of Rousseau after reading Émile. In 1769, at the age of twenty-one and in Tpossession of his inheritance, he came to the conclusion it was ROMANCE: his ‘duty to marry’. Day wanted a wife of plain tastes, dismissive of fashion and luxury, sensible and frugal. She would accept that her role lay in WOMEN, EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT the domestic sphere and had no pretensions outside it, restricting her influence to her home and family. However, Kate Iles securing such a wife proved problematic. Not only were his ideas not entirely congenial to the women he approached, but Thomas Day (1748-1789) was a his disregard for fashion and dress had implications for his member of the Lunar Society, but physical appearance. His best friend, Richard Lovell Edgeworth he was less mechanically or (1744-1817), who introduced him to the Lunar Society, explained, ‘Mr Day's exterior was not at that time, scientifically inclined than his prepossessing, he seldom combed his raven locks though he was colleagues. Influenced by the remarkably fond of washing in the stream’. ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Day grew despondent. Instead of questioning his own (1712-1778), he embarked on the philosophical attitude towards marriage, or even personal hygiene, he decided the problem lay with the objects of his most unusual experiment of all Library & Society Picture Museum/Science © Science affections and the education they received, which made them Jean-Jacques Rousseau from The Gallery of Portraits, 1833. the Lunar men, not in the realms too eager for the trappings of fashionable society and averse to of science and technology, but to the honest labour of housewife and mother. acquire and educate a young girl to become his wife. Day’s ‘Romantic’ Experiment ‘[H]e determined to put in practice a scheme, which had long The Male/Female Divide occupied his imagination. This was no common project, but a design more romantic than any which we find in novels,' said ‘The whole of education of women,' wrote the Richard Lovell Edgeworth of the scheme that his friend Genevan philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in devised to remedy his marital dilemma. his 1762 educational treatise, Émile, ‘ought to Anna Seward, the sharp-witted poet of Lichfield, associated relate to men.’ The anatomical and physiological with the Lunar circle through her friendships with Erasmus medical discoveries of the Enlightenment Darwin, Edgeworth and Day, explained rather more drily: revealed that men and women were formed He resolved, if possible, that his wife should have a taste for differently. Female skeletons were smaller and literature and science, for moral and patriotic philosophy... He specifically designed to bear children, their resolved also, that she should be as simple as a mountain girl in her nervous systems were different and their brains dress, her diet and her manners; fearless and intrepid as the Spartan were smaller, which seemed to prove women’s wives and Roman heroines - There was no finding such a creature naturally ordained role as wife and mother. ready-made; philosophical romance could not hope it. He must However, Rousseau elevated this domestic role mould some infant into the being his fancy had imagined. and attributed to it a new importance; women Day decided to educate himself a wife. As absurd as this might might be destined for the home, but their role sound, it was a perfect piece of Enlightenment logic. Day took within it was vitally important as companions to a rational approach to marriage and saw it as the building block © National Portrait Gallery, London Gallery, © National Portrait their husbands and educators of their children. Thomas Day by Joseph Wright, 1770. of society, which was to be taken seriously, and not merely as a In Émile, Rousseau outlined a new system of refuge from licentiousness. Within marriage, Day wanted to child-rearing that allowed children to learn from apply the principles of Rousseau, with their demarcated roles experience, away from fashionable society. For for husbands and wives. Day dismissed the idea that women girls, because nature had ordained them as were innately feeble or delicate, choosing to assert they merely companions for men, this education restricted
became that way through poor education and frivolous London Gallery, © National Portrait them to the home and learning of their conjugal expectations. Mrs Bicknell (formerly Sabrina Sidney) by Richard James Lane 1833; and maternal duties. after Stephen Poyntz Denning, (1832).
54 www.historywm.com www.historywm.com 55 A PHILOSOPHICAL ROMANCE
A Man in Possession of a Good Fortune and in Want of a Wife homas Day was a serious-minded, philosophical A PHILOSOPHICAL young man, who exhibited a distaste for fashionable society at an early age. He was taken by the theories of Rousseau after reading Émile. In 1769, at the age of twenty-one and in Tpossession of his inheritance, he came to the conclusion it was ROMANCE: his ‘duty to marry’. Day wanted a wife of plain tastes, dismissive of fashion and luxury, sensible and frugal. She would accept that her role lay in WOMEN, EDUCATION AND ENLIGHTENMENT the domestic sphere and had no pretensions outside it, restricting her influence to her home and family. However, Kate Iles securing such a wife proved problematic. Not only were his ideas not entirely congenial to the women he approached, but Thomas Day (1748-1789) was a his disregard for fashion and dress had implications for his member of the Lunar Society, but physical appearance. His best friend, Richard Lovell Edgeworth he was less mechanically or (1744-1817), who introduced him to the Lunar Society, explained, ‘Mr Day's exterior was not at that time, scientifically inclined than his prepossessing, he seldom combed his raven locks though he was colleagues. Influenced by the remarkably fond of washing in the stream’. ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau Day grew despondent. Instead of questioning his own (1712-1778), he embarked on the philosophical attitude towards marriage, or even personal hygiene, he decided the problem lay with the objects of his most unusual experiment of all Library & Society Picture Museum/Science © Science affections and the education they received, which made them Jean-Jacques Rousseau from The Gallery of Portraits, 1833. the Lunar men, not in the realms too eager for the trappings of fashionable society and averse to of science and technology, but to the honest labour of housewife and mother. acquire and educate a young girl to become his wife. Day’s ‘Romantic’ Experiment ‘[H]e determined to put in practice a scheme, which had long The Male/Female Divide occupied his imagination. This was no common project, but a design more romantic than any which we find in novels,' said ‘The whole of education of women,' wrote the Richard Lovell Edgeworth of the scheme that his friend Genevan philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in devised to remedy his marital dilemma. his 1762 educational treatise, Émile, ‘ought to Anna Seward, the sharp-witted poet of Lichfield, associated relate to men.’ The anatomical and physiological with the Lunar circle through her friendships with Erasmus medical discoveries of the Enlightenment Darwin, Edgeworth and Day, explained rather more drily: revealed that men and women were formed He resolved, if possible, that his wife should have a taste for differently. Female skeletons were smaller and literature and science, for moral and patriotic philosophy... He specifically designed to bear children, their resolved also, that she should be as simple as a mountain girl in her nervous systems were different and their brains dress, her diet and her manners; fearless and intrepid as the Spartan were smaller, which seemed to prove women’s wives and Roman heroines - There was no finding such a creature naturally ordained role as wife and mother. ready-made; philosophical romance could not hope it. He must However, Rousseau elevated this domestic role mould some infant into the being his fancy had imagined. and attributed to it a new importance; women Day decided to educate himself a wife. As absurd as this might might be destined for the home, but their role sound, it was a perfect piece of Enlightenment logic. Day took within it was vitally important as companions to a rational approach to marriage and saw it as the building block © National Portrait Gallery, London Gallery, © National Portrait their husbands and educators of their children. Thomas Day by Joseph Wright, 1770. of society, which was to be taken seriously, and not merely as a In Émile, Rousseau outlined a new system of refuge from licentiousness. Within marriage, Day wanted to child-rearing that allowed children to learn from apply the principles of Rousseau, with their demarcated roles experience, away from fashionable society. For for husbands and wives. Day dismissed the idea that women girls, because nature had ordained them as were innately feeble or delicate, choosing to assert they merely companions for men, this education restricted
became that way through poor education and frivolous London Gallery, © National Portrait them to the home and learning of their conjugal expectations. Mrs Bicknell (formerly Sabrina Sidney) by Richard James Lane 1833; and maternal duties. after Stephen Poyntz Denning, (1832).
54 www.historywm.com www.historywm.com 55 A PHILOSOPHICAL ROMANCE A PHILOSOPHICAL ROMANCE
Sabrina Sidney ‘perversion which makes women prefer Day believed that when men of rank and aving resolved on his lap-dogs to their own children'. fortune, such as himself were ‘attached entirely course of action, Day Day’s education of Sabrina was a to exteriors’, it blinded them to the misery of travelled, with his friend, complete rejection of this. It shows a others, ‘which make them consider their John Bicknell, to growing understanding that girls’ education inferiors less as men than beasts of burden, make Shrewsbury in Shropshire, at the time was poor and even though them entirely indifferent to their wants, their Hto a branch of the Thomas Coram Foundling nature might form girls to be wives and miseries; a profusion in dress, in equipage, usurps Hospital, where Day chose a twelve-year-old mothers, nurture was responsible for making the place of love and of generosity’. brunette, whom he named Sabrina Sidney. them sensible, moral and intelligent ones. This was the ultimate reason for the Sabrina With the raw material for his experiment, Therefore Sabrina’s education, as experiment. Day wanted a wife who would Day's task began in earnest. outrageous as it might seem to us, was ‘soothe my soul to rest’ and ‘soften ev’ry care’ He relocated to Lichfield, where he had rooted in a new belief in the potential that so that he could work for the greater good of the benefit of the support of his Lunar women held. It proclaimed a faith in mankind. She would minister to him and raise friends. He began his training of Sabrina, education to nurture that potential, to his children, so that he could perform his civic which was said by Anna Seward to include create a new breed of wife who was duty and improve the lot of those less fortunate the firing of blank pistol shots at her sensible and rational and a worthy than himself. Day’s ‘duty to marry’, was not petticoats and dropping hot wax on her Anna Seward, poet and friend of companion to the intelligent, creative and only to himself, it was to society at large. Thomas Day, from John Jackson’s innovative men of the Enlightenment. arms, to make her stoical and inure her to History of the City and Cathedral of pain. But these are the more sensational Iles Kate Courtesy Lichfield, 1805. An Experiment of Its Time aspects of Sabrina's education. She also Shrewsbury School, formerly a branch of the Thomas Coram Foundling Hospital. The Role of Marriage Thomas Day’s experiment with Sabrina Sidney received a ‘robust and hardy education’ aimed Anna Seward, the sharp- Day was also asking serious questions exemplifies the extremes of the Enlightenment. at making her the Spartan wife Day wanted. The Education of Women witted poet of Lichfield, about marriage, which to his credit, he saw It was an ambitious undertaking, even absurd as a vitally important aspect of society. He in its attempt to mould a twelve-year-old girl Day probably taught her to read the Classics, Although just one, rather extreme, example of an Enlightenment social associated with the Lunar aspects of natural philosophy and geometry, experiment, Thomas Day's relationship with Sabrina Sidney highlights the ways considered that marriage should be into the perfect wife, without thought or took her out for muddy walks in the fresh in which Enlightenment thought changed attitudes to women and their circle through her undertaken for the greater good, rather concern for her opinions or sentiments. But it air, regardless of rain or shine, and ensured education. The key planks of the Enlightenment offered new understandings of friendships with Erasmus than as a union of economic interests also shows the ideas that the Enlightenment she was ‘brought up to understand every the mind and its development. The philosopher John Locke believed the mind Darwin, Edgeworth and which undermined natural affections. was stimulating: a belief in the inherent reason species of household employment'. was a blank slate upon which any impression could be made and David Hartley’s Day, explained rather Attitudes to marriage were changing, of women, a move towards a model of becoming less about dynastic ambitions marriage that prized mutual affection over Unfortunately, despite his every effort, theory of associationism argued that understanding was formed through external more drily: Sabrina did not develop as Day wished, so impressions on the senses. It became harder to dismiss women, as Lord and more companionable, but it was still solely financial wealth or status, a faith in she was sent off to a ladies boarding school Chesterfield did, as ‘only children of a larger growth’ or to remain entrenched in He resolved, if possible, very much bound by class assumptions, education to improve the situation for women in Sutton Coldfield. the idea that they did not possess the faculty of reason. and wealthy families still wanted their and offer them opportunities to be more than that his wife should have sons and daughters to marry within their frivolous, fluffy-headed dolls, and an elevation Day eventually married Esther Milnes in Day’s experiment with Sabrina aimed not to undermine traditional ideas of a taste for literature and 1778. He found in Esther a woman who female subordination, because he retained the belief that women were created own ranks. of the roles of wife and mother. admired his philosophical spirit and gladly differently to men for the greater good of a well-balanced, ordered society. science, for moral and Day had no such aspirations. It also demonstrates a willingness to try, to renounced the society of others and her love Instead, Day sought to demonstrate that female reason, if cultivated properly patriotic philosophy... He Independently wealthy, he desired to marry experiment and to risk the possibility of failure. of music for his sake. They enjoyed a happy, through education, would make them sensible, practical wives and mothers. That resolved also, that she a woman without a fortune as proof of his In this Day was a true Lunar man, with an harmonious marriage until Day’s accidental vital element of the Enlightenment, education, was the key - teaching girls that devotion to her. He believed in the natural unwavering belief that improvement was should be as simple as a affection between husbands and wives, possible and attainable. death falling from a horse in 1789. their naturally ordained place was in the home and that the role they undertook mountain girl in her dress, Sabrina's life was subject to fluctuations of there was one of vital importance. affections that bound them together in fortune. Left largely to her own devices, she Education for girls was one of the major debates of the Enlightenment. Some her diet and her manners; mutual understanding. He feared that Dr Kate Iles worked on the Revolutionary Players supported herself by finding employment as women had already raised their voices and challenged the age-old prejudices. fearless and intrepid as the emphasis on the frivolities of life project (www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk) and a lady's companion until the man who ‘We are educated in the grossest ignorance,’ said Lady Mary Wortley in 1753, Spartan wives and undermined those natural affections and recently completed a PhD at the University of accompanied Day to Shrewsbury, John ‘and no art omitted to stifle our natural reason.’ But voices like Lady Mary’s were rendered husbands and wives indifferent to Birmingham on Sabrina Sidney. Roman heroines - There each other. Bicknell, reappeared in her life and asked her few and far between. was no finding such a Further Reading to marry him. Sabrina accepted and they In practice education for girls was still heavily traditional and class-bound. ‘A universal infidelity prevails,' he wrote Elizabeth Eger and Lucy Peltz, Brilliant Women: moved to London where Sabrina gave birth Lower-class girls received little or no education and the daughters of the creature ready-made; to Edgeworth about the French, in whom Eighteenth-century Bluestockings (National Portrait to two sons, John Laurens and Henry middling ranks were bred to be drawing room ornaments, restricted to the philosophical romance Day saw England’s future writ large unless Gallery, 2008). Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (eds.), Women, Edgeworth. Bicknell died in 1787, after only acquisition of ‘accomplishments’ – dancing, needlework, music, singing, and men of character and courage did could not hope it. He Gender and Enlightenment (Palgrave MacMillan, three years of marriage. Sabrina found a perhaps a foreign language such as French or Italian. something to prevent it: ‘the men can feel must mould some infant nothing but indifference for their 2007). position with the Reverend Charles Burney, In Day’s opinion, this education was disastrous: it taught girls merely to be into the being his fancy Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife brother of the novelist Fanny Burney, at his coquettes who wasted their time and energies on frivolous activities that had no nominal wives; hence all the ties of nature (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013). school in Greenwich. Here Sabrina lived for value. It was also dangerous for society, producing a generation of women who had imagined. are broken through, all the sweet Karen O’Brien, Women and Enlightenment in the rest of her life, working for Reverend were only interested in the fashionable society of balls and pleasure gardens and connections of domestic life unknown – Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge University Burney until the 1820s. more interested in their dress than in their husbands. For Day this was a husband, wife, father, son, and brother, are Press, 2009). words without meaning.’ Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men (Faber, 2002).
56 www.historywm.com www.historywm.com 57 A PHILOSOPHICAL ROMANCE A PHILOSOPHICAL ROMANCE
Sabrina Sidney ‘perversion which makes women prefer Day believed that when men of rank and aving resolved on his lap-dogs to their own children'. fortune, such as himself were ‘attached entirely course of action, Day Day’s education of Sabrina was a to exteriors’, it blinded them to the misery of travelled, with his friend, complete rejection of this. It shows a others, ‘which make them consider their John Bicknell, to growing understanding that girls’ education inferiors less as men than beasts of burden, make Shrewsbury in Shropshire, at the time was poor and even though them entirely indifferent to their wants, their Hto a branch of the Thomas Coram Foundling nature might form girls to be wives and miseries; a profusion in dress, in equipage, usurps Hospital, where Day chose a twelve-year-old mothers, nurture was responsible for making the place of love and of generosity’. brunette, whom he named Sabrina Sidney. them sensible, moral and intelligent ones. This was the ultimate reason for the Sabrina With the raw material for his experiment, Therefore Sabrina’s education, as experiment. Day wanted a wife who would Day's task began in earnest. outrageous as it might seem to us, was ‘soothe my soul to rest’ and ‘soften ev’ry care’ He relocated to Lichfield, where he had rooted in a new belief in the potential that so that he could work for the greater good of the benefit of the support of his Lunar women held. It proclaimed a faith in mankind. She would minister to him and raise friends. He began his training of Sabrina, education to nurture that potential, to his children, so that he could perform his civic which was said by Anna Seward to include create a new breed of wife who was duty and improve the lot of those less fortunate the firing of blank pistol shots at her sensible and rational and a worthy than himself. Day’s ‘duty to marry’, was not petticoats and dropping hot wax on her Anna Seward, poet and friend of companion to the intelligent, creative and only to himself, it was to society at large. Thomas Day, from John Jackson’s innovative men of the Enlightenment. arms, to make her stoical and inure her to History of the City and Cathedral of pain. But these are the more sensational Iles Kate Courtesy Lichfield, 1805. An Experiment of Its Time aspects of Sabrina's education. She also Shrewsbury School, formerly a branch of the Thomas Coram Foundling Hospital. The Role of Marriage Thomas Day’s experiment with Sabrina Sidney received a ‘robust and hardy education’ aimed Anna Seward, the sharp- Day was also asking serious questions exemplifies the extremes of the Enlightenment. at making her the Spartan wife Day wanted. The Education of Women witted poet of Lichfield, about marriage, which to his credit, he saw It was an ambitious undertaking, even absurd as a vitally important aspect of society. He in its attempt to mould a twelve-year-old girl Day probably taught her to read the Classics, Although just one, rather extreme, example of an Enlightenment social associated with the Lunar aspects of natural philosophy and geometry, experiment, Thomas Day's relationship with Sabrina Sidney highlights the ways considered that marriage should be into the perfect wife, without thought or took her out for muddy walks in the fresh in which Enlightenment thought changed attitudes to women and their circle through her undertaken for the greater good, rather concern for her opinions or sentiments. But it air, regardless of rain or shine, and ensured education. The key planks of the Enlightenment offered new understandings of friendships with Erasmus than as a union of economic interests also shows the ideas that the Enlightenment she was ‘brought up to understand every the mind and its development. The philosopher John Locke believed the mind Darwin, Edgeworth and which undermined natural affections. was stimulating: a belief in the inherent reason species of household employment'. was a blank slate upon which any impression could be made and David Hartley’s Day, explained rather Attitudes to marriage were changing, of women, a move towards a model of becoming less about dynastic ambitions marriage that prized mutual affection over Unfortunately, despite his every effort, theory of associationism argued that understanding was formed through external more drily: Sabrina did not develop as Day wished, so impressions on the senses. It became harder to dismiss women, as Lord and more companionable, but it was still solely financial wealth or status, a faith in she was sent off to a ladies boarding school Chesterfield did, as ‘only children of a larger growth’ or to remain entrenched in He resolved, if possible, very much bound by class assumptions, education to improve the situation for women in Sutton Coldfield. the idea that they did not possess the faculty of reason. and wealthy families still wanted their and offer them opportunities to be more than that his wife should have sons and daughters to marry within their frivolous, fluffy-headed dolls, and an elevation Day eventually married Esther Milnes in Day’s experiment with Sabrina aimed not to undermine traditional ideas of a taste for literature and 1778. He found in Esther a woman who female subordination, because he retained the belief that women were created own ranks. of the roles of wife and mother. admired his philosophical spirit and gladly differently to men for the greater good of a well-balanced, ordered society. science, for moral and Day had no such aspirations. It also demonstrates a willingness to try, to renounced the society of others and her love Instead, Day sought to demonstrate that female reason, if cultivated properly patriotic philosophy... He Independently wealthy, he desired to marry experiment and to risk the possibility of failure. of music for his sake. They enjoyed a happy, through education, would make them sensible, practical wives and mothers. That resolved also, that she a woman without a fortune as proof of his In this Day was a true Lunar man, with an harmonious marriage until Day’s accidental vital element of the Enlightenment, education, was the key - teaching girls that devotion to her. He believed in the natural unwavering belief that improvement was should be as simple as a affection between husbands and wives, possible and attainable. death falling from a horse in 1789. their naturally ordained place was in the home and that the role they undertook mountain girl in her dress, Sabrina's life was subject to fluctuations of there was one of vital importance. affections that bound them together in fortune. Left largely to her own devices, she Education for girls was one of the major debates of the Enlightenment. Some her diet and her manners; mutual understanding. He feared that Dr Kate Iles worked on the Revolutionary Players supported herself by finding employment as women had already raised their voices and challenged the age-old prejudices. fearless and intrepid as the emphasis on the frivolities of life project (www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk) and a lady's companion until the man who ‘We are educated in the grossest ignorance,’ said Lady Mary Wortley in 1753, Spartan wives and undermined those natural affections and recently completed a PhD at the University of accompanied Day to Shrewsbury, John ‘and no art omitted to stifle our natural reason.’ But voices like Lady Mary’s were rendered husbands and wives indifferent to Birmingham on Sabrina Sidney. Roman heroines - There each other. Bicknell, reappeared in her life and asked her few and far between. was no finding such a Further Reading to marry him. Sabrina accepted and they In practice education for girls was still heavily traditional and class-bound. ‘A universal infidelity prevails,' he wrote Elizabeth Eger and Lucy Peltz, Brilliant Women: moved to London where Sabrina gave birth Lower-class girls received little or no education and the daughters of the creature ready-made; to Edgeworth about the French, in whom Eighteenth-century Bluestockings (National Portrait to two sons, John Laurens and Henry middling ranks were bred to be drawing room ornaments, restricted to the philosophical romance Day saw England’s future writ large unless Gallery, 2008). Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (eds.), Women, Edgeworth. Bicknell died in 1787, after only acquisition of ‘accomplishments’ – dancing, needlework, music, singing, and men of character and courage did could not hope it. He Gender and Enlightenment (Palgrave MacMillan, three years of marriage. Sabrina found a perhaps a foreign language such as French or Italian. something to prevent it: ‘the men can feel must mould some infant nothing but indifference for their 2007). position with the Reverend Charles Burney, In Day’s opinion, this education was disastrous: it taught girls merely to be into the being his fancy Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife brother of the novelist Fanny Burney, at his coquettes who wasted their time and energies on frivolous activities that had no nominal wives; hence all the ties of nature (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013). school in Greenwich. Here Sabrina lived for value. It was also dangerous for society, producing a generation of women who had imagined. are broken through, all the sweet Karen O’Brien, Women and Enlightenment in the rest of her life, working for Reverend were only interested in the fashionable society of balls and pleasure gardens and connections of domestic life unknown – Eighteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge University Burney until the 1820s. more interested in their dress than in their husbands. For Day this was a husband, wife, father, son, and brother, are Press, 2009). words without meaning.’ Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men (Faber, 2002).
56 www.historywm.com www.historywm.com 57