THOMAS DAY, AND HIS MODEL WIFE.
Day, the author of Sandford and Merton, was an eccentric but amiable man; he retired into the country "to exclude himself," as he said, "from the vanity, vice, and deceptive character of man," but he appears to have been strangely jilted by women. When about the age of twenty-one, and after his suit had been rejected by a young lady to whom he had paid his addresses, Mr. Day formed the singular project of educating a wife for himself. This was based upon the notion of Rousseau, that "all the genuine worth of the human species is perverted by society; and that children should be educated apart from the world, in order that their minds should be kept untainted with, and ignorant of, its vices, prejudices, and artificial manners."
Day set about his project by selecting two girls from an establishment at Shrewsbury, connected with the Foundling Hospital; previously to which he entered into a written engagement, guaranteed by a friend, Mr. Bicknell, that within twelve months he would resign one of them to a respectable mistress, as an apprentice, with a fee of one hundred pounds; and, on her marriage, or commencing business for herself, he would give her the additional sum of four hundred pounds; and he further engaged that he would act honourably to the one he should retain, in order to marry her at a proper age; or, if he should change his mind, he would allow her a competent support until she married, and then give her five hundred pounds as a dowry.
The objects of Day's speculation were both twelve years of age. One of them, whom he called Lucretia, had a fair complexion, with light hair and eyes; the other was a brunette, with chesnut tresses, who was styled Sabrina. He took these girls to France without any English servants, in order that they should not obtain any knowledge but what he should impart. As might have been anticipated, they caused him abundance of inconvenience and vexation, increased, in no small degree, by their becoming infected with the small-pox; from this, however, they recovered without any injury to their features. The scheme ended in the utter disappointment of the projector. Lucretia, whom he first dismissed, was apprenticed to a milliner; and she afterwards became the wife of a linendraper in London. Sabrina, after Day had relinquished his attempts to make her such a model of perfection as he required, and which included indomitable courage, as well as the difficult art of retaining secrets, was placed at a boarding-school at Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire, where she was much esteemed; and, strange to say, was at length married to Mr. Bicknell.
After Day had renounced this scheme as impracticable, he became suitor to two sisters in succession; yet, in both instances, he was refused. At length, he was married at Bath, to a lady who made "a large fortune the means of exercising the most extensive generosity."
WASHINGTON IRVING AND WILKIE, IN THE ALHAMBRA.
Geoffrey Crayon(Irving), and Wilkie, the painter, were fellow-travellers on the Continent, about the year 1827. In their rambles about some of the old cities of Spain, they were more than once struck with scenes and incidents which reminded them of passages in the Arabian Nights. The painter urged Mr. Irving to write something that should illustrate those peculiarities, "something in the 'Haroun-al-Raschid style,'" which should have a deal of that Arabian spice which pervades everything in Spain. The author set to work, con amore, and produced two goodly volumes of Arabesque sketches and tales, founded on popular traditions. His study was the Alhambra, and the governor of the palace gave Irving and Wilkie permission to occupy his vacant apartments there. Wilkie was soon called away by the duties of his station; but Washington Irving remained for several months, spell-bound in the old enchanted pile. "How many legends," saith he, "and traditions, true and fabulous—how many songs and romances, Spanish and Arabian, of love, and war, and chivalry, are associated with this romantic pile."