Free How to Create the Perfect Wife by Wendy Moore

book is best understood as a general theory with illustrative examples. Taken as a broad approach toward a child-centered education based on learning through discovery, Rousseau’s treatise was—and is—a powerful force for good; taken literally it could become a recipe for producing little savages.
    Many of those watching Dick’s laissez-faire education from the sidelines did their best to warn his father of impending disaster. Edgeworth met with “opposition” from friends and relatives and “ridicule” from “all quarters,” he admitted. But if ever Edgeworth voiced any doubts aboutthe practicality of the system, Day always encouraged him to continue with it. For even as Edgeworth was beginning to perceive some flaws in a literal interpretation of the Rousseau approach, Day was becoming more and more enthusiastic.
    The educational program had been progressing for about a year when Edgeworth decided to take Dick on a visit to the family seat in Ireland. Naturally he invited Day, his assistant tutor, to join them. Still thwarted in his desire to travel the Continent by his stepfather, Day readily agreed. He had scoured the West Country and Wales for a suitable candidate for his wife-training scheme—his “gentle Lady of the West”—but perhaps, he considered, he had not been looking far enough to the west. Setting off in early summer 1768, the trio left behind Anna Maria, who had given birth to a daughter, baptized Maria, at Black Bourton, on January 1 that year. There would be no attempt to subvert the education of Maria Edgeworth, the future novelist, to her lasting gratitude. With Edgeworth at the reins of his customized phaeton and Day and four-year-old Dick seated behind, the trio hared off on the main road north for Chester to embark for Ireland.
    Eager to provide some light entertainment to break the tedium of the road trip, Edgeworth suggested a practical joke based on the Restoration comedy The Beaux’ Stratagem, in which two young men attempt to ensnare an heiress by posing as a wealthy gentleman and his servant. Day, it was agreed, would pretend to be “a very odd gentleman”—a role that did not demand great acting skills—and Dick—in an equally undemanding role—would play his son, “a most extraordinary child.” Edgeworth, meanwhile, would pretend to be a servant who was slimily obsequious to his master’s face but rude and arrogant behind his back. In the stage play, the two young rakes enact their deceit when they break their journey at an inn in Lichfield. In Edgeworth’s version, the curtain rose on the farce when the three travelers stopped at an inn in the town of Eccleshall in Staffordshire.
    Thundering up to the door of the inn, Edgeworth screeched to a halt and employed his innovatory device to release the horses from the carriage with a nonchalant flick of the wrist. As a crowd gathered to ogle thestrange vehicle and its equally strange passengers—“sitting composedly in the open carriage without horses”—Edgeworth lifted down the peculiarly attired Dick—in his trousers and bare feet—and then gave his arm to Day. Gleefully entering into the spirit of the jest, the fearless Dick performed several acrobatic feats, such as leaping from the carriage into his father’s open arms, as the curious crowd grew.
    Strutting into the inn, Edgeworth ordered a meager supper for his master and a lavish spread for himself. But just as Edgeworth was devouring his banquet in the kitchen, the ruse was exposed. A familiar voice hailed him from the dining room, and Edgeworth turned in embarrassment to see Erasmus Darwin, who had arrived at the inn with his friend John Whitehurst, a clockmaker from Derby. The game was up. A sheepish Edgeworth had to confess the whole scam, and the two parties joined company for a more conventional meal in the dining room.
    As Edgeworth, Darwin and Whitehurst launched into an animated discussion on the latest developments in mechanics, Day sat silently