Wendy Moore > Quotes

“In eighteenth-century Britain, many female friends enjoyed intense relationships, which they celebrated in romantic terms. Some probably compensated for stiff and formal relations with parents by forging close bonds with same-sex friends. In one case, Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby ran away from their families in Ireland to set up home together in Wales, where they would live in mutual harmony for more than fifty years. Known as the Ladies of Llangollen, they attracted visitors from far and wide who venerated their romantic story with never a hint that the friendship might be anything other than platonic”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“Having lost and regained her freedom in the most extraordinary circumstances over the course of her remarkable lifetime, few could have set a higher price on the value of liberty. And yet, as she was well aware, it was only through the fundamental principles of justice that her liberty had finally been secured.”
― Wendy Moore, Wedlock

“The lessons he learned were diligently applied to modify his methods, resulting in a continuous research loop,”
― Wendy Moore, The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery

“He could never be happy; as an obsessive perfectionist, perfection would always stay tantalizingly out of reach”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“the ancient city of Avignon provided an ideal winter refuge. Having served as the seat of seven popes for nearly seventy years during the fourteenth century—when it was the center of the medieval Western world—Avignon still fell under papal control as capital of the enclave, the Comtat Venaissin. The heavily fortified citadel was therefore conveniently beyond the reach not only of English but of French laws, making the city a favorite destination for political, religious and tax exiles of all nationalities as well as a natural hideout for smugglers and other criminals”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“Until the mid-1700s, newborn babies were often fed, or “dry-nursed,” with bread, cake or biscuit mixed with cow’s milk, butter and sugar—known as “pap”—supplemented by brandy, rum or wine”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“Franklin’s idea for a multidenominational church where all who accepted “the existence of a supreme intelligence” could come together in celebration of common ideas of morality rather than fixed religious doctrines”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“Members of the gentry and nobility migrated to Bath each summer to stroll along the Grand Parade, drive around the Royal Crescent, cavort at crowded balls and gossip over tea about whom they had seen and with whom; taking the waters for real or imagined complaints was an optional extra”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“A few minutes later, there was no mistaking the sound of clashing swords. Throwing aside his newspaper, Hull ran down the stairs and tried to open the door to the ground-floor parlor. Finding it locked, and growing increasingly alarmed at the violent clatter from within, he shouted for waiters to help him force the door. Finally bursting into the unlit room, Hull could dimly make out two figures fencing furiously in the dark. Reckless as to his own safety, the clerk grabbed the sword arm of the nearest man, thrust”
― Wendy Moore, Wedlock The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore

“the 1770s hundreds of thousands of slaves were working cotton, tobacco and rice plantations in the southern colonies of America—there were 60,000 black slaves in South Carolina and 140,000 in Virginia alone—as well as in the West Indies. Many of the most prominent Americans lobbying for independence were slave owners. George Washington inherited ten slaves when he was eleven years old and cultivated his farm on the labor of 100 slaves; Thomas Jefferson inherited fifty-two slaves when he turned twenty-one and had a “slave family” numbering more than 170 on his plantation. But even in London, it was hard to ignore the issue of double standards”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“A vociferous campaign had been launched in the 1760s by Granville Sharp, a government clerk who published the first anti-slavery tract in 1767. Sharp went on to champion the cause of an escaped slave, James Somerset, who won his freedom in a landmark court case in 1772 when Lord Mansfield ruled that no slave on British soil could be forcibly returned to his master or deported. Although the ruling was widely regarded at the time as a complete ban on slavery in Britain, in fact it only meant that enslavement could not be enforced by law; it would be 1833 before the Abolition Act finally made the slave trade illegal”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“Yet at a time when people were locked in debate over the significance of nature over nurture, Day’s project did not seem quite so outlandish or immoral. As a product of his time, his gender and his rank, he possessed the power and money to pursue his quest, and he therefore believed he had every right to subvert another person to meet his ideals. He was, perhaps, more deluded than wicked”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“opened five years earlier, as an integral part of the vast Adelphi development designed by the Adam brothers on the north bank of the Thames, the Adelphi Tavern and Coffee House had established a reputation for its fine dinners and genteel company. Many an office worker”
― Wendy Moore, Wedlock The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore

“Unmov’d Maria saw the splendid suite
Of rival captives sighing at her feet,
Till in her cause his sword young Stoney drew,
And to avenge, the gallant wooer flew!
Bravest amongst the Brave! – and first to prove
By death! or conquests! who best knew to love!

But pale and faint the wounded lover lies,
While more than pity fills Maria’s eyes!
In her soft breast, where passion long had strove,
Resistless sorrow fix’d the reign of love!
‘Dear youth,’ she cries, ‘we meet no more to part!
Then take thy honour’s due – my bleeding heart!’

~ Mary Eleanor Bowes”
― Wendy Moore, Wedlock

“Illegitimacy rose throughout the eighteenth century in Britain as in Europe; the Georgian era has been dubbed “the century of illegitimacy.” But far from proving an upsurge in lax moral behavior, the rise was probably due chiefly to planned marriages being abandoned through unforeseen disasters. Traditionally it was common practice, especially in the countryside, for couples to enjoy intimate relations that were only legalized in church if and when the woman fell pregnant. But high living costs and wartime conscription, along with the Marriage Act of 1753 making weddings more complicated to arrange, deterred or prevented many well-intentioned couples from proceeding up the aisle”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“The ivory girl had stepped down from her pedestal and stamped her foot. The foundling had found her voice.”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“While they mixed explosive chemicals, drew sparks from electrical charges and forged steam engines, Day was meddling with the human mind. Even in the so-called age of experiments, this was an experiment to top the lot”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“The philanthropist who could not pass a beggar without parting with his money, the nature lover who felt he did not have the right to stamp on a spider let alone mistreat a horse, the humanitarian who opposed slavery because it was the “absolute dependence of one man upon another,” was utterly convinced he had every right to keep a young woman subject to his total command and groom her to meet his desires”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“The story of Thomas Day’s quest to create a perfect wife symbolizes an eternal human desire: to craft a supreme being”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“In reality, of course, when it comes to choosing a spouse the vast majority of people have been always content to accept flawed reality over mythical perfection. But not Thomas Day. Nobody—before or since—has tried quite so literally or so systematically to create for themselves their vision of a perfect mate”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“The Georgians were not noted for their kindness to animals and children. Many children were forced to work in the mills, scale chimneys, beg on the streets or live by prostitution from the age of ten or less”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“Managing to overlook his lack of grooming and poor social skills, she was moved by the powerful monologues Day delivered on”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and his Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

“Typical conduct guides described how to stand (with feet turned out and one hand inside the waistcoat), to bow (with hat in hand, one knee bent and eyes downcast) and to walk (with head high and arms free) along with helpful pictures of the ideal poses, as well as detailed instructions on table manners and how to dance the minue”
― Wendy Moore, How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain's Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate