Wesley and Women
1] Wesley and Women John A. Newton Gordon Rupp's piquant comment on Frank Salisbury's celebrated portraits of the two founding fathers of American and British Methodism, comes rather close to the truth:
'He (Salisbury) made Francis Asbury look like an old man, and John Wesley look like an old woman.' Yet true or not, Rupp's critique may serve as a reminder that the feminine element in Wesley's complex make-up was certainly highly developed. There are numerous hints in the records of his life that this was so. His careful grooming of his long hair (contrary to eighteenth-century custom, he never wore a wig); the fastidious neatness of his person and dress; his tact, sympathy, and consistent courtesy of manner: these all point to the strength of his feminine side. Many women found Wesley charmingly attractive. Some fell in love with him —
Sophy Hopkey, Grace Murray — but found at best an equivocal response from Wesley as would-be husband. In middle life, Molly
Vazeille actually married him, but it was a union that proved bitterly disappointing to both parties.
A much larger group of women found in him a friend, pastor, spiritual adviser, and a leader prepared to treat them as trusted colleagues in the work of the Methodist Societies.
Wesley's collected letters reveal the astonishing range of his friendships with women. Young and old, married and single, drawn from the nobility, the middle classes, the labouring poor, these women shared certain common characteristics. They were evangelical believers, mostly Methodists. They had energy and commitment. They brought together spiritual idealism and practical good sense. They were not afraid of hard work, and they strove to express their faith in active charity and good works. They
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives were examplars of the Pauline ideal, which was for Wesley the essence of the Christian life, 'Faith, working through love'. Within the bonds of that Christian love, Wesley worked creatively with his many women colleagues. With woman as lover and wife he never came to terms. Perhaps he could not. But with the women he called his 'Sisters', it was a very different story. To them he was an elder brother; or alternatively we may see him as father-in-God to a large and lively brood of daughters. s This familial analogy reminds us that Wesley grew up in a home where he was surrounded by sisters — Hetty and Keziah; Martha,
Nancy, Sukey, Emily and Molly. They were spirited and intelligent girls, and Wesley relished their companionship, as he was to relish female company all his life. Later, as religious leader, he treated his Methodist 'Sisters' much as he had treated the girls at home — as his confidantes and friends who were now, in addition, his co-workers. His consistent style of address, in the many letters he wrote to them, was 'My dear Sister' — the title which the late Dr
Maldwyn Edwards seized on for his study of 'John Wesley and the women in his life'. These 'Sisters' may be seen as part of Wesley's surrogate family. In terms of spiritual consanguinity, they were his 'Sisters in the Lord' —a usage which reflects the Gospel passage he cited in a letter of 19 June 1773 addressed to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon:
My dear friend, you seem not to have well learned the meaning of those words, which I desire to have continually written on my heart, "Whosoever doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother,'
I am, my dear Lady, your affectionate, John Wesley.
Wesley's usage derives not only from the Gospels, reflecting the new family relationships created by the Kingdom of God. It looks back equally to the first Christian communities of the Acts of the Apostles, where 'Brother' and 'Sister' were common form among those who had been brought into the household of faith. At Oxford
Wesley had been nicknamed 'Mr Primitive Christianity', and he never lost his profound respect for the life-style of the first
Christians. 'My dear Sister .
. ." carries that apostolic resonance too.
Wesley and Women
There were, then, many women in John Wesley's life; but the first and most important was his mother, Susanna. When Elsie
Harrison published her biography of Wesley in 1937, she provoked a storm of criticism. Son to Susanna: The Private Life of John Wesley was not sufficiently hagiographical for some Methodist reviewers. It was, they claimed, too racy, speculative, psychologizing, in its portrait of the man. It made him human, all too human. Yet when all legitimate criticism of the book has been allowed, it still stands up, fifty years later, as a work which puts the accent where it belongs, on the crucial human relationship of Wesley's life. It is hard to exaggerate the enormous significance of the bond between mother and child, especially when the mother is as gifted and single-minded as Susanna. Some of the women who have written on Wesley —Julia Wedgwood, Elsie Harrison, Mabel Brailsford—have brought a quality of feminine insight to their studies which we need if we are to begin to understand him. They discern both his massive strengths and his human frailties. They have certainly grasped that 'Mothers are the makers of spirit', and that behind every great and good man or woman, there is a mother of distinction.
Wesley's mother is an outstanding case in point. She shaped his development, of course, by the quality of her maternal care and affection, as any good mother inevitably must. Susanna, however, went far beyond this basic, elemental nurturing. She influenced
John — and indeed all her children — by being both their school teacher and their spiritual mentor. For six hours a day she turned the Rectory at Epworth into her schoolroom, and gave both boys and girls all their primary education. With a large family — three boys and seven girls — she was driven to devise a basic structure of eight 'bye-laws' for their conduct and discipline. For the early eighteenth-century classroom these ground-rules were remarkably enlightened, as the first one exemplifies:
1. It had been observed that cowardice and fear of punishment often lead children into lying; till they get a custom of it which they cannot leave. To prevent this, a law was made that whoever was charged with a fault, of which they were guilty, if they would ingenuously confess it, and promise to amend, should not be beaten.
Susanna taught and trained her young in reading, writing, manners, morals and religion. She was herself the daughter of a
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives distinguished Puritan minister, Dr Samuel Annesley, and had browsed freely in his superb library as a girl. The mother of the Wesleys was unusually widely-read, well-educated, and an able theologian. It was surely significant for John Wesley that the first woman in his life was one who had a trained mind, a liberal culture and a genius for education. He was thus made aware, from his most formative years, of the intellectual and organizing, as well as the domestic, talents of women. He never forgot that lesson, and throughout his long life as leader of the Methodist people he would seek to encourage and employ the gifts of women to the full. He would never restrict the role of women to the chores of the church, but allow ample scope for their leadership and responsibility. He could hardly have been his mother's son had he done otherwise.
If Susanna was John's earliest and most formative teacher, she was also his first pastor. This woman of superlative gifts, confined to a rough parish in the backwaters of Lincolnshire, made a conscious decision to devote all her powers to the upbringing and Christian formation of her children. Had she been the Reverend
Mother of a religious house, she could hardly have been more utterly consecrated to her calling. She wrote for the children detailed theological expositions of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. She instilled into them a pattern of private prayer and family worship, and devised a detailed system of personal counselling to foster their Christian development. This latter innovation followed the great fire of 1709, when the Rectory was burnt down, and the children had to be boarded out among families around the village. In Susanna's view, this disruption of home life meant that their manners, morals and religion all took a turn for the worse. To reverse the decline, she instituted a series of personal counselling sessions, as a means of family reformation:
On Monday, I talk with Molly; on Tuesday, with Hetty; Wednesday with Nancy; Thursday with Jacky (i.e. John);
Friday with Patty (i.e. Martha); Saturday with Charles; and with Emily and Sukey together, on Sunday.
So the fire, disastrous as it was, had indirectly positive results for the children.
Nevertheless, the conflagration was a traumatic event in the life of the young Wesleys. For John, it was overwhelmingly so. He was the last to be rescued from the blazing house, trapped in his
Wesley and Women
bedroom, and pulled out through the window just seconds before the roof fell in. No wonder Elsie Harrison, in a startlingly apt metaphor, calls her chapter on the event 'Fire Curtain'. For John, the fire motif — in the Methodist hymns, in his theology, and in those unconscious levels of his mind which are outside time — was to remain always powerfully evocative. Fire symbolized not only the love of God and the power of the Spirit but also destruction, mortal danger and the fierce flames of passion and erotic love. As a missionary in Georgia, in love with his teenage protegée, Sophy
Hopkey, John would draw back from betrothal and commitment with the biblical question, 'Can a man take fire into his bosom, and not be burned?' A burnt child dreads the fire; and there was certainly fear in the self-questioning.
After the Rectory fire, and John's providential escape, Susanna confided to her devotional diary a vow to take special care of the six-year-old child who had been snatched from the blaze, and who would ever after regard himself as 'a brand plucked from the burning'. She recorded, in one of her meditations before God:
I would, if I durst, humbly offer Thee myself and all that Thou hast given me, and I would resolve (Oh give me grace to do it) that the residue of my life shall be all devoted to thy service; and I do intend to be more particularly careful of the soul of this child that Thou hast so mercifully provided for, than ever I have been, that I may do my endeavour to instil into his mind the principles of thy true religion and virtue. Lord, give me grace to do it sincerely, and prudently, and bless my attempts with good success.
Not that Susanna neglected the religious formation of any of her children; but she had a special care for John. Consequently we find evidence of a particularly close bond between mother and son which endured until her death and no doubt beyond. That is not to imply that the umbilical cord was never cut, or that Wesley was held in infantile dependence on his mother. He grew up, as did his brothers and sisters, into spirited independence of character. Yet the bond, even in his maturity, still held. Before they sailed to Georgia as missionaries, John and Charles laid their whole scheme before their mother, to win her approval and consent.
John would continue to consult Susanna on matters of moment, whether personal or theological, as long as she lived. After his
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives decisive experience of the grace of God at Aldersgate Street, on 24
May 1738, Wesley compiled a careful account of his spiritual development for the thirty-five years of his life up to that date.
Having compiled it, he promptly read it over to his mother for her confirmation of its truth. Charles did no such thing, after his similar spiritual experience. The fact that John felt it imperative to do so surely speaks volumes for the relationship between his mother and himself.
One other great debt Wesley owed his esther) beyond her teaching and pastoral care. Not only was she well-educated herself, but she ensured that all her daughters should be so too.
Her conviction shines through one of the rules she devised for her family, namely, her insistence . that no girl be taught to work till she can read very well; and then that she be kept to her work with the same application, and for the same time, that she was held to in reading. This rule also is much to be observed; for the putting children to learn sewing before they can read ereginae is the very reason why so few women can read fit to be heard, and never to be well understood.
She was not, of course, simply concerned with basic literacy, but with reading skills as giving access to the world of learning. As a result, Wesley was privileged to grow up among sisters who were not only lively and intelligent girls, but also recipients in their home of an education equal to their brothers'.
Without acknowledging the striking effect of Wesley's early experience of able women in his own family, we cannot well understand his mature relationships with the women of Methodism, who provided some of his outstanding colleagues and friends. To them we now turn.
The Church has, sadly, often confined the ministry of its women members to domestic chores in the household of faith, or to the dispensing of tea and sympathy. John Wesley would have none of that. He gave to women positions of genuine leadership, trust and responsibility. Grace Murray, in charge of the Orphan House at Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Hannah Ball, organizing pioneer Sunday
School work at High Wycombe; Nancy Bolton, exercising pastoral care and leadership in the Society at Witney: these were the
Wesley and Women
prototypes. Wesley encouraged women to use the varied gifts they had been given — in teaching, preaching, nursing, organizing and pastoral oversight. He never belittled them, patronized them or talked down to them. On the contrary, he drew freely on their advice, friendship and encouragement. He went further. He was _
ready to receive from his closest women colleagues the kind of ; rebuke which he had earlier accepted from his mother and his sisters.
The fruitfulness of Wesley's partnership with his many women colleagues comes out in the lively exchanges of his pastoral letters.
If we take a sample from one of the volumes of John Telford's edition of Wesley's Letters, we can see their range and significance.
Volume Five covers the years 1766 to 1772, when Wesley was in his sixties. These were years of steady growth among the Methodist Societies, marred chiefly by the fierce attacks on Wesley from his Calvinist opponents during 1770-71. Of the 103 personal correspondents in the volume, 34 are women; and Wesley writes, in general, far more frequently to his women correspondents than he does to the men. He writes to his 'Sisters' not about trivia, but on weighty matters, both pastoral and theological. He is concerned both for their bodily health and their spiritual progress. He takes them seriously, and gives detailed spiritual. guidance suited to each one's needs, without either arrogance or condescension. He is concerned that they should make advancement in their Christian living; that they should, indeed, 'press on to perfection'. His tone is familiar and affectionate, yet with a pastor's seriousness of concern. He writes, for example, to Mrs Woodhouse on 17 May 1766:
Surely His grace is sufficient for you: sufficient to subdue all things to Himself. I want you to be all like Him. Your openness and freedom of behaviour when we were at Epworth endeared you to me much. At any time you should speak to me without reserve just what rises in your heart. The peace that passes all understanding keep your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
I am, my dear sister, Your affectionate brother, John Wesley He used great frankness, whether he was writing to Selina,
Countess of Huntingdon, or to Sarah Ryan, who had begun life as a servant-girl. On 28 June 1766 he wrote to Mrs Ryan, who was
John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives then helping to run an orphanage in Leytonstone, in terms which combine plain speaking with his customary courtesy:
My Dear Sister, For some time I have been convinced it was my duty to tell you what was on my mind. I will do it with all plainness. You may answer or not, as you judge best. Many things I have observed in you which gave me pleasure; some which gave me concern: the former I need not mention; the latter I must, or I should not myself be clear before God. .
I am afraid you are in danger of enthusiasm. We know there are divine dreams and impressions. But how easily may you be deceived herein! How easily, where something is from God, may we mix something which is from nature! Especially if we have a lively imagination, and are not aware of any danger.
To Lady Maxwell (8 July 1766) he writes with equal directness:
I rejoice to hear that you have the resolution to sleep and rise early. The uneasiness of it will soon be over, but the advantage will remain for ever. O fear no cross! God is on your side, and will command all to work together for good.
I am, my dear Lady, Your most affectionate servant.
He often expresses concern for the physical, as well as spiritual, health of his women friends. To Lady Maxwell (23 February
1767) he urges:
Exercise, especially as the spring comes on, will be of greater service to your health than an hundred medicines; and I know not whether it will not be restored in a larger measure than for many years when the peace of God fixes in your heart.
On 13 June 1771 he seeks to dispel criticisms which had been levelled at Mary Bosanquet for preaching, and so, allegedly, going directly contrary to St. Paul's injunction that a woman should keep silence in the church. Wesley writes to her:
My Dear Sister, I think the strength of the cause rests there — on your having an extraordinary call. So I am persuaded has every one of our lay preachers; otherwise I could not countenance his preaching at all. It is plain to me that the whole work of God termed
Wesley and Women
Methodism is an extraordinary dispensation of His providence.
Therefore I do not wonder if several things occur therein which do not fall under the ordinary rules of discipline. St. Paul's ordinary rule was, 'I permit not a woman to speak in the congregation.' Yet in extraordinary cases he made a few exceptions; at Corinth in particular. — I am, my dear sister,
Your affectionate brother.
Like his Master, Wesley is prepared to flout public opinion and bend the religious rules in his relations with women. He has two prime aims: to enable them to use their gifts to the full; and to maximize their contribution to the work of the Kingdom.
This sampling of Wesley's voluminous correspondence with his women friends and helpers is entirely typical, and may serve to indicate its range and quality. He valued his women colleagues greatly. He both upheld them in their own work and drew support from them for his own. He needed their understanding sympathy and shrewd judgment. If we ask what were the qualities he most prized in women, he gives us the answer in the pen-portraits he draws of them. Of Grace Murray, he wrote that she was, 'indefatigably patient and inexpressibly tender; quick, clean and skilful; of engaging behaviour and a mild, sprightly, cheerful and yet serious temper; while her gifts for usefulness were such as he had not seen equalled'. In Nancy Bolton, he acknowledged, he had found 'all the qualities which I wanted, meeting together in one person: seriousness, liveliness, sweetness; and all that springing free from the true Fountain, Faith that worketh'.
These descriptions of the women he most admired are strongly redolent of his mother's character and gifts. That can hardly be accidental. Susanna had set the standard of womanhood for him.
It was a high standard, so high, perhaps, that no other woman could ever attain to it. John Wesley gave and received much in his wide range of friendships with women: they were to him advisers, co-adjutors, supporters and colleagues. His mother had been to him all these and more. Though he might have many 'Sisters', he had only one mother. He remained, first and last, 'Son to Susanna'.