Meeting Susanna ' 15
MEETING SUSANNA
' 15 stories, and disposed in seven chief rooms—a kitchinge, a hall, a parlour, a butterie, and three large upper rooms, and some others of common use; and also a little garden, empailed betwine the stone wall and the south." ^ There was ''one bam of six baies, built all of timber and clay walls and covered with straw thatche, with outshotts about it and free house therebye." There were a dovecot and a hemp-kiln.
Altogether the ''scite" of the rectory contained about three acres. ''Plenty of space for the children," thought Susanna hopefully.
Surely the Wesleys were better off with the new living of two hundred pounds®—a far cry from the thirty pounds of South Ormsby. But they were in debt. The stipend they received at South Ormsby, though doubled by Samuel's writings, had never fully met the expenses of their rapidly growing family. Now, even the new salary would not be nearly enough, for additional furnishings must be provided for the larger house, there were taxes incident to establishing them in a new living, and a yearly amount must be sent to Samuel's mother to keep her from starving. ''Farming on the glebe land (parish church property) might eke out the difference," thought Susanna to herself.
Few ministers' wives have ever looked out upon a more desolate landscape than did Susanna as she viewed the environs of their new rectory for the first time—dreary fenlands inter spersed with narrow ditches, a scattering of village dwellings, the church across the field a little way, and a few trees bend ing in a relentless wind. ''A flat malarial land of reed and rush where north winds sweep and an angry sea drives far inland, and where morning ever steps with misty feet and evening follows with sallow-rifted glooms. * Such was
Lincolnshire when the Wesleys arrived.
The tiny, low-lying ''island" of Axholme, surrounded by four rivers, the Trent, the Don, the Tame, and the Idle, was the site of Mr. Wesley's parish. Though many years before
SUSANNA-MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
the Wesleys' arrival the Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden had been commissioned to drain the swamps and turn them into fertile farm land, the rivers still overflowed the low country side at times, adding to the general inaccessibility of the place.
Lucky for Susanna that first day that she did not fully realize the nature of her husband's parishioners. These brutish fenland folk were the product of their environment. They had little contact with the outside world and no education to speak of and so viewed with high suspicion any intrusion either of new people or fresh ideas.
Picture a community where the best of the citizenry could read but falteringly, where there was no newspaper, no library, mail but once a week, and an insularity almost complete, and it is easy to understand why their "manners were coarse and vicious," why "fights were their favorite diversion," and their thinking narrow and mulish.
But this was no ordinary couple—these Wesleys who had been sent to minister to the Lincolnshire parish. They were well-educated, cultured people, each from a long line of noble ancestry. Furthermore, their dedication to their sacred calling was complete, else how could they have labored so long and so faithfully in this desolate spot so different from the London of Susanna's upbringing?
Young Mrs. Wesley was never given to vain repining over the past—the present with its many duties was too demanding for that. But during those early days at Epworth there must have been an undercurrent of sadness to her thoughts. Her father had died shortly before their arrival—that handsome, commanding figure. Dr. Samuel Annesley, around whom the life of her childhood so happily revolved. She could be for given a few nostalgic pangs as her mind reverted to him and all the associations of her early youth.
She had been brought up in an English parsonage where children were counted by the dozen—there were two dozen
Annesleys or a quarter of a hundred. Dr. Manton who baptized
MEETING SUSANNA 17
Susanna could not remember which. Susanna was the youngest.
Too little is known of Susanna's childhood. She was born in London on January 20, 1669. By the time she came upon the scene her father, being a Nonconformist, had been forced out of his important Anglican parish of St. Giles, one of the largest in London. Dr. Annesley later became the minister of the Puritan meetinghouse of Little St. Helen's where he developed a large and influential congregation. Spital Yard, a tiny but respectable street between Spital Square and Bishopgate St., London, was the location of Dr. Annesley's parsonage during his pastorate at Little St. Helen's. It is here that Susanna was born and spent her youth.
On one occasion Susanna spoke of being preserved from ill accidents, once from violent death during her childhood; but there are practically no incidents recorded about her early youth. We know that her home life was a happy one with plenty of wholesome fun.
Four years before her birth, the Great Plague which had its beginning in St. Giles, her father's former parish, had ravaged London. Many were the stories she heard of thou sands who died of that disease within a few days. People who had witnessed the London fire one year later could give her firsthand accounts of its destruction. When Susanna was growing up, London was in the exciting process of recon struction. The plague had taught the city some lessons in clean liness. Wider streets and better houses were laid out by Robert Hooke, and doubtless Susanna herself watched the building of St. Paul's Cathedral, the work of the famous
Sir Christopher Wren.
The records about Susanna's brothers and sisters are equally scant. If the Annesley family followed the usual pattern of that day, a goodly number of the children must have died before they reached maturity. We know that the oldest named
Samuel died early; that another son, given the same name.
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was trained as a merchant, that he left his family to go to India where he became quite wealthy; that he made many promises of financial help to Susanna's family but failed to keep them; that he died in India quite mysteriously.
There were handsome daughters in the Annesley home:
Judith and Anne and Sarah and Elizabeth. There was also a younger son, Benjamin, who became the executor of his fa ther's will.
Susanna, so the record has it, was a pretty girl, the most beautiful of her family, slim and graceful, "retaining her figure to old age." She was cultured and gracious, "with some measure of wit," though she was reputed to be of more serious temperament than her gay and rollicking sisters. Susanna was of an even disposition, with a "deep and natural piety which she is said to have inherited from her mother. In a letter written to her son John in later years she says that early in life she made it a rule "never to spend more time in any matter of mere recreation in one day" than she "spent in private religious duties." But with all her piety, this daugh ter of the parsonage was strong in her opinions and fearless in sticking to them.
Dr. Annesley kept a sort of "open house" for Nonconformist pastors of London and vicinity as well as young students of that persuasion. Among the many visitors to the hospitable house in Spital Yard was Samuel Wesley, a student at the Reverend Edward Veal's Dissenting Academy and a son and grandson of Nonconformist parsons.® It is here that he and Susanna met when quite young. It is worthy of mention also that John Dunton, Samuel Wesley's eccentric publisher, who married Susanna's sister Elizabeth, was a frequent visitor at the Annesley parsonage.
Susanna, of course, never went to college. In her day woman's education was "sadly to seek," as Trevelyan put it.
There were a few girls' boarding schools of poor quality, but, generally speaking, even a high-born lady's library was limited
MEETING SUSANNA
to a prayerbook and a collection of recipes. That Susanna received a good education, however, is attested by the classic simplicity of her writing and her ability to hold her own in the learned theological discussions that constituted the table talk in homes such as Dr. Annesley's. Her father recognized the intellectual acumen of his favorite daughter and took a part in her education.
It is quite likely that Susanna had a knowledge of French.
Some historians state that she was well versed in Latin and Greek; but this is highly improbable, for her letters to her sons at Oxford are completely devoid of classical phrases, as are their replies. The letters to their father, however, are heavily embroidered with Latin and Greek. Furthermore, in a letter to his son Samuel at Westminster School, Samuel
Wesley, Sr. urges Sammy to write freely about his inmost thoughts:
"I will promise you so much secrecy that even your mother shall know nothing but what you have a mind she should; for which reason it may be convenient you should write to me still in Latin"—which, incidentally, proves something else about the status of women in the eighteenth century beside the quality of their education.
Unquestionably, though, Susanna's was a "well-stored" mind and a logical one, and her exercise of it was to have great effect in fashioning the mold of the people called Methodists.
By no stretch of the imagination could Susanna ever have been called a mystic. Devout and good she was from childhood, but common sense was always dominant, especially in her religion. In writing to John at Oxford she once said: "I take a Kempis to. have been an honest, weak man, who had more zeal than knowledge, by his condemning all mirth or pleasure as sinful or useless. . . ." And again: "Let everyone enjoy the present hour. Age and successive troubles are sufficient to convince any man*that it is much wiser and safer to deprecate great afflictions than to pray for them, and that our Lord knew
SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
what was in man when he directed us to pray: 'Lead us not jj^to temptation.* ** Again, in her ]\'Icdtiattofis she writes. Reli gion is not to be confined to the church or closet, nor exercised only in prayer and meditation, but everywhere I am in His presence." "Hers was a religion of enlightened principle, rather than transient emotion." ® "A theologian in short dresses," William Fitchett calls
Susanna, and well he may. Before she was thirteen years of age she had carefully sifted the tenets of her father's belief. She had weighed them in the balance against the doctrines of the Established Church and had decided in favor of the Church.
Samuel Wesley before ending his Academy days had made a similar decision. He, too, was the son of a Dissenting clergy man, and what was more natural than that he and the beautiful
Susanna should become attracted to each other!
A quaint courtship this must have been, these two serious young people, withdrawn a bit from the merry group in the rectory parlor, in earnest discussion of deep religious princi ples. Samuel was able to lead his future wife out of the maFes of Socinianism in which she was then wandering and to help her establish a firm and lasting belief in the Trinity.
And what of this young cleric who was to be Susarma's life companion ?
Historians are at variance as to the date of Samuel Wesley's birth, but it is fairly well established that he was born in November, 1662. This is substantiated by his baptismal record, found in the church at Whitchurch and dated December 17,
1662. He, too, came out of a Nonconformist parsonage—a parsonage full of children and poverty-stricken like the homes of most of the Dissenting parsons when the Act of Uniformity deprived them of their living. The names of but three of the Wesley children beside Samuel are known: Timothy, Eliza beth, and Matthew.
Samuel's father, John, persecuted and driven from pillar to post, died of a broken heart at the time Samuel was attend-
MEETING SUSANNA
ing Dorchester free school, but his mother managed somehow to keep him there till he finished his course. No Dissenter was permitted by law to attend a university in England, so with a thirty-pound yearly stipend from the Dissenters' fund, Samuel entered Mr. Veal's Dissenting Academy in London, a school of high academic standards. After two years he transferred to Mr. Morton's Academy, an equally good school. Among his fellow students there were John Dunton, his future brotherin-law, and Daniel Defoe. It was during this period that he heard some of the most noted of the Nonconformist preachers, including John Bunyan.
Samuel Wesley proved a fine student and a young man of excellent character. It was at Mr. Morton's School that he undertook a thorough study of the Dissenters' beliefs and as a result decided with finality that his conscience would not permit him to follow the convictions of his father. To his credit it is recorded that he discharged all financial obligations to the Nonconformists by means of a small legacy he inherited, then turned his face toward the university and ministry in the Established Qiurch.
Well he knew that his Dissenting mother would be violently opposed to this change of allegiance, so he slipped out from home one August morning in 1683, and with forty-five shillings in his pocket and his knapsack on his back, set out on foot for Oxford, the impregnable citadel of English con servatism. His father and grandfather had gone to Oxford.
Why not he? The fact that his widowed mother had not a farthing more for his education deterred him not a whit. So, a pauper scholaris, the lowest of the four conditions of member ship, he entered Exeter College of the great university. One crown was the sum total of outside help he received during his entire five-year stay at Oxford, but he was able to defray his expenses by the strictest economy in food, fuel, and cloth ing, by serving other students and tutoring them, and by his pen. His only luxury was his trusty pipe.
22 SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
In Spite of his demanding schedule he found time to minister to the prisoners in the Castle at Oxford—a service which was later repeated by his sons during their student days.
Samuel's first book was a collection of poems under the odd title of "Maggots." It began with these revealing lines:
In his own defence the author writes Because when this foul maggot bites He ne'er can rest in quiet....
This little volume, light and witty in character, was published by John Dunton at the Black Raven printing establishment in London in 1685, while Samuel was still a student at Oxford.
The "maggot" continued to bite him for the rest of his life for he was determined to be a poet of the first rank—an ambition which was never realized even in the opinion of his admiring sons. "Maggots" was to be followed by many more writings of a serious nature as Samuel's reputation as a scholar increased.
This husband of Susanna's was cast in no commonplace mold. He was small in stature but with strength of purpose out of all proportion to his size. His body was toughened by pri vation and his will was equally inflexible. He was peppery and quick-tempered, in contrast to Susanna's even disposition; tact was completely absent from his makeup. Samuel Wesley was never practical; indeed, he has even been called irresponsible by some historians who thoroughly disliked him. He was, in fact, strikingly like David Copperfield's friend Mr. Micawber.
But for culture, industry, devotion to his calling and his family, and for downright courage, Samuel Wesley should receive a high rating.
Poverty stalked the life of the little rector from birth until his last hour, but he was never daunted by it.
Susanna and Samuel were married about 1689 when Susan na was nineteen or twenty and Samuel in his twenty-eighth year. It was a love match to the end of their lives together.
THE AIMIVESLEYS
and the WESLEYS *> The unpardonable sin for any storyteller is to digress even slightly from the unrolling of his tale. But it is also true that rhost readers unconsciously place the characters on the page before them in a contemporary setting and thus receive a distorted image.
The period of 1669 to 1742 was a long time ago, and to form a true picture of Susanna Wesley it is necessary to view her against the background of her ancestry and the time in
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which she lived. So, in fairness to this elect lady of an earlier day, we shall try to place her in the proper frame.
Adam Clarke, meticulous historian that he was, traces Sus anna Annesley's lineage back beyond the advent of William the Conqueror. For our purpose it is sufficient to go back no further than her grandfather John Anslye, a British preacher, and Judith his wife, godly people who dedicated their only son at his birth "for the work of the ministry." Appropriately, they named him Samuel after the prophet of old who received a similar consecration. John Anslye died when his son was four years old, and Samuel was carefully reared in a pious tradi tion by his mother.
Susanna's maternal grandfather John White, a Welsh Puri tan, was a distinguished lawyer and for many years a member of Parliament from Southwark. He demonstrated the strength of his character when, as chairman of a committee from the House of Commons to investigate the immoralities of the clergy, he made a fearless expose of his scandalous findings.
Perhaps it is from this ancestor that Susanna inherited the merciless logic of her reasoning—a quality she passed on in abundant measure to her famous son, John.
Susanna's father, Samuel Annesley, was a bom leader. Tall and handsome, he radiated a certain exuberance of good health and looked every inch the aristpcrat that he was. He entered
Oxford at the age of fifteen and was outstanding for his good ness and industry rather than for his intellectual acumen—but how his fellows followed him! Those who knew him loved him devotedly.
In due time, about 1644, Samuel Annesley completed the preparation for his beloved calling, was ordained and assigned to his first parish. Here began a long series of persecutions and hardships that persisted for many years.
From the start, his parishioners in his first settled charge at Cliffe resented him bitterly. They were used to a carefree, laissez-faire rector who winked at their riotous living. And