Susanna In The Parish 75
SUSANNA IN THE PARISH
in the big city must have been an exciting change from the restricted life of the remote flats of the "Isle of Axholme."
Dr. Matthew Wesley, brother of Samuel, took them into his home; but did they visit also uncle Timothy Wesley and Mrs.
Dyer, the sister of father Samuel, and grandmother Wesley, all of whom apparently lived in London? Part of the time young Susanna stayed with her uncle Samuel Annesley, before he went to India. Did he inherit the fine qualities of his famous father, the Reverend Samuel Annesley? Unfortunately, this period in the life of these two Wesley daughters is a frustrating blank. Mr. Annesley, incidentally, promised young Susanna financial help, but in one of Mrs. Wesley's letters we are told that this was never forthcoming.
Kezziah, the youngest Wesley child, was doubtless bom in the lodgings where Susanna took refuge after the fire. She was named for one of the daughters of Job, probably by her father who lived and breathed in the atmosphere of that Old Testai ment patriarch. Kezzy, as she was commonly called, was deli cate from the first, and constant attention must have been lavished upon her by both Mrs. Wesley and faithful Emilia, who cared for her mother during this trying interlude.
Susanna redeemed the time during the rebuilding by reI writing her Manual or treatise which had been destroyed in the fire. The purpose of this Manual was the religious instruction of the older children, and in it she set forth a detailed explana tion of the "evidences of revealed religion." The new writing reproduced the old and added a treatise on the chief articles of the Christian faith based upon the Apostles' Creed. She addressed it to Sukey in London, on January 13, 1709/10, but it was intended for the instruction of the other children as well. Dr. Adam Clarke holds that this work was entirely origi nal with Mrs. Wesley, and, though some of her conclusions may not be acceptable to a twentieth-century theologian, it is a remarkable production from a woman of Susanna's day. It
SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
was during the interval after the fire that she composed also her dissertation on the Ten Commandments.
The fire wreaked even more disastrous havoc upon Samuel's scholarly writings. He had, with great expenditure of time and labor, madfe alterations in his Lije of Christ. This together with all his other writings was destroyed. The only product of Mr. Wesley's pen that remained untouched by the flames was his beautiful hymn, "Behold the Savior of Mankind," a priceless Methodist heritage which to this day holds an honored place in the Methodist Hymnal.
Before the fire Samuel Wesley had already begun work on the most pretentious writing of his career: The Dissertations on the Book of Job. This was to occupy most of his spare time for the remaining years of his life. The volume comprised fifty-three dissertations, written in Latin, with Hebrew and Greek quotations. He had carefully read the Book of Job in Hebrew and in the Septuagint, had collated the versions and added notes. Then he had secured Walton's Polyglot Bible which contained the original texts of both the Old and New
Testaments in Hebrew and Greek, with all the ancient versions then known. These he also collated with his first work, adding more notes. All this meticulous work was destroyed by the fire, every page of it, and his precious Polyglot Bible as well.
This was a mighty blow, but Samuel Wesley's spirit was as indomitable as that of his wife. With thankfulness in their hearts for the deliverance of their family they set to work de novo. Samuel procured another Polyglot and, in addition to his previous work, consulted all the commentators he could find, even making the trip to the library of Lord Milton at Wentworth House, accompanied by his son John. Here he was accorded every courtesy, and Mr. John Wesley was asked to preach in the parish church on the Sunday morning of their stay.
All the papers and records of Susanna's father, the Reverend Samuel Annesley, were also destroyed in the fire.
SUSANNA IN THE PARISH
The new rectory was about a year in construction, and this time it was of sturdy brick, in Queen Anne style, a most creditable building still in uSe today.
Rebuilding caused no curtailment of parish duties. Though the rector was never popular—^his lack of tact and the strictness of his discipline toward his parishioners prevented that—^he was a conscientious pastor to his flock. He knew them all by name and regularly visited them from house to house. These visits were not merely social but were pastoral in nature, with inquiries into the conduct of the children and the spiritual state of each household.
Susanna's participation in the work of the parish during the early years of their stay in Epworth receives no comment by historians. Doubtless her time was more than filled with child bearing and the management of rectory and glebe. But not too long after the family's return to the newly built rectory she assumed a startling role in the life of St. Andrew's parish.
It happened this way:
Samuel Wesley not merely pursued his regular duties and scholarly writing, but his fellow clerics considered him also quite a leader in the wider work of the Established Church.
Three times they chose him to represent his diocese at the Convocation in London.^ One of these notoriously long meetings began in 1710.
Though there was no expense account to draw upon and the Wesley exchequer was in its usual state of depletion, Samuel arranged for a curate, Mr. Inman, to manage the affairs of the parish in his absence, and set out for London. Susanna remained at home to care for the family as best she could with the meager resources at her command.
Soon after Mr. Wesley's departure, Emilia found in her father's study the story of the Danish mission to Tranquebar.
Emilia read it aloud to her mother. The exploits of these Danes were most inspiring to Susanna. She felt that, in comparison, her own life was not as worthwhile as it might
SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
be and decided to do something about it in the only place possible for her—her own home. "I thought I might live in a more exemplary manner in some things," wrote Susanna to Samuel in London. "I might pray more for the people, and speak with more warmth to those with whom I have an oppor tunity of conversing." Could it be that Susanna bore her share of guilt for the lack of rapport with the people of Epworth?
It was under the inspiration of this book that Mrs. Wesley decided she should give more time to each of her children individually, so she set up a schedule of conferences at the only time available, in the evenings, and continued this practice as long as her children remained under the rectory roof.
The Reverend Mr. Inman proved a poor substitute for Samuel. In the curate's sermon on Sunday mornings (the only service he conducted) he continually harped on one theme: the obligation to pay one's debts. Since it was common knowl edge in the parish that the rector was usually in arrears, the sermons were considered to be aimed at Samuel himself.
Susanna bore the humiliation with composure.
During her husband's long absence there was no afternoon service at the church, and she felt obligated to have evening worship for her family. These services were held in her kitchen and consisted of the singing of psalms and the reading of prayers and a short sermon selected from her husband's library shelves. First the servants begged to come, then some of their relatives and friends, and finally the neighbors, so that the attendance increased to more than two hundred, with some unable to gain admittance. How one kitchen could contain such a congregation is difficult to understand, but these are
Susanna's figures, and she was never inaccurate.
Dutifully Mrs. Wesley sent a report of her kitchen meetings to her husband in London. Nor was hers the only report. Mr.
Inman was infuriated because Susanna had a larger attendance at her little service than he had on Sunday morning. He protested to the rector against his wife's evening "conventicle,"
SUSANNA IN THE PARISH
as he called it, and had several of his friends join him in the protest. Samuel's reply was not long in coming, and it was anything but favorable.
His objections which were expressed at length can best be summarized by giving the gist of Susanna's answer to them;
"As to its looking particular [unseemly], I grant that it does; but so does almost everything that is serious, or that may anyway advance the glory of God or the salvation of souls, if it be performed out of a pulpit, or in the way of common con versation."
In answer to her husband's contention that it was unsuitable for a woman to conduct such a meeting, she wrote:
"As I am a woman, so I am also mistress of a large family.
And though the superior charge of the souls contained in it lies upon you, as head of the family, and as their minister; yet in your absence I cannot but look upon every soul you leave under my care as a talent committed to me." Later in the letter, being very much a woman of the eighteenth century, she ex presses herself as dissatisfied with presenting the prayers of the people to God because of her sex: "Last Sunday I fain would have dismissed them before prayers, but they begged so earnestly to stay, that I durst not deny them."
"As for your proposal of letting some other person read," she further wrote, "Alas! you do not consider what a people these are. I do not think one man among them could read a sermon, without spelling a good part of it; and how would that edify the rest?'Nor has any of our family a voice strong enough to be heard by such a number of people."
In a later letter to her husband, Susanna describes the good effects of these meetings: "Our meeting has wonderfully con ciliated the minds of this people toward us, so that we now live in the greatest amity imaginable. . . . Some families who seldom went to church, now go constantly; and one person, who had not been there for seven years, is now prevailed upon to go with the rest."
SUSANNA-MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
And then comes her final paragraph which not only demon strates the force of Susanna Wesley's personality, but also how politic she was:
"If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your positive command, in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment, for neglecting this opportunity of doing good, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our LORD JESUS CHRIST."
Susanna won out! How could it be otherwise? When the rector returned to his parish, the kitchen services were dis continued in favor of evening worship at the church, but the old spirit of suspicion and animosity toward the rector was forever gone.
John Wesley, in his account of this unusual happening, says that his mother, "as well as her father and grandfather, her husband, and her three sons, had been in her measure and degree a preacher of righteousness."
Interestingly enough, Susanna spoke of her kitchen congre gation as "our Society," and actually these meetings were conducted in much the same way as the Methodist Societies later formed by her son. Perhaps this whole episode is another reason for the title fittingly given to Susanna Wesley: "The Mother of Methodism."
There was a streak of stubbornness in Samuel Wesley, and to satisfy himself as to his curate's competence as a preacher he invited Mr. Inman to preach in the sanctuary and assigned him this text: "Without faith it is impossible to please God."
The topic seemed safe enough, but the curate forthwith adapted it to a fifteen-minute homily on the obligation to pay one's debts 1 The rector was convinced.
The period of Samuel Wesley's attendance upon the Convo cation of 1711, as it was called, was an eventful one for the family back home. Beside the kitchen meeting episode, five of
SUSANNA IN THE PARISH
the children, including John, had smallpox during their father's absence. Susanna must have excelled as a nurse as well as a teacher, for there is nowhere any mention of disfiguring aftereffects of this dread disease upon the Wesley children.
Whether Samuel brought back from London some monetary gifts from friends and patrons to help him with his debts, as he did when he returned from his first trip to Convocation in 1701, is not known. His biographers do not mention such a windfall.
Samuel, Jr. had been away from home for several years by this time, and the second break in the family life at Epworth came in 1714 when John, not yet eleven years old, went off to Charterhouse School in London. Sammy was by that time teaching, at Westminster. It was a great comfort to Susanna and Samuel that John could be near his older brother, and the devoted parents kept in close touch with both sons by frequent letters. There was never any need to urge the boys to study
—their love for learning had been fostered at home almost from their infancy. Susanna's letters were confined mostly to matters of conduct and devotions, while Samuel's never omit ted instruction about their health. "Run around the garden three times each morning," was father Samuel's advice to John, and good advice it was.
Charterhouse had a fine tradition, but it was severe and hard. Under the prevailing fag system the smaller boys ate what was left on the plates after the stronger lads had helped themselves to what they wanted. Here discipline was strict and unyielding. After six years of such rigorous education,
John Wesley left Charterhouse a hardier character with a tougher body. This training was to stand him in good stead for the demanding life that was to follow. It is recorded that at the age of eighty-five, John Wesley walked six miles to an engagement. The rigor of the vast program he mapped out for himself is well known.
One of the firmest beliefs of both Susanna and Samuel
SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
Wesley was in the divine right of kings. To a person of the twentieth century such a doctrine sounds ridiculous, but it was widespread in Mrs. Wesley's time and accounts for some of the positions taken by both Susanna and her husband.
In her "Occasional Papers," written about 1705, Susanna expresses her view-on this subject: "I cannot tell how to think that a King of England can ever be accountable to his subjects for any mal-administration or abuse of power. But as he de rives his power from God, so to Him only he must answer for his using it." Four years earlier when Susanna and Samuel had their famous tiff over the prayer for William and Mary at family devotions, her contention was that the current sovereigns were usurpers and therefore the divine right be longed to the Stuarts and the Stuarts alone. She was a staunch
Jacobite, as was her son Samuel.
The rector's interpretation of this doctrine had a peculiar twist. During his Oxford days when James II came to the university and demanded in a most dictatorial manner that all its appointees should be Romanists, Samuel is said to have remarked; "I saw he was a tyrant. Though I was not inclined to take an active part against him, I was resolved from that time to give him no kind of support." But not long after this episode, who should write one of the congratulatory poems on the birth of the Prince of Wales (in the book prepared by various representatives of Oxford University) but Samuel
Wesley! ^ In spite of these inconsistencies, the Wesleys were both staunch royalists and trained their children to be so.
Meanwhile life went on as usual at the Epworth parsonage, a miserable life in many respects by twentieth-century stand ards. In addition to Samuel's three trips to London for Convo cation, he apparently made several others to raise money. He had to beg funds for the rebuilding of the rectory, since there was no local parsonage committee in those days to take this off his hands and he did a good job of it. In addition, his own
SUSANNA IN THE PARISH
debts at times reached a critical stage, and he had to appeal to friends and patrons to help him but. There was much love in the Wesley household, and lofty thought and a high regard for learning, but comforts were very, very few.
John entered Oxford in 1720, on a Charterhouse fellowship.
The accounts of the exploits of the three sons away from home furnished an exciting interlude in the drab life of the rest of the family. At great sacrifice Susanna and Samuel managed to keep the boys in school, but no money was left for the girls.
Most of them inherited the good looks of the Annesleys and are said to have had many beaus, but few of the local suitors were of congenial tastes with the Wesley girls. "With minds stored with the music of Homer, and hands working to the pageantry of Milton's verse, they were condemned to be hengirls and swine-herds on the filth of the water-logged flats of Lincolnshire," was Elsie Harrison's caustic summation of the Wesley daughters' fate.
Emilia, the oldest daughter, bewails the "intolerable want and affliction" of the family, and that they were in "scandalous want of necessities." Her mother was in bed all one winter and even expected to die, while Emilia did her best to keep the large family on a very small sum of money. All the girls told of the scantiness of clothes and funds, and they attributed much of their mother's ill health to lack of "common comforts."
Usually Susanna bore her woes with silent resignation. But in a lengthy epistle written on her birthday to her brother in India and dated January 20, 1721/22, she exposes some of her inner feelings. This is the letter in which she apologizes for Samuel's incompetence in the business affairs entrusted to him by Mr. Annesley, She goes on to say:
What we shall or shall not need hereafter, God only knows; but at present there hardly ever was a greater coincidence of unprosperous events in one family than is now ours. I am rarely in health. Mr. Wesley declines apace. My dear Emilia, who in my
SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
present exigencies would exceedingly comfort me, is compelled to go to service in Lincoln, where she is a teacher in a boardingschool. My second daughter, Sukey, a pretty woman, and worthy a better fate, when, by your last unkind letters, she perceived that all her hopes in you were frustrated, rashly threw away herself upon a man (if a man he may be called, who is little inferior to the apostate angels in wickedness) that is not only her plague, but a constant affliction to the family. O sir! O brother! Happy, thrice happy are you, happy is my sister, that buried your children in infancy! secure from temptation, secure from guilt, secure from want and shame, or loss of friends! They are safe beyond the reach of pain or sense of misery: bdng gone hence, nothing can touch them further. Believe me, sir, it is better to mourn ten children dead than one living; and I have buried many. . ..
The other children, though wanting neither industry nor capacity for business, we cannot put to any, by reason we have neither money nor friends to assist us in doing it. Nor is there a gentle man's family near us in which we can place them, unless as com mon servants; and that even yourself would not think them fit for, if you saw them; so that they must stay at home, while they have a home; and how long will that be? Innumerable are other uneasinesses, too tedious to mention; insomuch that, what with my own indisposition, my master's infirmities, the absence of my eldest, the ruin - of my second daughter, and the inconceivable distress of all the rest, I have enough to turn a stronger head than mine. And were it not that God supports, and by his omnipotent goodness often totally suspends all sense of worldly things, I could not sustain the weight many days, perhaps hours.*
Samuel Wesley . . . was buried in the Epworth churchyard.
EPWORTH and WROOT In 1724, Samuel Wesley was given the living at Wroot, in addition to the parish at Epworth. Wroot was four and a half miles from Epworth, its rectory was a dilapidated dwelling with a thatched roof, the parishioners "rustics of the lowest order," and the terrain swampy and uninviting. The living paid fifty pounds a year. The rector's family moved from Epworth to Wroot and occupied the parsonage for several years. Wroot was a desolate place to live in at best, but when
SUSANNA—MOTHER OF THE WESLEYS
the rains were excessive land transportation became impossible.
All travel then between the two parishes had to be by boat.
There was one partially redeeming feature, however; the family had plenty to eat in the smaller parish. It is possible that the Wesleys rented the Epworth rectory during their sojourn at Wroot. This possibility is substantiated by an excerpt from one of the rector's letters: "I walked sixteen miles yesterday, and this morning, I thank God, I was not a penny worse. The occasion of this booted walk was to hire a room for myself at Epworth, which I think I have now achieved." ^ Samuel Wesley was jubilant over the prospect of having the two livings instead of one. Emilia was urged to come home, now that there was an increase in the family income. She had had a five-year interval of teaching in a boarding school in Lincoln. It was hard work, but she was able to buy some clothes for herself and had thoroughly enjoyed having money of her own. But the school closed and home, perforce, was the logical place for Emilia.
She had been told, she wrote her brother John, that "this addition to my father, with God's ordinary blessing, would make him a rich man in a few years." Rather tartly she continues:
Then I came home again in an evil hour for me. I was well clothed, and, while I wanted nothing, was easy enough. . . . Thus far we went on tolerably well; but this winter,.when my own necessaries began to decay, and my money was most of it spent
(I having maintained myself since I came home, but now could do it no longer), I found what a condition I was in: every trifling want was either not supplied, or I had more trouble to procure it than it was worth. I know not when we have had so good a year, both at Wroot and at Epworth, as this year; but, instead of saving anything to clothe my sisters or myself, we are just where we were. A noble crop has almost all gone, beside Epworth living, to pay some part of those infinite debts my father has run into, which