9. The Loss of Samuel Annesley
The Loss of Samuel Annesley
A record of only one member of the large family in which Susanna was born has come down to us. That was of her brother, Samuel Annesley.
In 1683 Annesley and his wife went to India. The East India Company was vigorously promoting business with England, and capable, diligent efforts were bringing large rewards. Annesley, an enterprising young man, was determined to make his fortune.
The Wesleys’ daughter Susanna was known to the family as Sukey. Her uncle Samuel, learning in India of her winsome personality, promised that when he became rich he would do handsomely by her. And he apparently expressed his intention of providing well for the rest of the Wesley girls and for their mother.
During the long years of their poverty the family had looked forward to Annesley’s return. They bore with their worn-out clothing and the lack of variety in their diet, waiting for the day when he would sail into port and would fulfil his generous promises.
In order to understand the position of the Wesley girls, we must realize that conditions regarding employment for young women were very different then from what they are today. Class distinction was widely prevalent throughout England and although these girls might perform farm labours at home, milking cows and feeding sheep, they had about them a quality and a presence that rendered it out of the question for them to hire themselves out as servants in someone else’s home. The only positions open to them were those of a teacher in a girls’ school or a companion to some well-to-do lady.
The other alternative was that of being married. Although all manner of youths from Epworth and the area round about sought the company of the Wesley girls, few, if any of them, possessed the qualities that rendered them suitable to become lifelong partners to these extraordinary young women. Accordingly, as the years came and went, despite their temporary friendships, each was waiting till some young man of adequate standing, sufficient enterprise and pious character came into her life and won her heart.
In the meantime, while they worked in the house and on the farm, they anticipated the day when Samuel Annesley would return from India and would supply them, as they expected, with some of the things they had lacked so long. But over the years, relations between Susanna and her brother changed for the worse.
Needing someone to handle his affairs in England, Annesley wrote to Samuel Wesley, suggesting that he undertake this task, and no doubt offering to pay him well for doing so. However, Susanna raised certain objections to the scheme. She stated that her husband was too far removed from London to oversee the business adequately, and also that he might prove unfit to make decisions in commercial affairs. His ability to perform correctly the collecting and spending of money, she said, was open to question. But Wesley still agreed to serve as the agent for his brother-in-law.
The arrangement did not work well. As Susanna had predicted, Wesley proved inefficient in business decisions and in financial matters. After a time Annesley placed his affairs in the hands of another man, but he seems also to have been so incensed that he declared he would reconsider his intention to assist the girls and Susanna.
This proved a serious disappointment, especially to Sukey, to whom he had made a definite promise of provision. Under the shock of it she threw herself into a hasty marriage. Her husband, Richard Ellison, came from a well-to-do family from whom he received a considerable inheritance, but he was ‘course, vulgar and immoral’ and severely dominating in his manner, and he speedily made Sukey’s life almost unbearable.
Further correspondence also took place between Annesley and Susanna. None of his letters have been retained, but we have one of hers to him. Writing in 1722, she said,
Sir,
The unhappy differences between you and Mr Wesley have prevented my writing for some years . . . but feeling life ebb apace, and having a desire to be at peace with all men, especially you, before my exit, I have ventured to send one letter more, hoping you will give yourself the trouble to read it without prejudice.
I am, I believe, got on the right side of fifty, infirm and weak; yet old as I am, since I have taken my husband ‘for better, for worse,’ I’ll take my residence with him: ‘where he lives, will I live; and where he dies will I die; and there will I be buried. God do so unto me, and more also, if ought but death part him and me.’
Confinement is nothing to one that by sickness is compelled to spend a great part of her time in a chamber; and I sometimes think that, if it were not on account of Mr Wesley and the children, it would be perfectly indifferent to my soul whether she ascended to the supreme Origin of being from a jail or a palace, for God is everywhere. . .
Upon the best observation I could ever make, I am induced to believe that it is much easier to be contented without riches than with them. It is so natural for a rich man to make his gold his god . . . it is so very difficult not to trust in, not to depend on it, for support and happiness, that I do not know one rich man in the world with whom I would exchange conditions.
You say, ‘I hope you have recovered your loss by fire long since.’ No; and it is to be doubted, never shall. Mr Wesley rebuilt his house in less than a year; but nearly thirteen years are elapsed since it was burned, yet it is not half furnished, nor his wife and children half clothed to this day. It is true that by the benefactions of his friends, together with what he had himself, he paid the first; but the latter is not paid yet, or, what is much the same, money which was borrowed for clothes and furniture is yet unpaid.
You go on, ‘My brother’s living of £300 a year, as they tell me.’ They? Who? I wish those who say so were compelled to make it so. It may as truly be said that his living is £10,000 a year as £300.I have, sir, formerly laid before you the true state of our affairs. I have told you that the living was always let for £160 a year; that taxes, poor assessments, subrents, tenths, procurations, synodals, etc., took up nearly £30 of that moiety, so that there needs no great skill in arithmetic to compute what remains.
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 in ours. I am rarely in good health; Mr Wesley declines apace; my dear Emily, who in my present exigencies would exceedingly comfort me, is compelled to go to service in Lincoln, where she is a teacher in a boarding school; 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 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. Oh, sir! oh, 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 or shame, or loss of friends! They are safe beyond the reach of pain or sense of misery: being 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 m any. But here I must pause awhile.
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 gentleman’s family near us in which we can place them, unless as common servants, and that even yourself would not think them fit for, if you saw them. . . Innumerable are other uneasinesses, too tedious to mention; insomuch that, 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.[1]
Annesley had suggested that Wesley had not been entirely honest in his financial dealings, to which Susanna replied:
These things are unkind, very unkind. Add not misery to affliction: if you will not reach out a friendly hand to support, yet I beseech you, forbear to throw water on a people already sinking.
But I shall go on with your letter to me. You proceed: ‘When I come home’ — oh, would to God that might ever be! — ‘should any of your daughters want me’ — as I think they will not — ‘I shall do as God enables me!’ I must answer this with a sigh from the bottom of my heart. . .
You go on: ‘My brother has one invincible obstacle to my business, his distance from London.’ Sir, you may please to remember I put you in mind of this long since. . . ‘Another remora is, these matters are out of his way.’ That is a remora indeed, and ought to have been considered on both sides before he entered upon your business; for I am verily persuaded that that, and that alone, has been the cause of any mistakes or indavertency he has been guilty of, and the true reason why God had not blessed him with desired success.
‘He is apt to rest upon deceitful promises.’ Would to God that neither he, nor I, nor any of our children, had ever trusted to deceitful promises! But it is a right-hand error, and I hope God will forgive us all. . .
‘He is not fit for worldly business.’ This I likewise assent to, and must own I was mistaken when I did think him fit for it; my own experience has convinced me that he is one of those who, our Saviour saith, ‘are not so wise in their generation as the children of this world’.
And did I not know that Almighty Wisdom hath views and ends in fixing the bounds of our habitation, which are out of our ken, I should think it a thousand pities that a man of his brightness and rare endowments of learning and useful knowledge in relation to the church of God should be confined to an obscure comer of the country where his talents are buried, and he determined to a way of life for which he is not so well qualified as I could wish. . .
I shall not detain you any longer — not so much as to apologize for the tedious length of this letter. . .
I am,
your obliged and most obedient servant and sister,
Susanna is as much out of patience in this letter as in anything we have from her pen. She is incensed with her brother’s going back on his word to her daughter Sukey and makes it plain that Sukey had trusted him and that he had disappointed her and also all of her sisters. Susanna’s assertion that she would stay with her husband is probably an indication that Annesley had suggested that her wisest course would be to leave him. There is a fire in this letter that we see nowhere else in Susanna Wesley.
Although we have no document to confirm this, we have reason to believe that Annesley replied to Susanna’s letter and that he apologized to some extent for his previous strictures. He also apparently stated that he would shortly be returning to England and urged Susanna to meet his vessel when it docked. Accordingly we find John writing to his brother Samuel, ‘Tell me as near as you can how soon my uncle is expected in England and my mother in London.’[3]
Despite the enfeebled condition referred to in Susanna’s letter, she summed up sufficient strength to take the arduous trip to London. The journey from Lincolnshire would mean five or six days of travelling with a stop at an inn during each night. There was considerable cost involved, but we must assume that the opportunity to get away from Epworth for a time and to revisit the scenes of her childhood revived her physically. Charles speaks of her delight in walking about London, viewing again the areas she had known as a child.
Having repaired the breach with her brother and having journeyed from Epworth to London to meet him, Susanna naturally looked forward to his arrival. The vessel on which he had left India docked in London on the appointed day. But, strange to say, Annesley was nowhere to be found. His personal goods were in his cabin as he had left them, but the officers of the ship knew nothing as to the cause of his disappearance. It is highly probable that he was murdered and his body thrown overboard.
Annesley had apparently made his fortune. John Wesley ‘used to tell his nephews [sons of Charles], “You are heirs to a large property in India, if you can find it out; for my uncle is said to have been very prosperous.”’[4]
Accordingly, bearing this sad news, Susanna journeyed back to Epworth. She went on suffering her pain and weakness, meeting the family’s constant poverty, witnessing her husband’s physical deterioration and bearing his increasing temper. She hoped her girls would find suitable men to marry, and anticipated the day when John and Charles would be in holy orders and would be able to assist their parents.
Life had brought trial after trial and disappointment after disappointment for Susanna, but the greatest difficulty of all was the one she was now about to face — the tragedy involving her daughter Hetty.