10. The Tragedy of Daughter Hetty
The Tragedy of Daughter Hetty
Susanna named her fifth daughter Mehetabel, but the family called her Hetty.
Born in 1697, from her early days Hetty seemed exceptionally bright and particularly capable. At the age of five she began to attend her mother’s school, but her father, realizing that she possessed extraordinary qualities, gave her a form of education that he gave to none of his other daughters. This was instruction in the classics and by the time she was nine she was able to read Greek and Latin and had some knowledge of the literature of those languages. During the months that followed, because she wrote a beautiful hand, he had her assist him by transcribing his commentary on the book of Job. But her chief talent lay in composing poetry, a gift inherited from her father, but which rose to new heights in her.
Hetty’s intelligence, however, was combined with unusual liveliness. We are told that ‘From childhood she was vivacious and sprightly, full of mirth, good humour and clean wit.’ She was the kind of girl who, because of her high animal spirits, possessed a tendency to mischief and this inclination threatened to outrun her judgement and to bring her into difficulties.
As we saw earlier, when the rectory was destroyed by fire, Hetty, then a girl of twelve, and Sukey, who was fourteen, went to live with their uncle Matthew in London. Matthew was a well-to-do physician and in living with him and his wife the girls had virtually none of the restrictions that they had known under their parents. After well over a year, they returned to Epworth, but, experiencing once more the poverty and the lack of the many diversions they had enjoyed in London, they found life dull and boring.
This was their condition when the mysterious incidents occurred in the rectory that were attributed to a ghost. It may be worth noting in this connection that Hetty, who by that time was nineteen, was usually the last one to go to bed at night, for her father had her sit up to take his candle before he himself retired. Also, unlike the rest of the family, she made no mention of the ghost in letters to her brothers, or, if she did, whatever she wrote was destroyed, either by herself or by someone else. These circumstances, together with Hetty’s tendency to mischief, have been viewed, as we have already seen, by some authors as suggesting that she may in some measure have been responsible for the tappings that went on. Perhaps on these occasions she was entertaining some young man, who may actually have done the tapping — an idea which would confirm the rector’s original suspicion that the noises were made by the girls’ lovers.
The Wesley girls manifestly felt keenly the lack of suitable young men in Epworth. This is evident in the following verse that Hetty wrote to her sister Emilia:
Fortune has fixed thee in a place
Debarred of wisdom, wit and grace:
High births and virtue equally they scorn,
As asses dull on dunghills born;
Impervious as the stones their heads are found,
Their rage and hatred steadfast as the ground.
With these unpolished wights thy youthful days
Glide slow and dull, and Nature’s lamp decays;
Oh what a lamp is hid ’midst such a sordid race![1]
Samuel Wesley constantly determined whatever boy-friends were not in his opinion the right ones for his girls. Various young men sought the company of the beautiful Hetty, but her father apparently rejected one after another. In lines addressed to her mother she requested,
Pray speak a word in time of need,
And with my sour-looked father plead,
For your distressed daughter.[2]
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in his Hetty Wesley, has given us a colourful picture of this extraordinary young woman. He describes her among her sisters (she was in her mid-twenties at the time) as ‘Hetty of the high spirits, the clear eye, the springing gait; Hetty, the wittiest, cleverest, mirthfullest of them all.’
He goes on to state: ‘If the six sisters were handsome, Hetty was glorious. Her hair, something browner than auburn, put Emilia’s in the shade; her brows, darker than even dark Patty’s, were broader and more nobly arched; her transparent skin, her colour — she defied the sun-rays carelessly, and her cheeks drank them in as potable gold — made Nancy’s seem but a dairymaid’s complexion. Add that this colouring kept its original freshness; add too, her mother’s height and more than her mother’s grace of movement, an outline virginally severe yet flexuous as a palm-willow in April winds, and you have Hetty Wesley at twenty-seven — a queen in a country smock and cobbled shoes, a woman made for love, and growing towards love, though repressed and thwarted.’[3]
Hetty was equally outstanding when it came to intellectual qualities. To her knowledge of English and the classical languages was added her inherited gift of poetry. Dr John Julian, editor of the Dictionary of Hymnology, makes the assertion: ‘If she did not write hymns she showed plainly that she could have done so with a success that might have rivalled Charles’s own. Mehetabel Wesley had an exquisite poetic genius.’[4] She wrote poetry and her mind ran spontaneously in a poetic vein.
It may be said of Hetty, as of her mother, that if the universities of those days had allowed women to enter, she would have proved as able a scholar as any of the Wesley men. And it is probable that had there been athletic programmes for women she would have showed herself to be proficient in that field too.
One of Hetty’s chief characteristics was the passion inherent in her nature. As Quiller-Couch asserted, here was a woman ‘made for love’ and worthy of the finest man in the land. But, forbidden the university and denied the opportunity of obtaining suitable employment, Hetty, like her sisters, was confined to the narrow life of her home. As we think of her in her twenties, we see her feeding chickens, tending pigs and taking in hay. Indoors she transcribed for her father, but she also made certain that his tobacco and snuff were ever close at hand. And she helped her mother with the cooking, brewing and housekeeping.
Hetty manifestly loved her mother and though she nursed a steady resentment towards her father, she clearly respected him. The other sisters consented to his domination, but Hetty, although never disobedient in any outright manner, did not demonstrate the same measure of submission.
Susanna undoubtedly recognized Hetty’s unusual qualities, but she also seems to have felt that this daughter needed to be checked and governed. Samuel held this opinion even more intensely.
Like many fathers of that century, Samuel believed that it was his right to control the lives of his daughters. He was not opposed to their being married — which would free him from the responsibility of supporting them — but he was concerned as to what men they kept company with, and above all, whom they married. He rightly wanted to save them from a fate like that of Sukey, who had married the foul-mouthed and heartless Richard Ellison.
The year 1724 brought a change in location for the Wesleys. In that year Samuel secured the rectorship of the parish of Wroot, a village about five miles from Epworth. Although he remained rector of Epworth, he and his family moved to Wroot and by hiring a curate to assist him he served both parishes. Wroot added some £50 to his annual income, but he spent a large part of it in paying the curate.
Ellison and Sukey rented the Epworth rectory. This arrangement frequently threw the rector and Ellison into each other’s company and Samuel was constantly pained by his son-in-law’s bad language. And to make matters worse, Ellison scorned Samuel’s domination of his family and by his manner towards him he to some extent broke the spell the father had cast over his children. But Samuel could do little about it, for he had borrowed money from Ellison and had not been able to repay it.
Another young man was now introduced into the circle of the Wesley family. This was John Romley, the schoolteacher at Wroot. He had attended Oxford University and his father had previously served as curate at Epworth. Here was a cultivated young man close at hand and, as was to be expected, a warm friendship began to develop between him and Hetty, who was now twenty-seven.
Romley had a fine voice and he was asked to sing before a small company who had gathered one evening at the rectory. He appears to have chosen a satirical song, possibly ‘The Vicar of Bray’[5], a humorous account of a clergyman who endeavoured, by constantly changing his allegiance, to retain the good will of the monarchy and thereby gain preferment. In the days of King Charles this vicar had been a fervent churchman, but quickly surrendered these principles and moved towards Catholicism when the Catholic King James came to the throne. However, when the crown was given to William of Orange he professed allegiance to the new king, to Protestantism and the Church of England. He continued of this opinion until Anne became queen, when he loudly asserted his loyalty to her and his stand in politics as a Tory. At Anne’s death King George came to the throne, causing him to say,
My principles I changed once more,
And so became a Whig, sir:
And thus preferment I procured
From our faith’s great Defender,
And almost every day abjured
The pope, and the Pretender.
Whether it was this song which Romley chose or some other like it, it was a stinging parody of the changes made by Samuel Wesley in his endeavours to gain preferment. On hearing the song Richard Ellison, who was no doubt present, would have been loud in his laughter and have provoked others into similar behaviour. As might have been expected, the rector was highly incensed at hearing himself ridiculed before this company of young people. He angrily ordered Romley out of the house and forbade Hetty to associate with him.
During the days that followed she obeyed, outwardly at least, but she and Romley corresponded privately. Samuel soon discovered this and decided that she must be placed somewhere where she would be well separated from Romley. Without giving Hetty the least intimation of his plan, he called on a well-to-do family, the Granthams, in the village of Kelstern, some few miles away. He offered Hetty’s services as a companion to Mrs Grantham, apparently saying that she did not need to be paid.
Samuel then returned to Wroot. He told Hetty what he had done and said he was taking her to Kelstern immediately. She protested most vigorously, but he would not listen, and this time Susanna agreed with him. He drove Hetty to the Granthams’ and left her there.
After some months of misery Hetty wrote to her brother John, telling him of her plight. Her letter, written on 7 March 1725, reads:
I had answered your very obliging letter long before now, only your particular enquiry into Romley’s affair put me upon so melancholy a tack that you can’t wonder that that so long deferred the performance. You know that my father forbade him his house on account of the old song, when you were at Wroot; since which time I have never seen Romley. He writ to me several times since, and we held a secret correspondence together, till a little while before I came to Kelstern. I desire you would not be inquisitive how the intrigue broke off; the bare mention of it is much, much worse than I can bear.
My father came to Kelstern, Christmas was twelvemonth, and proffered me to wait on Mrs Grantham. She accepted it and my father promised Mr Grantham that I should come hither before I knew a word of it. When I did know ’twas in vain for me to endeavour to persuade my parents not to send me. They were resolutely bent on my journey; so I came very much against my consent, and had far rather have gone to my grave!
Dear Jack, I think I may write freely to you, for I’ve such an opinion of your generosity and good nature, that you will neither upbraid me with my weakness yourself, nor betray me to those that will, I mean our family. Though I’m sensible of the great folly of complaining where the grievance admits of no remedy, yet I find that misery and complaint are almost inseparable in our sex, and I’ve often concealed my uneasiness to the hazard of sense and life for want of some friend to console with and advise me.
I am in a great measure careless of what becomes of me; home I would not go, were I reduced to beggary; and here I will never stay, where they tell me they would never have desired my company, only my father proffered me, and they did not well know how to refuse me; and Mrs Grantham desires me to provide for myself against May Day.
So I intend to try my fortune at London, and am resolved not to marry yet, till I can forget Romley, or see him again. Could I live without thinking, or had anything to divert my thoughts from what I don’t care to think of, I might yet be easy. But here I’ve no company but my fellow-servants, and sometimes those that I care less for, viz. my lovers — a set of mortals who universally own me the most unaccountable woman that ever they knew. I’m condemned to constant solitude and have not been out of the town once since I came into it.
I thank you for the books you sent me, but I don’t care to read the Fair Penitent, though I admire it vastly. The poem you desire I cannot find, and cannot write it again, because I’ve forgotten it, and almost everything else. So I can’t desire the young lady’s poetry you mentioned, though you seem to think it good, a thing almost remarkable in a woman.
Forgive my unmerciful scrawling, and think how much I value your letters, when I write now in as great a pain as I can to oblige you, and entice you to write again as soon as possible, to
Yours
Hetty’s unhappiness at the Granthams is fully evident. Mrs Grantham had never wanted her and she had been made to feel like an interloper. Having received no wages, she had not been able to leave town, even for an hour. She had her lovers, but cared for none of them. Above all, she longed for John Romley, and this woman whose whole nature cried out for love ought never to have been separated from him. But Mrs Grantham had now asked her to leave and had set the date. She was utterly dejected and was growing desperate as she tried to decide where she could go and what she could do.
This was the situation to which Samuel Wesley, by his dictatorial methods, had reduced his beautiful and highly gifted daughter.
We have no information on Hetty’s activities during the next few months. She probably went to London and stayed with her uncle Matthew and his wife, and she may well have found gainful employment.
She had stated very clearly in her letter to John: ‘Home I would not go. . .’ She was determined not to return to Wroot and be subjected again to her father’s heartless domineering. Nevertheless before long — around the first of October — she did precisely what she had said she would never do: she returned to the rectory at Wroot. Her appearance immediately moved her father and mother to horror and anger and undoubtedly covered her sisters with anguish and caused them to burst into tears. The reason? Hetty was five months pregnant.
Samuel treated Hetty as something untouchable. She later told him in a letter, ‘I would have given one of my eyes for the liberty of falling at your feet,’ but he would not allow so stained a thing near him. She had brought disgrace upon the name of Wesley, had broken the law of God, and her sin was evident to all. Although she was a single woman she would soon give birth, and the rectory would become the home of a fatherless child. Accordingly, to save further dishonour being thrust upon himself, his family and his parish, he must see to it that she was married, and married without delay.
Samuel had disciplined those in his parish who were guilty of fornication by forcing them to stand on the damp clay floor of the church, their shameful persons covered with a white sheet, and this act of penitence had continued for three successive Sunday mornings.[7] But on this daughter he imposed, not a temporary punishment, but a life sentence.
A journeyman plumber, William Wright, was then travelling through the district, doing whatever jobs proved available. He appeared to be industrious, but was unlearned, boorish in his behaviour and somewhat given to drink. The circumstances of the rector’s meeting Wright are not known, but finding that he was unmarried, and perhaps convincing himself that he was at least honest, Samuel offered Hetty to him as a wife. And Wright, acting as though he was receiving a gift fallen from heaven, jumped at the opportunity.
Hetty was not asked if she would marry Wright. Despite her age — she was now twenty-eight — she was allowed no voice whatsoever in the matter. Although she would have agreed that Hetty must be married, and married right away, Susanna must have been shocked by the vast difference in their characters and abilities. There is probably much truth in Quiller-Couch’s report that she declared, ‘To think of Hetty and William Wright together makes my flesh creep.’
Each of Hetty’s brothers sided with her in this matter, as did also her crippled sister Mary. John preached in his father’s presence a sermon entitled ‘Showing charity to sinners’, and Samuel, who already was, as John said, ‘inconceivably exasperated,’ became still more out of patience with Hetty and now with John too. Mary is reported as standing before her father and asserting, ‘Oh, sir, you are a good man! but you are seldom kind and rarely just. . . You are a tyrant to those you love; and now in your tyranny you are going to do what even in your tyranny you have never done before — a downright wickedness.’[8]
In spite of all these protests, the couple were quickly married. Samuel refused to conduct the marriage service for such a shameful person himself, but he sent the pair to the Rev. Joseph Hoole, rector of Haxey, and on 13 October 1735 the rite was performed. We may be sure there were no flowers, no guests and no music, and that although Wright was overjoyed, Hetty was in tears.[9]
The couple went to live with Wright’s widowed father at Louth. Quiller-Couch portrays him as a nasty personality and his premises as wretchedly untidy. At any rate, conditions were very unpleasant for Hetty.
To make matters worse, soon afterwards Wright was imprisoned for a time. He went to prison in place of his father and we must assume that it was on account of the elder man’s debt.
In February 1726 the baby arrived. But Hetty, who had no experience in looking after an infant, had the pain of seeing it quickly weaken and die. She had anticipated pouring out her affection on this little one, but now it was taken from her. Moreover, she regarded its death as an evidence of God’s judgement upon her for her sin.
However, Uncle Matthew now came to the couple’s aid and gave them £500. This enabled them to move to London, where William set up afresh in the plumbing business.
Charles Wesley had just completed his course at Westminster and was on the point of moving to Oxford. He had only seven days before leaving London and he wrote, ‘Little of that time did I lose, being with her almost continually. . . In the little neat room she has hired did the good-natured, ingenuous, contented creature . . . and I talk over a few short days that we both wished had been longer.’[10]
Susanna, on the other hand, seems to have thought Hetty’s profession of repentance unreal and several months were to pass before she fully accepted her.
In a year’s time Hetty was pregnant again. Still feeling that she was under divine wrath and that judgement could be averted only if she secured the forgiveness of the man of God, her father, she wrote to him. Part of her letter reads as follows:
Although you have cast me off. . . I must tell you that some word of your forgiving is not only necessary to me, but would make happier the marriage in which, as you compelled it, you must still (I think) feel no small concern. My child, on whose frail help I had counted to make our life more supportable to my husband and myself, is dead. Should God give and take away another, I can never escape the thought that my father’s intercession might have prevailed against his wrath. . .
Forgive me, sir, that I make you a party in such happiness (or unhappiness) as the world generally allows to be, under God, a portion for two. But as you-planted my matrimonial bliss, so you cannot run away from my prayer when I beseech you to water it with a little kindness. . . But I have come to a point where I feel your forgiveness to be necessary to me. I beseech you then not to withhold it, and to believe me to be
your obedient daughter.
Samuel’s reply contained the statements: ‘I decline to be made a party to your matrimonial fortunes’; ‘your honest husband . . . I shall always think myself obliged to him for his civilities to you’; ‘What hurt has matrimony done you?. . . I do not know that you used to have so frightful an idea of it as you have now. . . Restrain your wit if you wish to write again, and I will answer your next if I like it.’[12]
Hetty had charged her father with his greatest crime — his forcing her into marriage against her will, and he could not face up to her accusation.
She replied in a very submissive manner. Here are two paragraphs of her letter:
I had not always such notions of wedlock as now, but thought that where there was a mutual affection and desire of pleasing, something near an equality of mind and person. . . and anything to keep love warm between a young couple, there was a possibility of happiness in a married state; but when all, or most of these, were wanting, I ever thought people could not marry without sinning against God and themselves.
Though I cannot justify my late indiscreet letter, yet I am not more than human, and if the calamities of life sometimes wring a complaint from me, I need tell no one that though I bear I feel them. And though you cannot forgive what I have said, I sincerely promise never more to offend by saying too much; which (with begging your blessing) is all from
your most obedient daughter,
This was the last correspondence between Hetty and her father. We look in vain for any sign of compassion from him; it was not forthcoming and he went to his grave without the least word of reconciliation to his erring, but deeply wronged daughter. We shall look later at the closing decade of Hetty’s life.