11. Uncle Matthew Sends His Complaints
Uncle Matthew Sends His Complaints
Matthew Wesley, like his brother Samuel, was born in a Dissenting home. Their father died at the age of forty-two and they each grew up without his guiding presence in the home. It is not known how Matthew received his education, but he probably did not attend a university. He became an apothecary, a medical practitioner with the right to prescribe and sell drugs. Residing in London, he proved so knowledgeable and industrious that he developed a large practice and acquired considerable wealth.
We have already seen that following the destruction of the Epworth rectory in 1709, two of the Wesley girls, Sukey and Hetty, went to live with Matthew and his wife, remaining there for well over a year. Matthew was an upright and honest man, but the girls noticed the difference between the easy and affluent existence in his home and the tensions and penury at Epworth. Matthew was regular in his attendance at Dissenting services and considered himself a good Christian, yet his thoughts were more taken up with professional success and the state of the stock market than with the things of God.
We must assume that Samuel at least called on this brother during his visits to London, and he may well have stayed with him, but nothing of this nature is recorded. It is also probable that Matthew’s mother lived at his home during the final years of her life, but we have no definite statement that it was so.
In keeping with the practice of the well-to-do of that age, Matthew visited several of the spas of Europe. Such visits afforded him a time of holiday and the opportunity to seek to improve his health while enjoying the company of other people of affluent circumstances.
But, as year followed year, he made no attempt to visit his brother in the ministry at Epworth — that is until 1731, when he journeyed north to see him. Matthew was then about seventy years of age and semi-retired from his professional activities. He brought with him his servant, his ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ and Susanna said in a letter to John,
My brother [Matthew] Wesley had designed to have surprised us, and had travelled under a feigned name from London to Gainsborough; but there, sending out his man for a guide to the Isle [of Axholme] the man told one his master’s name, and that he was going to see his brother which was the minister of Epworth. The man he informed met with Molly [one of the Wesley daughters]. . . She, full of news, hurried home and told us her uncle Wesley was coming to see us; but we could hardly believe her. . . He rode directly to John Dawson’s (the inn); but we had soon notice of his arrival and sent John Brown with an invitation to our house. He expressed some displeasure at his servant for letting us know of his coming; for he intended to have sent for Mr Wesley to dine with him at Dawson’s and then come to visit with us in the afternoon. Moreover, he soon followed John home, where we were all ready to receive him with great satisfaction.
His behaviour among us was perfectly civil and obliging. He spake little to the children the first day, being employed (as he afterwards told them) in observing their carriage, and seeing how he liked them; afterwards he was very free and expressed great kindness to them all.
He was strangely scandalized at the poverty of our furniture, and much more at the meanness of the children’s habit [clothing]. He always talked more freely with your sisters of our circumstances than to me: and told them he wondered what his brother had done with his income, for ’twas visible he had not spent it in furnishing his house or clothing his family.
We had a little talk together sometimes, but it was not often we could hold a private conference; and he was very shy of speaking anything relating to the children before your father, or indeed of any other matter. I informed him, as far as I handsomely could, of our losses, etc., for I was afraid that he should think that I was about to beg of him; but the girls (with whom he had many private discourses), I believe told him everything they could think on.
He was particularly pleased with Patty and one morning before Mr Wesley came down, he asked me if I was willing to let Patty go and spend a year or two with him in London. ‘Sister,’ says he, ‘I have already endeavoured to make one of your children [Hetty] easy while she lives; and if you choose to trust Patty with me, I will endeavour to make her so too.’ Whatever others may think I thought this a generous offer; and the more so because he had done so much for Sukey and Hetty. I expressed my gratitude as well as I could, and would have had him speak to your father, but he would not himself — he left that to me. Nor did he ever mention it to Mr Wesley till the evening he left us.
. . . Dear Jacky, I can’t stay now to talk about Hetty and Patty, but this — I hope better of both of them than some others do. I pray God to bless you. Adieu.
On his return to London, Matthew wrote to Samuel, severely upbraiding him for the condition of his children and the state of his home. In his letter he says,
The same record which assures us an infidel cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven, also asserts in the consequence that a worse than infidel can never do it. It likewise describes the character of such an one: ‘He provides not for his own, especially those of his own house.’
You have a numerous offspring; you have had a long time a plentiful estate, great and generous benefactions, and made no provision for those of your own house, who can have nothing in view at your exit but distress. This I think a black account, let the case be folly, or vanity, or ungovernable appetites.
I hope Providence has restored you again to give you time to settle this balance, which shocks me to think of. To this end I must advise you to be frequent in your perusal of Father Beveridge on Repentance, and Dr Tillotson on Restitutions; for it is not saying, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will bring us to the kingdom of heaven, but doing justice to all our fellow-creatures, and not a poetical imagination that we do so. A serious consideration of these things, and suitable actions, I doubt not, will qualify you to meet me where sorrow shall be no more, which is the highest hope and expectation of
Yours, etc,
Samuel must have been shocked to receive this letter. He had long told himself that the conditions in which Susanna and the girls lived did not matter. The important thing was that he had given his three sons the best education that England could provide, yet here, his own brother had overlooked that accomplishment and had castigated him for not doing better by his wife and daughters.
The rector, who had virtually never admitted himself to be in the wrong in anything, but always ascribed his faults to unavoidable circumstances, now continued that practice. He replied to Matthew in a somewhat jocular style, introducing an imaginary character and saying,
When I had read this to my friend John O’Styles I was a little surprised he did not fall into flouncing and bouncing, as I have too often seen him do on far less provocation. . . He stood calm and composed for a minute or two, and then desired he might peruse the letter, adding, that if the matter of fact therein were true, and not aggravated or misrepresented, he was obliged in conscience to acknowledge it, and ask pardon, at least of his family. If it were not true, he owed that justice to himself and family to clear himself, if possible, of so vile an implication.
After he had read it over he said he did not think it necessary to enter into a detail of the history of his whole life, from sixteen to upwards of seventy. . . but the method he chose . . . would be to make some general observations on those general accusations which have been brought against him, and then to add some balance of his incomes and expenses ever since he entered upon the stage of life.
The sum of the libel may be reduced to the following assertions:
1. That John O’Styles is worse than an infidel, and therefore can never go to heaven. . .
Answer. If God has blessed him with a numerous offspring, he has no reason to be ashamed of them, nor they of him, unless perhaps one of them [Hetty]. Neither does his conscience accuse him that he has made no provision for those of his own house. . . But has he none, nay, not above one, two, or three, to whom he has given the best education that England could afford, by God’s blessing on which they live honourably and comfortably in the world? Some of them had already been a considerable help to the others, as well as to himself. . . There are many gendemen’s families in England who . . . would be glad to change the best of theirs, or even all their stock, for almost the worst of his.[3]
By the time Samuel had written to this point he could go no further. As a result of a slight stroke some time previously, his right hand was partially paralysed, and he dictated the rest of his letter, with first Susanna and then John doing the writing.
Samuel answers Matthew’s complaint that his girls, ‘at their father’s exit will have nothing in view but distress’, by asserting that God will look after them. He then lists the various amounts he had received in the early years of his ministry and values his annual income while at Epworth at £200. He mentions the two fires, his rebuilding of the rectory and his great commentary on the book of Job, ‘whereby’, he says, ‘he hoped he might have done some benefit to the world, and in some measure amended his fortune’.
He then attempts to set out his Income and his Expenditures in two parallel columns. He lists ‘his income, about £200 per annum for near forty years, £8,000’, and while he leaves six items of expenditure without attaching any amount, the four for which he provides a figure amount to merely £720. He concludes by stating, ‘Let all this be balanced, and then a guess may be easily made of his sorry management. He can struggle with the world, but not with providence; nor can he resist sickness, fires and inundations.’[4]
Matthew Wesley’s experience probably made it difficult for him to understand his brother’s situation. While Matthew had exercised a profession that made it possible for him to acquire riches by means of true skill and untiring industry, Samuel, though equally skilful in his profession and equally diligent in his efforts, had been left in a country church, the income of which was but a fraction of that enjoyed by his brother. He had supplemented it to some extent by his writing and had tried hard to acquire a more lucrative parish, but all of his attempts to gain preferment had failed.
Samuel had made his choice to educate his sons rather than to provide for his wife and daughters. It could be argued that he might have done better to have let John and Charles work their own way through the university, as he had done himself, but he was in no sense of that mind.
Nevertheless, although we may understand Matthew’s revulsion at the state of the home and the penury endured by Susanna and the girls, we should also recognize the value of Samuel’s decision. We must ever bear in mind all that was accomplished through John’s ministry and the spiritual wealth contained in Charles’s hymns, both of which have been a tremendous blessing to countless Christians ever since. At the same time these benefits were only achieved through the difficult sacrifices made by Susanna and her daughters, as witnessed so strikingly by Uncle Matthew.