12. Susanna’s Children
Susanna’s Children
We have seen that Susanna bore nineteen children in nineteen years. Nine of these died in infancy, but we shall now glance briefly at the careers of the ten who lived.
The first child, Samuel junior, was taken when he was only a few months old to live at South Ormsby. He attended a grammar school there (the only one of the ten to do so), but on reaching the age of fourteen he was sent to the school attached to Westminster Abbey in London. Susanna manifested her particular care for him by the series of letters she wrote to him during the ensuing months, presenting Christian doctrine and warning him of the dangers of falling into sinful ways.
At the age of nineteen Samuel entered Oxford University. He secured his Master of Arts degree, was ordained and returned to Westminster as a teacher. After twenty years he moved to Tiverton in Devonshire, where he became the headmaster of an endowed school. He was an able, scholarly teacher and was particularly gifted as a poet. He was exceptionally generous towards his parents and while at both Westminster and Tiverton he provided them with all that his salary allowed. His widowed mother was heartbroken by the death in 1739 of this son, her first-born and her chief financial support.
The second child to survive was the girl Emilia. She was ten years old when Susanna began the school in her house, but she had been under discipline and, we may be sure, instruction long before this. During the year that followed the 1709 fire, by which time she was a young woman of eighteen, Susanna kept her at home to assist her, and the two became very closely attached. A year later Susanna wrote a sixty-page treatise, A religious conference between Mother and Emilia, based on the Scripture: ‘I write unto you, little children, of whom I travail in birth again, until Christ be formed in you.’ And in her introduction she prayed, ‘May what is sown in weakness be raised again in power. Written for my children.’
But Susanna’s earnest efforts on behalf of the souls of her children were offset in Emilia’s mind by her father’s failure to provide for their bodies. Speaking of the years that followed the fire, Emilia wrote, ‘I began to find out that we were mined. Then came on London journeys, convocations of blessed memory, that for seven winters my father was at London, and we at home in intolerable want and afflictions. . . Thus we went on growing worse and worse; all of us children in scandalous want of necessaries for years together, vast income, but no comfort or credit with it.’[1] Thus it is evident that Emilia thought that her father’s income was sufficient to afford his family a comfortable life. But instead they suffered this ‘scandalous want of necessaries’ and Susanna shared in this as well as her children.
During her early twenties Emilia was employed as a teacher at a girls’ school in Lincoln, but after some two years, knowing her mother was in great need of her help, she returned to Epworth. While she was teaching she had owned a few possessions, but back at home she had to face the fact that such things were no longer available. She declared, ‘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 Epworth, as this year; but instead of saving anything to clothe my sister and myself, we are just where we were. A noble crop has almost gone, beside Epworth living, to pay some part of those infinite debts my father has run into.’[2]
A little later Emilia spent some months living at the home of her uncle Matthew Wesley in London. While there she fell in love with a man named Leybourne and he made it appear that he was equally in love with her. But her brother Samuel, who had been at Oxford with him, stated he was not to be trusted and despite her deep affection for him the relationship was broken off.
At the age of forty, Emilia began a school for girls at Gainsborough. Here she fell in love with a man who was a Quaker, but being advised by her brothers that she ought never to marry anyone of that faith, she also ended this relationship.
In desperation Emilia married an apothecary named Harper. But his business was in difficulties and he seized whatever money she made from her school and only allowed her a pittance. He proved truly heartless and made her life miserable.
Emilia manifestly felt that it was because their father had spent so much on educating his sons that his daughters and their mother had been allowed to suffer. None the less, her brother John often assisted her and after her husband died he provided a comfortable lodging for her and her servant in London.
The next surviving child was the girl the family called Sukey. As we have seen, following the fire she and Hetty went to live with their Uncle Matthew in London and Susanna feared that, being free from the controls of home, they might feel the temptation to wander. In a letter to Sukey she said, ‘You have learned some prayers, your creed, and catechism, in which is briefly comprehended your duty to God, yourself, and your neighbour. But, Sukey, it is not learning these things by heart, nor your saying a few prayers morning and night, that will bring you to heaven; you must understand what you say, and you must practise what you know. . . I cannot tell if you have ever considered the lost and miserable condition you are in by nature. If you have not it is high time to begin to do it, and I shall earnestly beseech the Almighty to enlighten your mind, to renew and sanctify you by his Holy Spirit, that you may be his child by adoption here, and an heir of his blessed kingdom hereafter.’[3]
Susanna certainly manifested in this letter a conviction that salvation is not something obtained by an outward performance of religious ritual, but that it requires obedience from the heart.
Susanna’s brother, Samuel Annesley, had, as we saw, declared his intention of providing for Sukey after he returned from India and for years she looked forward to the fulfilment of his promise. But later he wrote saying he had changed his mind.
Stung by this sudden loss, ‘she rashly threw herself,’ as Susanna said, ‘upon a course, vulgar, immoral man, little inferior to the apostate angels in wickedness,’ Richard Ellison. She immediately began to suffer as a result of his vile behaviour and cruel actions. After some years the Ellisons’ home was destroyed by fire. Ellison’s temper became even more bitter and Sukey fled to London, taking her children with her. It is claimed that her husband then published an announcement of his death in the hope of enticing her out of hiding. She went into Lincolnshire to attend the funeral, only to find him alive. But she utterly refused ever to live with him again.
Ellison later lost all his cattle when his land was flooded and although he had begun with considerable riches which he had inherited he now found himself almost penniless. During his last months he attended the Methodist meetings held by John in the Foundery and there he professed to be converted.
Of Sukey herself, John was to say in 1764 that she ‘was in huge agonies for five days, and then died in the full assurance of faith’.
Susanna’s next child was named Mary. Due to an accident in her infancy she grew up crippled and shorter than the other girls. Apparently, but without reason, she felt herself inferior and at one time she stated, ‘I have been the ridicule of mankind and the reproach of my family.’ There is no record of any of the Wesleys treating her with anything but kindness, indeed, they seem to have shown an unusual affection towards her. One can only suspect that her inability to engage in physical activities on the same scale as her sisters may have caused her to feel left out and exposed to ridicule. Her outlook on life was pessimistic and she was convinced that she would never find a man who would marry her.
But she was wrong in this. In 1723 Samuel Wesley took into the rectory a tall, thin young man, John Whitelamb. He was to perform such chores as carrying wood and drawing water, but since he wrote with a good hand the rector soon started using him to transcribe his manuscript. He proved so obedient that Samuel also taught him Latin and Greek and in 1730 sent him to Oxford University. After graduating Whitelamb was ordained and became Samuel’s curate at Epworth. An affection sprang up between him and Mary Wesley and in 1734 they were married. The Lord Chancellor agreed to Samuel’s request that this young cleric be appointed to the parish of Wroot, whereupon the rector and his family returned to Epworth. Mary and John were manifestly in love and entered upon their duties with joy. A happy life seemed about to blossom before them, but, sad to say, within less than year, Mary died in childbirth.
Even during Hetty’s darkest days this crippled sister had stood by her and now Hetty, moved with sorrow, wrote an ‘Epitaph’ on her, one stanza of which reads:
If savage bosoms felt her woe,
Who lived and died without a foe
How should I mourn, or how commend,
My tenderest, dearest, firmest friend?
Most pious, meek, resigned and chaste,
With every social virtue graced.[4]
When Matthew Wesley wrote his will he evidently did not know that Mary Whitelamb had recently departed this life. He left her £200.
We have already considered Hetty Wesley at some length but must now look at the later years of her life.
After her third baby died William Wright sent a note to John Wesley which ended with the sentence: ‘I’ve sen you sum verses that my wife maid of dear lamb. Let me hear from one or both of you as soon as you think convenient.’[5]
Once more suffering a broken heart, Hetty expressed her sorrow in a poem, ‘A mother’s address to her dying infant’. Its last stanza reads:
Drooping sweetness, verdant flower,
Blooming, withering in an hour,
Ere thy gentle breast sustain
Latest, fiercest, mortal pain,
Hear a suppliant! let me be
Partner in thy destiny.[6]
Nothing could reveal more strikingly the difference between William and Hetty than these lines from their pens. More than once she expressed her desire to die, so heavy was her burden of sorrow.
William Wright also proved a trial in another way. He began drinking heavily, stayed away till the early hours of the morning and showed no concern about her. She wrote a poem addressed to him, in which, after mentioning his vile pastimes, she asserted,
Deprived of freedom, health and ease,
And rivalled with such things as these,
This latest effort will I try,
Or to regain thy heart, or die.
Soft as I am I’ll make thee see
I will not brook contempt from thee. . .
I’ll give all thoughts of patience o’er
(A gift I never lost before). . .
Till life, on terms severe as these,
Shall ebbing, leave my heart at ease;
To thee thy liberty restore
To laugh when Hetty is no more.[7]
Hetty had certain of her poems accepted by literary magazines in London. She also had a break from her hard life when Uncle Matthew took her to Bristol and there she associated with various outstanding people.
Susanna, after showing for three or four years that she had been wounded by Hetty’s sin, came around to the point where she accepted her fully and a rich affection grew once more between them, especially after the death of Samuel.
In 1739 John began holding services in a building in London called the Foundery and ten years later Hetty was attending these services regularly. She must have experienced a true work of grace within her heart for John accepted her as one of his spiritual workers. After her death he said to his sister Martha, ‘I have often thought it strange that so few of my relations should be of any use to me in the work of God. My sister Wright was, of whom I should least have expected it. . .’[8]
Susanna’s sixth surviving child was the daughter named Anne. Little is known of her till, in her twenties, she married a land surveyor, John Lambert. He is spoken of as ‘a well-educated, well-read man’. Lambert came of a respectable family and succeeded well in his profession. He appears to have been upright in his manner of life, but Charles reports that at one point William Wright was corrupting him with drink. None the less there are no reports of any difficulties in Anne’s marriage.
John Wesley, whose birth followed that of Anne by a year, rose to such prominence and is so widely known that he needs little comment here. But a mythology has been built up around his memory which portrays him as virtually perfect, while a more careful examination of his life reveals that though he manifestly inherited the good qualities of both his parents he also possessed some of his father’s less desirable traits. Any writer who succeeds in divorcing his mind from all the legendary concepts and presents us with the true account of the life of John Wesley will render an invaluable service to mankind.
John Wesley
The next child was Martha, whom the rest of the children called Patty. She seems to have felt the family’s poverty more keenly than the others and at the age of twenty-one she declared, ‘When my father dies I shall have my choice of three things, starving, going to a common service, or marrying meanly.’
At the age of thirty she met a man named Westley Hall. He was a member of the Holy Club and a friend of her brothers, and like them he entered holy orders. He made a show of great piety but was in reality a weak and treacherous individual.
Soon after he and Martha met they became engaged and her heart was closely knit to him. But not long afterwards he visited Epworth and there he met her younger sister Kezia. He revealed nothing about his engagement to Martha and declared his deep attachment to Kezia. Then he claimed to have a revelation from heaven which ordered him to return to Martha. Hall and Martha were duly married and Uncle Matthew gave them £100 as a wedding gift.
Some few years after the marriage Hall became a curate in the Wiltshire village of Wooton and then in Flesherton near Salisbury. There he revealed his true character. Martha took a young woman into the house as a seamstress, but Hall seduced her. As the time of her delivery approached he fled to London. Martha ordered the servants to find a physician, but this they refused to do. Instead they informed her that her husband was the father of the child. She then went out herself and located a midwife, gave what money she had in the house to the needy girl and set out for London to find Hall. After the little one arrived Martha nursed it as tenderly as if it had been her own.
During the eleven or so years that the Halls lived at Flesherton Martha bore ten children, all but one of whom died in infancy. The surviving child, a boy, was subject to his father’s uncontrolled temper. One day when the boy was three or four, Hall, in a fit of rage, thrust him into a dark cupboard and locked the door. The child screamed with fright and Martha’s pleas for his release went totally unheeded till, with an authority born of desperation, she addressed her husband with the words: ‘Sir, thank God that while my child is suffering to distraction a punishment he has not merited, I had not turned your babe out of its cradle. Now go and unlock that door!’ And Hall, moved by the force of her words, promptly obeyed her.
One day Hall walked into the house carrying an infant that some other woman had borne to him. Martha immediately ordered a cradle to be brought and she looked after this child too as carefully as if it had been her own.
Hall finally threw off all pretensions of being a Christian. He became a Deist and then an atheist. He went for a time to Jamaica, taking a woman with him, but when she died he returned to England. Little more is known of him till his death some thirty years later, when, John Wesley said, ‘He died . . . I trust in peace, for God had given him a deep repentance.’
Martha lived to reach her eighty-fifth year. She was a gifted conversationalist and one of those with whom she sometimes discussed philosophical matters was Dr Samuel Johnson.
Charles Wesley, born in 1707, undoubtedly had the happiest married life of all of Susanna’s children. Charles attended Westminster School and Oxford University and, after being ordained, went to Georgia with John. In the colony he found little but trouble and he remained there only seven months.
On his return to England he fellowshipped in a Moravian society and there he learned that his works would never save his soul. On 21 May 1738 he trusted solely in the work of Christ and he then came into the assurance of salvation. Moreover, the fountain of poetic expression that had been born within him was unlocked and hymn after hymn began to flow from his pen.
Led by George Whitefield into the task of preaching in the open air, although at first he was repulsed by so unorthodox a proceeding, he persisted and became an outdoor preacher of extraordinary power and unflagging zeal.
Charles exercised a mighty ministry. He met mob violence with undaunted courage and founded numerous societies. He was the first to carry the Methodist message to Cornwall, a county in which Methodism won amazing triumphs.
After performing his itinerant ministry for ten years, during which time he had no home of his own, Charles was married. His bride was Sarah Gwynne, the daughter of a Welsh squire. She freely gave up the affluent circumstances in which she had been brought up to become the wife of a poor evangelist. Their life together was almost entirely one of conjugal harmony and brought them both much happiness. Their two sons were musical geniuses.
From the time of his conversion till his death Charles was constantly active in composing poetry. Dr Frank Baker states, ‘The figure 8,990 of his poems that I have read is close enough to nine thousand to proclaim that “round” number as the total extent of his extant poems as he left them.’[9] A large proportion of these poems were hymns. The whole vast quantity of poetry is rich evidence of the gift first possessed by Samuel Wesley and inherited in such abundance by his son.
Charles Wesley
Susanna’s last child was the one they named Kezia. She proved rather weak as a girl and lacked the energy that characterized the rest of the family.
At the age of nineteen Kezia became a pupil-teacher in the school at Lincoln at which her sister Emilia had taught. She appears not to have had any boy-friends and in response to a suggestion from John that he knew a youth who would make a good husband for her she replied, ‘It is my humble opinion that I shall live the life of a nun, for which reason I would not give one single farthing to see him this minute.’
Apparently Kezia worked at Lincoln for just her board. Needing new clothes and having no money to buy them, she returned after a time to Epworth and cared for her mother and father, both of whom were becoming enfeebled with age. Then she experienced the heartbreak caused by the false profession of love made to her by Westley Hall. As we have seen, Hall afterwards married her sister Martha.
Following her father’s death and her mother’s vacating of the rectory Kezia was in need of a home. She was too unwell to find gainful employment and, receiving an offer from the Halls to come and live with them, she accepted. This arrangement did not please John and he arranged for her to move to the home of a godly minister at Bexley. She could have been happy there, but the experience with Hall had a lasting effect and, as John said, ‘She refused to be comforted and fell into a lingering illness which terminated in her death.’[10] She was thirty-two.
Thus it is evident that the married lives of all of Susanna’s children, with the exception of Charles and to some extent of Samuel and Anne, were marked by difficulty. But the opportunities that presented themselves to the girls to marry suitable men were very limited, both in number and range, and if they had been able to meet men possessing qualities similar to their own, their stories would no doubt have been very different and they would have brought to their own marriages many of the distinctive traits inherited from their mother. John was unbelievably impulsive in his choice of a partner, but had he married Grace Murray, as he desired, he would undoubtedly have known happiness in marriage.
All of the Wesley children were characterized by a force of personality and a strength of will that set them apart. These outstanding qualities no doubt made it less likely that the girls would find men fully suited to their needs. As we take our leave of Emilia, Sukey, Mary, Hetty, Anne, Martha and Kezia, we can rejoice in whatever happiness life brought to them, even as our hearts go out to those who knew so much sorrow.