Wednesday’s Children
Wednesday’s Children
The weather out of Lincolnshire’s skies usually consists of long spates of clouds and rain broken by occasional sunshine. The sunshine was good for the soul and for the rosemary mounded against the garden wall, the frequent rain good for flowers and herbs. And Susanna found her life going pretty much the same way.
The bit of sunshine was Jackie, who in 1726 became a fellow in Lincoln at age twenty-three. Susanna was proud that her son had persevered so diligently in his studies and service to God, even though his way had been hard. Sam was proud because his son had achieved the elevated status of fellow.
Otherwise, including the matter of Samuel’s tragic disappearance, clouds crowded out the blue sky and rained on her.
At fifteen Kezzy went away to Mrs. Taylor’s seminary, which in itself was good. Susannah now had time to study and read—but no money for books! She prevailed in vain upon Sam to somehow find some.
Patty traveled to London to live with Uncle Matthew the doctor and there met a clergy student named Westley Hall. Sam optimistically assumed the relationship was like that between himself and his Sukey so many years before. Susanna, of a more practical viewpoint, was pretty sure it wasn’t.
Sam took a living at Wroote, five miles across the marsh, in addition to his living at Epworth. Together the two positions brought in about half the income the Epworth living used to twenty years before. Sam rented out their warm, tight brick house and moved what was left of his family to a damp cottage on the edge of a town even smaller and meaner than South Ormsby. From this new base he served the tiny Wroote church. When bad weather made the road impassable he was forced to row a boat across the marsh weekly to deliver eucharist and services in Epworth.
Hetty found the man of her dreams, she said. Susanna called him the man of her nightmares. She and Sam, who so rarely agreed on anything, could both see through the bounder. Why couldn’t her daughter see that the cad was a smooth-talking womanizer? To Sam’s shock and Susanna’s dismay, Hetty ran off with her lawyer knight, later to return when he refused to marry her.
“‘Tis an unhappiness almost peculiar to our family,” Susanna wrote to Jackie, “that your father and I seldom think alike.” They thought alike on this issue, though. When it was apparent that Hetty was pregnant, Sam married her to what was essentially the first man down the pike. The abandoned mother-to-be became Mrs. Will Wright, bride of a journeyman plumber from Lincoln.
Sam disowned the girl, but Susanna felt more than that Betrayed. She was betrayed by a girl she had tried so hard to raise and nurture in the faith.
In a way, Susanna even felt betrayed by God. She had lived her life His way. She had written to her sons, “What creature under heaven, that has the use of reason, can be ignorant of the being of God, and that they ought to live in subjection to him from whom they receive their own being?” She had reared her children to know and revere Him. And now this. How could He let this happen when Susanna was playing correctly, by the rules?
Life at home got worse. Like all Sam’s money-making schemes, rental of the Epworth manse cost more than it brought in. Finally Sam moved his family back to Epworth.
And Sam began his magnum opus, a dissertation on the book of Job—in Latin. Every child at home or who came home to visit ended up in his study helping with notes. When the children finally rebelled, he brought in a local boy with promise, a Johnny Whitelamb.
Molly’s dream of so many years, to marry like any other girl, finally came true. John Whitelamb loved her so much he didn’t notice her crippling. The little ray of sunshine, the little strip of blue in Susanna’s cloudy sky, lasted less than a year. Molly, so happily married, died in childbirth. The baby died, too.
In November of 1731 Sukey almost died in childbirth. Susanna went to her, contracted pleurisy, and nearly died herself. The burden of Hetty’s grief came back upon her as if it were fresh. Molly’s death, so cruel; Sam’s inattention, cruel in its own way; the years of debt that hadn’t eased a shilling; Sukey’s bad marriage; they weighed Susanna down to the pits of hell. Come February she was still in bed. And she didn’t care.
More than thirty years of struggle, and here she lay without a spare farthing. She vowed to offer herself absolutely and entirely if it please God to give food and raiment without debt, without this extreme distress. And even as she uttered the vow she held scant hope God would listen.
A philanthropist named James Oglethorpe proposed a settlement in the New World to be colonized out of the debtors’ prisons. The man reasoned that if these luckless fellows had a fresh start and no debt burden they would become useful, successful citizens of the realm. Sam signed up; if anyone qualified as a debtor, he did.
Susanna didn’t gainsay him; it would have done no good; but she knew better than to dream that Sam would ever get ahead of his debts, not even in the New World with so far fewer places to spend money. Sam finally decided he was too old and canceled his application.
He was becoming too old to handle the Wroote living and had to give it up. He fell from the wagon during a ride in the country, to all appearances dead; yet managed to celebrate the eucharist come Sunday two days later. His right hand, though, was left so paralyzed he had to learn to write with his left.
Westley Hall and Patty spent the winter of ‘33 at Epworth. Wes threw Patty over for Kezzy, who at twenty-three was one of the prettiest of the seven Wesley girls. Whatever happened in that messy triangle Susanna never clearly learned. Wes went back to Patty and married her, took up a living in London, and invited Kezzy to live with them there.
How Kezzy could take part in such a thing she didn’t know. But nothing the girls would do could shock her anymore, it seemed. This was simply additional chickens coming home to roost—her fault in not exposing her girls more to life and to the world out there.
Emilia at age forty-four found a half-way decent man and settled for him. She was so tired of working, so wearied of the struggle to keep her school going. She wanted a man to care for her and let her be simply a wife and mother. But her Robert Harper, unbeknownst to her, was tired of working too and wearied of the struggle to earn his living. He wanted simply to be kept by a successful woman so he wouldn’t have to work. He took her savings and left her, eventually, with a sickly, dying baby and his debts.
Then the thing Susanna dreaded most came creeping up upon her to turn her cloudy days to absolute night. Sam began to slip. First he had trouble writing with either hand. Then his coordination deteriorated until celebrating eucharist was difficult for him. His mind drifted. By 1735 he was confined to bed.
He claimed to want only three things—be out of debt, to see his Job dissertation in print, and to die with Sammy at his side.
None of them was happening.
To Susanna life suddenly appeared futile. Serving God must be its own reward, for she saw no other. Every time she entered Sam’s sickroom her legs turned to water. She had known for years this would happen. But now that Sam’s time was here, she couldn’t stand it. Faults forgotten, he was her love.
And yet, just as in the beginning Susanna’s practicality was tempered by Sam’s optimism, so it was even yet, forty-six years after their wedding. Susanna saw death standing at the head of Sam’s bed while to the very end Sam saw revival blossoming out of Epworth.
Although Sammy couldn’t get away from his responsibilities, Jackie and Charles came home. They were holding Sam’s hands when he died.
The week following, somehow, seemed a bit easier than the weeks preceding. At least now the outcome was certain. Sam was in glory, and Susanna wrote his epitaph. She handled his passing much more calmly than she would have thought she could.
The boys sold off all the rusting farm tools, the cows and chickens, the current pig. Except for a few stray pieces, the house was emptied of furnishings. The new rector would furnish it. Susanna would live at Gainsborough with Emilia.
Two of Sam’s wishes in life finally saw fruit; the debt was, after a lifetime plaguing Susanna, at last discharged. And the dissertation on Job in Latin saw print. Even in death, Sam’s confidence remained ill placed. He had envisioned his dissertation as the crowning achievement of his life, to be welcomed by an admiring world, to be the instrument to lift him out of debt and put him in the ranks of Britain’s great scholars. It sold less than five hundred copies.
According to his desire a copy was given to Queen Caroline, in hopes that a generous stipend might be forthcoming, reflective of its worth.
She liked the binding.