Little Sammy
Little Sammy
Susanna clenched her hands and swallowed her scream, forcing the energy down instead of up and out.
“Good girl, Sukey! One more!”
Raging, howling pain twisted her body from the inside out. Somewhere in the haze a baby choked, sputtered, and began to cry. It was the urgent, demanding, lusty squall of a healthy newborn.
“One more, Sukey, then it’s all over.” The midwife’s round, jolly face swam in the haze overhead. “You are the mother of a healthy son. God’s blessing on the boy and on his life in service.”
“Amen.” Susanna lay quiet, her eyes closed, and spent some time doing nothing but breathe. She had memorized a scripture for this occasion, and now she was having trouble recalling it. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world. John 16—16—16 something.
It was true, as all Scripture is true. Already, her ordeal not even over completely, she could not clearly remember those last trying hours. Perhaps it was as well that the memory of birth pain faded quickly; this would likely not be her only experience.
“That’s fine, Sukey. I’m amazed how well you’ve done, and this your first baby. You’re very strong; I don’t mean just your body, but your mind. Would that all the girls I serve were so determined to do well.”
The midwife laid a tiny wrapped bundle in the crook of Susanna’s arm. With two fingers Susanna pushed aside the wrapping for a better look. A minuscule, wrinkled red face pinched together in anger.
Susanna laughed. “Already he has that wonderfully mobile face like his father’s. Constantly shifting, constantly telling you what’s going on inside. I don’t think he likes being born.”
The midwife hooted. “See how warm and comfortable he was! Would you?”
Joy that a man is born into the world. Joy soothed Susanna’s whole body, from the inside out. Sam had never said so, but Susanna could tell that deep inside he was hoping for a boy. Samuel Wesley I and Samuel Wesley II. Perfect. Thank You, Lord!
And look! Here on Samuel II’s neck was a tiny birthmark, a mark just like a mulberry—mulberries, her favorite fruit.
The midwife and her girl jostled Susanna about, freshening her bed. Susanna lay relaxed and let them do with her as they would. She had worked hard. She was ready to rest.
The midwife fluffed Susanna’s pillow. “You’re decent again. Shall I send in your man?”
“Please. He’ll be so happy it’s a son.”
The midwife smiled. “You’re a lucky woman. So many girls around here don’t have no man for to be proud of the child.”
Accident of birth. That thought, pushed to the back of her mind for months, returned full force to ravel the edges of her joy. A man was born into the world. But what manner of world was this? Was the joy warranted?
Sam came bounding in with his usual enthusiasm. He even hugged the midwife in the doorway.
The woman squirmed and giggled. “Mistress Sukey, I’ll return in a few hours. This being your first, I can give ye some lessons and instructions. You rest now, hear?” And she bustled out, her stolid, silent girl plodding in her wake.
Sam kissed Susanna tenderly. Then, with the caution of a man who had never done such a thing before, he lifted the bundle from her arm. The look on his face was wonderful, radiant.
Sam Second, born in mid-February, grew strong as winter waned. With spring came the linnets and robin redbreasts, the squill and primroses, and trouble in the church.
Well, it wasn’t trouble exactly. Most people appreciated Sam’s powerful preaching and his conscientious attitude. A few felt pricked and blistered by that very same powerful preaching, for wealth and status had hardened their consciences. And nearly every Sunday a few girls of Susanna’s silent ministry would slip into the back to hear the Word of God. They never caused problems or friction. Some of the wealthy would have done well to listen with the humble hearts those girls brought to the services!
This first rare Sunday of June Susanna thought about a passage in Luke as she awaited the beginning of service. She laid Sam Second against her shoulder momentarily as she found the place, to refresh her memory. Here it was, Luke 18, where the proud rich Pharisee and the humble rich publican each sought God’s blessing—and only the humble received it. She might mention that to Sam as a possible sermon topic.
Talk about humble and proud! The rector came walking in, with an obviously well-positioned man accompanying him. Although the rector was Sam’s overseer in the church, as far as Susanna could remember the man had never heard him preach. Had wealthy and discontented parishioners summoned the rector with an eye to over-throwing Sam? Ah, well, the Lord’s will be done here. Susanna turned it over to God and watched with idle interest the highborn fellow beside the churchman.
Sam’s voice, strong and melodious, opened with the Lord’s Prayer and the collect of the day. He went through the Decalogue as he did each first Sunday. Kyrie, epistle, gospel, creed—it all flowed so comfortably. Sam published banns for two couples and made a few other, housekeeping announcements. In his bidding prayer he mentioned a Molly. It startled Susanna, though there were many Mollys in the congregation. But might it be she? That one?
And now, here came the sermon. And oh, my, didn’t he blister the ears of the haughty and the supercilious this morning! If the rector was going to strip Sam of his curacy, it might as well be for thunder and lightning truly spoken from the Word of God. Susanna, never cool toward Sam’s calling, loved him more than ever.
Communion, with all its orderly and sacred parts, proceeded apace. Susanna recited by rote as she kept a discreet eye on the rector and his companion. The man piqued her curiosity. When her turn at the rail came, Sam paused to bless his son, as always. If Sam felt at all uncomfortable or put off by the lofty visitors, he showed no sign.
Gloria, blessing, and the restless congregation poured out the door into a day of welcome spring sunshine. Susanna worked her way to the front door to stand beside Sam. All the older ladies stopped to chuck little Sammy under the chin.
The rector wedged himself in beside Sam and greeted people who might not even know who was greeting them. Sam’s opposers knew. Susanna didn’t know his name, but this fellow in the threadbare wool cloak was one of the most vocal of them.
He tilted his long aquiline nose toward the rector. “So what think ye, sir, of our curate?”
“Splendid message, smooth performance of the office. John?”
“I agree.” It was the first the august gentleman had spoken. “I’m a sinner, as much so as any man, but I know the truth when I hear it. I wish all the church’s ministers were as anointed.”
The long sharp nose somehow seemed to get a bit smaller. The man mumbled something like “My sentiments exactly,” though it didn’t really sound that way, and sent himself one-foot-before-the-other out the door.
The rector watched him go a moment and turned to Sam. “We’d best be leaving ourselves, eh, John? Good job today, Wesley. I’ve heard about you; glad to get to hear you in person. My companion here, John Sheffield, Marquis of Normanby.”
Sam didn’t miss a beat. “Most honored. My wife, Susanna, formerly Annesley, and our son Samuel.”
They exchanged pleasantries a moment, but the greater part of Susanna’s mind was working on the placement of marquis in the mysterious hierarchy of British nobility; between duke and earl, she believed. And then the distinguished guests were on their way.
The river of worshipers slowed to a trickle, eventually to dry up altogether. Sam waited until the deacons had closed down and then joined Susanna for the short walk home.
Spital Fields was not one of the best parts of London, but June was certainly one of the best times of year. The warm, damp, full-blown smell of June gave one a heady sense of pleasure, of anticipation. Equally heady was the joy Susanna took in Sam’s triumph. His troubles were surely not settled; in fact they almost certainly would grow rapidly in pace with summer; but for the moment she felt good. Not only had the rector supported him, but the marquis, whoever he was, also seemed well enough pleased.
The giddy joy didn’t last long, of course. Susanna knew it wouldn’t, though Sam seemed to hope it would. Sam was the dreamer, not she. Consistently, reality trimmed his dreams to smaller size, as a farmer shapes a hedge. Reality was not Sam’s friend.
It was hers. She reveled in the methodical, the constant, the practical. Indeed, some of her routine was at last rubbing off on Sam. Two mornings a week he spent on sermon preparation. Another he devoted to the writing of serious poetry. (So far none of it had sold.) And two mornings a week he prepared articles and poetry for his pet project, the Athenian Gazette.
The Athenian had been John Dunton’s idea, and John published it, but Sam was one of the three who supplied its content. It brought a tidy sum of money into this little home that needed money so badly. If not for the Athenian, they couldn’t live.
Little Sam required much more time than Susanna would have guessed of a child so small, but she would not let him rob her of her daily study. If the reality of motherhood was constant busyness, she would master reality and bend it to her own iron will.
In July Sam received a letter from South Ormsby.
“South Ormsby?” Susanna peered around his shoulder at the seal. “Where is South Ormsby?”
“We shall soon find out.” Sam broke the seal. “Oh, the criers and the broadsides have the news: on the first of this month, James was gathering his forces along the Boyne, in Ireland. William met him there and bested him roundly. James’s losses were three times William’s. So the throne is secure with William now.”
Susanna muttered something noncommittal.
Sam scanned the letter as his face changed expressions twice. “A living at South Ormsby! They’re offering me a living at South Ormsby. Their rector died—old age—and they’re inviting me to replace him!”
“Where is South Ormsby?”
“A rector, Sukey! Not just a curate. My own parish to oversee. There’s much to learn in running a small church. From there I can go to bigger livings with larger congregations. They say here they’ve about two hundred, all told.”
“Two hundred in the church, or two hundred in the town?”
“Not clear on that point. Not clear on a couple points. But if their rector was old, they’ve probably not written such a letter in a long time. Out of practice, you know.”
Sam the dreamer.
“Where is South Ormsby?”
“Somewhere around Lincoln, I believe.”
“That’s over a hundred miles north of London.”
“They mention something about a hundred and fifty miles. Yes.”
“How did they ever come up with your name?”
Sam looked at her with a smug, triumphant smile. “Recommended to them by their friend and mentor the Marquis of Normanby.”
“And you’ll accept.”
“Of course. A splendid opportunity.” His face clouded up like November. “Wait. You’re a city girl. You’ve always lived here, never been in the country hamlets. Perhaps I should reconsider. You come first in my life. I couldn’t bear to make you unhappy in some wooded swamp a hundred and fifty miles from true home.”
“No. Don’t reconsider. Accept. Station and beauty are accidents of birth, but surroundings are not. I don’t want to raise Sammy here among the Mollys. Lincolnshire will be a much more wholesome place.”
Sam was staring at her, befuddled. “Mollys? Accidents? What?”
“South Ormsby, wherever it is, represents opportunity for us both—you as a minister and I as a mother. Take the rectory, and the sooner the better.”
He descended upon her with one of his engulfing kisses bespeaking unbridled enthusiasm. “I’ll run down to the wharves and engage a carter.”
“Lunch is at noon.”
He laughed. “Isn’t it always?” And away he went in pursuit of his newest dream.
Elusive, evasive will-o’-the-wisps are dreams. Susanna had known that from childhood, but Sam never quite seemed to grasp the idea.
South Ormsby was not what most people would call a dream, not by any stretch of imagination. Many miles from Lincoln, the only large town, South Ormsby perched on a rutted mud track, clung to the slippery shores of the endless, boggy moors and forests of the Lincolnshire Wolds. Around it here and there, gloomy little farmsteads huddled amid scraggly pastures. Low stone walls sometimes kept the woodlands at bay and sometimes not, for Susanna saw many a small tree sprouting on the pasture sides of the fences. Utter wildness, like a living thing, lurked in all the woods and glades to whisper accusingly in Susanna’s ear, You never should have come here; this is not your place.
Susanna ignored the chills this remote desolation sent down her back. Fens and forests possess a pervasive, dank smell of decay all their own. Still there was no smell of filth and raw sewage here as there was in London. In the villages and hamlets she saw all manner of urchins and feebleminded and ragged elderly, the decay of being poor. But they showed none of the blank hopelessness one saw in the faces of London’s poor, and Susanna saw no girl with the downcast eyes of London’s Mollys.
After an eternity of winding along narrow dirt lanes that pretended to be real roads, they arrived at the rectory beside the little church. The 206 souls boasted of in the letter composed the full population of the village, and quite probably a few of the dogs had been included in the number. On their slow, dismal ride through the village Susanna counted thirty-six dwellings.
The rectory itself, a mud hut with no glass behind the shutters, probably dated from the Roman occupation. It had been cleaned and swept nicely, a credit to the goodwives of the little village. And because she had just moved from a very small flat, Susanna could fit all her furniture into this tiny room-plus-loft cottage.
The poverty and meanness stilled Sam’s ebullience momentarily and turned him into a sober, long-faced penitent. Then the dream ignited again, and he was his usual self as he helped the carter tote in belongings.
Susanna sat in a corner as the house filled and the sun drifted down behind the trees. She dandled little Sammy on her knee and wondered pensively if she would ever see London again.