CHAPTER XV
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
WESLEY has sometimes been represented as an enthusiast whose
asceticism and laborious itinerant life effectually crushed
those tender feelings which would have made him an ardent lover
or a devoted husband. That theory can be maintained no longer.
We have already had occasion to refer to his feeling towards
Miss Hopkey in Georgia. But this was not his earliest attachment.
Wesley’s first love was Miss Betty Kirkham, the younger
sister of his friend Robert Kirkham, one of the earliest of
the Oxford Methodists. Her father, the Rev. Lionel Kirkham,
was a clergyman at Stanton, in Gloucestershire. On February
2nd, 1727, Robert Kirkham addressed a boisterous letter to his
friend at Oxford, which begins, “With familiarity I write,
dear Jack.” Wesley had now been Fellow of Lincoln for
nearly a year, and was Greek Lecturer and Moderator of his college.
There was no Oxford Methodism till about two years after the
date of this letter. Kirkham writes, ‘Your most deserving,
queer character, your worthy personal accomplishments, your
noble endowments of mind, your little and handsome person, and
your obliging and desirable conversation have been the pleasing
subject of our discourse for some pleasant hours. You have often
been in the thoughts of M. B.” (Miss Betty), “which
I have curiously observed, when with her alone, by inward smiles
and sighs and abrupt expressions concerning you.
Shall this suffice? I caught her this morning in an humble
and devout posture on her knees. I am called to read a Spectator
to my sister Capoon. I long for the time when you are to supply
my father’s absence. Keep your counsel, and burn this
when perused. You shall have my reasons in my next. I must conclude,
and subscribe myself, your most affectionate friend—and
brother I wish I might write—Robert Kirkham.”’
No particulars of Robert Kirkham’s life after he left
Oxford have been caught by any Wesleyan biographer. In Mrs.
Delany’s Life, however, there seem to be two references.
In February, 1756, she tells her sister that Miss Sally Chapone,
daughter of her old friend Sarah Kirkham, had to leave her.
“She is under an engagement, made for her by her uncle
Kirkham, to spend three weeks or a month with a young gentlewoman
that Dr. Hinckley is going to be married to.” The young
ladies were to stay with a Miss Prescot and then go to Charleton.
This doctor, a physician at Guy’s Hospital, married Miss
Marcon, daughter of a merchant of Ludgate Hill, the following
November.t In May, 1772, Mrs. Delany tells her nephew, the Rev.
John Dewes, “Mr. Kirkham has not been heard of since I
received my brother’s letter, though strict inquiry has
been made after him.”
Wesley did not burn his friend’s letter. His sister Martha
wrote him on February 7th. She had been eagerly expecting to
hear from him, “but when I knew that you were just returned
from Worcestershire, where, I suppose, you saw your Varanese”
(Betty Kirkham), “I then ceased to wonder at your silence;
for the sight of such a woman, ‘so known, so loved,’
might well make you forget me. 1 really have myself a vast respect
for her, as I must necessarily have for one that is so dear
to you.” This letter shows that Wesley’s feeling
toward the young lady was well known to his sister. Kirkham
directs his letter, “Lincoln College, Oxford, by the Worcester
carrier.” This will account for Martha Wesley’s
description of his journey as a visit to Worcestershire. It
was evidently made to the Kirkhams at Stanton. For more than
three years Wesley kept up a correspondence with Miss Betty
Kirkham. He spoke of her in the tenderest terms, and the friendship
seemed to be leading to the result the young lady’s brother
so ardently wished. In 1731, however, it was broken off. The
probability is that she married a Mr. Wilson. Mrs. Delany writes
from Killala, June 28th, 1732, “Poor Mrs. Wilson! I am
sorry for the shock her death must have given Sally, whose tenderness
must sometimes take the place of her wisdom; but I hope, when
she considers the great advantage her sistet in all probability
will receive by the exchange she has lately made, that she will
be reconciled to the loss of a sister that has given her more
woe than happiness. Pray, has Mrs. Wilson left any children?
Wesley’s sister Emilia wrote to him on August 13th, 1735,f
“Had you not lost your dear Mrs. C—n, where had
your love been fixed? On heaven, I hope, principally; but a
large share, too, had been hers: you would not have been so
spiritualised, but something of this lower world would have
had its part of your heart, wise as you are; but being deprived
of her, there went all hope of worldly happiness.” “C—n”
evidently refers to Mrs. Capoon or Chapone. That lady, however,
was married in 1725.
Wesley’s attachment was to her younger sister. It is
not surprising that Emilia Wesley should have made a mistake
in the name. Perhaps we may conclude that Mr. Badcock refers
to a disappointment in love in one part of his letter to the
Westminster Magazine. “By an incident of domestic life
I see his genius clouded, and the clearest reason muddled in
the school of Mysticism. Devoting himself to silence and solitude,
he exerted all the powers of his mind on the darkest and most
inexplicable dogmas of school divinity.”
Wesley’s correspondence with Mrs. Delany, then Mrs Pendarves,
opens up another interesting field of investigation, and throws
considerable light on the young collegian’s character.
The lady was the elder daughter of Bernard Granville, brother
of Lord Lansdowne. She had been married at the age of seventeen
to Mr. Pendarves, a Cornish gentleman, who left her a widow
in 1724, at the age of twenty-three. Before her marriage she
had lived much at Whitehall with her aunt Lady Stanley, who
had apartments there as a maid-of-honour. Her marriage to a
fat, gouty, and ungainly man, forty-three years older than herself,
who in his later years became addicted to intemperance, was
a great trial to the young lady; but happily she was soon set
free from the yoke. As a widow Mrs. Pendarves lived in London,
paying visits to her friends in the country and in Ireland.
She afterwards married Dr. Delany, who became Dean of Down.
Lady Llanover's volumes show that she mixed in the best London
society, and was greatly esteemed at Court. George III. and
his queen honoured her with their intimate friendship, and even
provided her a house at Windsor, that they might have daily
intercourse with one whom they profoundly admired.
As a girl Mrs. Delany had formed a warm friendship for Sarah
Kirkham, who afterwards married Mr. Capoon or Chapone. Mrs.
Chapone was a woman of brilliant wit and rare intellectual gifts.
One of her letters on behalf of Mrs. Elstob, a literary lady
in distress, became the leading topic of discourse at a royal
drawing-room in 1730. Mrs. Pendarves says on January 4th, 1736,
“Sally would shine in an assembly composed of Tullys,
Homers, and Miltons. At Gloucester she is like a diamond set
in jet; their dulness makes her brightness brighter.”
Mrs. Pendarves often spent her summers with her mother and sister
at Gloucester. In this way Wesley seems to have become acquainted
with this brilliant lady and her family. He corresponded with
her mother and sister as well as herself. A letter to Mrs. Granville
dated “Lincoln College, December 12th, 1730,” shows
Wesley’s high esteem for her. The young tutor evidently
finds it difficult to play the part of spiritual adviser. “I
have, therefore, little reason to expect that lie will direct
any motion of mine to that end, especially when the particular
end proposed relates to one who is far advanced in the great
race which I am but lately entered upon, if, indeed, I am entered
yet. What shall I say to such a one as is almost possest of
the crown which I dimly see afar off?” He adds a postscript:
“My brother joins with me in his best respects both to
yourself and those good ladies whom we love to call your family.”
• Dr. Rigg, after a careful study of the whole subject,
has reached the conclusion that Mrs. Granville’s daughter,
Mrs. Pendarves,t succeeded to the place Miss Betty Kirkham had
held in Wesley’s affection Mr. Lecky endorses that opinion.
The correspondence with her had airead begun. According to
the custom of the time, the friends bear fancy titles. John
Wesley is Cyrus; Charles is Araspes. Mrs. Pendarves is known
as Aspasia, Miss Granville, her sister, as Selina. Betty Kirkham
is Varanese, V., or Vnse. Some of the letters are given in Mrs.
Delany’s Life and Correspondence, but fuller extracts,
as deciphered from Wesley’s own manuscripts by Mr. G.
J. Stevenson, will be found, with explanations of the fancy
names, in the Wesleyan Magazine for 1863, and in Dr. Rigg’s
“Living Wesley.” Mrs. Pendarves had been trifled
with by Lord Baltimore, who won her affection and then made
some pretext for breaking off the intercourse. He was married
on July 20th, 1730. She bore her trial with great patience,
and from that time her correspondence grew more serious. Wesley’s
first letter to her, dated August 14th, 1730, seems to have
accompanied some copies of Miss Betty Kirkham’s letters
to him. “While I was transcribing the letters, these last
monuments of the goodness of my dear V., I could not hinder
some sighs, which, between grief and shame, would have their
way. Not that I was pained at seeing my utmost efforts outdone
by another’s pen, but I could not, I ought not to, be
unmoved when I observe how unworthy I am of that excellent means
of improvement. I trust so unusual a blessing of Providence
has not been utterly useless to me. To this I owe both the capacity
and the occasion of feeling that soft emotion with which I glow
even at the moment when I consider myself as conversing with
a kindred soul of my V.” On September 14th he writes,
“My dear V. informs me you are going yet farther from
us, but cannot inform me how soon.” Other letters refer
to Miss Betty’s ability to write on high and serious subjects,
and to her deep piety. “I do not wonder,” Wesley
says, “that Aspasia is thus minded, any more than I did
at the temper of dear These., under the sharpest pain that an
embodied spirit can know. You will easily take know ledge of
those words, if you have not heard them before, ‘When
I was in the greatest of my pains, if my strength would have
allowed, I would gladly have run out into the, streets to warn
all I met that they should save themselves from pain sharper
than mine.’”
In the early summer of 1731 Wesley had met Varanese, and enjoyed
a time of almost uninterrupted conversation with her. He speaks
of it with a lover’s fervour. “‘On this spots
she sat,’ ‘Along this path she walked,’ ‘Here
she showed that lovely instance of condescension,’ were
reflections which, though extremely obvious, could not but be
equally pleasing, and gave a new degree of beauty to the charming
arbour, the fields, the meadows, and Horrel itself.” •
This was perhaps their last meeting.
Wesley’s correspondence with Mrs. Pendarves was carried
on regularly till her journey to Ireland. She sought his advice
for herself and her friends. Wesley pointed out the perils to
religious character attendant on the gaieties of fashionable
life in which she moved. “That London is the worst place
under heaven for preserving a Christian temper, any one will
imagine who observes that there can be none where its professed,
irreconcilable enemies, ‘the lust of the eye’ and
‘the pride of life,’ are more artfully and forcibly
recommended.” The advice was not all on one side. When
Wesley was accused of being “too strict” at Oxford
in July, 1731, he asked Aspasia’s opinion, and laid his
defence before her. The reply was flattering. “0 Cyrus,
how noble a defence you make! and how are you adorned with the
beauty of holiness! You really are in a state to be envied.
. . . How ardently do I wish to be as resigned and humble as
Cyrus. . . . Company is come, and will not allow me a long conversation.
I cannot always submit to this sort of life. It encroaches too
much. Adieu !" Less than three weeks afterwards she writes
again. “While I read your letters I find myself carried
above the world; I view the vanities I left behind with the
disdain that is due to them, and wish never to return to them.
But, as it is my lot to dwell among them as yet, I will at least
endeavour to defend myself from their assaults; and, with your
assistance, I hope to baffle and turn aside their sting. As
from every evil we may extract good, so in this particular I
have great consolation, that, weak and insignificant as I am,
I have sometimes found means of maintaining the honour of a
great God when I have heard the blasphemer say, ‘Where
is now their God?’ At such an instant, how have I wished
for a capacity equal to the mighty cause !"
In the earlier part of this correspondence, Wesley’s
style is cumbrous, and his compliments somewhat fulsome, but
the letters on both sides bear evidence of deep religious earnestness
and high mutual esteem. When Mrs. Pendarves visited Dublin in
1731, she asked Cyrus to address his letters to her mother’s
residence at Gloucester, but afterwards begged her sister to
send him her Dublin address, that he might write direct. Readers
of her Life will notice how entirely Mrs. Pendarves neglected
all her correspondents save her sister during her long stay
in Ireland. It is not strange therefore that Wesley shared the
common fate. In March, 1732, six months after she had asked
her sister to send her address to him, she tells her, “Cyrus
by this time has blotted me out of his memory, or if he does
remember me, it can only be to reproach me; what can I say for
myself? What can I indeed say to myself, that have neglected
so extraordinary a correspondent? I only am the sufferer, but
I should be very sorry to have him think my silence proceeded
from negligence; I declare ‘tis want of time.” She
still took a lively interest in Wesley’s work. In a letter
to her sister on April 11th, 1733, she says, “As for the
ridicule Cyrus has been exposed to, I do not at all wonder at
it; religion in its plainest dress suffers daily from the insolence
and ignorance of the world; then how should that person escape
who dares to appear openly in its cause? He will meet with all
the mortification such rebels are able to give, which can be
no other than that of finding them wilfully blinding themselves
and running headlong into the gulf of perdition, a melancholy
prospect for the honest-hearted man who earnestly desires the
salvation of his fellow-creatures.”
In the summer of 1734, after nearly three years’ silence,
Mrs. Pendarves wrote again to her old friend. Her first sentence
shows her self-reproach: “I never began a letter with
so much confusion to anybody as I do this to Cyrus.” She
had been full of shame and reluctance to write after her long
delay and neglect, but had broken through this feeling, and
was willing to “suffer any reproach rather than lose the
advantage of Cyrus’s friend ship;” Wesley’s
answer shows that he had no hope of doing his correspondent
further service. “Alas, Aspasia! Are you indeed convinced
that I can be of any service to you? I fear you have not sufficient
ground for such a conviction. Experience has shown how much
my power is short of my will. For some time I flattered myself
with the pleasing hope; but I grew more and more ashamed of
having indulged it. You need not the support of so weak a hand.
How can I possibly think you do (though that thought tries now
and then to intrude itself still), since you have so long and
resolutely thrust it from you? I dare not, therefore, blame
you for so doing. Doubtless you acted upon cool reflection.
You declined the trouble of writing, not because it was a trouble,
but because it was a needless one. And if so, what injury have
you done yourself? As for me, you do me no injury by your silence.
It did, indeed, deprive me of much pleasure, and of a pleasure
from which I have received much improvement. But still, as it
was one I had no title to but your goodness, to withdraw it
was no injustice. I sincerely thank you for what is past; and
may the God of my salvation return it sevenfold into your bosom!
And if ever you should please to add to those thousand obligations
any new ones, I trust they shall neither be unrewarded by Him
nor unworthily received by Aspasia’s faithful friend
and servant, Cyrus. Araspes, too, hopes you will never have
reason to tax him with ingratitude. Adieu!”
So closes this remarkable correspondence. Wesley had gained
force of character since he indulged in the high-flown and scarcely
orthodox compliment of his first letter. “I spent some
very agreeable moments last night,” he then said, “in
musing on this delightful subject” (the excellencies of
his fair friend) “and thinking to how little disadvantage
Aspasia or Selina would have appeared even in that faint light
which the moon, glimmering through the trees, poured on that
part of our garden in which I was walking. How little would
the eye of the mind that Surveyed them have missed the absent
sun! What darkness could have obscured gentleness, courtesy,
humility, could have shaded the image of God? Sure none but
that which shall, never dare to approach them, none but Vice,
which shall ever be far away !"
The following letter, given in Mrs. Delany’s Life, shows
that John Wesley still kept up some correspondence with her
younger sister, Miss Granville, whose comparatively retired
life at Glou -ester gave her more leisure. Her portrait and
her letters leave a pleasing impression of this charming and
devout young lady on the minds of readers of her sister’s
Life. Lady Llanover says that the letter to Miss Granville is
without signature. She does not seem to be aware that it is
from John Wesley. Charles was on his voyage to England at this
date, and the letter bears its writer’s name in every
line. The seal was a cross, and the English postmark December
7th.
"To Mrs. Ann Granville, in Gloster.
"SAVANNAH, 24th September, 1736.
"The mutual affection, and indeed the many other amiable qualities,
of those two sisters one of whom is lately gone to a happier
place, would not have suffered me to be unmindful of your friend
and you had I had nothing else to remind me of you. I am persuaded
that heavy affliction will prove the greatest blessing to the
survivor which she has ever yet received. She is now very cheerful,
as well as deeply serious. She sees the folly of placing one's
happiness in any creature, and is fully determined to give her
whole heart to Him from whom death cannot part her.
"I often think how different her way of life is at Savannah
from what it was at St. James's, and yet the wise, polite, gay
world counts her removal thence a misfortune. I should not
be at all grieved if you were fallen into the same misfortune,
far removed from the pride of life and hid in some obscure recess,
where you were scarcely seen or heard of, unless by a few plain
Christians and by God and His angels.
"Mr. Rivington will send your letter, if you should ever have
leisure to favour with a few lines
"Your sincere friend and most obedient servant.
"Do you still watch, and strive, and pray, that your heart
may be right before God? Can you deny yourself; as veil as take
up your cross? Adieu !"
The two sisters were the Miss Boveys. Charles Wesley says in
his journal for June 20th, 1736, “Walking in the trustees’
garden” (at Savannah), “I met the Miss Boveys, whom
I had never been in company with. I found some inclination to
join them; but it was a very short-lived curiosity.” On
July 10th, Miss Becky died suddenly. Two days before Mr. Oglethorpe
when with them had spoken of sudden death. She said, “If
it was the will of God, I should choose to die without a lingering
illness.” Her sister asked, “Are you, then, always
prepared to die?” She replied, “Jesus Christ is
always prepared to help me. And little stress is to be laid
on such a preparation for death, as is made in a fit of sickness.”
On the Saturday, after tea, her sister, seeing her colour change,
asked if she was well. She received no answer. The doctor, who
was passing by, was called in, and told them she was dying.
He tried whether bleeding would restore her, but she bled about
an ounce, leaned back, and died ! Wesley went to the house as
soon as he heard the painful news, and begged that they would
not lay her out, as it might be a swoon. Any such hope, however,
had soon to be abandoned. “I never saw so beautiful a
corpse in my life,” he says. “Poor comfort to its
late inhabitant! I was greatly surprised at her sister. There
was, in all her behaviour, such an inexpressible mixture of
tenderness and resignation. The first time I spoke to her, she
said, ‘All my afflictions are nothing to this. I have
lost not only a sister, but a friend. But it is the will of
God. I rely on Him, and doubt not but He will support me under
it.” Almost the whole town was present at the funeral.
Edmund Burke told Dr. Johnson that Mrs. Delany “was a
truly great woman of fashion; that she was not only the woman
of fashion of the present age, but she was the highest-bred
woman in the world and the woman of fashion of all ages; that
she was high-bred, great in every instance, and would continue
fashionable in all ages.” * One glimpse of Mrs. Delany’s
feeling about the Wesleys in later life is caught in her Life.t
Her friend Miss Hamilton had a long conversation with her at
Bulstrode on December 4th, 1783. “She told me she had
known the two Mr. Wesleys (the Methodist preachers); she knew
them when they were young men. They lived near her sister when
they were students at Oxford. They were of a serious turn, and
associated with such as were so. These brothers joined some
other young men at Oxford, and used to meet of a Sunday evening
and read the Scriptures, and find out objects of charity to
relieve. This was a happy beginning, but the vanity of being
singular and growing enthusiasts made them endeavour to gain
proselytes and adopt that system of religious doctrine which
many reasonable people thought pernicious.” Mrs. Delany
had adopted the current opinion as to the motives of the Wesleys.
The lady of fashion, devout as she always was, could not understand
a life spent for the salvation of the common people.
We must now pass to other scenes. When Charles Wesley was married
to Miss Sarah Gwynne, the daughter of a Welsh magistrate, on
April 8th, 1749, his brother, who performed the ceremony, says,
“It was a solemn day, such as became the dignity of a
Christian marriage.” He was looking forward to similar
happiness for himself. The previous August he had suffered from
a troublesome bilious headache at Newcastle, where he was nursed
by Grace Murray, a young widow, thirty-two years old, foremost
in all Christian work there. She was born at Newcastle, but
removed to London when she was eighteen. Two years later she
married a sailor, who belonged to a Scottish family that had
lost its estates during the rebellion of 1715. The death of
her infant child led Mrs. Murray to attend the Methodist preaching.
Her husband bitterly opposed her views; but she held her ground,
and at last won him over. Wesley’s first sermon produced
a great effect on her mind. “Is there any one here,”
he asked, “who has a true desire to be saved?” “My
heart,” she says, “replied, ‘Yes, I have.’”
Wesley continued, “My soul for thine if thou continue
lying at the feet of Jesus !" On this word she took hold,
but it was some months before she found rest.
In 1742 Mr. Murray was drowned at sea. His widow returned to
Newcastle, where she afterwards became housekeeper at the Orphan
House, had a hundred members in her classes, met a “band”
each day of the week, and visited the neighbouring villages
to read and pray with the people. At Wesley’s request,
she went to nurse one of the preachers at the Orphan House,
but some disagreement with another inmate led her to return
to her mother’s. After spending six months in London she
went back to the Orphan House, with the same result. Two years
of great spiritual depression followed, but in the autumn of
1745 for the third time she became a member of the Methodist
family. Besides her classes and her visits to the sick and to
the country Societies, Grace’ Murray was the nurse of
the preachers. She had at least seven of these hard-worked itinerants
as her patients. One of them, John Bennet, was under her care
for six months.
This was the woman whom Wesley resolved to make his wife. When
he proposed to marry her, in August, 1748, she answered, “This
is too great a blessing for me; I can’t tell how to believe
it. This is all I could have wished for under heaven.”
Ten days later, when Wesley had to leave Newcastle, he expressed
his convic tion that God intended her to be his wife, and hoped
that when they met again they would not have to part any more.
Grace Murray begged that she might not lose him so soon, so
Wesley took her with him through Yorkshire and Derbyshire, where
“she was unspeakably useful both to him and to the Societies.”
She remained at Bolton, in the circuit of Bennet, whom she had
nursed at Newcastle. He was really Wesley’s rival. Grace
Murray vacillated strangely between her lovers, and even wrote
to Wesley to say that she thought it was her duty to marry Bennet.
In April, 1749, however, a week after Charles Wesley’s
marriage, she went with Wesley to Ireland. For three months
she was his constant companion. She examined all the women
in the smaller Societies, settled the female bands, visited
the sick, and prayed with the penitent. She anticipated all
Wesley’s wants, acted as his monitor when she thought
she saw anything amiss in his behaviour, and graced her position
in such a way that Wesley’s esteem and affection daily
increased. At Dublin they entered into a solemn contract of
marriage.
After their return to England, she travelled with Wesley from
Bristol to London and Newcastle, so that for five months they
were scarcely separated. At Epworth Bennet came and said that
Mrs. Murray had sent him all Wesley’s letters. Wesley
was now convinced that she ought to marry Bennet, but when he
wrote her a line to this effect, she ran to him “in an
agony of tears, and begged him not to talk so, unless he designed
to kill her.” Her conduct during the next few days showed
strange weakness and irresolution, but she assured Wesley, “I
love you a thousand times better than I ever loved John Bennet
in my life. But I am afraid, if I don’t marry him, he’ll
run mad.” At Newcastle she expressed her strong determination
to live and die with Wesley, and urged him to marry her immediately.
No doubt this would have been the proper course. But Wesley
first wished to satisfy Bennet, to secure his brother’s
approval, and to inform the Societies of his intention. One
of the preachers was admitted to their confidence, in whose
presence they renewed their contract. This preacher then went
off to satisfy Bennet in Derbyshire. Wesley wrote to his brother
at Bristol. The tidings filled Charles Wesley with dismay. He
had married a lady of birth and position, and was overwhelmed
by the idea that John should marry a woman who before her marriage
had been a servant. He started in haste for the north to avert
what he considered would be nothing less than a general disaster
From Newcastle he followed his brother into Cumberland. They
met at Whitehaven. Charles told him that their preachers would
leave them and their Societies would be scattered if he married
so mean a woman. John replied that he wished to marry her, not
for her birth, but for her own character and worth. Her neatness,
her carefulness, her strong sense, and her sterling piety had
won his highest esteem. She was “indefatigably patient
and inexpressibly tender; quick, cleanly, and skilful; of an
engaging behaviour, and of a mild, sprightly, cheerful, and
yet serious temper; while, lastly, her gifts for usefulness
were such as he had not seen equalled.” Finding that he
could not move his brother, Charles returned alone to Newcastle.
At Hineley Hill he met the lady, and after kissing her, said,
in his usual impulsive manner, “Grace Murray, you have
broken my heart.” She rode with him to Newcastle, where
Bennet had arrived from Derbyshire. She fell at Bennet’s
feet and begged forgiveness for using him so badly. Within
a week she had become his wife.
Whitefield invited Wesley to Leeds, where he broke the painful
news to his friend. Next day Charles came with the husband and
wife. He greeted his brother with the hard words, “I renounce
all intercourse with you but what I would have with a heathen
man or a publican.” White-field and brave John Nelson,
who were present at the interview, prayed, wept, and entreated
till the brothers fell on each other’s neck. Wesley kissed
Bennet without uttering a word of upbraiding. He also made such
explanations to his brother in a private interview, that Charles
entirely exonerated him and laid all the blame on Grace Murray.
This disappointment was the greatest trial of Wesley’s
life. He opened his heart in the following touching note to
Mr. Thomas Bigg, of Newcastle
"LEEDS, October 7th, 1749.
"My DEAR BR0THER,—Since I was six • years
old, I never met with such a severe trial as for some days past.
For ten years God has been preparing a fellow-labourer for me
by a wonderful train of providences. Last year I was convinced
of it; therefore I delayed not, but, as I thought, made all
sure beyond a danger of disappointment. But we were soon after
torn asunder by a whirlwind. In a few months, the storm was
over; I then used more precaution than before, and fondly told
myself, that the day of evil would return no more. But it too
soon returned. The waves rose again since I came out of London.
I fasted and prayed, and strove all I could; but the Sons of
Zeruiah were too hard for me. The whole world fought against
me, but above all my own familiar friend. Then was the word
fulfilled, ‘Son of man, behold, I take from thee the desire
of thine eyes at a stroke; yet shalt thou not lament, neither
shall thy tears run down.’
"The fatal, irrevocable stroke was struck on Tuesday last.
Yesterday I saw my friend (that was), and him to whom she is
sacrificed. I believe you never saw such a scene. But 'why should
a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?'
"I am, yours affectionately,
"JOHN WESLEY."
Wesley saw the woman he had lost at Leeds three days after
her marriage. He did not meet her again till 1788. John Bennet
soon left Mr. Wesley, and took with him all the hundred and
twenty-seven members at Bolton save nineteen. The whole Society
at Stockport joined him with the exception of one woman. At
Bolton Bennet spoke bitterly of Wesley, and accused him of preaching
nothing but Popery. He afterwards became the pastor of a Calvinistic
Church at Warburton, near Warrington, where he died in 1759,
at the age of forty-five. His widow conducted weekly meetings
for prayer and fellowship, and carefully brought up her five
boys. She afterwards removed to Derbyshire,t where she again
joined the Methodists, and was active in good works of every
kind. One of her sons became minister of a chapel on the Pavement
in Moorfields. When she visited him in 1788, Thomas Olivers
met her and told Wesley that she would like to see him. Henry
Moore gives a beautiful description of the meeting: “Mr.
Wesley, with evident feeling, resolved to visit her; and the
next morning, he took me with him to Colebrooke Row, where her
son then resided. The meeting was affecting; but Mr. Wesley
preserved more than his usual self-possession. It was easy to
see, notwithstanding the many years which had intervened, that
both in sweetness of spirit, and in person and manners, she
was a fit subject for the tender regrets expressed in those
verses which I have presented to the reader. The interview did
not continue long, and I do not remember that I ever heard Mr.
Wesley mention her name afterward.” Mrs. Bennet died in
1803, in the eighty-fifth year of her age.
The verses to which Moore refers are entitled “Reflections
upon Past Providences, October, 1749.” The thirtyone
stanzas, of six lines each, describe the course of Wesley’s
love, the history and attractions of the lady, and the cruel
blow which had robbed him of his blessing.
Wesley also bears witness to his own susceptibility to female
charms :— Oft, as through giddy youth I roved,
And danced along the flowery way,
By chance or thoughtless passion moved,
An easy, unresisting prey,
I fell, while love’s envenomed dart
Thrilled through my nerves, and tore my heart.
Borne on the wings of sacred hope,
Long had I soared, and spurned the ground, When, panting for
the mountain top,
My soul a kindred spirit found,
By Heaven entrusted to my care,
The daughter of my faith and prayer.
In early dawn of life, serene,
Mild, sweet, and tender was her mood;
Her pleasing form spoke all within
Soft and compassionately good;
Listening to every wretch’s care,
Mingling with each her friendly tear.
I saw her run, with winged speed,
In works of faith and labouring love;
I saw her glorious toil succeed,
And showers of blessing from above
Crowning her warm effectual prayer,
And glorified my God in her.
No one can read the poem from which these verses are pulled
without regret that such a woman should have been torn from
Wesley. Whatever weight may be allowed :o Charles Wesley’s
objections, Grace Murray's devotion .o the work of God and her
rare capacity for usefulness far outweighed them. She cannot
be acquitted of extreme weakness. But it must not be forgotten
that her position was one of great difficulty, and at the last
she was overcome by the severe pressure brought to bear upon
her.
Her gifts eminently fitted her to become Wesley’s helper,
and the Societies lost much by her marriage. But the gravest
aspect of the case is the matrimonial disaster which afterwards
befell Wesley. Had he married Grace Murray, John Wesley would
never have committed the fatal mistake of marrying Mrs. Vazeille.
This marriage took place on February 18th or 19th, 1751. The
lady was the widow of Noah Vazeille, a London merchant, of
Fenchurch Street. She had four children and a fortune of ten
thousand pounds in the three per cents., which Wesley took care
to have settled on herself and her children. The marriage was
a great trouble to Charles; Wesley. A fortnight before it took
place, his brother sent for him and told him that he was resolved
to marry. "I was thunderstruck,” Charles says, “
and could only answer, be had given me the first blow, and his
marriage would come like the coup de grace. Trusty Ned Perronet
followed, and told me, the person was Mrs. Vazeille! one of
whom I had never had the least suspicion. I refused his company
to the chapel, and retired to mourn with my faithful Sally.
I groaned all the day and several following ones under my own
and the people’s burden. I could eat no pleasant food,
nor preach, nor rest, either by night or by day.”
This remarkable extract shows that Charles Wesley objected
to his brother’s marriage in itself, quite apart from
any considerations about the lady. He did not even inquire who
was to be his sister-in-law. His own marriage must have shown
him how hard it was to leave home for weeks and months together.
Mrs. Vazeille was no stranger to him. lie had met her in July,
1749, at the house of Edward Perronet, on the very day that
his brother embarked from Ireland with Grace Murray. His description
of her as “a woman of a sorrowful spirit” shows
that she sought spiritual help in Methodist circles. Next May
Charles took her with him to visit the Gwynnes at Ludlow. She
then returned with him and his wife to London, by way of Oxford,
where he showed her the buildings and gardens. Mr. and Mrs.
Charles Wesley were afterwards her guests for eight or nine
days in London.
His marriage to Mrs. Vazeille was hastened by an accident which
Wesley had on the middle of London Bridge. In hastening from
the Foundery to Snowsfields to take leave of the congregation
before he started on his northern journey, his feet slipped
on the ice. He fell with great force, the bone of his ankle
striking on the top of a stone. With much pain and difficulty,
he took his work at Snowsfields and at West Street, but he could
not preach at the Foundery. The journey to the north was now
quite out of the question. Wesley took up his quarters at Mrs.
Vazeille’s, in Threadneedle Street, where he “spent
the remainder of the week partly in prayer, reading, and conversation,
partly in writing an Hebrew Grammar and ‘Lessons for Children.”
The conversation interests us most. It no doubt led to Wesley’s
marriage on the following Monday or Tuesday. He was not able
to set his foot to the ground, and preached kneeling on Sunday,
the 17th, and on the Tuesday after, so that he must have been
a remarkable bridegroom.
A fortnight later he set out for Bristol, “being tolerably
able to ride, but not to walk.” His wife remained in London.
Charles Wesley had met his sister-in-law before John left town.
During his brother’s absence he called and assured her
that he was perfectly reconciled. He also brought his wife to
see her, and took all opportunities of showing his sincere respect
and love. Such was the state of things when Wesley returned
to London. He stayed a few days to settle the business which
had brought him back. Then he set out for the north. “I
cannot under stand,” he says, “how a Methodist preacher
can answer it to God to preach one sermon or travel one day
less in a married, than in a single state.” He told Henry
Moore that he and Mrs. Wesley agreed before the marriage that
he should not preach one sermon or travel one mile the less
on that account.” “If I thought I should, my dear,”
he told her, “as well as I love you, I would never.. see
your face more.”
This marriage was soon seen in its true light. At Bristol,
only four months after the wedding, Charles Wesley found his
sister-in-law in tears. He expressed his love and desire to
help her, heard her complaints about his brother, took her to
his own home, and sent her away not a little comforted. Next
day he bad further conference with her and his brother, which
“ended in prayer and perfect peace.” Mrs.Wesley
travelled with her husband extensively during the first four
years of their marriage. She accompanied him to the north of
England, to Cornwall, and to Scotland. In April, 1752, Wesley
was able to report to his friend Mr. Blackwell, the banker,
“My wife is, at least, as well as when we left London;
the more she travels, the better she bears it.” He was
afraid that she would not understand the behaviour of a Yorkshire
mob, but there had been no trial of that kind up to the time
he wrote. “Even the Methodists are now at peace throughout
the kingdom.” Eight days later she had her “baptism
of fire” at Hull, where the mob attended their carriage,
throwing in whatever they could lay their hands on. Wesley tells
us that he was himself screened by the large gentlewoman who
sat on his lap; he says nothing about Mrs. Wesley.
The efforts which Charles Wesley made to secure peace at Bristol
were successful for the time, but in Novcinber, 1752, the venerable
Vicar of Storeham says that for many months Mrs. Wesley had
nursed her warmth and bitterness; he also mourns over her angry
and bitter spirit. When Wesley was thought to be dying of consumption
in 1753, he begged his wife and his brother to forges all that
was past. Charles was quite ready to do so, but added a significant
hope that Mrs. Wesley “will do as she says.” Two
years later he tells his wife, “I called, two minutes
before preaching, on Mrs. Wesley at the Foundery; and in all
that time had not one quarrel.” • He was evidently
afraid of her malice. He begs his wife to be courteous without
trusting her. Mrs. Wesley’s absurd jealousy of her husband
acted like fuel to her violent temper. When Wesley was in Cornwall
in 1755, he sent a packet of letters to Charles Perronet, which
she opened. She fell into a passion when she found there a few
simple lines addressed to Mrs. Lefevre. In February, 1756, Wesley
wrote to his friend Sarah Ryan, “Your last letter was
seasonable indeed. I was growing faint in my mind. The being
constantly watched over for evil; the having every word I spoke,
every action I did, small and great, watched with no friendly
eye; the hearing a thousand little tart, unkind reflections
in return for the kindest words I could devise,
Like drops of eating water in the marble,
At length have worn my sinking spirits down.
Yet I could not say, ‘Take Thy plague away from me,’
but only, ‘Let me be purified, not consumed.”
In January, 1758, after many severe words, Mrs. Wesley left
her husband, vowing that she would never see him more. In the
evening, while he was preaching at the chapel, she came into
the chamber where he had left his clothes, searched his pockets,
and read a letter she found there addressed to Sarah Ryan. Wesley
afterwards found her in such a happy temper as he had not seen
her in for years. But though the letter had touched her deeply,
she was not cured. She seized Wesley’s papers, and put
them into the hands of his enemies; she interpolated words to
make them bear a bad construction, and published them in the
papers. She once shut up Charles Wesley and her husband in a
room, and began to tell them their faults with that detail and
force which made Charles call her “my best friend.”
He won their release at last by quoting Latin poetry—a
device which he had once tried with good effect on his voyage
from Georgia—till their keeper was glad to let her prisoners
escape In her fits of jealousy, Mrs. Wesley would order a chaise
and drive a hundred miles to see who was with her husband in
his carriage when he entered a town. John Hampson, one of Wesley’s
preachers, told his son that he once went into a room in the
north of Ireland where he found Mrs. Wesley foaming with rage.
Her husband was on the floor. She had been dragging him about
by his hair, and still held in her hand some of the locks that
she had pulled out of his head in her fury.t Hampson found it
hard to restrain himself when he saw this pitiable sight. “More
than once she laid violent hands upon him and tore those venerable
locks which had suffered sufficiently from the ravages of time.”
A letter published in the New York Critic during the summer
of 1885 will show what Mrs. Wesley was
"COLEFORD, October 23rd, 1759.
"DEAR MOLLY,-I will tell you simply and plainly the things
which I dislike. If you remove them, well. If not, I am but
where I was. I dislike your showing any one my letters and private
papers without my leave. This never did any good yet, either
to you or me, or any one. It only sharpens and embitters your
own spirit. And the same effect it naturally has upon others.
The same it would have upon me but that (by the grace of God)
I do not think of it. It can do no good. It can never bring
me nearer, though it may drive me further off. And should you
do as you often threaten me, then the matter is over. I know
what I have to do. In all this you are fighting against yourself.
You are frustrating your own purpose if you want me to love
you. You take just the wrong way. No one ever was forced to
love another. It cannot be: love can only be won by softness;
foul means avail nothing. But you say, ‘I have tried fair
means, and they did not succeed.’ If they do not, none
will. Then you have only to say, ‘This evil is of the
Lord; I am clay in His hand.’
"I dislike (2) not having the command of my own house, not
being at liberty to invite even my nearest relations so much
as to drink a dish of tea without disobliging you. I dislike
(3) the being myself a prisoner in my own house, the having
my chamber door watched continually, so that no person can go
in or out but such as have your good leave. I dislike (4) the
being but a prisoner at large even when I go abroad, inasmuch
as you are highly disgusted if I do not give you an account
of every place I go to and every person with whom I converse.
I dislike (5) the not being safe in my own house. My house is
not my castle.
I cannot call even my study, even my bureau, my own. They are
liable to be plundered every day. You say, ‘I plunder
you of nothing but papers.’ I am not sure of that. How
is it possible I should? I miss money too, and he that will
steal a pin will steal a pound. But were it so, a scholar’s
papers are his treasure, my journal in particular. ‘But
I took only such papers as relate to Sarah Ryan and Sarah Crosby.’
That is not true. What are Mr. Landey’s letters to them?
Besides, you have taken parts of my journal which relate to
neither one nor the other. I dislike (6) your treatment of my
servants (though, indeed, they are not properly mine). You do
all that in you lies to make their lives a burden to them. You
browbeat, harass, rate them like dogs, make them afraid to speak
to me. You treat them with such haughtiness, sternness, sourness,
surliness, ill-nature, as never were known in any house of mine
for near a dozen years. You forget even good breeding, and use
such coarse language as befits none but a fishwife.
"I dislike (7) your talking against me behind my back, and
that every day and almost every hour of the day; making my faults
(real or supposed) the standing topic of your conversation.
I dislike (8) your slandering me, laying to my charge things
which you know are false. Such are (to go but a few days back)
'that I beat you,' which you told James Burges; that I rode
to Kingswood with Sarah Ryan, which you told Sarah Rigby; and
that I required you, when we were first married, never to sit
in my presence without my leave, which you told Mrs. Lee, Mrs.
Fry, and several others, and stood to it before my face. I dislike
(9) your common custom of saying things not true. To instance
only in two or three particulars. You told Mr. Ireland 'Mr.
Vazzilla * learnt Spanish in a fort night.' You told Mr. Fry
'Mrs. Ellison was the author as to my intrigue in Georgia.'
You told Mrs. Ellison 'you never said any such thing; you never
charged her with it.' You also told her, 'that I had laid a
plot to serve you as Susannah was served by the two elders.'
I dislike (10) your extreme, immeasurable bitterness to all
who endeavour to defend my character (as my brother, Joseph
Jones, Clayton Carthy), breaking out even into foul, unmannerly
language, such as ought not to defile a gentlewoman's lips,
if she did not believe one word of the Bible.
"And now, Molly, what would any one advise you to that has
a real concern for your happiness? Certainly (1) to show, read,
touch those letters no more, if you did not restore them to
their proper owner; (2) to allow me the command of my own house,
with free leave to invite thither whom I please; (3) to allow
me my liberty there, that any one who will may come to me, without
let or hindrance; (4) to let me go where I please, and to whom
I please, without giving an account to any; (5) to assure me,
you will take no more of my papers, nor anything of mine, without
my consent; (6) to treat all the servants where you are (whether
you like them or no) with courtesy and humanity, and to speak
(if you speak at all) to them, as well as others, with good-nature
and good manners; (7) to speak no evil of me behind my back;
(8) never to accuse me falsely; (9) to be extremely cautious
of saying anything that is not strictly true, both as to the
matter and manner; and (10) to avoid all bitterness of expression
till you can avoid all bitterness of spirit.
"These are the advices which I now give you in the fear of
God, and in tender love to your soul. Nor can I give you a stronger
proof that I am your affectionate
husband,
JOHN WESLEY.”
Mrs. Wesley often left her husband, but returned again I answer
to his entreaties. At last she went off with part of his journals
and various papers, which she would not restore. On January
23rd, 1771, he writes, “For what cause I know not, my
wife set out for Newcastle, purposing ‘never to return.’
Non earn reliqui; non dirnisi; non revocabo.” Mrs. Wesley
seems to have remained with her daughter, Mrs. Smith, at Newcastle
till the,, following year, when her husband visited the town.
Shel then returned with him to Bristol. She might have been
very useful but for her vile temper. At a little inn on the
Yorkshire moors she spoke a few words to the woman of the house
while Wesley talked to an old man. Both of these were deeply
affected. In 1774 a petulant letter shows that she was still
with her husband, but still of the same spirit. She died at
Camberwell in 1781, when Wesley was in the west of England.
On October 14th he says, “I came to London, and was informed
that my wife died on Monday. This evening she was buried, though
I was not informed of it till a day or two after.”
She left her money, which had been reduced from ten to five
thousand pounds, to her son. To Mr. Wesley she simply bequeathed
a ring. The stone erected over her grave in Camberwell churchyard
described her as “a woman of exemplary piety, a tender
parent, and a sincere friend.” Whatever she may have been
in these respects, she was one of the worst wives of whom we
have ever read. She darkened thirty years of Wesley’s
life by her intolerable jealousy, her malicious and violent
temper. Wesley would never sacrifice his duty to personal feeling,
but though he was a roving husband, a more tender or pleasant
companion no woman could desire. He repeatedly told Henry Moore
that he believed God overruled this prolonged sorrow for his
good; and that if Mrs. Wesley had been a better wife, and had
continued to act in that way in which she knew well how to act,
he might have been unfaithful to his great work, and might have
sought too much to please her according to her own desires.
The most charitable view of Mrs. Wesley’s conduct is
that she suffered from some mental unsoundness. Scores of papers
in her own handwriting, bearing witness to her violent temper,
seem to warrant this conclusion. She had begun life as a domestic
servant,t and her querulous, discontented spirit under the inconveniences
of itinerant life showed that she never gained any true refinement
or good feeling.
