Wesley’s Love Affairs

All Wesley’s love affairs were disasters, but his marriage was a tragedy — a tragedy made only the more complete by a certain ignoble aspect it wears. Yet both for the light it sheds on his character, and as a factor in his life, the story of that marriage has to be told.

On the subject of marriage generally both the Wesleys held at least semi-monastic views. Wesley published in 1743 a tract, ‘’Thoughts on Marriage and a Single Life,” which might almost have been written by a convinced and ascetic Roman Catholic. The celibate state, he taught, might not be of imperative and universal obligation, it was certainly a loftier state than that of marriage. Marriage was a conces.sion to human weakness, and ought to be postponed as long as possible in all cases, and forgone absolutely where there was sufficient grace to enable this to be done. When they returned from Georgia, the brothers made a compact, each pledging himself not to marry without the consent of the other.

But nature is stronger than even the most austere sacerdotal theories. It made itself first felt in Charles Wesley. In 1748, when he was over forty years of age, he propounds to his brother as a sort of conundrum, “How know I if it is best for me to marry? Certainly better now than later; and if not now, what security that I shall then? It should be now or not at all.” He proceeded in the characteristic Wesley fashion to collect the opinions of all his friends on this subject. His brother’s tractate stood in the way. He could hardly flout it publicly. This difficulty, however, was removed by the Conference of 1748 taking the “Thoughts on Marriage” in hand, and convincing its author “that he might be wrong”; that, at least, there was something to be said on the other side of the question. Wesley records: “In June 1748 we had a Conference in London. Several of our brethren then objected to the ‘Thoughts on Marriage,’ and, in full and friendly debate, convinced me that u believer might marry without suffering loss in his soul.”

This was not a very encouraging decision, but Charles Wesley was willing to take the risk. He fixed his choice on Miss Snlly Owynne. She was a girl of twenty-three, the daughter of a good family, and herself of very fine and attractive qualities. The story of the courtship sheds a curious light on the social habits of the day. Charles Wesley first approached his brother to secure his approval, and discovered to his delight that John was already contemplating matrimony for him. He had, indeed, mentally selected three young ladies, from whom Charles might take his choice, and Miss Gwynne was one of the three. Mrs. Gwynne, the mother of Sally, was then approached. She was the business mind of her household; and while approving of Charles, she discussed the whole matter from a strictly business standpoint.

The details are amusing. It was solemnly conceded, for example, that the bridegroom should be at liberty to “keep up a vegetable diet,” and to travel as an evangelist, but not to go to Ireland — a condition which, later, was withdrawn. Charles Wesley, on his part, had to show an income of £100 a year. After some diflSculty, John Wesley agreed to give his brother security for £100 a year on his profits of his books; but Mrs. Gwynne rejected this as not being a sufficiently solid as set. She had a practical woman’s doubts as to the market value of literature.

Negotiations came to a standstill, till one of Charles Wesley’s friends, Perronet, broke in on the proceedings by a letter to the mother of the bride. “If you and worthy Mr. Gwynne are of opinion,” he wrote, “that the match proposed by the Rev. Charles Wesley be of God, neither of you will suffer an objection drawn from the world to break it off!” This remonstrance proved effective; Charles Wesley was allowed a brief interval of courtship, interspersed with preaching, and during which he wrote no less than seventeen hymns — principally addressed to the earthly object of his affections; and on April 8, 1749, the marriage took place.

Some unkind critic wrote that it resembled a funeral rather than a wedding; but gravity of behaviour was the note of a good Methodist in those days. The marriage, as a matter of fact, proved one of singular felicity. His wife, to a very tender and loving spirit, united an almost masculine strength and sanity of judgment. She became the mother of eight children, filled her husband’s life with serenest happiness, and outlived him many years, dying at the advanced age of ninety-six. The marriage of at least one of the Wesley household thus proved to be a very happy experiment. As one of its results, however, it changed the character of Charles Wesley’s work. He was anchored now in a happy home, his children came fast about him. He could no longer take any wide flight as an itinerating evangelist, and his preaching tours were practically limited henceforth to the roads betwixt London and Bristol.

John Wesley, however, was far less fortunate in his excursions into the realm of sentiment. All his love affairs were blunders, and he ended by selecting what was probably the most absolutely unfit woman in the three kingdoms to be his wife. Such figures as those of Betty Kirkham, of Mrs. Pendarvis — the “Aspasia” of a literary correspondence — and Miss Sophia Hopkey, of Georgia, flit briefly across the landscape of Wesley’s life. But the story of a more serious entanglement has to be told.

In August 1748, Wesley, while at Newcastle, suffered one of his rare attacks of illness. It lasted only a few days, and it did not wholly interrupt his preaching; but during its brief continuance he was nursed by Grace Murray, one of the staff of the Orphan House at Newcastle. Now sickness was for Wesley always a period of what may be called matrimonial peril. In health he was too busy, too preoccupied, too eagerly intent on his work, to find time to think of marriage. And it may be added, he seldom stopped long enough in one place to make any acquaintance which could lead to marriage. But when he was sick, he felt the need of a womanls gentle ministralioii. He had a simple-minded but quixotic faith in the goodness of all women, and seemed always ready to propose to the particular face that at the moment bent over him in his sickness. He was thrice sick: at Georgia, in 1737, where Miss Hopkey nursed him; at Newcastle, in 1748, where Grace Murray nursed him; and in London, in 1751, where Mrs. Vazeille nursed him. And as a matter of fact, Wesley wanted to marry each of his nurses in turn!

Grace Murray was a widow of twenty-eight. She was of Scottish blood; political troubles had brought poverty on her family; and she herself had been at one time a domestic. But many facts make it clear that she was a woman of curious and dangerous charm. Wesley himself gives with prosaic minuteness a catalogue of her qualities: —

“She was remarkably neat; nicely frugal, yet not sordid; gifted with a large amount of common-sense; indefatigably patient, and inexpressibly tender; quick, cleanly, 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 (Wesley) had not seen equalled.”

The gift of being “inexpressibly tender” had for Wesley’s tired mind and body, as he lay sick, a perilous charm; and when Grace Murray’s duties as nurse drew to an end he proposed to marry her. She seemed amazed, and said, “This is too great a blessing to me; I cannot tell how to believe it. This is all I could have wished for under heaven!” To marry Wesley would, no doubt, have been for her a great promotion; but, as a matter of fact — though she did not inform Wesley of the circumstance — she was at that moment practically engaged to one of his helpers, John Bennet, whom she had nursed a year before.

The story that follows, if told in a novel as a picture of masculine simplicity, and of feminine caprice, would seem extravagant. It is related with courageous frankness in Tyerman’s “Wesley,” and there can be no doubt as to the main facts. The story is taken from authentic documents, one of which at least was revised by Wesley himself. It is a curious drama, with an absorbed evangelist as lover; a highly impressionable woman, whom her own sex at least would sharply sum up as an incurable flirt, as the object of his affections; a patient and determined rival, and an interfering brother, as the other actors. Grace Murray proceeded to “luu,” with equally “inexpressible tenderness,” her two lovers; and the mere dates of the story show with what easy facility she transferred her emotions from one to the other in turn.

A week after proposing marriage, Wesley had to start on a preaching tour; before doing so, he told Grace Murray he was convinced God intended her to be his wife. She thereupon protested that to be left behind was “more than she could bear”; and Wesley took her with him as a helper in his services. When he reached Bennet’s circuit, he left Grace Murray behind, quite unconscious of the relations betwixt the pair. Within a week Bennet wrote to Wesley askiug his consent to marry Grace Murray, and with his letter came one from the lady herself saying she believed it was the will of God she should marry — not Wesley but — Bennet!

Wesley replied in astonished terms; but he was now absorbed afresh in his work, and he accepted the situation with a magnanimity few men could have shown, and most women would not have admired. The too impressionable Grace Murray, indeed, was not willing that her romance should end so abruptly and so soon. For six months she maintained a correspondence with both men, and persuaded each in turn that she loved him only. She seemed, indeed, to really believe that she belonged to the one whose letter she had last read.

It must be remembered that she was one of the “helpers” employed in Wesley’s work, and in February 1749, Wesley, then about to visit Ireland, proposed to take her with him to assist in his services there. She sent Bennet the intelligence, and told him that “if he loved her” he must come to her at once.

Bennet could not come; and Grace Murray told Wesley, with the only flash of frankness she showed in the whole history, how matters stood betwixt her and Bennet. After much discussion, it was agreed that the contract with Bennet was not binding; she belonged to Wesley. Accordingly she accompanied Wesley and took part in his services throughout Ireland.

In August, Bennet and Wesley met at Epworth; and Bennet told Wesley that Grace Murray had sent him all his (Wesley’s) letters to her. The feminine conscience, where matters of express and clear duty are concerned, is usually more sensitive than even that of a man; but that vague, indefinable thing, “a sense of honour,” is, for some women, not only a thing unpossessed, but a thing uncomprehended. To give the letters which had been written by one lover, in all the confidence of affection, to a rival was an act of feminine treachery which few men could forgive. To Wesley’s stubborn sense of honour, the act must have seemed nothing less than base. It visibly chilled the ardour of his affection for its perpetrator, and perhaps helps to explain his willingness to postpone his marriage with Grace Murray when that lady was eager for it. After this stage the lady is plainly more “willing” — in alternating patches, indeed, after her characteristic fashion — than the gentleman.

But the act, if it proved how odd a sense of honour Grace Murray possessed, at least proved one thing — she loved Bennet! And Wesley decided the pair ought to marry at once, and wrote a brief note to Grace Murray telling her so.

When she received it she ran to Wesley in an agony of tears and begged him “not to talk so unless he designed to kill her.” Wesley hesitated; tears on a face he loved were almost irresistible. But he kept to his decision to give her up. She was ill, and sent for him. “How can you think I love any one better than I love you?” she cried. “I love you a thousand times better than I ever loved John Bennet in my life.” That same evening, when Bennet in turn came, she promised to be his wife! Was there ever before so active a transfer of affections from one suitor to another!

On September 6 Wesley asked her bluntly, “Which will you choose?” She replied: “I am determined by conscience as well as by inclination to live and die with you.” Both Wesley and the lady wrote to Bennet in these terms. Here, at last, the matter was surely settled. Grace Murray urged Wesley to marry her immediately. She understood herself too well not to know the risk of delay! But Wesley, always the most leisurely of lovers, now wished to satisfy John Bennet; to procure his brother’s consent; to explain his reasons for marrying to all his preachers and societies, and to desire their prayers; and this process, he calculated, would take “about a year.”

Here was a catalogue of delays and uncertainties! The lady agreed to wait, but protested she would wait no longer than a year, and plainly so tedious and circuitous an approach to marriage unsettled her easily transferred affections once more.

The business of satisfying John Bennet proved lengthy, and during its progress Charles Wesley appeared on the scene. It shocked his pride of family that his brother should marry a woman who, it was said, had been a domestic servant; and if Grace Murray had the art of fascinating all men, this was attended, as is usually the case, with the faculty of offending most of her own sex. Her inexpressible tenderness was wasted on them! They looked on her with .icily critical eyes; and Charles Wesley had poured into his ears many tales from eager feminine lips injurious to his brother’s intended bride. He told his brother bluntly that all their preachers would leave them, and all their societies disperse, if he married Grace Murray.

Wesley argued the case out with his brother with a philosophy which was more creditable to his self-control as a man than to his ardour as a lover. He was a logician even when in love; his affections ran in syllogisms; and after retailing to his brother, with scientific detail, the merits of the object of his affections, he summed up his conclusions under two heads: “(1) I have Scriptural reasons to marry; (2) I know no person so proper as this.”

Charles departed, having first kissed the intended bride, and saying, “Grace Murray, you have broken my heart.” But it turned out that Grace Murray had occasion at that moment to go to Newcastle, and she rode behind Charles to that place. John Bennet was there awaiting their arrival. The impressionable Grace Murray fell at the feet of lover No. 2, acknowledged she had used him ill, begged his forgiveness, and within seven days the pair were married!

A lady, we repeat, very expeditious in her affections. The dates condemn her. On September 6 she was urging Wesley to marry her immediately, and vowing she loved him only. On September 28 she was at John Bennet’s feet, enti-eating his forgiveness, and declaring he was the sole object of her too agile regards.

A few days after Charles Wesley, with the newlymarried pair, came to John, and a curious scene followed. Whitefleld, who had arrived the day previously, and had wept and prayed over Wesley, was present. According to Tyerraan, “Charles, with characteristic impetuosity, accosted his brother, saying, ‘I renounce all intercourse with you, but what I would have with a heathen man or a publican.’ Whitefleld and John Nelson burst into tears; prayed, cried, and entreated, till the storm passed over. The brothers, unable to speak, tell on each other’s neck. John Benuet was introduced; but instead of upbraiding hiiu, Wesley kissed hiiu. Wesley and his brother had a private interview, and, on hearing explanations, Charles was utterly amazed, exonerated him from blame, and declared that all the culpability was hers.”^

Wesley was, no doubt, very ill-used in this whole transaction; ill-used by his brother, by Beunet his helper, and by this lady of such very changeable moods. But it is easier to forgive those who have wronged us than those whom we have wronged; and Benuet, within nine months (it the marriage, separated from Wesley and carried off with him as many members of the society as he could influence.

Four days after the marriage, Wesley wrote to a friend (luoting afresh the verse he quoted some twelve years before, when Miss Hopkey was taken from him — “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.” “Yesterday,” he adds, “I saw my friend that was, and him to whom she is sacrificed.... But why should a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?”

But Wesley was not a man to nourish resentment; and he had no time to expend in regrets. He forgave the I woman who had trifled with him, and the friend who had! outwitted him, and the day after the interview described he started on a preaching tour. It was nearly forty years before Grace Murray and John Wesley met again. He was preaching in Moorfields, and she sent him a message, I askiug him to visit her. He went, spent a few brief moments with her, and was never afterwards heard to mention her name.

Human nature is compounded of many elements: and the story we have told gives only one side of Grace Murray’s character. A brief life, with extracts from her diary published by her son after her death, shows her to have been a woman capable of deep religious feeling, and with an unusual power of literary expression. There is evidence, too, that she kept a place in the regard of both

‘Tyerman, ii. p. 53.

the Wesleys after her marriage with Beimet, and the curious history which preceded it. Two months after the marriage, in a letter to Bennet, signed “your aflfectionate brother,” dated London, December 7, 1749, and never before published, Wesley says: —

“I wrote my last out of the fulness of my heart, not then perceiving that I should write to you any more. I do not care to write anything fresh on that subject. Perhaps I may some time show you the letter I designed for you in times past. I do not see things in the same light as you do; hut I complain not. For I am a sinner: therefore it is just that I go warily all my days. Nay, and I believe it is best for me.” He adds a significant postscript: — “Poor Grace! You have formerly been a means of many blessings to me. May God prepare you to receive all His blessings in time and in eternity.”

Many months later, in a letter to Bennet, dated August 10, 1750, Charles Wesley says: “My heart is with you and yours;” and then he too sends a message to the wife: “Dear Grace! Fear not! In six troubles the Lord has saved you. My partner,” he adds, “salutes you in the love that never faileth.”

Perhaps the best defence of Grace Murray is supplied by John Wesley himself in “A Narrative of a Remarkable Transaction in the Early Life of John Wesley, from an Original Manuscript in his own Handwriting,” published in 1802. Though the evidence for the genuineness of the narrative is not absolute, yet it is strong, and the story as thus told brings out vividly that deep and eager “tenderness” of Grace Murray which was at once her charm and her weakness. Wesley’s analysis of her character and of her work as his helijer, is written in an exalted key. He declares he “never met or heard of a woman so owned of God. ...” His love for Grace Murray, as shown in this narrative, is a slowly kindling fire, but it becomes intense, though always Wesley remained something of the pedant, even when in love. The key to Charles Wesley’s fiery opposition to the match is given in a letter headed “My dear Sister and Friend,” which Charles Wesley wrote to Grace after the interview in which he said, “Grace Murray, you have broken my heart.” In this letter he writes: “The case thus appears to me: you promised J. B. to marry him; since which you engage yourself to another. How is this possible, and who is this other? One of such importance, that his doing so dishonest an action would destroy himself and me, and the whole work of God.... What a scandal had you brought on the Gospel! You would have lived to hear your name cursed by God’s people.”

John “Wesley, according to this view, was taking from one of his preachers a woman who was his pledged wife. This was a scandal that explains Charles Wesley’s abrupt words to his brother, “I renounce all communication with you, but what I would have with a heathen man or publican.” “I felt little emotion,” says John Wesley, telling the story, “it was only adding a drop of water to a drowning man, while I calmly accepted his renunciation and acquiesced therein.”

To Grace Murray marriage with Wesley was thus described as a crime, which would destroy his work, and she was told that Wesley himself had realised this when she left him. Then the harassed and distressed soul declared, “I will have J. Bennet, if he will have me.”

Wesley himself, of course, believed that his engagement to Grace Murray was of an older date and better authority than that she had contracted with Bennet. For this strange tangle of dates and engagements Grace Murray, with her too eager and ready “tenderness,” was no doubt responsible; but, as Wesley “himself says, “those who know human nature will pity her at least as much as they will blame her.”

Wesley’s narrative adds one odd incident. After Charles Wesley had carried Grace Murray off and persuaded her that marriage with his brother would be a crime, thei*e yet remained the task of getting Bennet to marry her, for the message came that “he would now have nothing to do with her.” Charles Wesley hereupon left poor Grace with some friends, two miles from Newcastle, and rode forward to interview Bennet. The way he soothed his anger, says John Wesley, “was by laying all the blame upon me, as having Tised all my art and authority to seduce another man’s wife. ... It was then that Grace Murray was brought to him; she fell at his feet and begged he would forgive her. To satisfy her entirely as to any scruple that might remain, one was brought in to assure that I had given her up and would have nothing to say to her.” Wesley tells the story of the interview with Benuet and his newly wedded wife on October 6th. “Oh! what an interview,” he writes. “We sat weeping at each other. I asked, ‘What did you say to my brother to make him accost me thus?’ She fell at my feet, and said she could not speak against me, in many other words to the same effect, in the midst of profound sighs and tears. Before she arose he too (Bennet) fell on his knees for what he had spoken of me. Between them both I knew not what to say or do. I can forgive, but who can redress the wrong?” Wesley ends the narrative with the words, “Hardly has such a case been from the beginning of the world.”

Within eighteen months of this period John Wesley met his evil fate, and married. Charles Wesley first met the lady, Mrs. Vazeille, at his friend Perronet’s, and describes her as “a woman of sorrowful spirit”; a quality which, later, her unfortunate husband was to discover, merely meant a genius for making herself and everybody about her miserable. She was a widow, some years younger than Wesley, with three children, and a decent income settled upon them. She was, in her own uncomfortable fashion — at this stage, at least — a religious woman, with some capacity for making herself agreeable when she chose. But she was ignorant, of self-indulgent habits, with a semi-lunatic capacity for jealousy.

John Wesley had a child-like simplicity in all matters relating to women. He never allowed for sex. He looked on every woman with undiscerning eyes, and took her at face value. Any one of his sisters might have taught him better. They would have seen at a glance that Miss Sophie’s simple dress, and pious doubts, and zeal as a nurse in Georgia, were but the arts of her sex, intended to capture this young and earnest Fellow of Lincoln, thrown by a strange chance on the shores of Georgia. Grace Murray’s “inexpressible tenderness” and Mrs. Vazeille’s “sorrowful spirit,” in like manner, would have been analysed, discounted, assessed.

To John Wesley, however, every woman was a replica of his mother. It is easy to smile at his simplicity, but it had a generous and noble root.

Wesley was presently introduced by his brother to Mrs. Vazeille. Events moved fast. It was a case of a widow and a middle-aged man who thought he ought to marry, but was too busy to look for a wife. On February 2, Charles Wesley writes: “My brother told me he was resolved to marry.” That John should follow his own example seemed to Charles nothing less than a disaster. “I was thunderstruck,” he says.

“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 burdens. I could eat no pleasant food, nor preach, nor rest, either by night or by day.’”

Wesley, this time, was not in the least anxious to consult his friends, or take the opinion of his societies and ask their prayers. Least of all was he disposed to consult his brother Charles. His interference had spoilt one marriage; John would give him no chance of spoiling a second. But a curious incident followed. He records: —

“Met the single men of the London society, and showed them on how many accounts it was good for those who had received that gift from God, to remain ‘single for the kingdom of heaven’s sake,’ unless where a particular case might be an exception to the general rule.”

This spectacle of John Wesley some ten days before his own marriage explaining the superiority of the unmarried condition to one of his societies, is really very puzzling. Through the loophole of this phrase — “a particular case” — Wesley himself was at that moment about to escape from the celibacy he recommended to others!

Wesley had been as near to marriage before without reaching that goal, and it is by no means certain that Mrs. Vazielle would have become Mrs. John Wesley but for one trifling accident. Wesley was about to set out on his northern tour, in which it is probable he would have quite forgotten Mrs. Vazeille; but at this point an accident precipitated matters. It was a bitter frost, and Wesley, crossing London Bridge, slipped on the ice and injured his ankle severely. He tried with invincible courage to preach, but could not, and was taken to Threadneedle Street, where Mrs. Vazeille resided, and was nursed by that lady. This was fatal! Seven days were

‘Tyerman, ii. p. 104. speul, partly in the task of writing a Hebrew grammar, and composing a set of lessons for children, and partlj’ in “conversation with Mrs. Vazeille,” and the business of being nursed by her.

The accident occurred on February 10. On February 17 he was carried to the Foundry, and preached kneeling, not being able to stand. The next day, while he was still a cripple, he married Mrs. Vazeille. He preached again — indomitable man! — still in kneeling attitude, on Tuesday evening, and on Wednesday morning; and a fortnight after his marriage, being able to climb into his saddle, he rode off on a preaching tour.

Wesley’s wife lived till 1781, and for those thirty years she was for her unfortunate husband an embodied and ceaseless torment. She accompanied him at first in his preaching tours, but her genius for being discontented, and for quarrelling with ever3’body about her, brought this to an end. Within a month of the marriage the favourite topic for this remarkable wife was her great husband’s faults. Within a year the breach was open, confessed, incurable.

Wesley was, no doubt, a somewhat trying husband. His character and habits were settled; he was incessantly travelling; his life had in it absolutely no privacy. The wife who married Wesley might well have felt as though she were fastened to the tail of a comet. Yet Wesley was a man of invincible patience, of kindness without limit; and he had in him depths of feeling which a true woman might easily have evoked. But his wife was nothing better than a human gad-fly. Her business in existence was to sting.

Charles Wesley, with a touch of unconscious humour, gives us a hint of this termagant’s capacity for quarrelling. “I called,” he says, “two minutes before preaching, on Mrs. Wesley at the Foundry, and in all that time we had not one quarrel.” Charles, indeed, took his brother’s wife, with her furies, half humorously. He was accustomed to call her “My Best Friend,” because she told him his faults with greater diligence and emphasis than any other human being. Charles was once, however, for a moment pricked out of his philosophy. This scold was accustomed to accuse him of idleness; but in a more malignant fit of temper than usual, she declared that for years his dearest Sally had been his brother’s mistress! Charles fairly danced with rage at this slander on his wife, who, on her part, with her serene and invincible good sense, simply smiled and said, “Who will believe my sister now?”

Jealousy is, perhaps, the most malignant and tormenting of all human passions. When inflamed, it is simply a mood of lunacy. And Mrs. Wesley was furiously jealous of her husband. His work set him in the relation of friend and counsellor to many women; amongst his helpers, too, and in the institutions that were springing up under his care, women were employed; and each one was, for his hal fin sane wife, an object of deadly suspicion. Wesley, on his side, was apt to be tolerant, in a masculine, large-minded way, of facts in relation to such women which other women — even the best — would hardly forgive. Samh Hyan. for example, the housekeeper at one of his Orphanages, was a woman with “a past.” She was at this time only thirty -three; but she had three husbands living, and was sei)arated from them all! Wesley was in constant correspondence with her. a fact which kindled his wife to fury. She stole Wesley’s correspondence to satisfy her doubts; she would travel a hundred miles to see who were his companions at a particular stage of his preaching tour. Her fury threw her sometimes into paroxysms of mad violence, and sometimes into acts of almost incredible treachery. She not only stole her husband’s letters; she tampered with them, so as to give them an evil sense, and put them into the hands of his enemies to be published.

Wesley did not show much tact in dealing with his wife. He solemnly, and at infinite length, argued with her; as though a woman, who, like Tennyson’s “life,” was “a fury slinging flames,” was likely to be cured by sj’llogisms! Queen Victoria once complained that Mr. Gladstone used to address her as though she were a public meeting. Now John Wesley sometimes wrote to his wife as though she had been a crowd at Moorflelds or Kingswood. Here is an example: —

“At length, know me, and know yourself. Your enemy I cannot be; but let me be your friend. Suspect me no more, asperse me no more, provoke me no more. Do not any longer contend for mastery, for power, money, or praise. Be content to be a private, insignificant person, known and loved by God and me. Attempt no more to abridge me of my liberty, which I claim by the laws of God and man. Leave me to be governed by God and my own conscience. Then shall I govern you with gentle sway, and show that I do indeed love you even as Christ the Church.”

Here is another of Wesley’s remonstrances as a husband:

“It might be an unspeakable blessing, that you have a husband who knows your temper and can bear with it; who, after you have tried him numberless ways, laid to his charge things that he knew not, robbed him, betrayed his confidence, revealed his secrets, given him a thousand treacherous wounds, purposely aspersed and murdered his character, and made it your business so to do, under the poor pretence of vindicating your own character — who, I say, after all these provocations, is still willing to forgive you all, to overlook what is past, as if it had not been, and to receive you with open arms; only not while you have a sword in your hand.”

On January 23, 1771, there appears the famous entry in Wesley’s Journal: “For what cause I know not, my wife set out for Newcastle, purposing, ‘never to return.’ Non earn reliqui: non dimisi: non revocaho.”

It is generally supposed that this non revocal)o was final, and that from this date Wesley’s relations with his wife ceased; but this is by no means the case. The next year his wife, for a brief space of time at least, was with itiim again, but once more disappeared beyond the horizon in a whirlwind of passion. Wesley did not call her back, she came back uninvited. In a letter dated May 31, 1774, a letter which is one long scold, she signs herself “your affectionate wife.” They were finally parted, however, during the later years of her life. One of the last words Wesley wrote to his wife was in 1778: “If you were to live a thousand years, you could not undo the mischief you have done; and until you have done all you can towards it, I bid you farewell.” Wesley records in his Journal on October 12, 1781: “I came to London, and was informed that my wife died on Monday.”

Wesley’s strange marriage experiment is the tragedy of his life. The woman he chose, to quote Southey, “deserves to be classed in a triad with Xantippe and the wife of Job as one of the three typical bad wives of the world.” How did so wise and great a man come to make so unhappy a choice? But if any proof is needed of the heroic fibre of Wesley’s character, it is found in the circumstance that, while afflicted with a mere human plague in petticoats like this, it never deflected by a hair’s-breadth the work of his life. It did not even cloud his cheerfulness! The husband of this virago was yet able to declare that “he had never suffered from lowness of spirits for a quarter of an hour.” Any ordinary man, under such an affliction, would have known little else than lowness of spirits. Perhaps the unconquerable serenity of Wesley’s temper was an unacknowledged irritation to his wife. It was a challenge to her gift for making everybody about her miserable.

But it is almost amusing to note how the alchemy of his cheerful faith in the end turned even Wesley’s scolding wife into a force for good. He told Moore, one of his assistants, afterwards, “if Mrs. Wesley had been a better wife, he might have been unfaithful in the great work to which God had called him, and might have too much sought to please her according to her own views.” This same view is put with humorous directness by John Hampson: “Marriage has sadly crippled Charles Wesley,” he wrote to Berridge of Everton, “and would have done the same by John and George (Whitefield) if God had not sent them a brace of ferrets!”

Whitefield, it is to be noted, had a martial experience not much happier than that of his great comrade, and he deserved, his fate. In the letter to the parents of the lady he wished to make his wife, conveying his proposal of marriage, he explains that he wants a mistress for his orphanage, and adds, “You need not be afraid to send me a refusal, for I bless God, if I know anything of my own heart, I am free from that foolish passion the world calls love.” A suitor so frigid deserved a shrew for his bride.