Methodist History, 36:3 (April 1998) THE WESLEYS AT HOME: CHARLES WESLEY AND ms CHILDREN PHILIP 0LLESON The family life of Charles Wesley has perhaps not always received its due share of attention from his biographers, who have understandably con­ centrated their attentions on the more public aspects of his life. 1 Yet the domestic sphere assumed for Charles an importance that it never had for his ·brother John, and any biographical study needs to take account of this impor­ tant area of his life and his relationships with the members of hisJamily, cir- cle.: his wife Sarah (1726-1822), his daughter Sally (1759-1828),2 and his sons Charles (1757,...-1834) and Samuel (1766-T837).3 This paper focuses on Charles Wesley's attitudes to family life and his relationships with his chil­ dren, drawing on the evidence of his journals, letters and poetry, on unpub­ lished family papers, and on contemporary testimony. 4 'For biographies of Charles Wesley, see Thomas Jackson, The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A., 2 vols. (London: John Mason, 1§41); John Telford, The Life of the Rev. Charles Wesley (London: Wesleyan Methodist Book Room, 1900); Frederick Luke Wiseman, Charles Wesley, Evangelist and Poet (London: Epworth Press, 1933); Frederick C. Gill, Charles Wesley, the First Methodist (New York: Abingdon Press and London: Lutterworth Press, 1964); Ar:noldDallimore, A Heart Set Free: The Life of Charles Wesley (Welwyn, Herts: Evangelical Press, 1988). See also the relevant chapter in George John Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family (London: S. W. Partridge and Co., 1876). 2ln this paper 'Sarah' will be used for Wesley's wife, and 'Sally' for his daughter. 3For biographies of the children, see the relevant chapters in Stevenson, Memorials of the Wesley Family. For the musical careers of Charles and Samuel, see The New Grove Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie, 20 vols. (London; Macmillan, 1980) .. For a more extended study of Samuel, see James T. Lightwood, Samuel Wesley, Musician (London: Epworth Press, 1937). See also William Winters, An Account of the Remarkable Musical Talents of Several · Members of the Wesley Family, collected from Original Manuscripts, &c., with Memorial Introduction and Notes (London: F. Davies, 1874); Erik Routley, The Musical Wesleys (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1968). 4 • Jn the absence of a complete edition of Charles Wesley's letters, see The Jou~q.l of the Rev. Charles Wesley, M.A.; to which are appended Selections from his Correspondence and Poetry, ed. Thomas Jackson, 2 vols. (London: John Mason, 1849), and Frank Baker, Charles Wesley as revealed by his Letters (London: Epworth Press, 1948). See also Charles Wesley's letters of 1779-1784 to John Langshaw in Wesley-Langshaw Correspondence: Charles Wesley, his Sons and the Lancaster Organists, ed. Arthur Wainwright and Don E. Saliers (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, l 993). For Charles Wesley's poetry, see The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley, 13 vols., ed. George Osborn (London: Wesleyan Methodist Conference Office, 1868-72), and The Unpublished Poetry of Charles Wesley, 3 vols., ed. S T Kimbrough, Jr. and Oliver A. Beckerlegge (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1988-91). See also Representative Verse of Charles 139 I I 140 Methodist History l I J i' When confronted with information from such sources, one of the biogra­ ! pher's first concerns is with context: the extent to which the picture of family life and parental attitudes that emerges is typical of its time and the position in society of those involved. Accordingly, this paper begins by considering preva­ lent attitudes to the education and upbringing of children in 18th century England, and in particular those attitudes prevalent within Methodism. It goes on to examine the childhood and early upbringing of the Wesley children. From the point of view both of parents and of children the evidence here is uneven, favoring Charles and his sons at the expense of his wife Sarah and his daughter Sally. In the absence of information about the specific attitudes and contribution of Sarah Wesley, but bearing in mind what we know about other aspects of the marriage, we can only assume that Charles's views and attitudes were shared by her. As far as the children are concerned, the main sources of information relate mainly to Charles and Samuel, both of whom were musical child prodigies. Regrettably, there is comparatively little information on the upbringing of Sally, who, lacking her brothers' outstanding musical abilities, was less in the public eye and attracted correspondingly less attention. During his last decade., the most significant events in Charles's family life were his dealings with Samuel, at the time going through a troubled ado­ lescence and early adulthood. Of the three Wesley children, Samuel was the most musically gifted. He also comprehensively rejected the values of his family and of Methodism, to the sorrow of the family and the scandal of the entire Methodist community. Most of Samuel's later life dates from after Charles' death, and is thus not of direct relevance here.. But his involvement with and conversion to Roman Catholicism arid his long-standing love affair with Charlotte Louisa Martin both date from the 1780s and will be considered as important and highly stressful features ofCharles's final years. I Despite a large amount of concentrated and detailed attention over the last thirty years or so, the history of childhood still remains a controversial subject,· to the extent that there is little agreement even on the broadest out­ lines of how relationships between parents and children changed over time.5 Wesley, ed. Frank Baker (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962), and Charles Wesley: A Reader, ed. John R. Tyson (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1989). The two most important collections of Wesley family papers, including large numbers of letters by Charles's wife Sarah and the three children, are those at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia (henceforth Emory), and at the Methodist Archives and Research Centre, John Rylands University Library of Manchester (henceforth Rylands). 5For a brief summary of approaches to the history of the family and of childhood, see Michael Anderson, Approaches to the History of the Western Family, 1500-1914 (London: Macmillan, 1980) and the Introduction to Mary Abbott, Family Ties: English Families 1540-1920 (London: Routledge, 1993). Some of the most influential studies are (in chronological order): Philippe Aries, Centuries .of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. The Wesleys at Home: Charles Wesley and His Children 141 Many historians, however, would identify a move in the late 17th century to a more liberal set of attitudes to children and their education from those that had been prevalent earlier. These new attitudes were articulated and encapsu­ lated by John Locke in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), a work of immense influence on thinking on education for much of the 18th century. 6 The dominant attitude of 17th century parents to children had been, in the words of J. H. Plumb, "autocratic, indeed ferocious."7 Unquestioning obedi­ ence was expected of children, and infringements of discipline were met by harsh punishments. The new, more liberal, attitude stressed the importance of gentler approaches: a series of rewards and punishments appealing to chil­ dren's developing reason, by which they would be bf6ught Up as useful and' accomplished members of society. Although both approaches can be seen in 18th century educational thought, the more modern approach became increas­ ingly the dominant one. The two approaches have separate religiot;ts and theological pedigrees. The earlier model is Calvinistic and stresses the essentially evil nature of the child, acquired through original sin: in the words of Richard Allestree in 1658, "the new-borne babe is full of the stains and pollutions of sin which it inherits from our first parents through our loins."8 By contrast, the latter m~del stresses the essential goodness and innocence of the -child and the belief that with appropriate education and parental guidance he or she will prevail over the forces of evil. Theological underpinning for this view, which likens the child to Adam before the Fall, can be found as early as 1628 in John Earle's Micro-cosmographie: "A child is a man in a small let­ ter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of Eve or the apple. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil."9 This stress on the innocence of the child was to become more prominent in the 18th century, and was in one guise or another to be central to many Romantic attitudes to children and childhood. The most striking feature of the new attitude to children is the emphasis laid on the rationality of the child, and indeed of the whole enterprise of child­ rearing. As Locke says, expressing a point of view clearly novel at the time: ~John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (London! 1693); for a modern edition see The Educational Writings of John Locke: A Critical Edition with Introduction ati{i, Notes, ed. James L. Axtell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968). (London: Cape, 196l)(iLawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1977; shorter edn., Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1979); Linda A. Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relationships from 1500 to 1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). See also J. H. Plumb, "The New World of ·children in Eighteenth­ Century England," Past and Present, No. 67 (May 1975), 64-95. 7Plumb, "The New World of Children," 65. 8Richard Allestree, The Whole Duty of Man (London, 1658), 20, quoted in Plumb, ''The New World of Children," 65. 9John Earle, Micro-cosmographie (London, 1628), 1-2, quoted in Plumb, "The ·New World of Children," 68, n.