JOHN WESLEY'S ROMANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 210, 9 October 1909, Page 6

JOHN WESLEY'S ROMANCE.

THE SAVANNAH AND OTHER lOXS AFFAIRS. Ono of the mysterious Romances of famous biography ia recalled by the cablegram received on Wednesday Inst saying that a Methodist clergyman, exeditor of the Methodist Recorder, lua succeeded in deciphering secret passages in Wesley's Journal, which throw new light 011 his life and on his version of the Savannah love affair and quarrels. HOW HE MET HER. It was when Wesley was about thirtythree that lie went to Savannah, Georgia, with several companions as a missionary of the Propagation Society. He had hoped that his work would detl largely with the Red Indians, but ho settled in Savannah, a colonial town of about f>lß inhabitants. Here he met with a charming young woman named Sophie Hopkey, who was the cousin 0' one of his friends, and she evidently lost no time in falling in love with the young preacher. She became interested in religious matters, she studied them under his direction, and, having taken the trouble to find out from a friend of his how he liked women to dress, she thenceforth arrayed herself in gowns of white ur .->obi*r grey. In fact, she followed tactics which «iie was not the lu ilii cover nor the lust to fiml I'lfi'i-tivc.

John Wesley was ever impressionable where women* were concerned, and this gentle, tractable, and charming young woman almost completed her conquest of hiin when she nursed him devotedly through an illness, hnnlly suffering even his nearest friends to share the nursing with her. The girl seems to have been, as far as one could judge at that lime, in evory way a suitable wife for John Wesley, and it says more for his he.id than for his heart that lie submitted the question of his marrying her to the council of Moravian elderH, under whoso influence he hud come. They considered the matter, and solemnly reported that they advised him to "go no further." MARRIAGE WITH A RfVAT,.

Just wlint happened then in a question] that has troubled the admirers of .John Wesley for a hundred years and more. Did he at once break with the girl, ■ r did he continue to wish to marry her? Some of his friends «av that he thenceforth avoided her. Anyway, the girl seems to have been, as was natural, intensely annoyed at this submission of her fate to the decision of Moravian elders, and she promptly became CPgaged to a young man described by Wesley, who was hardly in a position to judge fairly, as 'a person not .«• markable for handsomeness, nor for wit, knowledge, or sense, and, least of all, 'for religion." Four days after the en-gagement-Miss Sophie Hopkey married Mr. Williamson, and it is said that eight days later her husband forbade her ever to speak to Mr. Wesley again or t» enter his church, a prohibition which she evidently disregarded, for fl" months later John Wesley got int j great trouble through refusing to allow her to communicate, saving that she had not fulfilled the conditions demanded from communicants.

Then there aro6c a great uproar in the ehurcli. Mr. Williamson demanded £IOOO damages for the wrong done to his wife's reputation, and Wesley was summoned to appear before the petty , Magistrate's Court to answer a long ' list of charges of arrogance and the like in regard to his ministerial duties, lie subsequently attended the sittings of the Court no fewer than seven times;, .asking that the charge of defamation of character might be investigated, but it never was, though when he announced his intention to return to England, Mr. Williamson took steps to have him I bound down to remain in the colony of | Georgia, and lie only escaped bv stealth. TIIE LADY'S AFFIDAVIT.

When Wesley was first summoned before the Court, Mrs. Williamson put in an aflidavit stating that he had wished to marry her, that after her engagement to Mr. Williamson was announced he came to her begging her to eav whether there were not some way by which she could escape from marrying Williamson, , and promising that if there were "anything in his way of life that she disliked he would make it easy for her," which she took to mean that he would relax his rigid mode of life for her saKe. The whole ease never was cleared up, Some of Wesley's friends declared that he had found reasons in the lady's con* duct to justify him in refusing to allow her to communicate, and one friend said that these reasons were stated in the private diary, A Mr, Moore said he heard the story from Wesley himself, wlm refrained from publishing the whole affair in his printed journal out of regard for one of his Georgian friends, but the private diary does not really give any illuminating details. Probably they have now been dug out of Wesley's cipher by a too curious student of his affairs.

FATED TO LOVE FOOLISHLY. ] Wesley seemed'fatcd to love foolishly. . Later oil he was nursed through unothi'r t illness by a charming young woman, , who apparently noted as deaconess, and . with whom he fell deeply in love. She allowed him to believe that she returned hia love, though she was then engaged , to one of his colleagues, and for a long '• time she kept both men at her feet. I It is one of the most curious love stories . ou record. Even when Wesley had dia- . covered lier engagement to his colleague he decided that it would be''better f >r . hei to marry him, and for a time s r ie . again corresponded with both of them. . But at last, perhaps tiring of the situa- . tion, she showed Wesley's letters to . the other lover, and then told Wesley , what she had done. Perhaps it was , this that cured him of his affection, for , he did not again make any attempt to , wm ' ier love. She was a Bweet cat. Illness was fatal to John Wesley. He had almost made up his mind to l'uarrv —he was certainly considering the matI ter from a philosophical, chilly point of , view, and probably liad a widow ladv .11 liis mind when ho had the misfortune— I it was a tragic misfortune—to sprain hs I ankle and fall into her hands as an in-' valid. Before his cure was completed,, when he was still 90 lame that he hai to kneel when lie preached, he became engaged to the lady, and married liev a I lew days after, with the understanding 011 her part that she was not to hinder his work for one day. lIIS MATRIMONIAL TROUBLES. Mrs. Wesley proved a fiend. She very soon developed the most amazing capacity for jealousy and unpleasantness, and she made him most abjectly miserable. His work brought Wesley into association with many women—earnest women, devoted to the work that he provided for them in different parts of England and Mrs. Wesley chose to be horribly jealous about them. She used, to rush off to distant places oil her husband's journeyings, and appear before him in a most surprisi.i" as ,1011. She read his letters, «'ne looked mto his correspondence, and she was treacherous enough to make mischievous interpolations in those letters before showing them to outsiders with 11 view to injuring her husband. Accounts have been given of most undignified and violent scenes in her life stories which should not be revived! Wesley, it may be said, behaved foolishly, and did not in the least realise the sort 0 woman he had to deal with. At last she left him hurriedly, and ho recorded solemnly in his journal: "Non earn reliqni, non dimisi, non revocabo " and one feels sure that he had much more grin, satisfaction in putting it like that thr,.( in saying, as any man might have done, "I have not desort.:d .'nf'n 11 r e J lo ', S ,? nt her awa y; I shall not call her back." It was many years WoX," l "r bcfore , the lad y A and W cslcj s biographers have been very wrnh. "'"urn™™- ents on lier - Soutlie y h and tile wife of : ,ol < s . he wis one of the three typical