"AND CLEAVE UNTO THE BEST."
_From the Revd. John Wesley to Mr. George Stobart._
"At Mrs. Berry's Lodgings, Bristol,
"May 5th, 1762.
"MY DEAR FRIEND,
"Your letter surprised and grieved me; for I had hoped that
Lady Kilrush would have smiled upon your suit, and that an
union between two natures so ardent in Christian charity
would be not only for your happiness, but for the spiritual
welfare of that dear lady, and for the greater glory of God.
"Yet though I regret your disappointment I can but honour
her ladyship for the reverence in which she holds her
promise to the dead; nor can I do other than admire that
chaste and heavenly disposition which would dedicate a
lifetime to the memory of a husband who was hers only in one
dying hour. Such widows are widows indeed!
"You ask for my counsel at this so serious crisis of your
life, when the nature of your future work for Christ rests
on your choice of action; first, whether you should take
Holy Orders, before you go to America, a voyage upon which
you tell me your mind is irrevocably fixed; and next whether
you should accept her ladyship's munificent gift of the
major portion of her funded property, and her mansion in
St. James's Square, she retaining only her Irish estate,
and the family seat on the Shannon. This latter question I
unhesitatingly answer in the affirmative. The fact that this
noble lady had executed the deed of gift which transferred
her property to you before she declared her intention, in
the touching letter which you send me, would show that
she had deliberately resolved upon this sacrifice, and
was influenced by the desire of doing justice to her late
husband's nearest kinsman. She has indeed honoured me with
a letter to that effect, and has moreover told me that she
intends to spend the rest of her life in Ireland, where I
hope occasionally to visit her.
"I say to you, George, accept this fortune, even though,
in your present temper, it may seem a burden. Lady Kilrush
will be still a rich woman; and you will have a wider scope
for the employment of money in the service of Christ than
any woman, not even that Mother in Israel, Lady Huntingdon,
could find.
"The more serious question of your ordination I must leave
to your own heart and mind, and the Spirit of God directing
you. As an itinerant lay-preacher your ministry has borne
good fruit, and if you transfer your labours to Georgia I
shall sorely miss your help; but as an ordained priest you
will enter a higher sphere of usefulness, and feel yourself
sent out upon a nobler mission: so, my dear brother in
Christ, I bid you go on and fear not. We desire to rivet the
chains that bind us to the Church of England, not to loosen
them; and the idea that we are drifting apart from that
Church--_injusta noverca_ though she has been to us--is a
source of fear and trembling to many weak spirits, most of
all to my dear brother Charles.
"For myself I care but little whether we continue to belong
to the Established Church or be cast out; for sure I am
that we have kindled a flame which neither men nor devils
will ever be able to quench. Our fundamental principles
are the fundamental principles of the Church, and will
suffer no change. I have no fear for the Society, which,
from so insignificant a beginning, has attained so vast
an influence. I remember how, less than thirty years ago,
two young men, without friends, without either power or
fortune, set out from college to attempt a reformation,
not of opinions, but of men's tempers and lives, of vice
in every kind, of everything contrary to justice, mercy,
or truth. For this we carried our lives in our hands, and
were looked upon and treated as mad dogs. Knowing this of
me you cannot think that I should fear to stand alone, the
untrammelled shepherd of my flock. Your ordination, should
you meet with a bishop of liberal mind, like Whitefield's
friend, that good Bishop of Gloucester, ought not to hang
tediously on hand. But I hope I may have many occasions for
conversing with you before you sail for America, where,
supplied with ample fortune, and armed with the faith that
can move mountains, you may do much to maintain those noble
enterprises, the Schools, the Orphanages, and Asylums, which
Mr. Whitefield initiated, and to which he ever returns with
fresh vigour. Would that he had a more robust constitution,
and that we might hope to see his ministry continued to a
green old age; but I fear he cannot long stand against the
inroads of disease, accelerated by strenuous toil, preaching
three times a day, long journeys in all weathers, the rough
usage of the mob, and that fiery spirit which has been
always like the sword that wears out the scabbard.
"On my return to the Foundery in the autumn I shall seek for
you in your house at Lambeth. Till then, esteemed friend and
fellow labourer, farewell.
"JOHN WESLEY."
_From the Revd. John Wesley to the Revd. George Stobart._
"At the George Inn, Limerick, Ireland,
"November 11th, 1768.
"MY DEAR FRIEND,
"It is with poignant grief that I take up my pen to write
the saddest tidings it has ever been my lot to send you.
Your last letter was full of enquiries about Lady Kilrush.
Alas, George, that noble being, whom we have both loved and
revered, no longer inhabits this place of sin and sorrow,
and I dare hope that her pure and gentle spirit has taken
flight to a better world, and now enjoys the companionship
of saints and angels. Rarely have I met with a nature so
free from earthly stain, nor have I often beheld a life
so rich in good works; and although she may not even at
the last have attained that unquestioning faith which I so
desired to find in her, I would hazard my own hope of Heaven
against the certainty of her everlasting bliss; for never
did I know a better Christian.
"Her death was worthy to rank in the list of martyrs. You
may have heard that this city--the filth and squalor of
whose poorer streets and alleys no pen can depict--was
lately visited by an outbreak of small-pox. Lady Kilrush was
at her mansion by the Atlantic, a delightful spot, where I
once spent a reposeful week in her sweet company, preaching
in the neighbouring villages, and narrowly escaping death
at the hands of a wild mob, egged on by a bigot priest. In
this healthful retreat she heard of the pestilence that was
mowing down the poor of Limerick, and at once hastened to
the dreadful scene. Secure from the disease herself, by past
suffering, she spent her days and nights in ministering to
the sick, aided in this pious work by a band of holy women
of the Roman Catholic faith, and by such hired nurses as her
purse could command.
"For six weeks she laboured without respite, scarcely
allowing herself time for food or sleep; and when my
itinerant ministry brought me to Limerick I found her marked
for death. She had taken cold in passing from close and
heated rooms into the windy street, had neglected her own
ailments in her anxiety for others, and the result was a
violent inflammation of the lungs, attended with a raging
fever.
"Alas, dear sir, I can give you no message of affection from
those once so lovely lips. She was delirious when I saw
her, and though your name was mixed with her wild ravings,
'twas in disjointed sentences of no meaning; but on the day
preceding her death the fever abated, and indeed it seemed
for a short space as if my prayers had prevailed, and that
she would be spared still to adorn a world where by her
charities and inexhaustible beneficence she shone like a
star. Her senses came back to her within an hour of the
last change. She knew me, and received the Sacrament from
my hand, and I dare hope that in those last moments perfect
faith in her Saviour was conjoined with that perfect love
which had long been the ruling principle of her life.
"I had been kneeling by her bedside in silent prayer for
some time, her marble hand clasped in mine, when she cried
out suddenly, 'Husband, I have kept my vow,' and, looking
upward with a seraphic smile, her spirit passed into
eternity. I assisted in the funeral service, and saw her
mortal remains laid in the family vault, where her coffin
was placed beside that of the last Lord Kilrush.
"Yours in sorrow and affection,
"JOHN WESLEY."
EPILOGUE.
Thirty years later, on the anniversary of Antonia's death, George
Stobart, Bishop of Northborough--the fighting bishop, as some of his
admirers called him, a profound scholar, a fiery controversialist, a
celibate and an ascetic, once famous as a Methodist field-preacher, and
now the leader of the extreme High Church party--sat by the fireside in
his library in the episcopal Palace, a lofty and spacious room, where a
pair of wax candles on the writing-table served but to accentuate the
darkness. He sat leaning forward in the candlelight, with one elbow on
the arm of his chair, looking at a long dark ringlet that lay in his
open hand, bound with a black ribbon to which was attached a label in
Wesley's writing--
"Antonia's hair, cut after death by her sorrowing friend, J. W."
"Only a woman's hair," murmured the bishop. "'Tis said that Swift spoke
those words in pure cynicism over a ringlet of his ill-used Stella.
Only a woman's hair! And for me the memorial of a life's love, the one
earthly relic which reminds the priest that he was once a man. Oh, thou
who wert the idol of this heart, dost thou in some undiscovered region
still live to pity thy desolate lover? Shall we meet and know each
other again, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage? Or
is it all a dream, nothing but a dream?"