Find results with:

Add another field

Search by date

to

Searching collections:

Charles Wesley Family Materials at Bridwell Library

Add or remove collections

Home Letter to Sarah Wesley

Reference URL

Share

To link to this object, paste this link in email, IM or document

To embed this object, paste this HTML in website

Letter to Sarah Wesley

View Description

Download

small (250x250 max)

medium (500x500 max)

large ( > 500x500)

Full Resolution

Print

Loading content ...

you wish to report:

Your comment:

Your Name:

Submit

Cancel

...

Back to top

Powered by CONTENTdm®

Title	Letter to Sarah Wesley
Post Date	December 14 (1797 or 1809?)
Author	Shepherd, Mary Freeman, 1731-1815
Recipient	Wesley, Sarah Gwynne, 1726-1822
Date	1797-12-14
Physical Description	2 pgs total; 1 pg text; 1 pg blank
Dimensions	24 x 20 cm
Location (Box, File)	Box 1, File 26
Transcriber	Wanda Smith
Transcription	[To Sarah Wesley] Thursday, December 14 Dear Sally I like your Quaker much. She comes on Tuesday. The name of my protégéé is Sheppard; her little girl’s Louisa Sheppard. The child speaks French as well as English but cannot read French. She is seven years old, hath been in France from an infant of a few months old. The mother before she married was several years English teacher at a boarding school, went over about six years ago with her husband to France. He as an agent broker to and from England. She taught English to the French; her husband is detained in France as an Englishman. She in my mind foolishly returned to England with her child last August, finds most of her former friends removed by death and human contingencies far off, is a stranger in her own land and very destitute of a subsistence. She can speak French very well, but I fear is not qualified to teach that language. Yet possessing it so as to speak it might be the more desirable even as an English teacher. But will want a few articles in clothing for a decent change. She hath three shifts, one good dress, one tolerable, and one more inferior; so for [?] handkerchiefs, aprons, under coats and stockings she is rather bare. I wish to see you so soon as you have a breathing interval. I breathe Vendetta Ultionem to that she fiend Boswell and her male associate in malice, Sam Belial.[1] Yours affectionately, M. Freeman Shepherd[2] __________ [1] Eliza Tooth identifies ''fiend Boswell'' as Euphemia Boswell, daughter of James Boswell, the famed biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson. ''Sam Belial'' she identifies as Samuel Wesley, the brother of Sarah and Charles Wesley, Jr. Miss Tooth alludes that Miss Boswell and Samuel Wesley were plotting against Sarah and Charles ''to injure them with Lord and Lady Moira.'' The year that this letter was written would have been either 1797 or 1809, when December 14 fell on a Thursday. [2] Mary Freeman Shepherd was born October 9, 1731 O.S.; died June 29, 1815, age 84. She was a cousin to Ebenezer Blackwell, the Lewisham banker and friend of the Wesleys.
Digital Resource Type	Image
Digitization Date	Digitized: 2003
Digitization Process	Digitization process: Derivatives resized at 4037 pixels high or wide
Digital Publisher	Bridwell Library, Special Collections; Perkins School of Theology; Southern Methodist University
Rights	Permission to publish materials must be obtained from the Head of Special Collections of the Bridwell Library