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commonplace for those of their class and background.’ 25
It is fortunate that it was during the 1760s that his two sons began to show their
extraordinary musical precocity. By this time the Methodist movement was well
established, having survived the struggles and persecution of the 1730s and 40s.
Charles had begun to settle down, establishing a comfortable domestic existence at
Bristol. Happily married (a rare achievement for the Wesleys, it seems) and occupied
with raising a family, he had by no means retired from leadership of the Methodist
movement, but could scarcely attempt to match his brother’s gruelling schedule of
travel and preaching. The unexpected appearance of not one but two musical
prodigies in their midst was the cause of much heart-searching. On the one hand their
father felt obliged, as a Christian, not to waste his sons’ remarkable talent; on the
other, he was aware that life as a professional musician would scarcely be congenial to
Methodist values.
His decision-making process was exhaustive and protracted, involving a
veritable ‘who’s who’ of musical London. 26 Among those who took an interest in
Charles’s young sons were John Stanley, John Worgan, William Boyce, Thomas
Linley, Samuel Arnold, T. A. Arne, J. Broderip, John Burton, John Keeble, John
Beard, Matthias Vento, Felice de Giardini, J. C. Smith, Jonathan Battishill, and
Wilhelm Cramer. At length the decision was referred to Joseph Kelway, a minor
composer but apparently the final authority on questions of musical education.
Charles accepted the advice of the experts and, in Kenneth Hart’s apt phrase, ‘resigned
himself to the idea that this was a gift from God’. 27
25 Wesley, p.4.
26 See Olleson, Wesley, pp.7-9, 217-18. It is recorded in great detail both in Charles’ Journal and, in
an expanded form, by the lawyer Daines Barrington (1727-1800) in his Miscellanies on various
Subjects (London, 1781), pp.291–310, and ‘An account of the very extraordinary musical talents of
Messrs Charles and Samuel Wesley’, Westminster Magazine, 9 (1789), 233-36, 289-95. These have
been excerpted in T. Jackson, The life of the Rev. Charles Wesley, MA (London, 1841), pp.330-45,
and Routley, Wesleys, pp.43-57.
27 From a presentation to the Perkins Faculty Luncheon, 6 March 1996, concerning his (still
unpublished) edition of S. Wesley’s Reminiscences (to be found at:
http://www2.smu.edu/theology/faculty/hart/ken_hart.htm ).
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