Very shortly after his removal to Epworth, his daughter Mehetabel was born. Henry Moore and Adam Clarke say, she was her mother’s tenth or eleventh child; but that is an evident mistake, for Mehetabel was born in 1697, which was only the eighth year after her mother’s marriage.[107] The whole of the Wesley family were gifted with poetic genius, but Mehetabel perhaps shone the brightest, Samuel and Charles not excepted. From her childhood, she was gay and sprightly, full of mirth, good humour, and keen wit. At the early age of eight years, she had made such proficiency in learning, that she could read the Greek Testament. When about twenty-seven years of age, she was prevented marrying a man whom her father called “an unprincipled lawyer;” and, in the height of her vexation, made the rash vow, either never to marry another, or to take the first that might offer. Shortly after, she had an offer of marriage from a man named Wright, a journeyman plumber and glazier. Her father, fearing that she might still marry the man who had jilted her, urged her to marry Wright. She unhappily did so, and found her husband to be utterly unsuited to her in all respects. Her uncle Matthew gave her a small marriage portion, and, with this, Wright set up business for himself. He then began to associate with low dissolute companions, spent his evenings from home, became a drunkard; and, by ill-treatment, broke the heart of his wife. In a most exquisite poetical address to her husband, she speaks of her “heart-breaking sighs and fruitless tears;” often does she spend “half the lonely night” in waiting for her absent husband, and then, on his coming home from his carousals, “curbs her sighs, conceals her cares,” dashes away her tears; and, to please him, puts on a cheerful “smile.” But despite all her attention and her tenderness, he still runs to “obscure and unclean retreats,” and associates with drunken blackguards, who, as a great achievement, grin at “obscene jests and witless oaths.” She then concludes her poem with the threat, that if this effort to regain his affection fails, she will abandon patience, and give herself up to rage and grief, until death restores to Wright his liberty, and gives him the opportunity “to laugh when Hetty is no more.”[108] ----- Footnote 107: _See_ Clarke’s _Wesley Family_. Note, vol. ii. p. 136. Footnote 108: Moore’s _Life of Wesley_, vol. i., p. 75. ----- Her husband carried on his business of plumbing and glazing in Frith Street, Soho, London. They had several children, all of whom died young. On the death of one of her infants in 1728, she wrote the following beautifully pathetic, but sad and saddening poem:—