Mary Reid, 24 Church Row, Hampstead, to Henry Crabb Robinson, 2 Plowden Building, Middle Temple, 7 April 1835.  

Dear Sir

             I have heard occasional news of Mr H: Robinson being in Town, & thought that perhaps in some leisure hour he wd find out an old friend at Hampstead, but from the complete seclusion in which my health has obliged me to live during the whole of the winter, it is very probable he may not have heard that we are here. I therefore dispatch a line to let you know that I am still in existence, & that when you are disposed for a Country walk or ride, we shall be glad to see you, & if you could drop a line to [paper torn], so much the better – as in fine weather we often drive out – I suppose you have of late been much engaged with yr friend Mr Wordsworth – I need not say how happy we should be, if you could bring him with you – I once had the gratification of drinking tea at his house at Rydal (with the Lloyds) a visit amongst the most distinguished of ‘my pleasures of memory’ – to these, I am afraid you cannot add, those of hope, as no doubt Mr W: is in too much request to have any time to bestow on such an insignificant person, where he could only have the pleasure [paper torn], a pleasure he cannot [paper torn] fail to experience wherever he goes – You however will perhaps favor us with a visit ere long—Do you happen to be disengaged on Sunday next? & will you come to a family dinner at half past three o’clock, or to Tea at six, which may suit you best  -- Have the kindness to write a line on receipt – Excuse the effects of haste & believe me

                                    Yours sincerely,

                                                 Mary Reid

24 Church Row

Hampstead   April the 7th

Address: H. C. Robinson Esqr / No 2 Plowdens Buildings / Middle Temple.

Postmark: 4 Even AP 7 1835.  Endorsed:  7 April 1835 / Mrs Reid.      

Text: Crabb Robinson Correspondence, 1834-35, letter 98, Dr. Williams's Library, London.

Mary Reid (1769-1839) was the daughter of Matthew Reid and Mary Atchison Reid of Leicester. One brother, also named Matthew, was a merchant in Leicester; another brother, John (1773-1822) was a Unitarian physician who settled in London in 1795 and became an acquaintance of many of the early Romantic writers, such as Coleridge, Southey, Lamb, Hazlitt, Lloyd, and a young Henry Crabb Robinson. John Reid was also a friend of Dr. Richard Pulteney (1730-1801), formerly of Leicester and later at Blandford, Dorset, and a prominent member of the Linnean Society. Like her friend Elizabeth Coltman, Mary Reid also joined the congregation at Harvey Lane after the arrival of Robert Hall in 1807. Like Coltman, Reid never married, rejecting numerous suitors, including the poet James Graham. After the death of her brother in 1822, she inherited a considerable amount of property, both in Leicester and Glasgow, where her father had originated. According to Glasgow historian, Robert Reid, 'Miss Mary Reid was a literary lady, and was spoken of as blue stocking in my early days' (55). She was a close  friend of Susanna Watts and Elizabeth Heyrick, Elizabeth Benger, and Susanna Watts, even spending three weeks in the Lake District in 1802 with the latter. 'She was also', Reid adds, 'a keen politician, of the Foxite school', all of which would have placed her in good company with her friends, Mary Steele and Elizabeth Coltman.  As to Reid's appreciation for Steele, she left these words in a letter to Coltman after Steele's death: 'I have moments of more exquisite & delightful feeling in thinking over the virtues of order dear friend, than in associating with any living one'. For more on Mary Reid, see Robert Reid [Senex], Old Glasgow and its Environs (Glasgow: David Robertson; London: Longman, 1864), 55; Leicestershire Record Office, 15D56/449; also Timothy Whelan, Other British Voices: Women, Poetry, and Religion, 1766-1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 162-70, 187-89; for Mary Steele's 1807 friendship poem to Reid, see Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 3, p. 162.