Anne Steele, [Broughton], to [Philip Furneaux], [London], c. December 1759.

Sir

         Many incidents have prevented my writing sooner to thank you for the transcript of the Case of Conscience which you obliged us with, it has been communicated to the person for whom it was requested (observing your caution) and I believe was very agreeable to him tho’ his distresses were before in a good measure removed.  Our My F.r thanks are also due you for M.r Pikes sermons on Sovereign Grace which we have all read wth pleasure

  I am sorry for the continuance of y.r Sister’s disorder, the more because we had heard not long before that she was much better I believe you know that under dark and afflictive dispensations of Providence it is the Christian’s duty and comfort to adore and trust that gracious Hand which cannot err.  Hereafter all will be bright.—The pieces you sent me wrote by a Lady are indeed excellent, I have long since read them with pleasure, they were both written by Mrs H. W. daughter of Mr Towgood &c. and Wife of Mr J Wakeford of Andr who is now my Bror in law.  A little mistake or two I take leave to rectify  The first was not a birthday, but a New Years Midnight Reflection  the other, said to be found after her death, she communicated to Mr Wakeford when she wrote it. I had not the pleasure of being acquainted with her, but she was, by what I have heard, a most amiable woman, she died in the bloom of youth about a year after her marriage.

         You desire my opinion of your own verses.  It is this   The tho’ts are good, the language not unpoetical, but they want a little correcting and deserve it. Our family’s good wishes attend you  I am Sir your obliged Friend and Servant  A.  S. 

         The acc.t which you sent us of Sandemanianism has not mended my opinion of it, I am sorry that good & useful men shou’d embrace those sentiments, but must wish & hope that they may see their error.

[written on the back]

On Nov.r 29th 1759   A Day of Thanksgiving for National Blessings

The wond’rous Mercies of the Lord

         Our joyful Songs demand:

May lively gratitude record

         The blessings of his hand.

Let ev’ry heart adore his Grace,

Let ev’ry tongue declare

’Tis not in vain to seek his face

[written on the page sidewise from that above]

To convince you dear Nan

That your Books give me pleasure

I’ll write if I can

In rhyme & in measure

I sure can make rhyme

Of one sort or other

But about the sublime

I shall not make a pother

The Since Wits will allow

That new things delight

These lines I make now

Is Are certainly right

I love your verse dearly

And that’s the best praise

To admire it, is clearly

Prov’d wrong in Popes lays

But stay – on reflection

I must not say love

(Admit the correcion)

I only approve

Approve is a word I never bestow

Till Judgment & fancy agree to permit me

And so my dear Sister by this you may know

The verses in question exactly do fit me

Text: STE 3/13/vi, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. For an annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 2 (vol. ed. Julia B. Griffin), pp. 313-14. This letter, a draft, is a response to a letter by Furneaux in which he had sent Anne Steele a folium with four poems transcribed in his hand, two by Hannah Wakeford and two by himself, dated 1759 from London. Furneaux’s letter is lost, but the folium with the poems can now be found in STE 3/17/3.  

Hannah Towgood Wakeford (1725-46) was the daughter of Stephen Towgood, a dissenting minister from Devon, who served as minister to the James’s Meeting (Presbyterian) in Exeter, 1743-77. She married Joseph Wakeford of Andover on 15 July 1745 at Clyst Honiton, Devon, bearing one child, a daughter also named Hannah, who was christened at the East Street Independent Chapel in Andover on 26 July 1746, shortly before the death of Hannah Wakeford at the age of twenty-one. For a complete transcription of the poems by Hannah Wakeford that accompanied the above letter, as well as other poems and prose meditations by her (now belonging to STE 10/1), see Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vols 4 and 8.