Mary Steele [Dunscombe], [Broughton,] to her half-sister Martha Steele, Abingdon, [Sunday] 15 January 1804.

   I am much obliged my Dear Sister by the early intelligence of your safe arrival at Oakley we thought & talked of you frequently. The weather being so cold & you alone I was anxious about you – Accept my thanks once more for your late visit – I have only to regret that I could not make it more comfortable – & now as I trouble my Friends so much with my Complaints I must not delay to remove any little Anxiety they have felt on my account. There is my dear my Dr Martha  a great alteration in me since we parted – I am now so well that I scarcely know myself – it is really astonishing, confined constantly within doors & such brisk warm weather which used always to relax & improve me – yet my strength is returned, my Spirits revived, & I feel more animation than I have done for months perhaps I might say years – to what can I attribute this but to his gracious influence with whom are the issues of life & death – it is true we ought to acknowledge that blessing which gives efficacy to all ye means we make use of – but to our gross perception does not his hand seem even more apparent when contrary to our wellgrounded fears & without any means we are relieved and felicitated

Oh could this laboring heart this faultering tongue

But breathe some humble tribute to his praise!

but as every earthly enjoyment must have its alloy so mine has. Dear Lucys health has declined as much as mine has improved, her Cough has been extremely bad & she has now that weakness in her Stomach which she had last year, this the 3d season she has been attacked with it & I cannot help feeling a degree of alarm from it. She attributes it herself to the uncommon rainy Season. She begs her Love to you & should an Opportunity occur would be obliged to you to send her another Cake of Hore hound. She is chiefly here now her Companion not being yet returned.

   We are indebted to you My Dear Martha for a great deal of entertainment.  Mr D Lucy & myself are all equally interested & delighted by Cowper.  It has made even these gloomy hours fly so freely away.  After all I have heard & seen about it I was not disappointed & that when expectation has been so much raised in no common case we are got almost half way thro the second volume so hope we shall not detain it a great while longer from you.  Lucy & I read it together – I did not dream with regard to a 3d Vol for at the end of the 2d is an advertisement of it & said to consist chiefly of Letters, but it was then only in the Press which accounts for your not having it – poor Benegoustie lies by untouched – thro the more powerful Attractions! dark indeed, but for the [Beams] of Immortality which pierce thro it.

   Perhaps you will be glad to hear that poor Mr Dunsford has found another Asylum & by his Account a pleasanter than the former he had a terrible Journey & went out as he says literally like Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to such a Country not knowing whither he went his little pittance carried him to the end of his Journey but was then severely exhausted – The poor little Infant at nurse next door is dead. His mother must feel it but if she is removed too its death will be a happy Circumstance –

   I have not forgotten my Dear Anne & her Children.  Tho I have said nothing of them I think of them daily & now I am so well wish I could have that pleasantest of Exercises a good game of Romps with the Dear Girls. I have fancied when playing with Children that they seem’d to communicate a portion of their innocent hilarity & I could wish to become like them in more respects than one. I suppose Marys day of departure draws near – I rejoice that it is not such a day of dread as it used to be formerly to me. – It is well I have no Child to send to School.    

   My Love to all the Family Circle in which Mr D sincerely joins as well as in affectionate regards to yourself. – The account you gave us of Miss D was a great satisfaction. Adieu My Dear Sister do not forget to be particular about your health yr headach &c when you write –  & let it not be long before you give that pleasure to your affect. Sister

                                 Mary Dunscombe 

You have left your [paper torn] I hope to send it before the year is out. –

Jan 18th 1804

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, pp. 356-58 (annotated version); STE 5/12/ix, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Postmark: Stockbridge, 20 January 1804.  Address: c/o Mrs Biggs, Peckham.

Reference above to a new edition of William Cowper’s Poems (originally published in 1786) with a Preface by Cowper’s friend, the evangelical clergyman John Newton, which appeared in 1803 in two volumes, sold by Joseph Johnson in London; and Mary Steele Tomkins, who had returned to school at Sarah Norton Biggs’s establishment in Peckham.