William Steele, Broughton, to Mary Steele, Motcombe, near Shaftesbury, [Saturday] 4 December 1773.

Broughton Dec. 4th 1773

   I hope this will meet my Dear Daughter safe & well arriv’d at Motcomb, & that no difficulties attended you in your journey thither. Your Letter of the 27th past came duly, your Uncle I presume is gone for Exon & as the Weather has been very favourable I hope he has had, if not a pleasant, a comfortable journey.

   Your Aunt is not quite so well as when I last wrote, has had more of her fits, but has done without watchers, she longs greatly to see you as indeed we do all, your absence having been much longer than was at first intended.  I think next Tuesday sennight the 13th Inst will be a proper time for you to come home, when I hope to meet you at Sarum or if I should not will send the Chariot; shall be glad of a Line to know if Miss Frowd will favor you & us with her Company & whether (if Providence favor) I may expect you that day.  I suppose you will have a Chaise from Hindon or from Mr Russ’s Tenant, you had need set out by 8 o’Clock as the days are short & the Evenings dark, if neither of the Miss Frowds should accompany you, some person had need come with you to Sarum that can return in the Chaise.

   Your Letter to your Aunt came safe to hand, it was my neglect that I did not mention its receipt to you, the Verses were very agreeable as yours all are to your friends here, but don’t for the future call them silly &c lest it should look like fishing for Compts.

   The Red Herring for your Cough is not an unheard of thing, as Dr Goldmeyer you may remember mention’d several extraordinary Cures perform’d by it.

   We all join in the most friendly Salutations to all the Family at Motcomb & Knoyle & our warmest Love attends My Dear Girl I commit you to the protection of a kind & gracious Providence & am My Dear

                     Your ever affectionate Far

                                             Wm Steele

Our Love to Dear Dear Sister Polly & hope she will soon come home as we want to see her very much. – From her playful Sisters

                                 Anne Steele junr

                                 Martha Steele junr

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols.  (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, pp. 242-43 (annotated version); STE 4/5/xxxiii, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Postmark: Andover. Address: Miss Steele / at Mrs Hayne’s / Motcombe / near Shaftesbury.  The note at the end of the letter is written by William Steele, but the signatures are those of his two young daughters, Anne and Martha. 

Mary Steele is visiting Sarah Froude, sister to Mary Froude, at Mrs. Hayne’s school for girls at Motcombe, where Sarah was a teacher. Mary Steele produced at least three poems during this visit to Yeovil and Milborne Port. Most likely she read the finished draft of Mary Scott’s The Female Advocate and she and Scott probably read the poem by Canon Seward which resulted in Steele’s poem, “Occasioned by reading a Poem entitled The Female Right to Literature in a Letter to a young Lady from Florence, by ----, 1773,” and Scott’s inscription to The Female Advocate. The verses sent back to Broughton by Steele were “A Reflection written on a Sunday Evening at Yeovil 1773 October 31st’”  and “To Theodosia, an Epistle from Yeovil, 1773.”