William Steele, Bodenham, to Mary Steele, Yeovil, [Wednesday] 3 November 1773.

   My Dear Polly’s very affectionate Letter of the 27th Ult.o came to hand Saturday, I need not say how welcome it was but it was much the more so as it inform’d me that your Cough is much better. – As you will think it long before you hear from me if I don’t write till we go hence I take a few minutes to scribble to you from Bodenham where we now are with the two little Damsels who are highly delighted with their playmates. Mrs Whitaker & her little ones being all here, so that you may judge here is a Rout indeed. We came from home yesterday morning and left your Aunt much as usual & the rest well, & hope to return tomorrow morning. – I am sorry Miss Scott has left you as you will miss her company greatly. As I think (& I believe you think so too) that ’tis time to think of your return home, shall be glad you will let me know if your uncle is gone (or does go) [on] his Journey & when you propose to go to Motcombe & how long you would willingly stay there & at Knoyle? I think it will be best for you to go in the manner we propos’d with M. Winsor.

   Miss Jenny had a Letter from you Yesterday. – The lines from Miss Phillis (to be sure she is Miss now) are very extraordinary & ’tis  indeed wonderful that Genius tho’ uncultivated shou’d shine amidst slavery & distress. – I am very glad Mr Way has satisfy’d your uncle about Hodges’s Estate, as I believe his Mind was uneasy about it.

   Here is 6 or 7 of the noisy little folks in the room & we are just going to dinner, so must conclude with assurances of the warmest Love to my Dear Girl, whose affectionate Father I hope she will always esteem me

                                 Wm Steele

Bodenham Nov. 3d 1773  

All join in Love &c

Miss Jenny’s Love & compts to you (her own words,) & intend to write you pr next Sundays post.  A miserable Scrawl I scarce know what I have wrote – may the God of blessings attend you

Text: Steele Collection, STE 4/5/xxix, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. This is a photocopy of the letter; the original is no longer in the Steele Collection. For an annotated text of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vol. 3, pp. 238-39. 

Caroline Attwater Whitaker had three young children by this time: Philip (1766-1847), Anne (1768-79), and Mary (1773-1800). Along with the four young children of Gay Thomas Attwater and Mr. Steele’s two young daughters, the Attwater residence was alive with children. "Miss Jenny" is a reference to Jane Attwater. Also in the above letter is a reference to the recent publication of Poems on Various Subjects, Moral and Religious (London: A. Bell, 1773), by Phillis Wheatley, the former enslaved person of John Wheatley of Boston. Though she would take the name Phillis Wheatley, William Steele is actually correct in referring to her as ‘Phillis’, which is all she used as identification on the title page to her Poems. This is another instance of the nature of the wide reading of the Steeles, their access to current publications from London, and their obvious sympathies as dissenters to the problem of slavery. Mary Steele and Mary Scott were both reading Wheatley’s poems, for she appears in the Preface to Scott’s The Female Advocate.