William Steele, Bristol, to Mary Steele, Broughton, [Thursday] 11 September 1777.

Bristol Sep 11th 1777

   I rec’d My Dear Maria’s Letter in the Evening after I had dispatch’d my last & tho’ a post sooner than I expected was most acceptable.  I write now to inform you that we sent Miss Ash’s Trunk to Sarum this day & I presume it will be at Sarum at the Lions before next Tuesday when if Bear goes you may order him to call for it.

   We are just return’d from Meeting & going to dinner and in the Afternoon we expect to Tea Dr Mrs & Miss Stonehouse, and Oh Wonderful!  Miss Frowd Miss Patty More & I suppose the Poetess & the other Sis.r the two former call’d on us Tuesday & invited us to Park Street, but we cou’d not then promise it as we thought ourselves engag’d to Fishponds yesterday; but as that did not take place Mr Evans & I called on them & invited them to drink Tea here this Afternoon with the Docr &c who had appointed it before. I have not seen the Poetess she was from home but expected in the evening & I presume will be here and to morrow. I expect we must visit the Dr &c & as we have no other Opportunity, call at Mrs More & sit half an hour with them, the Dr who call’d on us Monday told them we were here.  They seem’d much pleas’d with an Opportunity of knowing us & we were acquainted presently, but it made me almost asham’d to hear their Compts about the Honour our Company wou’d be to them which you know I hate.

   What think you of Danebury being read in full Assembly this Afternoon, dont blush when you read this, for I am not asham’d it should be read before the Queen, however I dont yet know how it may be.

   W Morrant as I said in my last may come by Amesbury at the appointed time, we hope to be at Bradford Saturday.  To morrow morning we have appointed to breakfast at Fishponds as we have no other time.  I long to be at home Love to all Adieu

                             W Steele

in haste you may see Mammas Leg is better

thro’ Mercy our health continues

Text: Steele Collection, STE 4/5/lix, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Postmark: Bristol. Address: Miss Steele / Broughton near / Stockbridge / Hants. For an annotated text of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vol. 3, pp. 284-85. 

Elizabeth Ash was preparing for a long visit with the Steeles at Broughton. More importantly, the above letter records a remarkable moment in the life of the Steele family, despite William Steele’s deprecating tone. The "honor" on the part of the Mores in meeting the Steeles has to do with the fame of Anne Steele and her Poems of 1760 and her dominant presence in the Bristol Hymns of 1769, edited by Caleb Evans and John Ash. William Steele’s reading of Danebury before the Mores, the Evanses, and Dr. Stonhouse was indeed a significant marker in the poetic career of Mary Steele. The event would not go unnoticed by Hannah More either. In 1786, she visited Mary Steele at Broughton and togethery they walked to Danebury Hill, an occasion commemorated by More in a poem to Mary Steele preserved in the Steele Collection at the Angus Library and published, along with some letters to the Mores, in Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 3, pp.  304-05. For the letters between the Mores and Mary Steele, click here; for Hannah More's poem to Mary Steele, click here.