Anne Steele Tomkins, Abingdon, to Mary Steele Dunscombe, Broughton, [Friday] 21 July 1797.

Oakley  July 21st  97

   You must ere this my dear Sister begin to accuse me on the part of negligence – alas with me it rests. We have been much engaged or I should have acknowledged your welcomed Letters. They arrived the day following & conveyed real pleasure to my heart – my visit to Broughton is not remembered by you only with partial fondness – how often is it retraced by the pencil of memory with ever new delight.  Nothing in this world my dear Sister is capable of inspiring my bosom with so much genuine felicity as enjoying your society amidst the well known shades – save the tender ties that constitute my home.  I feel very anxious about Mr D – s leg & have frequent enquiries for him – it was a melancholy summons that call’d him from his happy abode – but the brightest  days are seldom without a cloud – you have heard  I suppose of the death of Mrs Boswell Beddome. She has left a large family – & it is not a year since Mrs Parsons died & it is thought Mr Wilkins Senr can survive a very short time – what awful warnings continually surround us & audibly exclaim in the midst of life we are in death.

   Nesbit left us on Tuesday her health was considerably amended by being here but her heart I fear is not entirely heal’d  the weather has been very unfavorable for pleasures peculiar to Summer – You are very good to remember your little Paddler she has not forgotten the happy days pass’d at Broton – she is very well & sends love & kiss to Aunt & Uncle D – Martha too is much better though she has suffer’d from repeated colds.

   I thank you for all your interesting intelligence particularly that which relates to yourself – I am glad you have less tête à tête & dare say you are [illegible word] comfortably have you made great progress in the Studies of Nature? Mr Evans is reading them & often amuses me with details of those parts which most interest him. He is one of the best friends I have – it gives me sincere pleasure to hear Mr Frowd is recovering & trust he will soon be restored to his family – whenever you write to Miss Frowd present my regards to her.

   Mary is going this morning to Abingdon on Horseback before her Father – Give my love to Mr D & tell him Mr Evans hopes the spirit of writing will awake from lethargy – I suppose we see him ere long – remember me affectionately to Lucy. I often visit her genial asylum on the Wings of fancy – Adieu my Dr Sister – ever ever yrs

                                             A Tomkins

Text: Steele Collection, STE 5/11/ix, Angust Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Postmark: Abingdon.  Address: Mrs Dunscombe / Broughton / Stockbridge / Hants.  For an annotated version of the above letter, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 3, pp. 346-47. References above are to Anne's eldest daughter, Mary Steele Tomkins (1793-1861), four years of age at this time; and to Thomas Dunscombe, who married Mary Steele on 1 January 1797. 

Anne Wilkins Beddome was married to Boswell Beddome (1763-1816), the son of Benjamin Beddome (1717-95), who spent some 50 years as the Baptist minister and a hymnwriter at Bourton-on-the-Water.  At one point he was a suitor to Anne Steele of Broughton, but was rejected. In 1777, his assistant minister, William Wilkins, asked for Mary Steele’s hand in marriage and was, like his senior pastor, rejected.  Anne Wilkins Beddome was his sister. She died at the age of 33, leaving her husband with several young children. He remarried in January 1800 and that July was elected a deacon at Maze Pond. Mrs. Parsons, who died in 1796, was also a sister of Anne and William Wilkins. The ‘Mr. Wilkins Senr’ is most likely her father, who may have been living with his daughter at the time of her death. 

The Froude family had long-standing connections with the Steeles of Broughton, going back to Edward Froude (also spelled Frowd or Froud) (d. 1744) of Sedgehill, brother to Anne Froude Steele (1684-1720), the mother of Anne Steele and, like the Steeles, a Baptist. His adopted son, James Froude became an Anglican, as did his children: Sarah ("Sarissa," b. c. 1755), Mary ("Amanda," baptized in 1753), Susan (1758-1837), and a brother (possibly a twin to Mary), the Revd John Thaine Froude (1753-1826), who served as vicar at Kemble for nearly fifty years. Thus, the Froude sisters were distant cousins of Mary Steele. By the mid-1770s, James Froude was dead and his daughters were living at East Knoyle with the Revd Russ, the local Anglican vicar, and his wife, Mary. The Russes had probably been designated guardians of Froude’s daughters in his will. Both Sarah and Mary appear on several occasions in Mary Steele’s poetry and letters. In fact, it was Sarah Froude’s copy of Mary Scott’s The Female Advocate (now at the Huntington Library, Los Angeles) that was used as the copy-text for Gae Holladay’s reprint of the poem in 1784. Mary later spent several years teaching in Bristol at the school operated by Hannah More and her sisters. Both Sarah and Mary remained unmarried. Susan, however, married Edward Pellew (1757-1833), who eventually became 1st Viscount Exmouth. For more on the Froudes, see John Broome, A Bruised Reed: The Life and Times of Anne Steele (Harpenden: Gospel Standard Trust Publications, 2007), 121; Marjorie Reeves, Pursuing the Muses: Female Education and Nonconformist Culture 1700–1900 (London: University of Leicester Press, 1997; 2000), 3-10.. 

Benjamin Jeffries Evans was the eldest son of Caleb Evans; he left Bristol and became a successful hatter in Abingdon, attending the same Baptist church there that the Tomkins attended during the long ministry of Daniel Turner.  The references to the Froudes would be the Revd Froude of Chicklade and either Sarah or Mary Froude, two of his sisters.