Anne Steele Tomkins, Abingdon, to Mary Steele Dunscombe, Yeovil, [Monday] 28 January 1799.

   I hope my dear Sister you are convinced, that Marthas wishing to answer your letter immediately, alone prevented my writing sooner; – this early plea for exculpation appears like the offspring of guilt, but I wish my silence were not always so excusable.  Most sincerely I can say, I never receive a Letter from you, but my heart prompts an instanteous reply; but when the moment of inspiration is past, indolence is too prone to usurp the empire of the soul; how rare are those spirits, which do not require some stimulus to awaken their energies, & call them into motion: enviable beings! who anticipate in some faint degree the pleasures of immortality, when their efforts are directed to the noblest objects – But whilst contemplating intellectual greatness without the hope of attainment, my soul derives consolation, from the feelings of veneration it inspires, & excites compassion for those, who are degraded so low, as to be insensible of its power. – You say my dear Sister it is a delightful thought, that no “impediments arise to retard the progress of virtue” but of our own creating – yet how prone we [are] to grasp at impossibilities – while daily duties are suffer’d to pass unheeded by duties which if contantly profess’d would ennoble our natures – ensure our own approbation, be pleasing to the eye of universal benevolence – perhaps this should not be mentioned as a general sentiment but an expression of my own feelings.  

   I read with tender regret that sentence of your letter, which related to your union with Mr D – , “it is a melancholy picture to behold life wearing away in toilsome care & vain regret,” but the propensity to hope has not forsaken me, & I must still anticipate a period when tolerably free from care, you will enjoy the pleasures of sentiment & affection. – Your visit to Broton must be deeply ting’d with regret, yet so much tenderness mingles with the idea of our native home & its recollected happiness that the necessary [paper damaged] repose is cherish’d with fondness. – Martha told you I wrote to Mary to offer her my [illegible word] place, she has agreed to come if she does not hear of any other nearer her Sister within a month. – You know too that Nesbit after spending ten weeks with us, prevail’d on me to suffer Mary to accompany her home – I know not which was most delighted – Martha has promised to fetch her – Edward Frowd goes to School tomorrow, very much to his discomposure he is very happy here & is wonderfully improved in appearance since he came from taking more air & exercise – You recollect Mr Morland – his wife died at the Hot Wells a fortnight ago. She was only 21 & has left a little girl believe he feels much – this mournful event should rouse our attention to the uncertainty of life & its last enjoyments – little Emma is tolerably well tho’ her looks & temper are somewhat injured by cutting of teeth which are not all quite thro’ yet – have the goodness to remember me to each of your circles & accept this as a memorial of the faithful affection of yr Dr Sister

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Text: Steele Collection, STE 5/11/xi, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford.  Postmark: Abingdon. Address: Mrs Dunscombe / Yeovil / Somerset. 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. 349-50. Edward Froude was probably a son of the Revd John Thane Froude of Chicklade. 

The Dunscombes lived for a time after their marriage on the property at Yeovil Mary Steele had inherited in the 1780s after the death of her uncle and father. Anne's quotation from the previous letter to her from Mary Steele about her husband, Thomas Dunscombe, or possibly her life in Yeovil (which it appears he was responsible for the decision to move there) is not something one would expect from a woman who had married a Baptist minister but possibly not something that should be a great surprise either for a woman who married for the first time at the age of 43: “it is a melancholy picture to behold life wearing away in toilsome care & vain regret.”