In 1742, when
Anne Steele was 25, she received a written proposal of marriage from Benjamin Beddome. By then Beddome had been pastor at Bourton on the Water in
the Cotswolds for one or two years. How he would have met Anne is uncertain. It may have
been that they met in Haycombe near Bath, if and when Beddome preached there. Anne had cousins there (the Gays, her mother's sisters children) and would visit at times. Anne
refused the proposal but kept the letter. Beddome went on to marry
the daughter of one of his deacons.
A footnote by Timothy Wheelan, in his essay Mary Scott, Sarah Froud, and the Steele LiteraryCircle:A Revealing Annotation to The Female Advocate says
Anne Steele rejected a proposal from Benjamin Beddome in 1742, and at least one other after that, possibly the Independent minister in London, Philip Furneaux (1726–1783), around 1757. In a marvellous exchange of letters between Anne and her half-sister Mary in 1757 concerning what appears to be another rejection by Anne of a lover, Steele responds to her sister’s criticism of her incivility in dispatching the poor suitor in language remarkably similar to that used by Mary Steele in her poem to Sarah Froud.“’Tistrue,” she writes,“a gentle Swain with many soft intreaties lately offer’d his hand to help me over, but I made him a Curt’sie and declin’d his officious civility, for I look’d over and saw no flowers, but observ’d a great many thorns, and I suppose there are more hid under the leaves.” See The Poetry of Anne Steele, ed. Julia B. Griffin, vol. 2 of NWW, 307.
A footnote by Timothy Wheelan, in his essay Mary Scott, Sarah Froud, and the Steele LiteraryCircle:A Revealing Annotation to The Female Advocate says
Anne Steele rejected a proposal from Benjamin Beddome in 1742, and at least one other after that, possibly the Independent minister in London, Philip Furneaux (1726–1783), around 1757. In a marvellous exchange of letters between Anne and her half-sister Mary in 1757 concerning what appears to be another rejection by Anne of a lover, Steele responds to her sister’s criticism of her incivility in dispatching the poor suitor in language remarkably similar to that used by Mary Steele in her poem to Sarah Froud.“’Tistrue,” she writes,“a gentle Swain with many soft intreaties lately offer’d his hand to help me over, but I made him a Curt’sie and declin’d his officious civility, for I look’d over and saw no flowers, but observ’d a great many thorns, and I suppose there are more hid under the leaves.” See The Poetry of Anne Steele, ed. Julia B. Griffin, vol. 2 of NWW, 307.
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