I was able to take a night off from work with children and young people tonight to join around 40 others at Bethesda, Kensington in West London for the 37th annual lecture of the Strict Baptist Historical Society. The lecturer was the very competent Sharon James of Leamington Spa (wife of Bill, daughter of Erroll Hulse). She spoke on the 18th Century hymn writer and Strict Baptist Anne Steele. Mrs James endeavoured to show
1. That though living an outwardly uneventful life Steele was possessed of a sparkling and attractive personality
2. Her place in English hymnody. Steele was the first female writer to have her hymns extensively used. She brought in a personal subjective note in the Puritan tradition that had been largely absent until then.
We were given some 18th Century background regarding nonconformity and the Romantic movement and a brief history of the church in Broughton, Hampshire, where Steele grew up and lived and where her prosperous uncle and father successively ministered. In the church there were times of harvest but mostly slow progress despite the Methodist Revival to which the family seemed favourable.
Material had been culled from papers in the Steel Collection at the Angus Library in Oxford, which includes the journals of Anne's stepmother to whom she was very close. Anne's own mother died in child birth when her daughter was only three. (It should be noted that nearly everyone in the story was called Anne, if a woman, or sometimes Mary, and William if a man).
Anne was a happy child in comfortable circumstances. Throughout her adult life she suffered with various ills. She probably had recurrent malaria, peptic ulcers and the inevitable toothache. Remedies in those days probably did more harm than good. She was thrown from a horse at 19 and hurt her hip but despite some ancient theories this was probably the least of her worries. There was also perhaps a courtship with a man who drowned but the story that this happened the day before they were to be married has no substance. It was confirmed that Benjamin Beddome once proposed and others. Anne, however, was quite contented in her singleness and took advantage of it to carry on a lively correspondence with family and friends and write her hymns.
When she was 43 (1760) two volumes of hymns and poems were published anonymously. At the time of her death, aged 60 (1778) she was unknown to the Christian public but in 1780 three volumes were published by Caleb Evans of Bristol using her real name (containing 105 hymns and 52 poems). The Bristol Collection, the first Baptist hymn book, that appeared in 1769 contained 412 hymns - 137 by the father of hymnody, Isaac Watts, and 62 by Anne Steele.
She was commended to us as a fresh, warm, honest, feminine writer hampered only by the constraints of 18th Century hymn tunes (all in just three recognised metres).
In conclusion she was held up to us as
1. A godly woman and a role model for today where the danger of making women feel downtrodden is ever present. A plea for the legitimacy of the single life was also made.
2. A hymn writer who breathed a breath of fresh air into 18th century hymnody - something we can benefit from today when hymns show real freshness and passion.
The cyberhymnal lists some 90 hymns of hers here. In 22 cases the words are given. (I don't think any have made it into Praise! and not many in other hymn books today). Mrs James has a book of four biographies including Anne Steele In trouble and in joy. See here.
