“A quarter of Molly's schooling is paid. The children are perfectly well.”
TO LADY STEELE.
“March 26, 1717.
“My Dearest Prue,
“I have received yours, wherein you give me the sensible affliction of telling me enow of the continual pain in your head.... When I lay in your place, and on your pillow, I assure you I fell into tears last night, to think that my charming little insolent might be then awake and in pain; and took it to be a sin to go to sleep.
“For this tender passion towards you, I must be contented that your Prueship will condescend to call yourself my well-wisher.”
At the time when the above later letters were written, Lady Steele was in Wales, looking after her estate there. Steele, about this time, was much occupied with a project for conveying fish alive, by which, as he constantly assures his wife, he firmly believed he should make his fortune. It did not succeed, however.
Lady Steele died in December of the succeeding year. She lies buried in Westminster Abbey.
Steele replied to Dennis in an Answer to a Whimsical Pamphlet, called “The Character of Sir John Edgar”. What Steele had to say against the cross-grained old Critic discovers a great deal of humour:
“Thou never didst let the sun into thy garret, for fear he should bring a bailiff along with him....
“Your years are about sixty-five, an ugly, vinegar face, that if you had any command you would be obeyed out of fear, from your ill-nature pictured there; not from any other motive. Your height is about some five feet five inches. You see I can give your exact measure as well as if I had taken your dimension with a good cudgel, which I promise you to do as soon as ever I have the good fortune to meet you....