Josiah Conder, London, to Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, [Saturday], 16 April 1814.

London, April 16 1814

My dear Madam

   If you have concluded from my long silence that I have forgotten, or that I have remembered without gratitude the kind hospitality with which you received me at Salisbury, when I was so long detained there a disconsolate prisoner,  – tho’ I own that I have laid myself open to your suspicions, I can assure you that you have wronged me.  I hope that Mr. Bennet has informed you that in a letter written to him some weeks ago, I intimated my intention of writing to you, & had I designed merely to write, I should have done so long since; but the truth is, that wishing to send more than the post would carry, I have been putting off the execution of my intention week after week, in the expectation of a private conveyance, till I am at length vexed & mortified to find that above two months have elapsed since my return to London, without your receiving from me any acknowledgement. When I passed thro’ Salisbury with my friends on my return, it was midnight & we only staid half an hour to take refreshment as we had determined on going through. It was not in my power therefore, to call in Castle St.  It was above a fortnight after I left Salisbury before the state of the roads allowed of my return; & I was consequently impatient to reach home. Ever since my return tho’ it may sound like egotism to make the representation, the incessant & harassing occupations of business have been such that I have been unable to get thro’ what called for immediate execution: and had you the oppportunity of knowing the details, I feel assured that you would not so much wonder at my apparent dilatoriness in sending you my respectful remembrances.

   I often think of your interesting family, & I wish in return to be remembered by them – There is something that soothes my vanity, perhaps, in the idea of being anything of a favourite with those, who love or dislike, from simple & undisguised motives. Besides this, I have always found the nearest way to please the Parent was by evincing an unfeigned interest in the children; nor do I know of any objects so interesting, or which, next to the few who love us & whom we love, it is such a relief for the mental eye to repose upon, in turning from the harsh & disagreeable forms which the world is made up of. And yet I must confess that all children cannot interest me thus – there is ‘more of partiality than of benevolence’ I fear in the interest which yours excited; for certainly all children are not like them – They are distinguished by the enjoyment of a privilege which, I hope, they will one day better appretiate than they can at present; & if they attain, either to distinction, or to a respectability of character more intimately connected, than distinction, with solid happiness, they will look back, with Pascal, with Kirke White, & a number of great men, who have concurred in a similar acknowledgment, & bless God for a good mother.

   Gregory’s Astronomical Lessons, my friend Philip will add to his library. Maternal Solicitude is intended for his eldest sister, but not being sure of her name, I have not written it in the book. It is sent in boards because being a new book, the binding might injure it, but when she has read it thro if Papa will bring it to town with him some day, Mr Conder undertakes to get it neatly bound. The other two are for Cary & Jane, & I hope they will not be too grave for them. As Cary is the eldest, he is to take his choice, if Mama pleases, tho’ in general we must learn to give up to the ladies, especially to a Sister. If they have got any of the books already, I should be very happy to change them. The pamphlets, I think, I promised their Mama & they are only worth sending as they may shew I have not forgotten the promise. If ever I should come to Salisbury again, which will not, I think be, in the season of snow, most likely, Philip will have become a man of business; Cary a grave scholar; Mary Anne & Jane head Teachers in the School; John I do not know how tall, & Edwin quite a hero. But I must break off, or I shall be too late for my conveyance with best respects to Mr Saffery, I am Dear Madam & Miss Salter

                                 yours very resp[ectfully]

                                             Josiah  Conder

Text: Saffery/Whitaker Papers, Acc. 142, II.A.9, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Address: Mrs Saffrey | London. No postmark. For an annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 341-42.

Josiah Conder (1789-1855) was the son of Thomas Conder (1746?-1831), a London publisher and prominent Independent layman. Josiah took over his father’s business in 1814 and gained considerable recognition for his work as editor of the Eclectic Review (1814-37) and The Patriot (1832-55). In 1810, Conder, along with Jane and Ann Taylor, collaborated on a book of poems, The Associate Minstrels (London: T. Conder, 1810), a volume of poems presented as a gift by Mary Steele Dunscombe of Broughton to her niece (see Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 3, p. 165). References above to Blaise Pascal (1623-62), French writer, mathematician, and Catholic philosopher, author of the Pensees (1669); Kirk White (1785-1806), British poet from Nottingham, author of Clifton Grove, a Sketch in Verse, with other Poems (1803); and Philip John (P. J.) Saffery and his sister, Marianne.

Lessons Astronomical and Philosophical for the Amusement of British Youth (London editions appeared in 1796, 1799, 1806, 1811, 1815, and 1824) was a popular textbook by Olinthus Gregory (1774-1841), professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, 1803-38, and a prominent London Baptist layman. The same year he published Lessons, Gregory arrived in Cambridge to work as sub-editor for Benjamin Flower’s Cambridge Intelligencer. Like Flower at that time, Gregory also attended the ministry of Robert Hall at St. Andrew’s Street. He also operated a bookshop and a school, hiring Newton Bosworth as his assistant. In 1803 Gregory came to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, turning his Cambridge school over to Bosworth. By the time he retired in 1838, he had composed several scientific treatises, written about half the scientific articles for Bosworth’s encyclopedic work, Pantalogia (1808-1813), served as a member of numerous philosophical and scientific societies, and become widely known for his writings in Christian apologetics, such as Letters on the Evidences of Christianity (1811). For many years Gregory worshiped with the Baptist church at Maze Pond, Southwark, though in his later years he frequently attended Anglican services. He was also widely known for his edition of The Works of Robert Hall (6 vols, 1832) and was actively involved in the formation of the University of London (later University College London). His daughter, Eliza Gregory, will visit Maria Saffery at Salisbury in late December 1828, and her four letters to Saffery can be found on this site (click here).