Marianna Jane Head, Bradford, to Jane Attwater Blatch, Bratton, [c. 1840].

My beloved precious Aunt

   When can I begin to thank you for kindnesses to me or here express my gratitude for all the tenderness received from you and the beloved friend & now glorified spirit who removed makes another vacuum in our hearts which Heaven alone can fill. True affection my precious Aunt enters in and participates with you in the loss that meets you in every feeling of your heart head & thought yet when we consider the Lord has done it, O how then we desire to say His will be done, and under the dispensations that lays us low, how much have we to bless our gracious God, for in mingling so much & many mercies in our sorrows preventing many agonizing sufferings we feared may we be still encouraged to trust in the Lord and rest our sorrowful burden on Him who has fulfilled & will fulfil his promises which are all yea & Amen in Christ Jesus – may I be permitted my dearest Aunt & you are enabled to translate our affections and dependance from earth to Heaven to the loving God stayed on Him, trusting Him, feeling our times & all we have and are in his hands – I feel absence from you my precious Aunt although I feel how remiss & inefficient I was to you while with you  I can only deplore my inability & wonder at your condescention & kindness, but it was God’s goodness in inclining you & yet throughout from first to last & this idea sometimes encourages the unworthiest to hope, seeing he induces such excellent ones to notice, oh my beloved Aunt never say you have nothing to live for, what could I do without you? Life would seem a blank to me – still live here and pray for me my dearest Aunt.

   I fear you have been unwell pray take care of yourself my precious Aunt this would be the fervent wish, the earnest entreaty of your beloved Husband & I am sure your wish would be [to] attend to his advice –  I am very anxious for you, and I did feel dismayed at not a line today – I trust it did not arise from your being ill – I wish I could send or do any thing for you my dearest earthly friend – I am sorry I could not get you a gown I like for you, I send this for you to see now you must use yr own mind if you like it if not please return it as it makes no difference in the world & < > would take it again but if you do not like it I shall have it myself –

   I was so neat I could not get the stamp but hope to soon.

   My dr aunt forgive this I wrote in the utmost haste I have returned these Books which I never ordered  having them before detaining Wills Sermons 3/ enclosed

   Yours my dr Aunt most

         tenderly & respectfully

                    A J Head

the linen is 6/ per the 9 yds

love to Mary

Text: Reeves Collection, Box 19/2/o, Bodleian Library, Oxford.  For a complete annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 8, pp. 198-99. This letter was written not long after the death of Joseph Blatch in 1840; both aunt and niece were now once again living alone, the latter having lost her mother, Marianna Attwater Head, in 1832. Marianna Jane Head (c. 1785-1857) “would” later become the second wife of William Jay, Independent minister at Bath.