Richard Ryland, London, to Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, [Friday], 4 March 1808.

Savage Gardens 4 Mar. 1808

Dear Madam

   I enclose your Bank of England paper for the amount you sent me & am much obliged by your friendly Care as the Expenditure. I am very glad your good Opinion of both the Girls continues & hope they will continue to deserve it. I was much mortified that Harriets Health &c prevented her Acquiescence in her Mother’s Visitation – and still more so that Lucy did not comply with the hint I dropped her through Archer – the State of Health of the former might perhaps have prevented her usefulness & in some degree consequently the pleasure, of her rejoining us – but with regard to the latter, I am quite sure it was an Opportunity to have professedly sent as a kind Providence seemed to me to have thrown in her way, and which it was unwise not to endeavour to improve – Mrs R: from a State of Health extremely ill for several months, I might say years before, and great rational Grounds of Fear & Anxiety about herself, & the Child she was to add to our Number has had a deliverance more than usually easy, a Recovery uncommonly comfortable, and above all what we had scarcely ventured to hope the power to make almost as good a Wetnurse as she did 20 years ago – the little Girl too has perfect Health, very great Animation, with more quiet good humour & Placidity than I have almost ever seen – Mrs R. has in Course now passed nearly 3 months of more domestic Ease & Health & Comfort & Chearfulness than she perhaps ever expected to enjoy again – and whoever had passed them with her would have enjoyed their Share as we have, perhaps, making the Reflection that no one who has not experienced Languor & Fear & Sickness can altogether judge how far the Existence of those internal Crosses & Burthens influences our natural Behaviour to others, & how far any of us become in appearance discovered to those about us, where the difference is within, and arises from a disordered Body or a troubled mind, not from want of kindness of heart or social Affection.

   When any such Opening should occur again – or can be made – I hope it will not be neglected – Lucy might have trusted me that I wod not have proposed what I was other than very sure wod have been to her advantage; my Affection for them both is equal & undiminished – their Conduct, occasionally, of the one, or the other, has been less when I thought right, & of Course as I am not apt to conceal my Sentiments they have been so by my Behaviour. I shall always feel all a father’s Anxiety for their Welfare, in all Respects.

   The rest about us are all well. Richard gives us the most Satisfactory Accounts of himself & so do his Superior Officers of him onboard the Audacious. He was 10 or 12 Days at Plymouth in December & is now again off France, not expected to come into port before midsummer. As a Midshipmen he is considered to be the first Lieutenant’s right hand & in all respects one of the first Seamen in the Vessell. Mrs Nicholls had an uncommonly fine passage to Bdos – only 25 Days from Falmouth. The preceding pacquet had a severe & sanquinary Engagement with the Enemy & the next after them  a still worse having been taken & carried in to one of the French Islands – but Mrs Nicholls died of the fever of the Country in about 3 weeks after thy landed – we have heard nothing from Fanny herself as the Accots came from Gen. Maitland by the Government Express the very Day of his Death. Mrs Macreat & Chaddie after staying at Madeira about 21 Decr then got prospects & were going forward – since which we have heard nothing of them.

   Mrs R. who has always made herself pretty much a slave to the Children she was nursing has not yet found that she could leave this little one long enough for us to go to Peckham on the Sunday, but we have found ourselves extremely comfortable at Mr Stephen’s in Goodmans fields. This is our domestic News, which when you detail to the Girls, I will thank you to call their Attention to our serious < > about the former part of this Scrawl, which may not perhaps be very legible or very intelligible – but which claims a little thought from them, to understand & take to heart. I beg my best respects to Mr Saffery & am Madam

                                 Your assured Friend & Servt

                                            R Ryland

What I said about Needlework referred merely to my not being insensible of Lucy’s past Labours which were highly useful & indeed exemplary – & had no Reference to anythng I wished either of them to do in future or in absence – altho’ no Attention of that kind could fail of its Effect – or its Reward – and such a thing might perhaps give an Opening to good.

   I was quite content that Lucy’s Loss should be made good, to the full – for I reckoned the fault more Croft’s than her’s & I felt for her Mortification on the Subject – they continue I hope to make their own things, and to employ themselves much in useful work – here, none of us are idle –

   Their < > & letters should I think be paid out of their weekly allowance I hope that you have reasonable Evidence that the latter is spent properly

   I will not longer detain you tonight,  indeed this is already too late for the Post

Text: Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, II.D.5.a.(17.), Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Address: Mrs M G Saffery | Salisbury. Postmark: 5 March 1808. For an annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 257-59. John Croft Ryland (b. 1792) was the third son of Richard and Harriet Ryland. Both Harriet Frances and Lucy Ryland were living with the Safferys in Salisbury. In London, the Rylands were still attending to the ministry of William Stephens at the Baptist meeting in Little Prescot Street, Goodman's Fields.