John Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Andrews Whitaker, [Thursday], 19 December 1799.

This short letter was affixed to a letter by Maria Grace Saffery to her sister, Anne Whitaker:

   My dr M. wishes me to add a Paragraph by way of Postscript to her Newspaper.  But wt can I say? After reading the above you will conclude yt I can have no intelligence to communicate & I will attempt nothing in yt way except it be to say yt we cannot send Miss J’s Bonnet ys week, but will endeavour to do it with ye other things some time next week.

   The weather is very cold with us, & the distresses of the poor great. ’Tis our mercy we are not destitute of ye necessaries, & comforts of life when we are daily pained with the complaints of many – I have nothing to complain of God, & every thing of myself; indeed my dr Bro & Sis – I am amazed ye vast importance of things engross no more of my attention. Oh! wt a poor earthly stupid creature I am, blessed be God I do hope it will not always be thus, & yt my poor soul will by & by be where & wt I desire it to be.  Just ys moment I cd write on, but it is late ye cap is almost scratched off, ye pins are out, ye stays unlaced & poor wife weary, & almost as restless as tho’ she were a pregnant woman urging me to rest I can therefore only say, good night & remain Yrs very affectly

                                             J Saffery

N.B. We had almost forgotten to wish you the compliments of ye Season, & so by our love to all yr dr Family

Text: Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 180, A.1.(b.), Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Address: Mrs Whitaker | Bratton Farm | Favor’d by | Mr Williams. No postmark. For a complete annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 172-73.