Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 30 October 1807.

Sarum   Octr 30. 1807

My dear Friend & Sister,

   The sight of a letter this morng addressed to ye revnd John Saffery from Bratton, & in your hand writing produced a momentary but agonizing alarm.  My maternal anxieties just hushed into repose, were all awakened by an conjecture that this epistle, probably conveyed tidings of my beloved Carey, that you were reluctant to inform me of yourself my distress however soon yielded to grateful satisfaction as I eagerly perused yr accnt of the Lord’s goodness in his completed recovery.  Many kisses to the dr little fellow & assurances of our love.  I hope his good manners will continue – I need not say how sincerely I regret the alarming illness of yr Sert Polly, poor little Maid!  her Morng of life, is indeed even made darkness.  O that the light of immortality may irradiate the Cloud! may ye visitation of God preserve her spirit, whatever be the issue of ye disease I fear my beloved Anna will suffer most exquisitely during this season of suspense remember more than ever yr personal interest in < > in a due regard to yr own situation.  I have < > nurse she cannot conveniently leave home before [Tuesday] & she has therefore determined on going pr Coach to Warminster on that day, wh is unquestionably the best plan  you will of course forward some person to meet her there according.  It is time I had said something @ yr sweet Boy who is as Miss R–  terms it in a perfect state that is in good health & spirits.  You must all receive his love & thanks for the Cake.  He was highly charmed with his letter all of wh he read himself except as he said ye “hard words.”  You are inquiring @ the other inmates of my family we are thro divine goodness well  my dr S– & Mason wish to be remembered most affectionately.  Miss R. wd not I am sure be forgotten, but alas almost every remembrance of her makes me sigh.  I cannot enlarge on a Subject on wh I wd gladly think but little Lucy excepting the same < >, & something of the family face, < > folly unlike her, and so interesting, so unattractive that I am in danger of loving her, < > ye involuntary emotion of a heart that shrunk as involuntarily from the friendship of her Sister.  You will say nothing @ this to any one I intreat you also to say nothing particularly of Miss Norton & Mr Page as the dr has so enjoined me to silence yt I shd not like him to suppose me communicative on that affair. 

   Adieu my dr Anna I cd say much from a full heart, but must only add my earnest assurances that I am

                             Yours most tenderly

                                         Maria Grace Saffery

I hope & pray that ye Lord may yet recover poor little Polly.

Text: Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.1.(30.), Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Address: Mrs P. Whitaker, Bratton Farm | to be left at the Red Lion, | Warminster | Octr 30th. Postmark: Salisbury, 30 October 1807. For an annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 247-48.

The ‘dr’ above is a reference to John Ryland of Bristol, who will later mention the same Miss Norton in one of his letters. The Norton family were once a prominent family in the Broadead church in Bristol. Hannah Evans Norton (1746–1807), wife of Robert Norton, was the daughter of Hugh Evans of Bristol (1712-81), pastor at Broadmead, 1758-81. The Evans and the Nortons were friends of the Steeles of Broughton and known to many dissenting families in the West Country. Robert Norton was also the brother-in-law of Thomas Mullett of Bristol and later London, the latter a close friend of Henry Crabb Robinson. Norton eventually left Bristol for Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, where he became a successful clothier and tobacconist. The ‘Miss Norton’ mentioned in these letters is his daughter, Anne Evans Norton. She would marry William Smith, a landed proprietor and clothier, and settle at Horsley, Gloucestershire. Her elder sister, Sarah Evans Norton Biggs (1768-1834), was already operating a successful boarding school for girls of nonconformist families in Peckham, and was instrumental in the education of her younger sister. According to the family historian, Sarah Biggs, already a widow with three children, ‘was a woman of decidedly superior intellectual powers, which it was her delight to cultivate. She was also, though not handsome, a striking looking woman, with an elegance of manner and possessing much taste’. Mary Steele’s niece, Mary Steele Tomkins, attended Mrs. Biggs’s school at Peckham c. 1803–5. Biggs remained a Baptist and was also known to Crabb Robinson and, most likely, his friend Mary Hays. As close relations of the Evans family were still attending the Broadmead church, both Anne and Sarah Norton would have been known to John Ryland, Jr. For more on the Nortons, see M. Evans, Family Chronicle of the Descendants of Thomas Evans, of Brecon, from 1678 to 1857 (Bristol: privately printed, c. 1870), pp. 40–2; see also Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 3, pp. 355-56, 360-61.