Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Thursday], [28] April 1808.

Dearest Anna,

   Since I wrote you anything like a detail of our affairs so much has occurred, so much has been said & done and what is more, so much of all this has immediately engrossed & interested myself that I am aware my present attempt will be very imperfectly accomplished.  In fact you must come to hear what in a great measure at least I shall certainly fail to write such indeed is the vivacity of present events in our little circle, that they act upon me like a vortex so that I seem half engulphed, in the quickly succeeding and closely encircling waves, which the impressions of divine providence are making on this part of the Ocean of life – but I must not spend on exordium the momentary leisure I had selected for recital.  I therefore commit the following particulars to your attention because I know they will most sensibly interest you.  After all the vicissitudes moral, and physical, we have observed in Ryland, one at length appears obvious of ye most important & I trust blessed nature.  Soon after my return from B—n I was struck with an improvement in her habits a temper wh I confess I almost wholly attributed to the direct influence of her friend Anne Salter, who was then you know an Inmate in our family.  During this period she took occasions to talk with me on the subject of religion, in a manner so close & interesting, as but for former impressions would have exceedingly delighted me. You are too well aware of my Sentiments in these matters & too well acquainted with all the fears I entertained respecting ye future character of this accomplished female to be surprised that I shd have listened to such a conversation with more caution than triumph & that I left her without those congratulations which naturally flow from the lips when the heart is encouraged and assured.  As I rather avoided than solicited subsequent intercourse a considerable time elapsed before the subject was renewed still her change of manner at home, her seriousness & emotion & in the sanctuary daily strengthened the feeble hope wh her first professions had inspired at length she made another effort to awaken my attention to her spiritual concern by opening her heart to Mason who was greatly astonished, & charmed with the statement of her experience tho’ she had long noticed its propitious influence on her temper.  Since then Mr Saffery & myself have held repeated conversations with her in all of wh the result has been pleasing as to the conviction of our own minds.  She was before the Church last Lord’s day & expects to be baptized the succeeding Sab: Miss Norton a Miss Murch five other females & one Man are also expected.  Dr Ryland was invited to preach ye baptizing sermon &c – but our application was too late in a letter recd this morng, he says he had previously engaged to be at Westbury Leigh & Mr Page is to supply his place at Salisbury.  I very much wish you would write Ryland an impressive letter tho’ I wd still rather you wd admonish, & encourage, her in person.  Will Mrs Stapleton inevitably keep you at home till after her arrival? we are longing for your Society here & those that enjoy it most had best look to themselves that they deserve it poor R’s health continues very delicate & no kind of regimen seems materially to improve it.  For the present Lucy maintains her interest in my heart & I hope will appear to have eventually ye better claim on it than those she brought with her –

   Poor old nurse is yet in the body, but much worse the few last days so that her dissolutions and blessed be God her Redemption too, hourly draweth nigh.  Mr John Smith is also very dangerously ill, but I have heavier tidings than of the affliction of these persons to communicate our dear young Friend William Penny is laid on a sick bed, under the pressure of a disease to wh Dr Fowler does not, & Mr French, cannot, give a name.  There is an induration and swelling in the abdominal regions wh they imagine the consequence of long accumulating mischief.  There is in my view nothing pulmonary in the complaint & in fact no species of decline that may be called primary.  I have been long anxious @ the state of his health both from his countenance & his occasional declarations. You must conceive what I < > describe the distress of the family.  His dr Mother Mary leaves him, but watches day & night the son in whom she delighteth.  O that God may restore him to our prayers and render more valuable a life so valueable! ask Dr Seagram all you can, sometimes I think, more might be done, if he were here.

   My Father arrived in safety @ eleven days since after an overturn in ye Coach.  < > man so completely in point of decision, that we have ever known yt I forbear even guessing at his plan of operations  I think I am authorised to say that you may expect to see him a week or two hence.  He wd be remembered I suppose. My dr S– is not well, but ye indisposition is slight.  The children are in good health, tho’ Philip has some indications of delicacy, he is thinner than Carey and has required the past month or two more attention than either of the younger Gentry. I am not however at all disposed to indulge any disquietude respecting the state of his health wh I believe is quite unnecessary.

   < > is we think getting better.  Mr Saffery who was appointed visitor at the Infirmary for this week saw her this morng.  Adieu ma douce amie I am surrounded with engagements but in every circumstance my heart owns the sweetly animating influence of yr friendship, & I am

                                 Ever Yours,

                                             Maria Grace Saffery

Thursday afn  27 April 1808 [misdated]

Text: Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.1.(35.), Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford.  Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | nr Westbury | Wilts. 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. 262-64.

In the Reeves Collection, Box 17/7, Bodleian, is a bound manuscript notebook containing fifty-one letters addressed to Samuel Saffery (copied in his hand while at St Helena in 1838), four during his time as a student at Joseph Dear’s establishment at Chelwood House, near Bristol, and forty-seven during his apprenticeship at Dunn’s Counting House, London, March 1822-September 1823. During that time he boarded in the home of Mrs. Stennett, 60 Paternoster Row; she was a descendant of the famous Stennett family of Baptist ministers, a family of preachers who were also friends of the Steeles of Broughton (see Volume 3, letter 96).  After recording a brief letter from Ann Salter, dated 3 March 1823, he attached the following tribute to her. He confessed that he could not complete his volume of letters without adding

at least one letter from a person so inseparably connected with the home of my infancy & manhood.  Having entered it very soon after my birth & continued there until after I left England it is not wonderful that she should be so nor would it be if her character had been a common one.  Hers however is one that cd not fail to influence any Society of which she might form a part, presenting in rare combination both moral & intellectual qualities of the most opposite description.  Her masculine force of mind & energy of action are associated with a more than usual portion of woman’s tenderness & susceptibility of nature – Her powerful imagination, lively fancy, keen perception, & intense feeling of the beautiful – in a word, her high poetical temperament – formed a prominent feature of her character but not less so than the order, the method, the precision and the perseverance which she carried out the practical duties of life down to their minutest details.  Her high Spirits wh gave such sprightliness to her conversation were not unfrequently absorbed & lost in the deep undercurrent of Melancholy which ever flowed beneath them. Formed for Society she yet courted Seclusion.  But though loving Retirement, when associated with others for benevolent purposes, she would throw all the energy of her character towds the accomplishment of objects of association & appear as if in her natural element when drawn from that in which she habitually moved.  Intellectual in her tastes & pursuits & skillful in the elegant arts of painting &c she delighted also in mechanics; & in works requiring manual skill seemed to realise Coleridge’s expression¾ “the brain in the hand.”  An accomplished musician she yet rarely ever performed (and before strangers –

never) because she cod not realise her own high, & perhaps ideal, standard of excellence.  Inexpensive in her personal habits, she was ever most generous towards others and especially the poor to whom she has been a benefactor to an extent wh: God & herself only know; for it was in the hidden channels of private charity her benevolence chiefly flowed.  These are some of the prominent points of her character, and though on reading what I have written it seems too much like studied antithesis; yet that is the form which language naturally assumes in describing an antithetical character.  Such I think hers & were it not that Religion pervades & in some degree harmonizes qualities so discordant, it would be one, with all its fine habits, not to be envied perhaps.  Happily, most happily, for her, she is [words erased]. 

  But I must stop.  It is not my purpose to draw a full length portrait.  She has delineated herself most admirable in allegory composed for my beloved Sister Jane, which I have seen, and has given the Shadows with no unsparing hand – I only intend a Sketch – sufficient to identify a character who is so frequently named in my letters – and one wh: had so much ascendency in the home from which most of them emanated – Perhaps, too much – but it was unsought – It was the natural effect of her character.  Many a time have I observed its influence on persons of every grade & shade of mind who joined our family as guests.  All seemed to feel the spell & within a few days, at the most, generally.  Yet there was nothing of display about her.

The Mrs Stapleton mentioned above is the widow of Dr Joseph Stapleton (d. 1795), who lived at Ardleigh Hall, just outside of Colchester. Her family worshiped in the Independent congregation in Lion Walk, at that time under the ministry of Isaac Taylor, father of Ann and Jane Taylor, poets and writers of children’s literature.  Mrs Stapleton had four daughters and one son, Joseph, who married Lucy Ryland in the summer of 1813.  Mrs. Stapleton's daughters, all in their twenties, died from consumption between 1804 and 1806. It was through Joseph Stapleton, who lived for a time with the Whitakers, that they came to know Ann Taylor, whose letter to Anne Whitaker dated 17 June 1812 can be found on this site (click here). 

The ‘Ryland’ in this passage is Lucy Ryland of London, who would later marry Joseph Stapleton. The fact that she has decided to make a public profession of her faith (she will be going before the church, as the next letter details, to give her ‘experience’, as it was referred to at that time) is a moment of great importance in the life of any evangelical Calvinist, but what is of note is that she appears to be presenting herself for baptism as well. Her early church life was among the Independents, who sprinkled, whereas Saffery's form of baptism, as a Particular Baptist, was by immersion, an act generally required of new members who had formerly been sprinkled (some open communion congregations among the Particular were more lenient in matters of baptism than those who advocated a closed communion).