Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 4 August 1809.

Friday Eveng Aug 3d 1809

My dearest Anna,

   While I reflect on the nature of your engagements this day and see you making part of the melancholy circle in the house of mourning, I seem to feel the mingled emotion wh has I know already prompted you to weep & to rejoice.  I seem to hear the expression of your sympathy prepared also to listen to the consolation you urge on those, who awaken all the poignancy of your distress – we are thankful that dear Mr & Mrs B– are indulged with such a state of feeling amid the severity of their affliction.  O that while they trust the dear deceased “has received beauty for ashes,” they may be helped to take the “Garment of pain for the Spirit of heaviness” – but I forbear  –

   Your arrangement for next week has occasioned us great hesitation and perplexity, tho’ you are certainly blameless in this matter.  I am inclined to think that I must submit altogether to the exigency of the case and let your beloved & valuable friend leave Bratton without seeing them.  If they knew how to estimate this trial of my fortitude I think their benevolence wd bring them hither! – but you are inquiring for the cause of my perplexity.  In addition to ye general difficulty attendant on my leaving home or immediately after the opening of the School I have on occasion for confinement there just now wh I scarcely like to mention lest you should be induced to appreciate my sufferings too highly – however explanation is now inevitable & I must tell you that our dear Carey is once more become an object of great anxiety to our parental tenderness. On Wednesday Morng Chapman preparing to dress him observed a very extraordinary swelling on the thigh. On asking if it did not hurt him, he said in his singular way, “O why that you know is my bad leg” and being dressed ran @ as usual.  You will judge of my agitation when on examination I saw something like a large abscess – after shewing it to French we proceeded to Fowler who on first seeing declared it to be matter probably formed on ye cavity of ye back, & fallen from thence into the thigh observing that it must be opened  dr Fr met Mr Fw next Morng with this idea but varied in his opinion on second examination thinking with Mr F that it could not be pus but rather a gelatinous substance that might be dissipated by embrocation & vinegar poultices – otherwise it must still be opened. We are to make ye experiment for @ week under Mr Fs inspection when dr F will again see him.  Under such circumstances how can I leave home even to see dr Mr & Mrs Scott. Mr Saffery will endeavour to preach the sermon as proposed on Wednesday Eveng tho’ with myself he exceedingly regrets the time –

   Adieu my love I am much harried & heavily fatigued in head & heart.  I hope your dear Alfred is better.  We beg united love to all – again adieu  I have scarcely time to say what peculiar claims I feel you have on the friendship of

                                 Your Maria

Mason will I hope return on Tuesday  but this is not certain – Ryland continues to suffer in her usual manner –

Saturday Morng

I hope your Cousins may take this otherwise I shall forward it by the Coach.  The abscess if I must so term it on dear Careys thigh is by no means less from present application and I fear we must have recourse to incision  Fowler is not expressly a Surgeon.  I do not like Curtis  what think you of shewing the child to Seagram Senr?

Text: Reeves Collection, Box 14.4.(k.), Bodleian Library, Oxford. Address: Mr Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm, | To be left at the Red Lion | Warminster | 4th Aug: 1809.  No postmark.  Letter is misdated on first page; it is correct on the address page. For an annotated version of this letter, see Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 285-86.

Throughout this letter Saffery expresses her condolences about the death of Annajane Blatch six days prior to the letter. Family and school matters make it impossible for her to travel to Bratton to attend the funeral, an absence which greatly distresses her. She is also distressed by the fact that she will miss seeing her old London friends, the Revd Thomas Scott and his wife, Mary Egerton Scott, who are paying a visit to the Whitakers at Bratton, the visit now coinciding with the unfortunate circumstances afflicting the Whitaker, Attwater, and Saffery families.