Maria Grace Saffery, Bodenham, to Jane Saffery, [Portsmouth], [Thursday], 12 June 1817.

Bodenham  June 12th 1817

My dear little fairy friend,

         I came here on Tuesday Eveng, to look at the gardens, and the fields, and to hear the song of the nightingale, but the tender “human flower that breathed its first fragrance in my bosom” is sweeter than the balm of roses to my memory, and the gay tones of your vivacious childhood have been recalled – not by the songs of Philomel, for she has not chosen to sing in my hearing; but by the busy tribe of day-light songsters, that nature has taught to melodize their airy summer joy. Ah this is all the soft imagination of maternal love. But I have more solemn and interesting reflections to communicate. My Jane is not a guiltless bird, an unconscious flower, just made to sing, and bloom and die. No, God requires of her, a sweeter perfume, and a nobler song. She knows already that the sacrifices of God are a “broken and a contrite heart.” This only from a Sinner, he will not despise.

         I shall send this unwafered into Salisbury, and your papa must add the news, for he will like to say a few words to his little daughter, & I have only time to tell you again that I am,

                   Your fond and anxious Mother,

                                         Maria Grace Saffery

         Our kind regards to Mr & Mrs Ireland, & suitable remembrances to your whole circle of Portsmouth friends –

         I have put the little paper into your pocket-book for your private reading.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 358-59 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.5.a.(2.), Angus Library. Address: Miss Jane Saffery. No postmark. Jane Saffery preserved the "little paper" her mother put into her pocket, which contained some verses her mother wrote; they now reside in the Reeves Collection, Box 17/3, Bodleian Library, Oxford; for Saffery's poem to Jane, click here.