Maria Grace Saffery, [Brixton], to Jane Saffery Whitaker, Bratton, Saturday, 20 July [1844].

Saturday Eveng July 20th

My dearly beloved Jane,

         I began my Bulletin this Eveng that I may post it on Monday, with my requisite additions which notices from Peckham for your further information during the interval, may provide. Your dear namesake was the visitor yesterday, and she returned from the scene of suffering a little comforted by observing some mitigation in the more painful symptoms of preceding days. Still the variations of a favourable character which now and then occur, fail to satisfy our longing desires for the restoration of the sorely afflicted ones, for whose sake, while we witness the continued and severe vicissitude of her disease, we cannot feel repose.

Monday morng 22nd

         We are expecting no fresh tidings to day and though Jane goes to Peckham by appointment again to morrow, I will not detain this imperfect Bulletin for any further details she may have to communicate on her return – rest assured of faithful reports from time to time. May the tender mercies of our Heavenly Father make them messages of peace! Let our own thanksgivings abound, that we may return such an one to those who enquire after the spiritual welfare, while like the apostles to the well beloved Gaius, we are still wishing health for the body corresponding with the prosperity of the soul. You will be pleased with Mrs Jewin’s letter which I enclose as a specimen of her sweetly tender friendship – she too has recently suffered sore affliction both personal and relative.

         This is indeed a season of tribulation to some – well known – and dear to us. The death of Mary Dendy is deeply felt by your Sister Anne and her good widowed mother. I wrote to Leeds on Saturday – the tidings reached me from Manchester, where Philip had seen Mary – she thought him looking well; – but speaks of his gentle wife both as a sad mourner and an Invalid.

         I hardly know how to proceed with tragic details in a letter to you my Jane, but you have heard of the poor Bennetts, with whom I have had pleasant intercourse in some of my visits to Peckham. A short time since I took leave of their happy party, who were expecting soon to start for Dover, during a short recess from business granted to the truly amiable Father, that while Susan and her Children were deriving advantage from the Sea, he might employ as an Artist his pencil on the Scenery around him. The dear little girls were all gladness when we parted, in their pretty garden – they alas! will gladden that scene no more – their Mother accompanied by her Cousin Rawlings of Basinghall Street in the absence of her Husband took out her precious charge in a sailing boat which overset and deposited her treasure in the wave. Her Cousin too was the victim of the deep and she herself was with difficulty restored after a medical process of several hours – her condition now admits of no description – no one is yet allowed to see her except the immediate attendant poor tired Mrs George is in the house. It was a merciful appointment that the little baby boy was left on shore with his nurse, he is a beautiful creature; and now their only child. The Father’s absence was also an especial mercy, as in all human probability his efforts to preserve the life of others, would have been fatal to his own – but I must close – you will see how I have written this outline of a tragic volume. My heart is aching & my hand is trembling; but I am comforted with the thought, that I can call myself.

                                             Your Mother

                                                         Maria Grace Saffery

One bit of good news!

Sam is coming into this neighbourhood as lodger

Love from all to all – whose claims are fully felt

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 441-43 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.5.b.(2.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Joshua Whitaker | Bratton | near Westbury | Wiltshire. Postmark: Westbury, 23 July 1844.  The letters in this set are double postmarked, at point of origination and destination; they are also accompanied by their original envelopes and one penny Queen Victoria stamps. Eliza Saffery is in the last stages of an illness that will result in her death at the end of August 1844. Her husband had died the previous summer. Saffery was staying in the home of a Mrs Whitworth (Samuel Saffery’s landlady) in Brixton, not far from Peckham where her daughter-in-law lives. Jane Saffery (hence the reference to ‘namesake’ in the above letter), the wife of Maria Grace Saffery’s son, John, had arrived from Dalston for the dual purpose of seeing her dying sister-in-law and visiting her mother.

Mary Dendy was the sister of Ann Dendy, second wife to P. J. Saffery. Her brother, Walter Dendy (d. 1881) was a BMS missionary to Jamaica, having been sent out of the church in Salisbury during the ministry of P. J. Saffery in 1831. At the time of the above letter, Saffery was living in Waltham Abbey, working as a field representative for the RTS, which sent him on the road, primarily through the north of England and Scotland, on long visitations.