Maria Grace Saffery, Sarum, to Anne Andrews Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 27 January 1804.

   I received my dear Anne’s brief acc:t of her Journey &c with unfeigned satisfaction & I would hope gratitude to Him who had thereby a fresh < > its humble & happy exercises in my bosom by this time every little inconvenient < > you mention in your last is I trust removed  I assure you I have had a very severe cold during ye week wh has affected my Chest & occasioned some cough & considerable hoarseness  I am however something better tho’ not in my usual health ye School has been a fatigue to me of course & I have been alone in it till to day.  Miss L. came last Night I recd a letter from her just after you left me intimating her wish to return till Lady Day & asking permission which I of necessity acceded to without hesitation – thus stand affairs at present – I have a new scholar from Southampton – Misses Reade Ball & Everett returned  Miss Wakeford is not yet arrived neither ye Lymington Ladies but there is no reason to doubt of their coming.  I have 7 day Scholars –

   Our dear babes are all well & so is their dear Father but I think he makes very free with renovated strength he preached both at Stoke & Shrewton last Tuesday Eveng left Meeting at ye latter place @ 10 oclock rose & preached at 5 ye next morng & returned home to dinner!!!  Our  Bro.r Rowe is here in an < > state he talks of visiting Bratton during his stay.  I hope he will be spared to labour for God again he is very little altered his affliction taken in to the acc:t   You must read Miss Hamiltons letters – I am doing it with a mixture of admiration & delight not wholly unalloyed by suspicions to the tendency of ye System here & there – this is a very uncouth phrase but you will pardon it.  Miss H. has adapted Hartley’s philosophy on ye doctrine of association, of which the Socinians have made so bad a use in their application of it to religion, & applied it to education.  I am not well acquainted by any means with their writings but hitherto with some exceptions I am < > with these views. It is a beautiful theory part of which perhaps a large part might be reduced to practice I shd imagine in most families.

   You want less information as a Mother & preceptress than most of us but you will not reject the trouble from this consideration & I am sure it will amuse you.

   Now I must break off from this important to introduce what you will call a very insignificant subject but the little affairs of life must have their due  Miss [Cape?] has at present some muslin of ye proper width of ye kind you saw she sent it round yesterday but I chose to wait your orders shall I procure 1 shirt or any of a different sort – Mary Moss also wants ye lace to compleat your Gown it must be trimmed as she has made it in ye Sleeves will you send some or shall I get it  it must be broad?  & one of dr Joshua’s socks –

   Our united love to our dr Bro.r & kisses in abundance to all the Boys –

   You will be very careful what you say with reference to Miss T– in your neighborhood  she is very low & I cannot help feeling a mixture of esteem & pity – adieu dear Anna.  I had a melancholy day when you left S–  indeed we were all in ye dumps, but I need not say anything to assure you of ye lively interest you have in ye heart of

                     yours with tenderest affection           

                                 Maria Grace Saffery

Sarum Jan.y 27th 1804

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 192-93 (annotated version); Reeves Collection, Box 14.4.(b.), Bodleian. Address: Mrs P. Whitaker | Bratton Farm | Westbury | Wilts.  Postmark: Salisbury. Now in her fourth year of operation, Saffery’s school was prospering, with a mixture of boarding and day scholars. The ‘Miss Wakeford’ is most likely the granddaughter of William Steele Wakeford (1753-1819) of Andover, son of Mary Steele Wakeford, half-sister of Anne Steele.

References above include Elizabeth Hamilton's Letters on Education (Bath: R. Cruttwell, for G. and J. Robinson, 1801), also author of Memoirs of Modern Philosophers (1800) and a number of works on education. David Hartley (1705-57) is best known for his work on the theory of the association of ideas, espoused in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) and in his seminal work, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty, and His Expectations (2 vols, 1749). The Unitarian minister, philosopher, and scientist, Joseph Priestley  (1733-1804), was a disciple of Hartley’s associationism, which was also a form of philosophical determinism, in which ideas in the mind are interconnected and sequential, the result of sensate experience (the latter derived from John Locke), in which all mental processes and ideas are ultimately determined by resemblance, by contiguity in time and place, and by cause and effect. Hamilton discusses association at length in letter IV, where she writes, ‘It is not familiarity alone that biasses our minds in favour of [the beliefs of our own sect], nor is it a reasonable conviction of their superior utility. It is from association alone, that non-essential forms and ceremonies derive their importance’ (Letters on Education, p. 67).