Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 21 February 1806.

Sarum Feby 21st 1806

   Many thanks to my beloved Anna for her entertaining and truly affectionate Epistle which was inexpressibly cheering to me amid the multitude of daily cares that naturally tend to solicitude & depression – I hope I am sincerely disposed to acknowledge yt divine mercy in your returning health & the better condition of your afflicted Servant may the Lord speedily restore her to an accustom’d usefulness and sanctify the dispensations that have interrupted & restored your domestic comforts – Your opinion of Kotzebue & the Reviewers, &c is so much the more agreeable to me as it exactly comports with my own  you will understand this confession to the branch of self-love  –  we are of course flatter’d by an agreement of sentiment with those we think wiser than ourselves.  We have his other Travels circulating in the Society & provides myself a little amusement in turn We are just @ to read Miss More’s Hints on the Education of a Young Princess a glimpse of wh makes me wish for you at my elbow.  I offer my dear Annas book back with a sort of pleasurable regret in those hours we have spent tete a tete in alternate reading & conversation.  What a zest do such communications give to literary enjoyment & how truly is the loss of them felt when perusing with solitary admiration the splendid productions of genius or glowing under impressions of sentiment from the page of some elegant moralist without an opportunity for the effusions of a criticism possibly more benevolent than profound. – But I must recollect that I have not yet introduced the little Hero of my Friday’s Epistle who you may be sure from this very circumstance is no object of anxiety – Indeed he appears to me in perfect health without any one symptom of indisposition except it be ye slight remains of quite a common cold – he begs love & talks much of your visit & seems a good deal concern’d @ Fanny – he had quite a philosophical conversation with me last Eveng but was particularly anxious to know why the working Bees were neither male or female – & what they cd be? –

   My dear S has been out this day or two  he is return’d this Eveng fatigued & poorly he is sadly harassed with his business  things go very roughly just now & I know not what he will do without additional assistance in the money way he cannot dispose of either wool or parchment to advantage you know him so well that you will not wonder at his being immensely depress’d indeed I fear for his health he wd be I know most affectionately remember’d.  Our dr babes are well  the Servts better but Ann is still weak and low –  Colds we have all had  I have had rather a severe one for too or three days but it is better –

   I had half a mind to tell you a secret but tho’t against and am afraid you will think me half mad & tho’ this may be a very serviceable ingredient for a London Preacher I don’t think it wd advance my fame in authorship because something like this is too common to have the effect of novelty.  I want your help however if I shd be quite < > of this < > on common sense – and with < > now < > the subject. I wish your Husband was not so much like mine that I might say don’t let him see this part of my letter but remember I will not allow of a word said to any other person –

   Is not the last a comical paragraph? It put me in mind of a girls first declaration of love to a female correspondent.  But adieu ma cherie Annie  I must say Adieu for it is late & I know not what else to say except it be that  I am

                                 Yours most faithfully

                                             Maria Grace Saffery

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 209-10 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, 1.B.1.(20.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | near Westbury | Wilts  | 21st Feby 1806.  No postmark.

References above include Augst von Kotzebue’s Travels through Italy, in the years 1804 and 1805 (London: R. Phillips, 1806), and the subsequent publication, Analysis of a New Work of Travels, lately published in London ... by August von Kotzebue (London: R. Phillips, 1806); a possible reading, or book, society in Bratton; Hannah More's Hints toward Forming the Character of a Young Princess (1805), written for the benefit of Princess Charlotte; and a reference to John Saffery’s business as a commodities factor, mostly in cotton and wool.