Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 14 March 1806.

My dear Anna,

   I hope you received Mr W. with the warmest congratulations possible on Wednesday.  I mean with a fire that would thaw the icicles on his coat, for I never question the power of your smiles upon his heart, which indeed is not a very frigid region, since I wrote this it struck me how well he answers to the description Cowper gives of a true friend & I am heartily glad the comparison held so good throughout on Wednesday you recollect my allusion

“An honest Man close button’d to the Chin

Broad Cloth without and a warm heart within”

   Alfred is well and begs affecte remembrances – he is really a better boy with me than either his father or you would imagine from a Specimen now and then the other little Master & Misses are also quite well, by the way I think Jenny very beautiful and was hardly pleased that a certain Gentleman said so little @ it   to be revenged, if I don’t think Emma very pretty indeed I’ll say nothing @ her. – I had a letter from my dear S this Morng  he is better and gives me a most interesting & delightful accnt of Mr Hall with whom he says he had an hour & half conversation.  He intends reaching Salisbury on Monday at Midnight but says it is possible he may delay his return a day or two by way of attending to business on his Read[ing] of this  I shall of course be inform’d, I am sorry to say that the post this Morng bro’t me a very unwelcome letter from Bury – respecting the Wool  I know he is a good deal harrass’d with ye Glue &c at Bristol & I really cannot conceive what he will do for money at the present Crisis.  Crenshaw says they feel no inclination to purchase on any terms & refers to the state of affairs with America this objection however I wd hope may be speedily terminated, I am indeed, for me uncommonly concern’d at the state of the business in Fisherton –  My dr S. says I wd say so too!  “I desire to leave it with him, in whose hand are all things, who never has forsaken, & I believe never will forsake us!”

   Miss A. begs kind respects.  We are both pretty well, but in great want of a beau since Wednesday.  This cold weather keeps us at home but I trust we are grateful for it as a general blessing. I want to hear that you are quite hearty  may the lord grant you health & every possible good therewith in answer to the earnest prayer of

                                 Your with inexpressible tenderness

                                             Maria Grace Saffery

Friday  March 14th 1806

I am rather shocked at the awkward manner in < > had Mr Ingell’s bill given him I received it after asking for it some time before same day last week & then said my Bror will be here on Saturday & I’ll give it him however I neglected to do it my self, & tho’t on recollection the next morng I had better let Sally give it him as Ingell had perhaps seen him during his short stay at S–  all this is an apology for a mere awkwardness –

I sent to Britford yesterday Fanny is much better.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 212-13 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.1.(21.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm, | to be left at the | Red Lion, | Warminster | Wilts | 14th March 1806.  Postmark: Salisbury. Lines above taken from William Cowper’s poem, ‘An Epistle to Joseph Hill, Esq.’, in Cowper, Poems, vol. 2, p. 290. John Saffery met with Robert Hall at the asylum in the Fishponds, Bristol, where the famed preacher was under the care of Dr. Joseph Mason Cox, having suffered a second mental breakdown in November 1805 at Cambridge.