Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Tuesday], 15 September 1807.

   My dear Anna’s doubly welcome letter, has this day banished from my Mind the faint impressions of anxiety, which yet remained after the hasty interview with our dr Bror.  The welfare of yourself and beloved family is one of those superior enjoyments that cannot be even slightly interrupted without exciting perhaps a more than proportionate solicitude.  But I am thankful that my distrustful heart is at once relieved & animated by so good an accnt of your whole family – as to my dear little Jane she is still an Invalid, but I think her just now as the consequence quite as much of a Pet, & rather more of a Tiger.  Her illness is indeed of the trifling but troublesome kind, & of no importance with regard to your visit. Notwithstanding I make this assertion a strict adherence to your kind injunction forces me to add, that I can accommodate my dr Sister with far greater comfort next week than the present from the circumstance of an additional chamber – to this period I am looking forward with those ever mingling emotions wh in the present state must accompany our sweetest & strongest sensibilities of pleasure – May the God of all grace multiply our mercies by sanctifying a friendship which as it has blossomed amid the desolutions of adversity will I trust be fruitful in the Sunshine & serenity of peace. 

                     Ever yrs M. G. Saffery

my dr S begs love  remember us to dr Miss G. & all @ you & pray if you love to please me bring Emma   if quite the same to you the green cloth will be a convenience to me.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 242-43 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.1.(28.), Angus Library. Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | nr Westbury | Wilts | 15 Sepr.  Postmark: Salisbury 15 September 1807.