Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 29 January 1808.

Friday Night Jany 29 1808

   I have been for some days expecting to hear from my beloved Anna, my anxieties have been relieved by usual information of your general welfare received thro’ the medium of Mr Moody who I find had an Interview with Mr Whitaker en passent in the region of Trowbridge, having proceeded thus far, I perceive yr Eyes wander over the paper in quest of the name of Alfred and I write it with almost equal avidity because I can associate with it the most agreeable ideas his health is good, his manners are in high repute, & I of course am pleased for his sake, and yet more for his dear Mother’s not to mention a little vanity of the aunt wh I detect frequently mingling with my more disinterested satisfaction – I hope you had my modicum of reply, to yr last.  Yr silence partly induces me to send this by the way of Warminster that it may ensure a safe convoy to Bath in which place I trust the blessings of health & friendship are now enjoyed by you in some good measure.  O that to your strong minded energies, such a degree of corporeal vigor were added, as might attack the comforts of sensation to the fine pleasures of the Soul ’till then my prayer for you must bear some kind of analogy to that wh the benevolent apostle offered for the hospitable Gaius – You my sweet friend will know how to estimate my joy & gratitude as a maternal & I hope a Christian nurse, when I tell you, that I am now sitting near the bed of a convolescent child, to whom my attentions have been blest during ye past ten days. My dr Carey has been down stairs only once since then & kept his bed the greater part of that time with an illness so like his old attacks that notwithstanding some variation I cannot suppose it distinct in its nature.  He has slept in my room ever since his return dined in the parlour previous to his indisposition & has been under my immediate direction & inspection in every particular.  He has taken antimonia emetic calomel James’s powders subsequent aperients wh I think have all been in a measure salutary.  But a profuse bleeding of the nose appeared to me more particularly to alter the pulse & relieve the head – this accnt of my last weeks employment wd excuse even a worse letter. Indeed my cares are all amply repaid in the recovery of my dr little patient but confinement by day & watching by night have rendered me so attentive to the admonition of the Watchman that I hastily forsake the pen for ye pillow  May the God of providence guard the repose of my beloved Sister & may he command his loving kindness on her with the morng light in answer to the prayer of

                     Yrs most faithfully

                                 M G Saffery

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 255-56 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.1.(33.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs P. Whitaker | Bratton Farm | To be left at the Red Lion | Warminster. No postmark.