Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Monday, [c. mid-March 1811].

Monday Night 11 oclock –

   My dear Anne must have a line by good Mr Edminson with whom I am more than ever delighted, but indeed if weariness might excuse me I should say, it was impossible to write even to you.  It is a great mercy that I am not nursing a sick family or lying on a sick bed – we are all well and if I could say no more I seem bound by the tender obligations of friendship to say this. I do not know when I have seen the whole circle in better health and what little ails have occurred since dear Saffery’s illness have been some slight constitutional propensities that at any other period wd scarcely have been observed – I have heard twice from your beloved Brother since he left home his last epistle from Birmingham mentions an adventure rather more in my style of travelling than his own. I am glad I was not there to have it imputed to my destiny.  The Coach on which he made one of eight outside passengers was overturned between Tewkesbury & Worcester  3 of them it seems had got down to walk up and down a Hill but Saffery is no pedestrian and kept his place on the Coach box  one of the Horses, a leader & almost blind, took fright at some gleaned corn & frightened the others The Coach Man was alarmed and inexperienced – & the Coach was subsequently overturned into a deep ditch into which some of the passengers were thrown & some into a garden a little beyond it  Saffery foresaw the catastrophe & by a singular presence of mind & with a skill wh but for the matter of fact I should not have attributed to him rose from the Coach box took hold of the Iron & threw himself round on the side of the Coach which came uppermost so that he had no fall & escaped wholly unhurt.  He says one Gentleman only had a severe contusion of the arm.  The rest were little more than frightened including three Ladies within so much for the overturn.  You will acknowledge the mercy of the providence that provided for such a peril  the people here seem inclined to make it into a miracle  dear S’s late illness has roused their feeling to enthusiasm.  This is a position of mind I can readily pardon.  Your amiable Pastor is in high repute here, but he is in a deplorable state of health.  Can nothing more be attempted? I find I shall get to the end of my paper without answer’g you.  I can only thank you for the tenderness it breathes for me and reprove the melancholy it expresses of yourself. O my Anne! the Wilderness is rude indeed, but you will come up out of it leaning on an arm that cannot fail you

                     Your’s most faithfully

                                 M G Saffery

Love to yr whole circle my dr Bror & my Children especially

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, p. 309 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.4.c.(6.), Angus Library. No address page or postmark.  Most likely the date of the letter is Monday, 18 March 1811.