Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 17 April 1812.

Salisbury Friday Eveng April 17 1812

dearest Anna,

   I sit down with a full inclination to impart comfort with so little prospect of success that I hold the pen at this moment doubtingly  The truth is I have been rather severely indisposed to day with a species of bilious attack to wh in certain circumstances I a generally liable & tho’ much better this Eveng am far too languid to be a promising correspondent. I suppose indeed that I should not have written, but on Miss Ryland’s account who purposes going to Warminster by the early Coach on Tuesday, so that some notification was become absolutely needful – she has been so engrossed with a long letter to Mr G– who left us yesterday Morng and is so depressed &c &c that I feared to leave the information to her and Lucy  you as well as myself is quite on the creditor side of the correspondence, being also subject to my writing aversion. When are we to hear from Bratton? Since the last Sab: I am afraid the poor Girl takes his protracted absence sorely to heart, her health is very little better since my last – dear S. came home on Tuesday Eveng not I think quite well; nor yet passing for an Invalid still suffering from his very obstinate cold – and the oppression of bile for which last maladay I have been treating him. My own state of feeling has been better during the last ten days than for some time before, but my struggles for serenity & cheerfulness are still struggles & have alas! many opposing efforts to contend with – to bear up under the presure of internal despondence of outward hostility requires a strength on wh such weakness only can repose and there is all my hope! –

   Lucy had a letter from Colchester this morng with pleasant tidings among which we reckon an assurance that the writer has dispatched a previous Epistle to Bratton. S. sends dear love – we unite in begging as much caution in yr communications to  –   on our separate affairs & feelings personal & relative as can be all comfort with the peace of your own ingenuous Mind I wd say the same to my good Brother  it is indeed necessary – How is our beloved Philip? my heart yearns over his still present image with all a Mothers recollection and I know another heart that glows as warmly and beats as solicitously as my own.  Surely he need not be told such an one must be in the bosom of a Father.  His dear Brothers and Sisters talk of him very constantly & quite as kindly  my S– unites in most affecte regards to our dear Brother the children &c – and to that beloved Sister who has a still longer claim on the acknowledged tenderness of her ever

                     faithful friend and Relative

                                 Maria Grace Saffery

Now do burn this scrap of hetrogeneous communication when you have read it – you will observe my motive from the contents above –

Stapleton begged his love might be transmitted very particularly to Bratton – by in his letter to day

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, p. 326 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.2.(16.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | To be left at the Red Lion | Warminster. No  postmark. The letters from Colchester mentioned above would have been composed by Joseph Stapleton. Also mentioned above is Philip John Saffery, Maria Saffery's son.