Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Tuesday, 21 April 1812.

Salisbury  April 21st 1812

Tuesday Morng

   It is not to answer my dear Anna’s late welcome letter that I have taken the pen this afternoon but mostly to acknowledge its kindness and to assure her of its very agreeable influence  It would indeed, have been more satisfactory but for the inclination of your stiff neck and the traces of a too exquisite anxiety for the future fortunes of dear Joseph.  Certainly you must not yield to indecision in continuing the correspondence much advantage may & I think will arise to him from an interchange in this way.

   I do not send my little Jane just now because on various accounts I shd prefer her returning with you. I suppose we shall see you early in the next month – you will find me in circumstances closely allied to captivity but I trust the solicitude of your friendship will not counteract its pleasures. You know I am not inclined to gloom about this matter yet I would gladly have you spared every participation in the pains of your Mind  Your sympathies alas! have not been very felicitous on her accnt I continue to get @ that I am lame with a species of Rheumatism for some inconvenient pressure producing similar difficulty in walking there is nothing in my peculiar circumstances beyond the ordinary measure of suffering – I have weary days and what some wd call wakeful nights &c &c but I must deplore my obligations to opium for the scanty supply of vigor & repose I enjoy in either  be assured my dearest Anna I was very glad to adopt yr opinion respecting the cause of this Unrest and if I am not persuaded wholly, it is not for want of inclination – glad at any rate to be less the object of general remark and to live in my complicated household with more ostensible capacities of enjoyments shall I say to ? – Your newly arrived Guest has been of late sadly discomposed but I think she will divest herself of this state of feeling at Bratton during a short visit  Lucy is not quite in the happiest attitude of Mind  I think she will be very glad to see and converse with you – Mason is deplorably nervous & tending strongly to the exhibition of it you once witnessed – so that I have something to do even to dream of the Champs Elysees in our circle.  Mr S. begs love he has bilious & nerves ever since his return – the children are pretty well, but poor Sam does not thrive.  We all love Phil & his dear little playfellows  do tell them I rejoice in the good news from Southampton.

   I send the trimming & persian for John’s hat regretting the latter is so bad but I cd not get a better yt wd match.  Mason says you must have ye stays fitted here ye other had such various alterations yt she cd not possibly venture to have these finished from her recollection.

   Adieu ma douce Amie I am always what I called myself with feebler impressions even from Infancy & Childhood

                     Yr friend & Sister

                                 M G Saffery

United love to our dear Brother

Send a certain little Nursing implement the Pump soon as possible

Lucy’s Salter’s & Mason’s Love

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 327-28 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.2.(17.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm. No postmark.