Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [c. early April 1812].

Dearest Anna,

   You will doubtless conjecture at the sight of this, that I have fits of writing and that now you are to have a torrent of epistolary communication after a season of literary drought if you will allow the term, but I have no fear of a dry critical murmur on this subject, from Bratton Farm therefore I proceed without further preface to explain the occasion of this billet doux.  I had a letter from my beloved S–  this Morng in a parcel wh contained my father’s banking book, in which he begged that I would forward the said book without delay; to present all further solicitude for its destiny; and to prove how expeditiously as well as safely, it has taken its little journey under the auspices of a parson.  Our love to him if you please  the enfeebled tone of my nervous system prohibited any attempt at addressing a letter to him myself or I think I should have ventured a line on matters of greater moment than the Banker’s occasion, but my hopes too were so languid that they failed to assist me in the effort –

   In addition to this motive for writing I thought an opportunity was afforded me of imparting pleasure by sending tidings of Stapleton.  We have not heard from him since I wrote back of him by yr dear Brother the important interview is passed. Mr R. was very gracious, received his references with a satisfied air but declined any advance of fortune beyond what is proposed for the sister saying he was not so rich as was imagined that he might be 15000 thousand in which Lucy would share eventually and that in the Lady’s fortune of 28000 thousand she might possibly share also but he could promise nothing – he drank tea and I believe spent the night at Crofts with Archer very amicably, perhaps even agreeably. Croft’s wife it seems went to School with Letitia Stapleton. Lucy with my self rejoices that he has left Town we want no rethinkable intimacy with this treacherous family and I am sure you will sympathize – he set off for Ongar on Wednesday, and we expect to hear from him to morrow.  He told S he had received our dear Brother’s letter and that he would write almost immediately. Adieu ma douce Amie for must close hastily.  I am quite as well as usual I wd hope a little better the Children too are well & the Household & in general Lucy and Salter beg much love  Mr G & Miss Green about this afternoon when I was down stairs but I know the latter wd be suitably remembered – again adieu you know how faithfully and tenderly I am your’s

                     Maria Grace Saffery

Love to the dear Children I have stuff to make Philip [an] under waistcoat, an affair that has been sadly mismanaged on our part.  Let him have his braces when these are made on accnt of his shirts  our love to him

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, p. 325 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.4.c.(18.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm. No postmark.

John Croft Ryland (b. 21 December 1788) and his family lived near Peckham, south London, where his father, Richard Ryland, stopped to spend the night before the latter finished his journey to his home in Ramsgate. Letitia Stapleton was one of four sisters of Joseph Stapleton (Lucy Ryland's future husband) to die from consumption between 1804 and 1806. The Stapletons were staunch dissenters, worshiping with the evangelical Calvinists in the Independent chuch in Colchester. They were close friends of Ann and Jane Taylor during their time in Colchester when her father, Isaac Taylor, was the minister at the Independent congregation. At the time of the above letter, the Taylors had just removed to Ongar, where Isaac Taylor would begin a new ministry in that village. Apparently, all the Stapleton children received their education at some of the best nonconformist boarding schools in and around London. As the author of Letitia's ‘Memoir’ writes, ‘Having enjoyed the opportunities of an excellent education, her mind was cultivated by the acquisition of useful knowledge and ornamental accomplishments. Parental and pastoral instruction had impressed on her memory the texts and doctrines of the sacred scriptures, according to the evangelical system. These had occasionally been attended with a degree of powerful impressions, but not so effectual as to produce any real change of heart and life.’ Soon she began to doubt her orthodox beliefs, and by the time she was a teenager had joined the ranks of the ‘rational’ dissenters and become a Socinian, much to the horror of her mother and siblings. After a visit to Bristol in the spring of 1806 to seek aid from the mineral waters there, consumption began to take its toll upon her. As the realization of approaching death set in, she began to seek consolation and guidance from her mother, and eventually returned to her original beliefs, though not without much agony over her lack of assurance and excessive guilt over her former beliefs. She set out once again for the West Country in the fall of that year, but grew so weak that she could not continue past Basingstoke, where she died on 12 December 1806; less than two weeks later, her elder sister, with a fourteen-year-old Joseph at her side, died in Dublin. See ‘Memoir of Miss Letitia Stapleton, of Colchester’, Theological and Biblical Magazine 4 (1807); reprinted as a pamphlet by W. Keymer of Colchester, undated.