Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [c. late March 1812].

My ever dear Anna,

   Tomorrow morng I accompany my dr S– to Lymington but wd not like to let a second parcel go to Bratton without a line of my own composing to Lucy’s one therefore, I shall commit the various articles which are to be forwarded among which I know you will look for Maria’s letter ah, my sweet friend there is no want of that sympathy which has so long instructed me whenever I am called upon to think for you I can still in idea lay my hand upon your heart and count its pulses, and if I am backward to communicate it is because I dread for you the contagion of sorrow. I am quite as well as you left me S– says I shall be better for my journey, for the comparative stillness of his sole society, perhaps I may, associated as it always is in my mind with some of the best human pleasures – Here is a communion which can make every scene, and every circle, please, but when this vanishes from the center of our enjoyments we look with weariness on multiplied claims that without the invigorating principles fail to cheer us to some more solitary goal to which we naturally attach feelings more soothing & sublime more akin to the infinite bliss for which we long wish.  Yet I am inclined to allow, what I know you wd be inclined to suggest, that where Society loses all its power of animation, Solitude is in danger of forfeiting all its repose to melancholy  at any rate one beloved comparison is better than a multitude of mere competition for ones courtesy, but I am straying into the regions of romance, and my imagination is not gay enough to make it a very agreeable pilgrimage for you.

   I was very thankful for the good news conveyed in yr letter.  You know doubtless that we have had another epistle reach us from the Farm. I suppose it may be answered next week.  I expect it was very welcome  It seems the writer may be here so as to meet Mr Gibbs who is to be with us the first & second Sabths in April. Harriet intimated to Lucy she shd like this to occur of course.  L. cannot say as much with her feelings yet I believe she did not think it quite expedient, to oppose the idea  you will know how to manage the affair.

   I am longing to write to dear Philip but maternal language is so precisely the effusion of the heart that I am afraid to venture it in the present state of my Spirits. I think the effect of very early sympathy in my own case has been to render me dangerously insusceptible to pain thro’ life before the feelings are under the discipline of principle it is in my own opinion a dangerous experiment – our tenderest love await him little Mary has begged so hard to make him a present that I permitted her to purchase a Rasselas this afternoon and make him read it if you can – I hope his new shirts will be ready to morrow eveng  let us have the old ones returned soon as convenient & say if the shoes fitted –

   Adieu ma chere amie it is very late & I can only – good night

                     Yrs ever faithfully & tenderly

                                 Maria Grace Saffery

Lucy begs dear love & all wd be suitably remembered especially my S. to you and our dr Brother my love to Stapleton I suppose I cd add to this intimation

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 323-24 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.4.c.(12.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm. No postmark. George Gibbs was the Baptist minister at Pershore; he replaced John Dyer at Plymouth in 1815, remaining there until 1819 (see Nicholson, Authentic Records, pp. 100-01).