Maria Grace Saffey, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 4 November 1814.

Friday Eveng  Novr 4th 1814 –

   My dear Anne’s shawl came last night; Salter too has written out the tune so that I will not delay the line that must accompany them because I have nothing new or agreeable to communicate from or of myself – Alas what I vainly called the treasures of mind seem in my case exhausted, that enthusiasm of feeling which in the day-dreams of my opening life looked like a perennial spring of pleasure, no longer supplies the current of my thoughts, & fertilizes the wilderness of life around me – care operates on the intellectual like Winter on the natural world, and the sentimental dream,

“Feels the chill magic of his look,

And lingers into Home”

but I will not allow my self to be even poetically sad when I am talking to you  you I believe are in no danger of freezing and I certainly cannot be charged with inhabiting the frigid zone of friendship – My S–  came from Reading yesterday – on Monday week he commences a Journey into Devon & Cornwall in aid of the Mission. Dyer takes his place both Sabbaths here  will you step this way?  It is at his suggestion and and Mr Fuller’s added request that yr Brother goes this journey  The visit to Bradford is consequently delayed Mr Fuller is yet too feeble from his late attack for much troubling or preaching – he made an effort to accomplish a journey in the old cause a short time since with Mack and Blundel for his Assistants but was taken ill on the first day & obliged to return leaving to them the whole work –

   We have had no letter from Lucy since she left, but M. Attwater says it was all well.  I have guests in the next room from whom I ran away to say this adieu  dearest Anne you have your old place in the bad heart of

                     Yours affectionately

                                 M G Saffery

We are all in very tolerable health.  Dr S. Mason Salter the children wd all be suitably spoken of in my letter to you & yours.  You well know what wd be the diversified kind & measure of remembrance our united love to His prussian Majesty & ye branches of royal family round yr table. Carey was quite well when his father called very happy & we hope doing well –  M. Penny’s love to her Sister & mine also.

   I had almost forgotten to mention ye price of ye shawl wh is £2.17.0  Miss Stott procured it. She might have bought one with a wider border for 7 [shillings] less but the quality of the shawl was inferior  your’s is a very good & I think an elegant one.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 344-45 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.2.(22.), Angus Library.  Address: Mrs P. Whitaker. No postmark.

John Saffery worked tirelessly on behalf of the Baptist Missionary Society from its inception in 1792, serving as a member of the Society’s board until his death in 1825. He promoted the work of missions throughout the West Country and corresponded with many missionaries in India and the West Indies, much of which now resides in the BMS Archives and the Reeves Collections, Angus Library, Oxford.  By 1814 John Dyer had emerged as a major figure in the work of the Society as well; as Andrew Fuller’s health deteriorated toward the end of 1814, Dyer’s presence grew even more prominent.  Fuller died in 1815, and in 1818 Dyer became the first full-time Secretary of the BMS. John Mack (1797-1845) was pastor of the Baptist congregation in Clipston. He would later be recruited by William Ward to join the BMS mission enterprise at Serampore, where Mack taught Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, as well as mathematics, chemistry, and natural sciences. He served as Principal of Serampore College from 1837 to 1845. Thomas Blundel, Jr. (1786-1861) studied at Bristol Academy (1804-1809) prior to becoming pastor of the Baptist congregation at College Lane, Northampton, the same church John Ryland, Jr. had pastored from 1785 to 1793. Blundel remained at Northampton until 1824. He was very active in Baptist affairs as well as serving as chaplain of Mill Hill School (1821-1831), where several of the grandchildren of Maria Saffery and Anne Whitaker attended. Maria Saffery composed a poem in honor of the death of Fuller and John Sutcliff, but the poem was never finished (see Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 5, pp. 107-09). See F. A. Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), vol. 1, pp. 355-366; R. Hayden, Continuity and Change: Evangelical Calvinism among Eighteenth-Century Baptist Ministers Trained at Bristol Academy, 1690–1791 (Chipping Norton UK: Roger Hayden and Baptist Historical Society, 2006), p. 226.