Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Thursday], 29 August 1816.

Salisbury  Aug: 29th 1816

   How should I address my dearest Anna but in the language of that consolation wherewith she herself is comforted of God! how feeble would be the suggestions of mere human sympathy tho’ its extent might be measured by the sorrows of your own heart, if unaccompanied by that pity of the Lord which alone effectually mingles “alleviation with distress.” Blessed be God!  there is a copious supply of comfort for this hour of  tender suffering; so many and so great are the motives to holy & even cheerful resignation that if we are disconsolate they might say to us in the strain of apostolic reproof  ye are not straitened in us but in your own bosoms – I find alas! much that exposes me to this reproach.  I catch myself looking with an Eye of sense which must inevitably weep; where only I am allowed to direct the eye of faith, which must as certainly rejoice.  But I will not enter with you on this worst part of my experience; I will rather tell you how often I remind myself, that this dear little child has thus early escaped, from the dangers of serene vicissitude, to enjoy the accomplishment of His words who said, with the emphasis of infinite complacency, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven” – 

   I know because I feel all that damps your spirit while you contemplate this high destiny of your beloved all that checks the crown of your devotion when you would say with Jesus respecting this babe to whom for his sake, glorious things, hidden from the wise and prudent are revealed.  Even so Father, for so it seemed good in thy Sight – I echo the sigh with which you reflect that the promise of his infant beauty, his vigorous health, the bright dawn of his intelligence, are no longer visible, where you could have watched their progress; where you might have participated [in] their lovely or sublime effects, but remember how these are matured in the exchange of scene into the energies of imperishable life to the immortal Spirit this transition has not been exile, but return, and to the mortal part it will in the Morng of the Resurrection, be indeed “beauty for Ashes” then too we shall share in the unembittered triumph of his immortality.  Let us therefore take the “oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness! perhaps it may sooth you to be spared that I am alive to all the sensibilities this dispensation can have awakened in your heart. O may I remember the dear departed with a poignancy of emotion, wh wd leave me, but for the truths I have referred to, vibrating between the excesses of indifference, and anxiety amid the dearest interests of infantine existence; never indeed have I thought or wished it possible, when I looked on yr children to limit the maternal feeling to those who bore the name of Saffery –

   I long to visit you in this yr day of mild adversity but I am half afraid of adding solicitude to yr sorrow by accompanying John Penny on Friday the feeble state of my Spirits, & the languor I yet retain fm late indispositions, under the proposal liable to many conditions. Adieu I have been writing at various moments, perhaps dear S– will add a line to our very dear Brother –

   Your’s more than ever tenderly

                     Maria Grace Saffery

Affecte regards to Mrs Penny things are pretty well in Milford Street  our whole household unite in love

Dear S. had a preaching engagement which forbade his expressing for himself, the continued exercise of that sympathy and cordial love, which he feels for his beloved Relatives at Bratton Farm.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 351-52 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(3.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Whitaker | Bratton Farm near | Westbury.  Postmark: Salisbury, 29 August 1816. Quotations above are from II Corinthians 6:12; Matthew 19:14; and Isaiah 61:3.