Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 23 February 1816.

My dear Anna

   I am still surrounded with Linen and workwomen and tho’ I cannot easily make such affairs my “daily thought or nightly dream” sweeter and sublimer meditation is sadly interrupted – Sometimes indeed I associate these inferior occupations with the important destiny of the individuals on whose account the plan of operations was suggested, but it is difficult for me at least to listen with unwearied attention to perpetual details of stichery, and tho’ I would not have done less & would I hope readily do more I cannot help rejoicing to perceive the lumber of Calicoes &c &c formed into more sightly heaps of 2 or 3 hundred garments.  You know that Randall his wife and child are our guests & will be till their departure for town on Monday fortnight.  Their little maid sickened with measles a few days since & all the symptoms are quite favourable.  I am not sure that Jane Wellstead or Miss Dyer have yet had this disease but precaution has been eased to preserve them from the contagion – two years ago!  but I need not state to you the impression which the sight of little Randall’s feverish face and the first sounds of her measly cough made on me when I saw her in my poor baby’s cradle  she is as well now that the similitude is utterly lost.

   I am afraid I omitted saying enough to satisfy Fanny in my last about her Sister in law but I have not obtained any clear information till lately  now I understand that she is better and the child who had smallpox first but that the other children were not infected notwithstanding they had been vaccinated some time since I think they are likely to do well.

   We have heard nothing from Titchfield very important.  Poor Mr S. is yet at Winchester, and will I suppose stay there till affairs are arranged with Roe and the other Creditors.  Ah! my dear Anne I think of our first introduction to that family in Milford Street.  I wander to the sick room the now dying bed of dear Mr Smith.  I have even to poor Robert of Heytesbury with his worthless sons & desolate hopes as to this world; and as for me my feelings are almost gone.

   Philip goes to London as soon as I have accomplished my task here for the Randalls & it is said that I am to accompany him, but my heart sinks at thought of leaving home where I can better indulge the melancholy that is so long burthened my Spirit.  Will you try and go with me if < > decide on going perhaps it would relieve yr corporeal malady.  I am rendered anxious by the indefinite idea I have of the real state of your health write when you get this and tell me particulars.  Adieu my friend my Sister the prayers I breathe for you are among the sweetest comforts of my happiest hours.  dr S. begs love to you our good Brother & the Children.

         Yours as ever tenderly

                     M G Saffery

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 349-50 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(1.), Angus Library.  Address: Salisbury. Feby 23d 1816 | Mrs P. Whitaker  | Bratton Farm  | To be left at the | Red Lion, | Warminster.  Postmark: Salisbury, 23 February. The ‘Miss Dyer’ mentioned above is most likely the daughter of John Dyer. The cause of the death of Edwin Cecil Saffery, Maria Grace Saffery’s youngest child, in March 1814 at the age of two, appears to have been measles.