Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Tuesday], 9 December 1817.

Salisbury Dec 9th 1817

My dear Anne

   The Moody’s have indeed left Salisbury for some time with the exception of George the eldest son who has a little shop in St Thomas’s Church Yard for the purpose of selling some of the articles that constitute his Father’s professional apparatus. Of course the lad’s opinions cannot be asked and I perhaps should scruple an implicit confidence in the Father unless it were a case of pretty common experience and of this my utter ignorance will not allow me to determine.  I never well understood, Mrs Blatch’s dilemma, tho’ I perfectly remember that it was supposed assistance of a peculiar kind was essentially requisite. Cannot Baynton’s advice be taken immediately?  The Moody’s are at Bath under the patronage of Fisher.  Fowler too thinks well of Moody’s skill – All this or nearly this you know before but I feel anxious about this patient whoever may be the person and earnestly recommend a speedy application to the first professional opinion not that I have knowledge enough to judge of danger or even to ascertain the probable degree of inconvenience to be expected from delay.

   This in the emphatic language of a certain humourist of notorious absurdity is a week of “miseries” the confusion of the approaching holiday presents itself in frames and work-bags and half said lessons and sentimental struggles between insipid dejection and troublesome mirth, and yet it is all very well I look at the little ones fluttering about me and presenting the various proofs of immortality still unsatisfied with the present, and still seeking for the future good, and hope and pray that sublimer anticipations will one day give them nobler proof that “this is not their last.”  In the mean time, the infancy, aye, and the maturity too, of mind on Earth, must be allowed its humbler joys.

   How is our dear little Samuel? and what does he think about his holiday he will come home to be sure.  But how will he like to have Papa & Mamma and Mary & Jane and John away.  Yet this will be ye case I think for part of the time, but Miss Salter and Mr Godden and all the Servants will be very kind to him, and he is to go to Bodenham too.  Tell him all this if you please and that I have not forgotten my promise about a cake, nor any thing that is pleasant for him to have.  But I have been so very very busy that many days I have scarcely found time to think or talk of any thing that was not quite necessary and I will make him I hope ample compensation for any apparent negligence.  We are much obliged to good Mr  Edminson for all his kind attentions. I am really afraid of omitting my commission from dear little Anne and that on Wednesday the 17th they are to leave Salisbury at an early hour in a post chaise for Warminster the party to consist of Miss Green, Miss Lydia Green Miss Mary Green & the little Miss Mary Anne Green and your little Miss Whitaker. I am not bespeaking a Green house, but as I have reason to imagine that Anne and her amiable friends cannot conveniently sleep at Warminster.

   I wish the car to meet them on Wednesday – yr Cousin Maria would put herself into the Chaise if she were less.  I think it must require a little body who would venture to make the addition.  Adieu I can only say we love you & that I am 

                                             Yrs M. G. Saffery

I always forget @ my health but I want air or something to make me well

On Wednesday 17th we go to Town. Yr Bror goes on to Nottingham  S– will be at Devizes < > Eveng if the Lord please

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 366-67 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(9.). Address: Mrs P Whitaker | Bratton Farm | near | Westbury | Wilts. Postmark: Salisbury, 9 December 1817. Concerning the Green family, on September 1829 Anne Whitaker married Robert Green in Bratton. Also mentioned above is Maria Attwater (1783-1840) of Bodenham, Philip Whitaker’s cousin.