Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 16 May [1817].

Salisbury   Friday Eveng 16 May

My dear Anne,

   It is more than time that I had told you about your little girl who has lost her black eye and her sick stomach for some days, and is again busy in the school-room &c &c  My other children, I mean her little Cousins, have been Invalids since dear Anne’s recovery. But they too, are convalescent, and I am freed from the anxieties of a Maternal Nurse  The indispositions have worn the some aspect and probably all originated in the state of ye atmosphere  you know that we have the once blooming Mary Alsop (now in the sables of a widow) for our Guest – She is better than I even hoped to see here, but altogether it has been a melancholy season  death in the persons of William Rowe & William Totten and the mortal sickness of James Saffery, have brought nigh the Scenes, from which alas, I generally shrink, but to the contemplation of which, I am even by nature prone. My Spirit seems often drenched in the more than midnight dews, that gather round the gloomy confines of the grave –

         “O for an overcoming faith

         To cheer my dying hours.”

When will you come  I talk to yr Nannette about it when I see her a little grave and she blushes and smiles – till I am convinced my cordial has ye effect intended – This has been quite a warm day can’t you oblige me with a sight of Baby Ned – in your arms – ?

   Adieu you must fancy Nancy’s kisses & remember to apply again all I have possessed so long, and felt so firmly, for I can scarcely see to write ye name of

                     yrs   M. G. Saffery –

Anna will want a Spencer soon instead of her cloth pelisse.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, p. 357 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.4.c.(2.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | To be left at the | Red Lion | Warminster.   Postmark illegible.   Letter can be dated by references to the recent deaths in the spring of 1817 of William Rowe and James Saffery. Lines above taken from Isaac Watts's hymn, ‘Victory over Death’, from Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book I, hymn XVII, p. 16. A  spencer was a short, woolen outer coat, originally for men, but by the 1790s had become a fashionable garment for women as well, worn much like a cardigan today, stopping just above the waist.