Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Thursday], 30 October 1817.

Salisbury  Octr 30th 1817

My dear Anne

   Your little Girl is well and, tho’ I am afraid of boasting, promises me the satisfaction of sending her home with a face tinted at least, with the bloom of health and a mind cheerfully disposed to improvement.  Her tears are I think far less frequent and when they do fall, they seem more like the effect of an irrepressible sensibility, than of a wayward temper.  Indeed I am much inclined to congratulate you on the effects of your early cares which are very perceptible to me at the present moment and will be more readily traced thro the succeeding stages of her Education. Do you know of Mr Edminson’s letter to Mr S. about taking one of our boys at half the charge &c your dear Bror is much pleased and yet more obliged and would probably soon make an arrangement of the kind. But as for me I have a thousand difficulties some it may be of pride more of tenderness, and after all the great proportion seems to originate in the most distracting doubt of what would be best and wisest for all parties.

   Dear Carey lies with a heavy weight on both our hearts every body about me dislikes his continuance at Mill Hill and thinks he should have a more distinct or rather a more appropriate superintendence and so do I, but admitting that Mr E, was the exact Preceptor, would it be right to make the claim? Perhaps my dear S– would think this implied a cruel charge against our poor boy. Well, I love my Child – proof of this will not be missing eventually, but I love my neighbour too – Then there is my little John, I would he might obtain his modicum of learning without a boarding school.  Alas I am half ashamed to state my exquisite anxieties about this lovely and beloved one.  I look round me and say

         “To whom shall I the hope and fear impart!

         And trust the care, and folly of my heart!”

Oh yes I can whisper to you that I would fain preserve his manners, his elegant simplicity of mind, and yet bestow the beauty of intelligence in its finest colouring –

   Little Anne has just put a letter into my hand written without any inspection carefully sealed, and directed to “Mrs Whitaker Bratton” so that you will get as much of her heart as she could let escape to the paper during the time of writing it.

   But now about the Miss Whitaker and her Sister Miss Sophia. I am willing to receive them, and I pray God they may get some good and no harm! under this Roof! When had they better come?  What will be the requisite arrangements about room fire &c what the general learns? I intend leaving the whole to you and Mr Whitaker and wish for an account of your particular wishes and intentions then you shall hear what can be done and what I hope to do.  My dear S. is just returned from a short journey to a place in the neighbourhood of Lymin[g]ton.  And is very weary but very well.  He would unite affectionate expressions of regard to your whole circle and leave besides something yet unsaid of that long cherished friendship which still abides in the heart of

                     Your faithful friend & Sister

                                 M. G. Saffery

Love dear love to our little Sam—l & thanks for his letter | I have not forgotten the cake. Our kind remembrances to Mr E.   adieu.

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 365-66 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(8.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Whitaker | Bratton Farm | to be left at the Red Lion | Warminster.   No postmark. Rev. Robert Edminson, like many Dissenting ministers at this time, operated a school for boys as a means of supplementing his income. The poetic lines above appear to be original to Saffery. Anna Jane Whitaker (1784-1838), Philip Whitaker’s unmarried sister, lived with her mother in Bratton. The ‘Sophia’ is her close friend and future sister-in-law, Sophia Williams (1790-1891) of Bratton, who would marry Anna Jane’s brother, Thomas Whitaker, in 1824.  For the diary of Sophia Williams, 1812-17, see Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 8, pp. 437-91.