Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 4 December 1818.

Salisbury  Decr 4th 1818

My dear Anna

   When Solomon said there was a “Time for every thing under the Sun,” he certainly utter’d a reproof that reaches me in this distant age, especially on a review of my letter writing, for which alas I seem only to have found the time to refrain. Yet that I love you – love to retrace the social hours of our early friendship – while I triumph in the consciousness of its perennial vigour must not be doubted in the silence of these heavy hours in which I often seem spell bound like Milton’s Lady, or as if the Enchanter’s wind had drawn around me, the Circle of Solitude and desertion. Oh! if the pure and lovely emendations of the Eternal Mind had not visited these regions of death in the Gospel of the Son of God, what heart susceptible of mournful feeling might have endured the comfortless gloom of the Wilderness. But there is light enough now.

“Tis by the faith of joys to come

We walk thro’ deserts dark as night.”

   I am afraid you will think that I choose a melancholy moment for writing to Bratton, and that I am far too sentimental to be at all entertaining, but indeed I often forbear to write because I cannot well infuse into the communication the gay good humour of a mind at ease – I think however that I am not morose at home and that in the circle of my little friends I more frequently create a smile than awaken a sigh tho’ some of my fair Misses have remarkably tender spirits – Your little Anne is improving in this respect and I hope too in many others.  Her mind has more tone and her temper more sweetness.  What am I to say, or do about the holidays  you recollect our conversation on this subject two or three months since and our conviction that a winter’s journey had better be avoided for the Child.  I think so still and am quite secure of reconciling her to this arrangement if you and her father decide on it.  My boys are writing too about their return.  What I shall do with these Gentlemen it is far more difficult to say if I provide as I intend for the Comfort of my Ladies.  Miss Green stays a great assistant for me at least I have cause to hope so  Marianne & Miss Mursell are to go to Lymington. A marriage is expected there.  Miss Knight talks of spending ye vacation with her Bror all the rest except yr little Cousins stay.  So I shall have a cheerful number if more make merrier.  John came home in excellent health & spirits, & we are much very much obliged to his Uncle for the assistance afforded in his return & to the kind friends who have so long taken such good care of him.

   Will you tell my dear boys at Bratton that I have done all but quarrel about a cake for them & that now I do believe it will be sent by Applegate on Tuesday with a letter from me or papa.

   Adieu the post will only allow me to say that I am

                                 Your’s

                                             M. G. Saffery

write as soon as possible yr plan about the Child –

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 373-74 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(12.), Angus Library.  Address:  Mrs P. Whitaker | Bratton Farm | To be left at the red Lion | Warminster.  Postmark: Salisbury. References above taken from Ecclesiastes 3:1; John Milton’s masque, Comus (1634), of which one of the main characters is known as ‘the Lady’; and the opening lines of Isaac Watts's ‘We Walk by Faith, not by Sight’, in Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book II, hymn CXXIX, p. 245; for more on the Mursells of Lymington, especially William Mursell (1761-1838), click here.