Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 20 February [1818].

Friday Aftn  Feby 20

My dear Anne,

   It seems requisite that I should bear testimony to the welfare of your little Girl, who has neglected to do it for herself. She is I think just now, both good and gay, and this is the general character that the whole circle. I cannot speak half so well of her Aunt, who is alas! neither good, nor gay.  I have seldom endured ostensibly at least, this the business of the day, but the spring is coming and who can tell but the vernal breezes may blow balm on me?  would that I were more like Montgomery’s daisy, to “welcome ev’ry changing hour – And weather ev’ry Sky.” But oh, this sickly atmosphere of Sin & death! the plants of celestial birth cannot live in it, and only things like daisies can do without the gales of paradise, when the breathing, vital influence, shall come the Desert shall rejoice The moral wilderness shall bloom like the Garden of God.

   I have sent Sam a cake  kiss him for me to morrow, if you see him and tell him the cake and the kiss too, come from a friend, who has loved him every moment for eleven years.  Dear S. sends love also, to his little boy, and many a good wish both as a Papa, and a Parson.  He has quite a bad cold.  We had a letter from Philip to day, the lad writes pleasantly.  I mean as to the view he gives us of his state of feeling; for nothing can be more guiltless of allurement, than his composition.  Yet he seems to have a taste for the eloquence of others, and this on his sanguine mind, is likely to become an inspiring influence. He will be what he admires. As to the fashion of the thing, in what degree, time must develop.

   I went to Bodenham on Monday to see your Cousin Thos he is indeed very sick, and more, far more sad, distressed even to agony, about the state of his Soul dr Saffery had a long & free conversation with him then; and saw him again yesterday.  We think he will probably recover from this attack wh has been unusually severe, & that there is good scriptural evidence, that his broken heart, is “right in the sight of God.” Adieu.  Still I am, 

         Yours,  M. G. Saffery

our love around you.  Salter says, it was very kind of you to send Coward’s diagrams

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, p. 372 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.4.c.(1.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs P. Whitaker | Bratton Farm. No postmark.   Reference to Samuel Saffery’s 11th birthday provides a date for the letter. Lines above taken from ‘A Field Flower’ by James Montgomery, from The Wanderer of Switzerland, and Other Poems, p. 151; Acts 8:21; and Nathan Coward’s Quaint Scraps, or Sudden Cogitations (Lynn, 1800), in which the title page refers to Coward as the ‘Professor of Quaintness’. Philip Whitaker would soon see the passing of his cousin, Thomas Attwater (1767-1818) of Bodenham, and his brother, William.