Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 26 February 1819.

Salisbury  Feby 26th 1819

My dear Anne,

   I am afraid my poor boys will grow impatient of delay, but I have been quite unwell since my last promisary epistle, and busy too with the changes in my household. Last week I was suffering from a severe inflamation of the eyelid which required the indulgence of a dark room, and this week I have been forced to relinguish my lingering hold of my kitchen favourite. Poor Betty was married on Tuesday Morng. Now all my Servants are strangers, not one of them can interpret a look, or sympathize a sigh of mine like poor Betty!  I believe however that I am pretty well supplied with people of the usual kind and indeed with something unusually interesting in the little villager who came from Bratton.  I mean Hannah Drewett whose inimitable simplicity is at least highly entertaining. But to return to the introductory lamentation, I have not been able to provide for the Children as I intended. Carey’s suit is made but I cannot have his hat before next week, and this too is the case with Samuel’s Linen. I am sorry to add that I have suffered some vexation about the colour of Carey’s clothes I was in the act of ordering blue cloth when Mr Targett and Papa fell into conversation about a piece of green cloth which unexpectedly to the latter was found remaining in Mr T’s hands and represented as very eligible. Will you tell the child that Mamma had no share in the choice but that she thinks it will look very well and that whoever has the green next time, he shall have the blue.  I am intending to send a green suit to little John – I need not explain to you my motives for this Message.

   I had a very obliging letter from dear Alfred about a fortnight since, he had been to see the bird in the cage at Chelwood, and found him singing.  I depend fully on Alfred’s examination of which he seems to be aware.  As to your little Maid, she is longing to write to you but she would shew me the copy of her letter and when I had seen it I thought it would be prettier for an alteration or two. Since that interruption she has attended two or three astronomical lectures with the other children of which she is proposing to give you some accnt she is quite well, had a good character to day from the Music room & wd send the love she is wishing to write about < >  Adieu I shall he hurried from you in a moment & my eyes are aching with even this slight attempt to assure you of the tender remembrances of

                                 Your’s faithfully & affectionately

                                             M. G. Saffery

My dr S. wd be always kindly most kindly remembered he has had a wounded leg wh is scarcely healed now  Adieu my heart prays for you & your’s.

My sweet Massa Coultart is here  I know I shd present his love

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 375-76 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(14.), Angus Library.  Address:   Salisbury Feby 26th 1819 | Mrs P. Whitaker | Bratton Farm | To be left at the Red Lion | Warminster. Postmark: Salisbury, 26 February 1819.

Another reference above ("the bird in the cage at Chelwood") to John Saffery’s ongoing trials at Joseph Dear’s boarding school, this time visited by AW’s son, Alfred. James Coultart (d. 1836) was from Holywood, near Dumfries, Scotland, and studied at Bristol Academy and later became a BMS missionary. For more on Coultart, click here; for his letters to the Safferys, see Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.A.27, and II.C.26; Reeves Collection, R13/1-24, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; see also Cox, History, vol. 2, pp. 24, 234.