Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Monday, 21 August 1820.

Salisbury Monday Eveng Aug: 21st

The memorable day of my departure from Bratton

   No my dear Anne I cannot visit you just now tho’ I certainly wished and intended to accomplish my promise of seeing you in the course of the present month – Your Brother is still from home but I expect his return by Thursday and then perhaps my absence would be taken unkindly.  My school too, has a very imperious claim on my time, and the almost consuming anxieties to which it exposes me would haunt me in the bosom of the fairest Solitude. I did not at first design more than two or three days on this occasion for my self, and as many weeks for little Jane, but we must both wait for our holiday.  The Child is much better and I have not yet lost the vigour with which the Sea-breezes so lately supplied my fainting frame.  It is almost impossible for a being, with any capacities of thought or feeling, to be at rest in the hurricane of life, but is quite possible to anticipate the “rest that remaineth” – Let not your heart be troubled” – is enough for them that believe.  Alas I am oftener listening to the roar of the tempest, than to the voice of him who commands it.

   Your letter which I did not receive till this Morng is dated the 18th I have just this moment observed it with some consternation because I fear it was delayed at one of the Offices and that your plan will be interrupted tho I am answering it by the first post.

   What are you intending to do? Will you come and see me as I cannot go to you? My curiosity, only extends to this question so you may ascribe it to selfishness if you please –  I found your account of Lucy very consolatory after repeated alarms.  My love & sympathy when your write or send.

   I just saw Sophia Williams out in the afternoon and did not see your Sister Jane.

   Philip left this morning.  I miss the gay good humour of his smile breaking in upon the gloom of my pensiveness.  Tho’ nature certainly never made us for companions – I am afraid he is not quite well and people seem intent upon distressing me with their conjectures.  One says the preaching will kill him or something like it another that he looks ill < >.  I scarcely apprehend anything very seriously of the kind they imagine, but I do not like the frequency of his preaching  it is too large a claim upon his youthful mind, to say nothing abot the interruption of his Studies –

   Adieu for I must hasten.  Love to my dear Brother & kind & suitable regards to yr whole circle.

         I am ever your’s

                     Maria Grace Saffery

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 383-84 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(17.), Angus Library.  Address: Salisbury Augst 21st 1820 | Mrs Whitaker | Bratton Farm | near Westbury | Wiltshire.   Postmark: Salisbury, 21 August 1820. Reference affixed to the date is that it commemorates the day Maria Grace Andrews left Bratton for Salisbury as a married woman to John Saffery in 1799. Maria's eldest son, Philip, was studying at Bristol Academy at this time.