Maria Grace Saffery, Dawlish, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Friday], 28 July 1820.

Dawlish  July 28th 1820

My dear Anne,

   The date of my letter will convince you that I am yet a sojourner in the land of my fathers tho’ I have been so long silent, to your letter of kind inquiry. The truth is I waited for something better to communicate than a lament over shattered nerves, and immoderate fatigue.  The closing of the School, repairs and alterations in the house, with peculiar private anxieties incident in both, had indeed so wasted my spirits, and distracted my powers of thinking that I could not write tho’ I was called upon to talk, and act, from the rising to the resting hour, like one who was merely busy, not disquieted.  After many a debate and many a conflict, a journey was at length decided on for me by me. I can scarcely say; for my leaving home was more like an Ejectment than you readily imagine.  Almost every being who composes the family Council exacted a promise of compliance with the general decree after their departure for except the two little toys and the Servants all had forsaken me.  I had some difficulty about leaving these fellows to ye disabling habits which such a desertion would almost impose on them, but then it was agreed, that they shd accompany their father into Devonshire on a Missionary expedition soon after his return from London. They purpose to begin the route next Monday, and I hope to meet them at Exeter in a week or two – When I arrived at E. lodgings were provided at Dawlish, for two or three members of the Salter family, and of course I am of the Seaside party, an affair as skilfully, as kindly arranged for my advantage something of the kind was talked of for little Jane, but she is after all going to Weymouth.  I will not tire you with the details of that arrangement.

   I came hither a week ago, the weather since then has been intensely hot and I have been very languid, but the breeze is cooler this morning and I feel its salutary influence yet you will not be surprized to find that I expect less from variety than I have done.

   “’Tis but a poor relief we gain – to change the place and keep the pain” –  “Still the tortured nerve will languish” whether I look upon the Ocean, or the plain – whether I watch the undulations of the deep, or the puny agitations of a water-course, whether I stand upon the shore with the rock for my Canopy, or seek the shelter of a tree in my little formal garden walk – still however the mighty antidote prevails as widely as the woe.  This is the Land of tribulation, but it is Jehovah’s world. 

“He sitteth above the water flood,

Within his circling arms I lie”

and it is enough to rest upon Omnipotence.

   I am pleased with my invitation to Bratton [&] hope to avail myself of it.  You know that I love Alfred Whitaker, and I intend at least to be pleased with the Lady.

   Adieu write if you can, a few lines to this place immediately tho’ I have kept you so long unanswered.  It will accord with the noblest maxim “Good for Evil” –  you have tried it before and cannot repent of it towards a friend in adversity.

         Your’s ever faithfully

                     Maria Grace Saffery

The Ladies wd send kind regards   you will know how to express mine – Direct for me at Mr Crowles Grocer, in the Strand, Dawlish, Devon.

Little as I saw of Lucy, I feel pensive at her going quite away.  When does she go?

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 381-82 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(16.), Angus Library.  Address: Mrs Whitaker | Bratton Farm | nr Westbury | Wiltshire.  Postmark: 29 July 1820. Dawlish was a village on the English Channel, just north of Teignmouth, Devon.  Lines above taken from Isaac Watts's hymn, ‘The Vanity of Creatures: or, No Rest on Earth’, from Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book II, hymn CXLVI, p. 259; and Watts's ‘God is Everywhere’ from The Psalms of David, Psalm CXXXIX, p. 294. Other reference is to Alfred Whitaker's approaching marriage to Sarah Waylen in 1823, an event that was short-lived due to her untimely death in September of that year; and to Lucy Ryland of Bradford, now a mother with three children.