Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, [Tuesday], 1 June 1830.

Salisbury  June 1st 1830

   Today my dearest Anne I hope you may be from home: but Mary Anne will leave this at the farm, and after your return from Devizes, and from Robert Hall, please to remember, your anxious petitioners in the City of New Sarum, who crave your loving attention to the undermentioned plea.

   This is June, the Month appointed for your Summer visit, and for our short Summer rest, from a little portion of life’s labour; which has of late, been sweetened by the contemplations, of seeing those we love at home, and of wandering with them to those we love abroad. Now then can you tell us when the sight of you here, will realize the former and whether we may hope to accomplish the latter in your beloved Society? The call to Weymouth, must not be slighted and it appears more eligible to spend the early part of the vacation, with Marianne, both on account of those who go, and of those who remain.

   If therefore, your visit can precede ours; I intend to allure you thither in our party.––I sigh to think that on this occasion Bodenham cannot detain you though I used to be a little jealous of its soft retreat. I suppose dear Maria will soon leave, for a season at least; and then, –  there will be indeed the Silence of death in the bowers. – Yet there is still something so benign, in the character of their desolation, that the echoes of the Apocalyptical beatitude, seem to follow your footsteps through their quiet Shades.  The voice that says, “Blessed are the dead, that die in the Lord” –

   I have strayed into a Subject too sweet, and too unearthly, for the hour, and the Scene – Adieu then, for I dare not enlarge.  Write and tell me, that you are coming; – and that you are coming soon to

         Your’s, by unbroken, and unbreaking ties,

                     Maria Grace Saffery

How are my good brothers, and dear Joshua? we have heard that both were indisposed but nothing distinctly –

Distribute the kindest, and they will be, the truest remembrances

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, p. 415 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.3.(26.), Angus Library. Address: Mrs Whitaker | Bratton Farm | near Westbury | Wiltshire.  Postmark: Salisbury, 1 July 1830.  Robert Hall was now entering the final year of his ministry at Bristol and his life. Reference above also to the death on 22 May 1830 of Sarah Attwater of Bodenham, Philip Whitaker’s unmarried aunt. His other aunt, Anna Attwater, had died in 1825; both women were close friends of Anne Whitaker and Maria Grace Saffery, with Bodenham being one of their frequent places of visitation during the previous thirty years.