Anne Whitaker, Weymouth, to Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, Friday, [c. summer 1829].

My very dear Maria

   Thanks for your letter which though it contained a refusal was welcome as coming from you – indeed so uncertain was the comfort or advantage of the thing proposed that one could not impatiently desire a compliance. I suppose Joshua will go though he is not very anxious respecting it – he mends more slowly than the rest of the party – yet I hope he is mended – he is not allowed the cold bath and he does not much like using the tepid – for myself I am as much as an old stationary invalid can be and I am almost ready to think I should shake off a great deal of my debilitation if I was to reside long on the coast George is wonderfully improved. Anne is looking hardier but she has not the rallying power in the same degree that many have. – Mr Whitaker is with us this week and enjoys the sea air and prospects very much – Alfred intends being with you tomorrow and to proceed to Weymouth Monday or Tuesday – My kind love to him and to all your young people.

   Excuse the haste of this which I send by poor Mrs Sloper who I much fear will never recover. Adieu

                     I am most tenderly yours

                                 Anne Whitaker

Weymouth

Friday Morng

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 412 (annotated version); Reeves Collection, Box 20.2.(h.), Bodleian. Address: Mrs Saffery | Castle Street | Salisbury | favor’d by Mrs Sloper.  No postmark.  The next year Anne Whitaker writes that she cannot come and see Marianne at Weymouth; the presence of Mrs. Sloper in this letter and the next suggest that the Whitakers visited Weymouth in 1829.