From [Sophia] Soutter in Handsworth to Mary Tooth in Madeley. Soutter must beg for Tooth’s forgiveness for her long silence and should also add that Mr Gordon ‘was not kind enough’ to pass on Tooth’s kind note of invitation until a month or two back, and then not until Soutter’s father had been to his house two or three times to collect it. Mrs [Anne] Jordan is coming to dine with them today and says that she can enclose a letter for Soutter. Soutter has just time to say that she loves Tooth and longs to see her, but that she must not ‘reckon too much on the happiness arising from intercourse with friends here below…’ Does Tooth recall that when Tooth last left the Soutter’s house, that Sophia spoke to a young person who they met just as Tooth was getting into the coach? ‘This was my first, my first affectionate friend, and in her character was concentrated everything that was lovely and the whole, hallowed by religion.’ This spring, Soutter witnessed her decline and death ‘and it is only the triumphant manner in which she left us that can afford me any consolation. How mysterious to us appear the ways of providence; the most lovely in mind and body; of her family, the only one pious, just about to settle in life and in that station of life in which from exterior circumstances she would have commanded an extensive sphere of usefulness and just beginning to take an active part in some of the many excellent institutions which the gospel has given to our country. I could fill my paper in telling you the many happy sentences she uttered… but I must conclude’. If they knew she was writing, Sophia has no doubt that her father and brother would send their regards.
[Annotated by Tooth – ‘Answered Nov. 27th’]