Benjamin Flower, Mr. Kirby’s, Newgate Prison, to Eliza Gould, the Gurney’s, Keene’s Row, Walworth, Sunday, 18 August 1799.

                                                                                 Newgate, Aug. 18. 1799

                                             Sunday Eveng 11 o’clock

My Dear Miss Gould

   I believe you partly promised me a visit to day, but I know not whether I ought to regret my disappointment in not seeing you.  I scarcely knew such was the state of my mind, how I should be able to express myself in the conversation I had resolved to have with you.  Not having seen you, I must take up my pen, requesting your attention for a very few minutes.

   I have often reflected on what you must have thought of me for not more fully replying to the letters you favoured me with at Cambridge, a few years since.  Your friendly visits to me during my present confinement, prove to me that your interpretation was more favourable than I could have expected.  You shall now have my reasons for my brevity.  I thought I discovered in those letters a kindred mind: but knowing that my situation rendered it impossible for me to visit you, and apprehensive that in a lengthened correspondence, those affections might be entangled which, on various accounts, I dared not let loose, I much against my inclination, returned those short, though I trust not disrespectful replies, which certainly by no means encouraged you to continue, or me to expect a continuance of favours which had afforded me such exquisite pleasure, and which indeed charmed those few friends to whom I took the liberty of communicating them. But although I was silent, I was not indifferent.  I thought much of you, and during one or two short visits in London, I made various inquiries after you, anxious to hear of your welfare.  If the letters I have alluded to produced the effect I have related, can you be surprised at the much greater effect produced by the visits you have so kindly favoured me with, the friend­ship you have honoured me with, and the confidence you have placed in me, by laying before me a recent most interesting correspondence. Shall I attempt to describe my sensations?  Shall I launch forth on—personal attractions—mental endowments—talents for conversation and epistolary writing—sensibility the most refined and the most useful—Piety the most sincere—Virtues of every class shining most resplendidly.  No—I fear I should be suspected of what I have no inclin­ation to bestow, or you to receive—flattery: but the indelible impressions on my heart, compel me, in one short sentence, to make a declaration, which honoured as I have been with the friendship of some of the ornaments of your sex, I have never before made to any one—That heart is yours! 

   But my Dear Madam, justice to you equally compels me to add, you are but superficially acquainted with the man who presumes thus to address you.  The pouring out of his soul on the loss of a beloved young friend, you, without his knowledge, witnessed. You know little more of him.  My highest present hope, therefore is—That you will permit me to expose to your views my past life, my present situation, and my future prospects.  The survey shall I assure you be an impartial one.  Such is my confidence, that my soul shall to you be transparent, you shall be acquainted with passages of my life known hitherto to my God only.  Further professions I will not now make to one, who has had painful reasons to suspect the sincerity of the professions of my sex.  I will therefore only add—If I know my own heart, I am incapable, indeed I am, of deceiving you in a single Iota.  I hope when you inform me of your settlement with Mr Fordham, we shall arrange a plan of correspondence which I shall be anxious to commence.

   You surely owe me a visit, as I did not see you to day.  Your kindness will not suffer you to delay it on account of the present letter.  Rather than lose, in a single instance, the pleasure of your company, in my present confinement, I will promise you, that if at any time, you should think proper to interdict me from proceeding on the present subject, immediately to desist.

   My mind though now somewhat more tranquil than of late, I feel still agitated.  It somewhat resembles a vessel at sea, which has been driven and tossed by storms, tempests, and hurricanes, occasionally enjoying a sky totally clear, a pleasant gale, and proceeding prosperously.   Hoping for a sky of more continued serenity, more even and pleasant gales, a sea less ruffled, and a companion in her voyage; but not without fears, lest the hemisphere should again be thickened, and blackened with clouds, and the storm, the tempest and the hurricane, should again be raised—But blessed be God, hope preponderates, because I have an anchor on land, which whenever I have cast it, although surrounded with rocks, quicksands, and roaring billows, has never yet failed me, and I will with confid­ence add—never will fail me, but with which I shall safely arrive at the haven of eternal rest.

   With my most fervent wishes and ardent prayers that every species of happiness—temporal and eternal may attend you, I subscribe myself  My Dear Miss Gould

                     Your very sincere & affectionate

                                 friend & humble Servt                         

                                             Benj Flower

P.S.  You will, at least for the present lock the contents of this letter in your own bosom.

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould, 1794-1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008),  pp. 55-57 (a more annotated text than that which appears on this site).  

On the back of the letter Flower writes: “Miss Gould (To be read in private)”; the letter was probably hand delivered, for there is no postmark. They first met in person on 16 July 1799, but whether they corresponded before 18 August is unclear (they had previously corresponded on a few occasions since 1794). Flower was in his fourth month of imprisonment in Newgate for libeling Richard Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, in an editorial in the Intelligencer on 20 April 1799. During Flower’s stay at Newgate, he resided in the quarters of John Kirby, keeper of the goal.  Newgate had a long tradition of inmates living in the keeper’s quarters, for which they were charged room and board. Flower’s living quarters were modest but comfortable, allowing him to entertain guests frequently as well as to continue the operations of his newspaper.  On 7 September 1799, Flower printed a letter in the Intelligencer from five Newgate prisoners to Kirby, dated 17 July 1799, praising Kirby for the humane treatment they received while under his keeping. About to be sent to different prisons in England, the men were apprehensive that their next experience would not be so humane, for their treatment in Newgate stood in stark contrast to “the cruelty and oppression which some of our friends have suffered in other prisons.” Flower added in a footnote that the letter was “a just acknowledgment to a man [Kirby] who strictly and fairly discharges the duties of his office.” Flower would later write of his Newgate experience: “The late worthy and much respected Mr. Kirby, the governor of Newgate, treated me more like a friend than a prisoner.  How frequently and how forcibly were the words of the sacred historian impressed on my mind:-The Lord gave Joseph favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.  The friendship of Mrs. Kirby was also displayed in the performance of a variety of kind  offices” (Flower, Statement xxiv). 

John Copland was an apprentice in Flower’s printing shop in Cambridge. He was the eldest son of John Dawson Copland, Esq. The younger Copland died on Sunday, 16 October 1796, at his father’s house in Witchingham, Norfolk, at the age of 17.  

A few years before the above letter, Eliza sent an advertisement to Flower requesting a position as governess, an advertisement Flower never placed in the Intelligencer.  Instead, he answered the letter himself and shortly thereafter attempted to arrange a position for her in the household of George Fordham of Sandon, a position, however, that never materialized.