Benjamin Flower at Cambridge to Eliza Gould at Dodbrook, undated (c. 20 November).

… most unfortunate Tiverton adventure and the melancholy state of your health, I was indeed so affected, that I avoided Company, and did not visit a single acquaintance during the week; but your succeeding letters so removed my anxieties & restored my spirits that not a day passed without my visiting some one, or other, and every body tells me, “I never looked so well in my life.” You assure me that your health mends daily; that assurance sets my heart at rest.  “Nothing fatigues you so much as writing.” I sincerely and affectionately ask you—Do you attend to my repeated injunctions on this subject, and which you must plainly perceive are those of all your friends.  If you write your usual letters to me, at one sitting, I am sure you act imprudently, pray write at Intervals, and the moment you feel fatigue, leave off.  To render your friends satisfied without hearing from you at all, I sent your “trumpery” letters to London, but not having them returned so soon as I wished, I have written for them.  You see how obedient I am, and tho’ I had unfortunately disgraced you, I am unwilling that disgrace should be lasting.  Indeed, I had another motive for hastening their return.  As I am soon to be chained to the “trumpery” writer of them, I am willing to fortify and prepare myself for the trial, by reading over again & again what—(molloncholy to reflect!) affords me too fair a specimen of the “trumpery” life I am doomed to lead!  You see my Dear Eliza how I am determined to laugh at you when you say anything strange, but this I find much easier than to imitate you in these devot­ional effusions of gratitude, which makes everyone who hears them envy you, [and] your frame of mind.  I hope, altho’ I cannot yet reach your purity of mind, and spotless conduct, have been incapacitated from testing.  Oh that “every faculty of my soul” may too, “be absorbed when reflecting on the kindness of my heavenly father,” who I doubt not has had merciful intentions even in the severest of his dispensations.  After all the cares, anxieties, pleasures and enjoyments, we experience as Individuals—after all the bustle in the world occasioned by ambition, wars, massacres &c—after all that arts and sciences have done for mankind—After all the revolutions of time, the risings and fallings of might empires, no event is of consequence in the sight of the great Governor of the Universe but as it affects the eternal state of mankind.  What a transporting thought is it, here you and I are safe.  God has already bestowed on us the greatest gift it was possible for infinite wisdom, infinite goodness & infinite power to bestow—His well beloved Son.  The inference of the Apostle is therefore truly rat­ional—“How shall he not with him also freely give us all things”—That is all things necessary to bring about the grand end proposed.  What can a Christian desire more.  Yes, my Dearest Love, our mercies as well as our afflictions will tend to enhance our everlasting felicity.  We will therefore begin the song here, we will join in singing it through life, which I trust we shall sing to all Eternity.  Have riches in themselves considered—have honours—have exalted stations—have those trifles which so attract the vast majority of mankind attractions for us?  no!  We are happy we are rich in the possession of each other, and in the possession of our God, be anxiously careful for nothing.

   We have at last a truce to rainy weather, not having had any rain since last Friday.  To day is the finest I have seen since I left Newgate, I hope we shall have a continuance of such weather, and that it will be the means of completely restoring your health, that your “flushings tho the effect of weakness,” may be exchanged for those roses which in your Countenance so often proclaimed you in perfect health & spirits.  Adieu my Dearest Eliza, and believe me with the utmost sincerity, tenderness & affection.

                                             yr B Flower

I will direct my next Communication, my paper, as usual; or if you set out on Monday, the post will probably be at Kingsbridge, before your departure.

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. 200-02.