Benjamin Flower at Cambridge to Eliza Gould at Mrs. Quartley’s, near Well­ington, Tuesday, 26 November 1799.

                                                         Cambridge Nov. 26. 1799

My dearest Eliza

   You shall never be disappointed when you expect to hear from me. Altho’ I was so cruelly disappointed, on Saturday, I could not be easy at your being in suspense a single post. When you expected to hear, I accordingly snatched all the time I could between the services on Sunday, and when I should (as some would say) have been meditating on what I was going to say to others in public, I was anxious to converse with you in private.  

   Last night I got to St. Ives, and found by your letter you expected to send me an answer by Thursday.  I had but a few minutes to spare, the post setting out in half an hour, and on the solicitation of some friends the day before, I had agreed to address the society at Mr Wesley’s chapel, which I thought a small one, but which proved a crowded congregation of 400 persons: but my few previous minutes were devoted to you.  I returned home to breakfast this morning, and perceiving you expect’d to find a letter from me, at the Post office Exeter, altho’ it is a day of much hurry, I will not wait till to morrow lest you should leave Exeter on Friday, and by that means not have my letter.  But positively, if you had not so frequently intimated that my letters gave you pleasure, I should have been fearful that I had fatigued your mind to almost as great a degree as indis­pos­ition has fatigued your body.  Your last letter altho’ it somewhat relieves that anxiety which accompanied the perusal of the preceding, yet is not so satisfactory as I could have wished.  You do not say one syllable, about your lungs: surely you forgot what you said on the subject in your previous letter, and which gave Miss Jennings & myself much uneasiness.  When you are at Wellington, which I hope will be next Friday, or Saturday, I shall depend on having Mr Holman’s faithful report, for I hardly know how to depend on your reports.  I must remind you of your sins of omission.  You never wrote to Mr Holman—he charges you with “forfeiting your word”—You never wrote to me from Tiverton except the note which informed me of your being Quite well—How little meaning was retained in these words the rest of your letters have too painfully informed me, and your being obliged to travel in the same slow manner as two months since, is but too plain a proof of the very trifling benefit, if any you have received from your journey, excepting the satisfaction your mind has received from Bath and Dodbrook, and our mutual Converse.

   You have indeed my Dearest Love, given me a curious proof of your obedience to my Commands already—namely your writing Three Letters a day only. Miss Jennings shook her head, and well she might as my reading the above sentence and at the same time exclaimed—“She ought to write to nobody but you—One moderate letter is quite enough for one day.  I am sure she will never get well if she has nobody to look after her—do pray hasten her home.  She exerts herself too much, I know both in speaking & writing.” Now to shew you what obedience I expect, and what a perfect despot of a husband I am resolved to make—If I had been at your elbow after you had written one letter I should have said—“my Dear Eliza—you must not—shall not write any more to day.” If after leaving you, I had on returning found you still writing, I should sans ceremonie, have snatched up inkstand and paper, and locked them up, for at least one whole day, and not even then have returned them, till I had a promise of implicit obedience in this respect in future.  I must indeed use the utmost stretch of my Authority in endeavouring to reform you of the only fault I have yet been able to find in you  —that of not taking care of yourself.  Pray do not write any more letters to any one but me, till your return to London.  Remember I have not had one long Letter, tho’ so often promised.  You acknowledged in one of your letters, “I have been cheated out of one.” I must try & find out who the cheat was: but it is now too late for me to expect one and however exquisite the pleasure I might have received, I will not now ask or expect one.  Short letters, if they were “Bulletins of health only” shall content me—if they are favourable ones, they shall more than content me. 

   In looking over Burns’ Ecclesiastical Law, under the word Marriage there is something about the ring which struck me as worth transcribing.—“The ring at first was not of gold but of Iron, adorned with an adamant; the metal hard and durable, signifying the durance & perpetuity of the contract.  Howbeit it skilleth not at this day, what metal the ring be of: the form of it being round and without end, doth import, that their love should circulate & flow continually.  The finger on which this ring is to be worn, is the fourth finger of the left hand, next unto the little finger, because there was supposed a vein of blood to pass from thence unto the heart.” These are pretty remarks, whether they are correct, I know not, but when writing to you, my Eliza, I feel as if I had a pain of blood passing from each “finger to the heart.”

   I will still indulge the hope that you will on New Years Day make me a new and a happy man.  It will indeed give me such spirits to begin the new year.  I find by inquiry that altho’ the Surrogate by Law is ordered to require an oath from one of the parties of a month’s residence, before he grants a licence, yet that he often does grant the licence without any oath or declaration.  If this should be the case, I hope you will confirm your former promise of assisting me to tie the “gordian knot” on that day.  Let it be tied at Walworth if the Licence can be procured: if not do consent to its being tied at Cambridge.  I was thinking—if I could not use that kind of influence which is almost universally successful—I mean Bribery—Well let me see—If you will consent I will bribe you with a good lot of—Pens, Ink & Paper!

   Yes, my Dearest Love, I have often “anticipated,” not only by day, but on my pillow, in the wakeful hours of night, “the various sensations with which we shall greet each other,” with which we shall be united together, and which will accompany us thro’ life; but you claim a right to know my inmost soul: I cannot therefore hide from you that at times I have had my fears, least the blessing my imagination has feasted upon, should be too rich for me to be allowed to enjoy in this world.  I endeavour daily to cultivate a disposition resigned to the will of heaven, but the task I find harder than I ever yet found it, when I read any un­fav­ourable accounts of your health.  Oh my God, let me suffer any affliction, rather than that my heart should be transpierced!

   Our cares, our sorrows, (for cares & sorrows we cannot expect to escape) by being divided, by being transfused into each others bosoms will be lightened, and our pleasures by the same means will be doubled.  I will not indulge any gloomy idea when closing a letter to you.  Entreating by our mutual love, that you would take care of yourself, avoid any kind of exertion, by writing or talking that may fatigue you and that you would exercise your mind on those topicks only which afford it pleasure—I remain

                                                         Your B Fr

Miss Gurney returned me your “Trumpery Letters” Yesterday.  She calls it a “valuable packet” and assuming to be me says—“How fine are the Ideas, & how beautifully expressed”—You see how simple we all are to value “Trumpery.”  Well I am glad to find that tho’ you know me to be warm hearted, you do not think me hot headed.  [I have] not however yet clothed my poor skull with flannel.  

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. 204-07.