Benjamin Flower at Cambridge to Eliza Gould at Dodbrook, Wednesday, 6 November.

                                                         Cambridge Nov. 6.  1799—

My Dearest Eliza

   I know not whether I had a right to expect a letter from you by this morning’s post, but I could not help anxiously wishing for one.  I will however hope for the best, and that the letter I shall receive to morrow morning will contain as favourable an account of your health as I can reasonably wish.

   I am so fearful, my love, that my letter of yesterday agitated you, that I cannot help addressing you to day.  When I converse with you I cannot disguise my feelings, perhaps it might have been more for your happiness during your journey at least, had I been able so to do.  I wish however you had in this respect followed my example.  Had you earlier informed me of your Tiverton adventure, I should not have felt the shock I received when perusing your last, and it would have come in its proper place and I should at least have been spared the additional uneasiness I underwent on account of my not hearing from you as I had reason to expect.  Most sincerely do I hope your health has been such as to permit you to accept the hospitable invitation of your good friends who propose throwing you across a horse for exercise, and to “cram” you with victuals to enable you to endure such exercise.  If so you are likely to have a fine week of it; while they are exercising and “cramming” your body, I am exercising and “cramming” your mind.  This is the third letter written in four days: however I hope your next letter will enable me to give you a respite, and that I shall not have occasion again to address you, till Friday Eveng when I shall have a word or two with you, as usual when I direct my paper.

   As I am mentioning my paper, let me just ask, do you not now & then see a little of the colour of my mind in the Poetry? Some people will hardly believe but what certain late articles were my own invention, although I always mention the source from whence I derive them.

   I really think there can never be but one opinion reigning in your Family and Friends, as well as mine, and that is, that it will be for our mutual happiness that we should be settled as soon as possible.  If you are not essentially better you have had proof enough that the Devonshire air is not likely to mend you, and I really think the air of Cambridgeshire, not the sunny part but that part in which you are to live, as it is more soft, and generally reckoned salubrious is more calculated to restore you than that of Dodbrook.  If you have not already, I cannot but again recommend you to write to your medical friend, Mr Holman, he app­ears to have understood your case, & is well acquainted with your Constitution, and if he will permit you, pray do commence your journey to London, without losing a day.  Whether you should return by Salisbury, or Bath I cannot determine.  In the former case, the journey will be 80 miles a day, which will perhaps be too much.  In the latter you may stay all Day at Tiverton, to see your and my old acquaintances, or at Wellington to consult Mr Holman if necessary, but only stop one day at both places, I mean both together.  At Bath a few hours will I hope be only necessary.  Then you may take a single day or a two day Coach as you think most advisable.  If at Tiverton you again submit, (should you fall in the way of the person alluded to,) to a repetition of her brutal insolence, you deserve I was going to say, to experience similar bad effects.  If you meet her, try for once in your life, if you cannot scold, and if not, go out of the room.  I cannot reflect on the two days so wretchedly mispent at Tiverton without feeling my indignation raised to an uncommon pitch.  I have not met with anything that so provoked me, for a long time.

   Yesterday my mind was indeed in a perpetual conflict.  Affection, Philosophy, Religion, all took the field.  The First soon beat the Second hollow.  The battle was hard between the first and the last, and after all, so far from quitting the field, Affection could only be compelled not to engross the complete possession of the mind & heart to herself.  Religion towards the close of the day, reduced her opponent to a little order, and compelled her to attend to divine reason.  I retired to rest better, much better than I was in the morning.  I arose this morning after a tolerable night’s rest, much refreshed.  Hope preponderates to day; I have been amusing myself with a good map of Devonshire, in which Dodbrook is printed in small capital letters, devoting it to be a market town.  Oh could I but travel to that spot.  I wish those lively fellows the French would not be content with merely inventing curiosities.  Why have they not improved their balloons so as to make them of common use: as I said to our family last night when we were chatting about you, and I was comparing your late letters, (about yr health) “I want to dine in Devonshire to morrow—I wish one of my servants would get my balloon ready by 4 in the morning.”

   It affords me unspeakable satisfaction, my dearest life, to find your mind not only composed, but holding fast her confidence in her neverfailing friend.  I dare not request you to indulge yourself and me in enlarging on those topics which you now and then hint at of a religious kind; indeed whenever you favour me with a long letter I must add, if you do not inform me it was written at different periods, and that the writing has not fatigued you, it will considerably diminish the pleasure I should otherwise receive.  Altho’ I cannot yet equal you in religious tranquility, and fortitude, yet I am I hope not unsuccessfully striving to approach you.  Blessed be God, as I have strong affections, and poignant feelings, so I have strong Consolations; and I believe there are very few moments, when if an angel from heaven were to make me the offer of choosing my own lot, and of arranging the whole plan and every event of my life, according to my heart’s desire, I should not refuse accepting it, entreating that I might not have the management of any one concern of my life, but that I might still be at the entire disposal of my heavenly father, whose wisdom, love & faithfulness are like his nature, infinite and boundless; and the severest of whose dispensations, are the result of his parental kindness toward his children as those they are apt to term his kindest.  All indeed are equally kind, because they are sent with no other end than to promote the benefit, the highest benefit to those who love God in consequence of their being beloved of him.  These thoughts my Dearest Eliza, make me in some few happy moments thoroughly resigned to the will of heaven.  When they penetrate my soul, I sometimes think I can resign my greatest earthly treasure, or rather that object which comparatively speaking is my only earthly treasure—possessing whom I am sure I shall be happy, and without whom I shall for ever bid adieu to happiness, till I am re-united to her, in another world.  My other Heart—My Eliza! But I ardently hope that this delightful subject, the Providence of God, will prove the solace, the exalted converse of many happy social hours in this world.  But submission to the will of God, and endeavouring with the fullest bent of mind to reason ourselves into the sentiment that such submiss­ion is the only way to be happy, is the chief duty & the chief privilege of the Christian.

   Adieu My Dearest Love, and Rest assured that no distance of place can in the minutest degree diminish the firmly rooted, and unalterable affection of  

                                             yr B Flower

To morrow I hope to receive a satisfactory letter.  Till you are better, pray let me have a line every day   if writing a Note fatigues you, your Father or one of the family, will be so good as to favour me with a line.

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. 181-84.