Benjamin Flower at Cambridge to Eliza Gould at Dodbrook, near Kingsbridge, Devonshire, Thursday, 24 October 1799.

                                                         Cambridge Oct 24. 1799

   My last to you, My Dearest Eliza, was dated the 20th, and directed to you, where I hope you have arrived, safe, and in improved health by this time.  Yesterday I received your most welcome and very affectionate letter of the same date from Wellington.  We were indeed conversing with each other, and it has frequently afforded me pleasure in imagining, or rather in reflecting on what has really been the case, that at the very hour, I have been writing to you, you were writing to me.

   The only pain which accompanied the reading of your letter was—that you were in pain while writing it: you know that I love to see your paper filled, but I am fearful this consideration induces you at times to go beyond your strength, but you recollect what I wrote in my last on this subject, and I will not repeat it.  Miss Jennings, who I have more than once thought possesses more medical skill than two thirds of the male apothecaries in the kingdom, highly approves of the application of the blister, and has little doubt of its efficacy.  With her love, she desires me to recommend to you to take two ounces of Mutton suet, boil it in a pint of milk till it is dissolved, then strain the milk.  Take a tea cup full warm, two or three times a day.  It is she says a most excellent recipe for restoring your lungs, and it will not interfere with any medicines, which you may be in the habit of taking: but I must sincerely hope you have by this time done with medicines, and that air and exercise are what are principally necessary perfectly to restore you.   It is indeed very kind of you to subtract a week of your originally proposed stay at Dodbrook, that is if your health will allow you.  This you will not for a moment lose sight of—It is the paramount consideration: I most sincerely hope, your next letter will inform me that the radical cause of your illness is completely removed, in which case I should farther hope, the time you now propose, three weeks, will be amply sufficient to set you up:  and if you are then so well as you ought to be, that is so well as to be fit to return, your journey by easy stages so far from throwing you back or occasioning a relapse of any kind, will still farther be of service.  

   Since my return home, I have been like the Jewish King, “Setting my house in order,” which I assure you it very much wanted, tho’ not like him I trust that I may “die & not live,” but that I may live and not die, and indeed that I may live to better purpose than ever. My hurry & fatigue is this week encreased by the indisposition and grief of one of my servants who has lost his two children, who were seized last Sunday with a putrid fever, and died, the eldest (about 4 years old) yesterday, and the youngest (about 2 years old) this morning.  Happy for both the man & his wife, tho’ they are as may naturally be supposed, very low, yet that they do not feel so keenly, and so lastingly as I should on such an occasion.  I sometimes think it is not right for a christian to pray to be exempt from trials of any kind, but I cannot help now and then darting a petition to heaven that I may be spared in my affections.  Trials of every other kind, and some that the world in general might term very severe I think I could bear with tolerable fortitude—Yes I know I could you sharing them with me—but after all, I believe it is best for me not to suffer my thoughts to dwell on this subject.  We are under the care of a merciful God: our heavenly father altho’ he may not always indulge us according to our temporary wishes, will most assuredly indulge our main wish.  “All things shall work together for our Good!” We shall feel this truth to Eternity.

   I have too, my most dear Love, “many things to say, and to ask your opinion of, and advice about,” but I must defer them.  I am afraid of your writing too long letters at present, and I do assure you, a long letter will not be read with that extreme pleasure which it otherwise will be, unless it is accompanied with the assurance, that in writing of it, you have not made an effort beyond what your health and strength allow.

   Did you receive my two last papers?  one directed to you at Wellington the other at Dodbrook.

   Though I am very busy, I cannot, somehow or other, settle to business as I wish.  Miss Jennings tells me she knows I never shall, till you come and help me, and I believe she is right.  Before I left London, I shewed Miss Gurney the profiles, asking her if she knew either of the originals.   After surveying them for sometime she said no: One of them I then said, I believe you know as little of, personally as I do  that is the gentleman—but may I hang up the lady and thus introduce to my acquaintance our friend—Eliza Gould, as it is done for her?  With a look of astonishment she replied—“Yes you may, but you must write under it—This is not the likeness but the Caricature of Eliza Gould.”

   But the hour of the Mail, as well as my paper inform me I must conclude.  I hope you have found all your family in good health & spirits—that they are rejoiced to see you I need not add.  With my respects to them, accept my Dearest & best friend, the continued assurance of your reigning in the heart and of your entire possession of the warmest affections of your

                                                         B Flower

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. 166-68.