Benjamin Flower at Newgate to Eliza Gould [“to be left at the Post Office”] at Bristol, Wednesday, 9 October 1799.
Newgate Oct 9. 1799
My Dearest Friend
Your Favour of the 7th, reached me yesterday just after Miss Gurney had left me. I heard her say she was going to dine at her Aunts on Holborn hill. After reading it over, I sent it to her there, she has returned it [to] me this morning. I have now likewise before me your Favour of Yesterday. I have written the note you requested, but as I fear it will not be in Time to stop the letter alluded to, you will give directions accordingly to some of your Bath friends.
“Write to you half a page,” after two such letters! no I cannot write so short a letter. Were I to answer them as I wish, I should write a dozen pages. I have much to say about Mr Haskins—about Feltham—about you—and about that important personage—Self, but I must send my letter by to day’s post, as you will be disappointed—a word or two therefore must suffice on each of these articles. Let me however just while I recollect it, ask you if you attend[ed] to my intimation of marking those parts of a letter which require an answer. Did you receive my papers of last week—Have you seen Mrs Britton?
I shall be as anxious to have a letter to answer from our Friend (you see I am always ready to adopt your friends as mine) as you can be that I should answer it. Do not fear that my letter to him will be cold, formal, or brief. If it is, it will be I assure you the first of the kind I even wrote to a Friend. I recollect telling you that I was fearful that persons who only formed a judgment of me from reading my paper would be led to think I was a person of an acrimonious temper. But it is wickedness the most abandoned, because the most hypocritical, I have had to protest against, nor do I in the least repent of the language I have used. I am persuaded I have, in this respect, followed the example of our Saviour who, perfectly meek and gentle and forgiving as he was to the true penitent, whatever the former life might have been, used language quite as “acrimonious,” as any I have used, against the bad men in Church & State of his day. I cannot help wishing every friend I have would read my Preface to “National Sins considered,” which contains an ample apology for all that severity of language I have thought it my duty to use, and which is severe because it is just.
What a base fellow in more than one sense of the word, has that Feltham proved. But the man who can rob a woman, of her choicest treasure, her affections, must not excite surprise, when he practises baser villanies. But that he should (for the purpose of still more basely treating you, I have little doubt) pretend to love you still urge you with tears to renew your Connection, talk of forgiving you—and at the same time be injuring your Character, and endeavouring to prevent the exercise of your friends kindness—This stamps him no common adept in hypocrisy. I am not quite satisfied that Mr Haskins did not give him a sharp cut, when he wrote respecting the account. It would not have “made him of consequence,” but it would have made him feel. I would have done it in a line or two which if I had not been prohibited, I would have sharpened on the occasion.
If your Letter of Yesterday, had not informed me that you felt yourself “better & better every day,—that you can now take a long walk”—I should have been fearful that the effort of the preceding day had been too much. I depend upon your implicit obedience to what I have repeatedly said on this subject. Write me as often—Write me as long letters as you can. They are the best company I have in my prison. When I read them, I take a chair, place it by my own, if by my evening fire, or at other times sitting on the sofa, imagine you by my side. Your letters talk to me, and I sometimes cannot help aloud replying, the same as if you were personally present. Local distance I find cannot separate our minds. But I must add—that the re-establishment of your health being the object nearest my heart, a short letter, a note, a sentence or two of conversation only, will give me more pleasure, written at perfect ease, than a long epistle, with an aching or a “confused head,” and a “trembling hand,” tho’ only at the close of it.
I hope I shall have another letter to answer by Friday. If I have, I shall write by the post of that evening, directed to you at the Post office, Wellington, to which place, I have ordered you my next paper. Pray do not stay at Wellington longer than Monday, you may from thence go in the afternoon by the coach to Exeter. Do not stay at Exeter. You are one of those of whom I remember Saurin somewhere says—“They carry letters of recommendation in the countenance.” I am more afraid of Friends detaining you at various places, than of your not finding friends any where, or every where. It is only 51 miles from Bristol to Wellington, and I most sincerely hope, from the cheering accounts you daily give me of your health, you will not be in the least fatigued by your journey. If you do not leave Bristol till the Saturday, the last of the days you propose, you will then have two days if you stay at Wellington till the Monday. It is only 26 miles from Welln to Exeter, that ride will not fatigue you. I perceive Kingsbridge is about 40 miles from Exeter, and the Coach to Plymouth, goes every day thro’ Totness to within about 8 miles of Kingsbridge. But you will have been out a fortnight before you get to Dodbrook. If you stay 3 weeks there, & you cannot if you return by Tiverton, be less than a week on your journey to London—this makes 6 weeks in all, and brings you nearly to the latter end of Novr—there will hardly remain a month to the close of the year—on which I much wish to have my gratitude to my God wound up to the highest pitch, for my being in complete possession of a blessing—which indeed high as it was in my estimation, I had within these three months, despaired of ever enjoying, and to borrow a phrase I was in the habit of using to my intimate friends when they talked to me on the subject—My happiness I considered as deferred to a future state of enjoyment! Now, blessed be God, it will be begun in the present state.
Adieu! Heaven guard you on every step of your journey, give you a happy meeting with your family & friends—restore and confirm your health & strength, and return you to the heart. No—you are there—you dwell there—you can never be absent—but to the house, to the presence, to the arms of him who will be to eternity
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. 147-49. Martha Gurney’s bookshop was located at 128 Holborn-hill.