Benjamin Flower, Newgate, to Eliza Gould, Mr. Gurney’s, Keene’s Row, Walworth, Tuesday, 24 September 1799.

                                                         Newgate— Sep. 24.  1799

                                                                     Tuesday— 1 oclock

   Let me now have half an hour’s interval from business and company, to converse with my Dearest Friend.  I have this minute received Miss Gurney’s note, by which I am very happy to find that you are still recovering health and strength: but when am I to hope for the increased happiness of an interview?  In your letter of Sunday last, you said “that Mr S- thought you might, with safety, go out in a coach the first fine day.” This morning has been fine, and to day is the second day since you wrote the above sentence: but I must add—that every thing respecting your venturing out, as your employment at home—whether it relates to your riding, or walking, or speaking, or writing—you must, indeed you must, implicitly follow the opinion of Mr S- and of your Nurse & Secretary.  I must now insist on my Right—I only demand it, on the principle of Equality.  I have obeyed you, and it is now your turn to obey me.  I drank all the water gruel last night.  It was very good, and needed a trifling seasoning only.  I am now so well, that I believe when you see me, you will not be able to discover that I have had a cold.  I told you I would be perfectly well, long before you would be so, and you find I have kept my word. 

   Nothing passed respecting you from any one in my apartment yesterday (or indeed at any time) that you would dislike to have repeated.  In talking about Aristocracy, and Republicanism I launched out against the abominable Aristocratical distinctions which prevailed in private life, and I really aimed at giving a hint or two, you know where. Scott spoke very highly of you.  B. H. tho’ not so warm in your praise, spoke in general terms of respect, and not one syllable dropped from his lips of a contrary nature.  It is well there did not.  I was prepared and would really have sharpened a sentence or two in my best manner, had I heard any, even the most distant insinuation to your disadvantage.

   In reading over the letter to Miss H— there were some things which threw a farther light on the main subject.  What a noble, what a spirited, what a firm and dignified mode of conduct is displayed in your last interview with Feltham.  I am sure you must have felt, indeed you had a right to feel your great superiority.  It is very curious to hear a man’s warm professions of affection &c and at the same time his most disinterested offer to resign the object of his affection, and who has given the most decided evidence, of warmth of affection on her part—to resign this object chearfully to another!  Forgive the coarseness of the word—but it is a confounded lie; and I would not believe the fellow if he was to swear to what he says, till his face was a black as his heart! 

   I will not allow you, indeed I will not, to find any fault with your father’s letter.  I told you the effect it had on me.  I considered it as coming from the heart of a Parent, doing however nothing more than parental justice to his daughter, altho’ it contained, very, very little, if anything more than I had before discovered.

   I find some of my old play-fellows have been informing you of one of the fictitious names formerly given me, and by which they, at times still address me.  It was first applied on my singing the Song of Liberty Hall—which commences— “Old Homer &c.” I mention the circumstance for fear application of the name should give rise to the least Idea of my being or ever having been a Poet.  Rhymes I have two or three times attempted: but a certain correct and elegant Prose writer (did she never write Poetry?) has made me resolve not to attempt the like again. I have enough to do, to pass off decently in the plainest prose.  I must, at least, expect to have a variety of “jocular remarks” played off on the present occasion.  It is within these three months that I almost, not quite—(I was not so foolish) vowed never to marry.  But amidst jokes, I shall always remember the old maxim—Let those laugh that win! 

   Don’t put yourself in a fright, if you should be told that in your visits to me you had “a design” in so doing.  I hope you had, and that a person of your sense does not without a design.  I know, after two or three visits, I had a design on you, and which, thank God, I have most happily accomplished.  If it will afford you any satisfaction, I will tell my friends—how prettily you behaved.  How sorry you was for the “serious injury you had occasioned to my mind,” having “nothing,” in answer to my honest, warm profession, but “your gratitude to return.”  That you were about to display your abilities in a fine long letter, detailing a heap of “substantial reasons for declining my proposals,” and that if the subject had not lain too near my heart I almost wished to have seen your admirable, “epistolary talents,[”] (for admirable on such an occasion they must have been) exerted even in a bad cause.  But as to talking about a long, or an intimate acquaintance, I will not contradict plain matter of fact.  No—Pitt and the Bishop of Llandaff—Lord Grenville and the House of Lords shall have their due merits.  Had it not been for them, I firmly believe, Eliza Gould would never have arisen a letter higher on the Alphabet.  A fine previous acquaintance truly!  You within five and twenty miles of me, for the last twelvemonth, and I know nothing of it, and no communication, either directly or indirectly having passed between us for several years, and when any existed you thought yourself devoted to another!

   But I shall be too late for the Post (and let this apologise for my not replying to Miss Gurney’s note).  I cannot help acknowledging—No—I can find no words for the purpose—what can I reply to your most affectionate, most welcome, most heart elating expressions of esteem and regard.  I can say nothing—but I will pray my God—that in every action of my life I may prove the sincerity with which I now and with which as long as that life lasts—I shall subscribe myself My very Dear Eliza’s

                     Most grateful and most affectionate

                                 B. Flower

I again forgot the enclosed.   If the Post made any additional charge, they would not have been worth sending.

Text: Flower Correspondence, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; for an annotated edition of this letter and the complete correspondence of Eliza Gould and Benjamin Flower, see Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould, 1794-1808 (Aberystywth: National Library of Wales, 2008), pp. 127-30. 

References above to “Scott,” “B.H.,” and “Miss H—” are to Russell Scott (1760-1834), Benjamin Hawes (1770-1760), and his sister, Harriet Hawes (d. 1822), the latter a close friend of both Eliza Gould and Eliza Gurney, who, like Gurney, never married. Scott ministered to the Unitarian (Presbyterian) meeting at High Street, Portsmouth, from 1788 to 1834. He married Sophia Hawes, sister to Benjamin and Harriet, in 1790. His sister, Mary Scott (1751-93), was the author of The Female Advocate (1774) and a close friend of Mary Steele (1753-1813) of Broughton, the niece of Anne Steele (1717-78), the famous hymn writer. For Steele's letters to Mary and Russell Scott, as well as some letters by Russell Scott to Mary Scott and her daughter, see Timothy Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, vols. 3 and 4. Benjamin Hawes, a successful soapboiler in London, was the son of Dr. William Hawes (1736-1808), of London, a friend of Joseph Gurney who was known for his pioneering work with the resuscitation of drowning victims and other causes of asphyxia -- a preoccupation that led in 1774 to the founding of the Humane Society. His wife was the former Sarah Fox (d. 1815), sister of the radical bookseller/pamphleteer William Fox, who partnered for many years with Martha Gurney as a bookseller and pamphleteer in the early 1790s, especially in regard to the abolitionist movement. In somewhat of an odd twist, in 1796 Benjamin Hawes married Ann Feltham (d. 1847), sister of John Feltham, the former fiance of Eliza Gould who is mentioned above. Complete transcriptions with extensive notes of Eliza's letters to Feltham can be found in Timothy Whelan, Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794-1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008).

Others mentioned above include Richard Watson (1737-1816), Bishop of Llandaff, who was frequently involved in political matters in the 1790s, becoming a favorite target of radical reformers like Flower and the cause of his imprisonment in Newgate; and William Grenville (1759-1834), a cousin of William Pitt and M.P. who held various governmental posts in the 1780s.  He consistently supported the war against France and Pitt’s domestic policies, even proposing several bills aimed at restricting freedoms during the mid-1790s (bills vehemently opposed by the reformers), such as the suspension of habeas corpus in 1794 and the Treasonable Practices Bill and the Seditious Meetings Bill in November and December 1795.