Benjamin Flower, Newgate, to Eliza Gould, Mr. Gurney’s, Keene’s Row, Walworth, Friday, 27 September 1799.

                                                         Newgate Sep. 28.  1799

                                                                     Friday 1 o’clock

My Dear Eliza

   You and your Nurse and Secretary, will do me the justice to say—that I do not suffer my affection to get the better of prudence.  I really was under some anxiety to get rid of you on Wednesday Evening, which anxiety was not removed till I received Miss G—’s note of Yesterday Morning, which contained quite as fav­ourable an account as I expected.   This morning’s note which I have just received, shows that my fears were not groundless.  I am rejoiced however to find, that the cold which I think with Mr S— you caught, was so very slight, and that you are so much better.  Yesterday was a sad day, the last of the kind I hope we shall have for some time.  I am glad you did not stir out.  To day the weather is so fine, that I am persuaded you are taking, and will find the benefit of an airing.  If to morrow it should be equally fine, I shall expect you, and altho’ no medical man, I should imagine, the earlier you can take the morning sun and the morning air, the better.  I can answer for it, that you shall take no cold in my room, and we will guard against the accident which affected you, tho’ happily in so slight a degree on Wednesday.  If you have not written to Mrs S— of Bedford, will you be so good as to defer writing a post or two. I will tell you my reason when I see you.  

   I know not what you will say to one of my paragraphs which you will see in my paper of to morrow.  You will have no fear on a political account.  But (I cry your mercy) I have given almost your whole sex, and I fear you are not  excluded, a trimming hint, for which I suppose you will trim me; but I will excuse you, (if I find you want an excuse) on the score of not having thought so much, or so earnestly, on the subject I have alluded to, as you have on every other. Now I suppose I have raised female curiosity a little.  Well, it must remain till to morrow before it can be gratified.  As I shall have the paper as soon as you, do not wait to see it at Walworth.

   Considering that water gruel has been my only evening’s (bodily) repast of late, and that my mind has so long subsisted on “Trash”—alias the notes and letters of a poor weak minded female, “who cannot connect two Ideas together!” I am as well, and as resigned to my fate, as can be expected.  For shame Eliza!   Were I to accompany you into Devonshire, I should almost be inclined to ask your mother whether she never corrected you in your days of childhood for storytelling!  I gave a morsel of the “trash,” to my literary friend Mr Lindsey on Wednesday. He is one the best epistolary writers I know, I mean of my own sex.  He made shift to swallow it down without one wry face, or making one remark which I was in the least displeased to hear. 

   Mr Scott breakfasted with me this morning.  Miss Hawes had half a mind to accompany him, but did not.  Our Conversation turned certainly on the state of religion as it now appears in the world.

   I have just received letters from Mr E. Fordham of Royston, and from my Brother Richard.  The contents of that from the latter will serve us for Conversation to morrow.  Both desire to be remembered to you.

   I should have been happy in a note, and altho’ you have had nothing but “Trash” to offer me, heaven is witness to the sincerity of the declaration, that no banquet of a literary nature ever afforded my mind such intellectual luxury, as you have provided for it during this fortnight past   Farewell my dearest Eliza, and believe me

                     Your Most sincere & ever affectionate

                                 B. Flower

I thought to send this by Mr  [either Joseph or John] Gurney, but believe I am too late.

Text: 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. 130-32. The letter was postmarked 4 o’clock, 27 September. Flower obviously misdated the letter. 

References above are to Eliza's London doctor, Richard Saumarez; and to Mrs. William Smith of Bedford.  Mr. Smith was for many years a deacon at the Old (Independent) Meeting in Bedford, where Eliza often worshiped during her year in Kempston with the Squires.   In January 1799, Smith left the church and joined the 3rd Meeting, where the Rev. Thomas Smith, most likely his relation, had previously pastored during the mid-1790s (and where he would return in October 1800). Mrs. Smith assisted her husband in a printing/bookselling business in Bedford, selling several of Flower’s publications and those of his friends, such as George Dyer’s Complaints of the poor people of England (1793).  She may have served as Flower’s distributor for his paper in Bedford in 1799. Mrs. Smith also conducted a school in Bedford. Among her students in 1796-97 were the children of Timothy Thomas, minister of the Baptist church at Devonshire Square, London. See G. B. Harrison, ed., The Church Book of Bunyan Meeting 1650-1821 [facsimile] (London: J. M. Dent, 1928), fol. 239; H. G. Tibbutt, Mill Street Baptist Church, Bedford, 1792-1963 (Bedford: The Foundry  Press, 1964), 3; Cambridge Intelligencer, 2 November 1793, 11 January 1800, and 18 June 1803; Baptist Annual Register, vol. 3, p. 326.  

Accepting William Fox’s admonition in An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the Consumption of West-India Produce (1791), a pamphlet sold by Martha Gurney, Flower had long advocated abstaining from West Indian sugar, convinced that such a boycott would effect an end to the slave trade. On 28 September 1799, he argued in his editorial in the Cambridge Intelligencer (written from Newgate Prison) that the women of England were the key factor in this boycott: “We again appeal to those, whose influence in society can effect any thing they wish to accomplish—the ladies who preside at our tea-tables.  We hear much in the present day of refined sensibility. Is this exalted virtue to be met with in novels only?  We may on this subject be called enthusiasts, but we are, when pleading the grand cause of humanity, regardless of the application of any term, however opprobrious:—As to our West India merchants, planters, and slave dealers,-who have long been fattening, and who steeled to every feeling of justice and humanity, are resolved if possible to continue to fatten on the slavery, the tears, and the blood of their fellow creatures—We hope their distresses will bring on a sense of justice and of humanity.”

Elias Fordham was Richard Flower’s brother-in-law. Hannah Lindsey was the wife of Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808), a prominent Unitarian minister and political reformer. She mentions this visit in a letter to her brother, the Rev. Francis Blackburne, on 30 September 1799:  “He [Lindsey] is just gone to Newgate to talk with M.r Flower about y.r business, with whom he left y.r letter a few days ago, & the result I shall inform you of at his return” (Cambridge University Library, ADD. MS. 7886, fol. 137). On 11 May 1799, she informed her brother of Flower’s arrival at Newgate the week before:

You will be sorry for Ben Flower tho’ he was often so violent in his article of remarks: his punishment is very arbitrary, and excessive; the business taken up, as is believed without even the privity of the Bishop, and to disgrace, rather than favor him.  To put a stop to the Paper was the main object, but that will not be accomplished immediately, tho’ it will be attended with increased expence & difficulty.  He is well lodged in Newgate, & in good spirits: His brother [William] has been to see him, who on account of their different politics, has been hostile: How easy it wd be for his rich Uncle, worth [£]600000 Mr Fuller a banker & near 90 years old, to remove all pecuniary inconveniences by the gift of but 1000: This same man to avoid paying so much to the 10 pr Cent tax, has by a deed of gift vested 18000 for charitable uses.

      The prisoners in the Kings Bench, Mr W[akefield]: especially is reconciling himself to his fate, whatever be the length of his confinement: men who have a true religious principle upon any system bear suffering the best: Messr Johnson, & Flower, can all look to the Maker for support & comfort.  Neither are they without the kind attentions of many worthy friends.  (Cambridge University Library, ADD. MS. 7886, fol. 136)