Benjamin Flower at Cambridge to Eliza Flower at Robert Aspland’s, Newport, Isle of Wight, Tuesday, 13 December 1803.

Cambridge Dec 13.  1803—

My Dear Love

   I am obliged to argue about my letters as I sometimes do about my Remittances to Conder; which he frequently forgets to acknowledge the receipt of; but which I pretty well know if he had not received I should have heard of it with a witness.  So in the present instance you do not say one word of receiving the letter I directed for you at Mr Scotts; but I know you would have been so uneasy had you not received one, that I should have heard of it.  My last to you, directed as this will be, was of the 10th & 11th. Instant, since which I have been very poorly.  My cold encreased yesterday & attacked me in all ways so violently, that I scarcely ever remember a similar one.  I therefore set most seriously to work to nurse myself: after eating a potato only, for supper; I ordered a bason of whey; previous to my taking it, I took Robberd’s drops agreeably to the directions; and made Ann envelope my head with flannel; my nose &c I likewise greased away till it quite shone again; I fear indeed I rather overdid the matter; for whether the Drops and the Whey could not agree, or what was the cause, but first before I got into bed, I was seized with a sickness which got rid I believe of every drop of the whey.  During the night I perspired and expectorated much; and found myself better this morning; I have however kept at home all day, and will not leave off nursing myself till I am quite recovered.  I did not think of writing again till Thursday; but fearing you may imagine me worse than I really am, I will give you a line or two by next post.

   Our Dear Eliza is in every respect as well as when I wrote last; she went out yesterday, but to day the weather has been so unfavourable, wet & foggy, that home was the best place for her.  Her want of a walk, did not however take away her appetite; she ate the whole of the apple of one of my dumplings, with a due quantity of bread; this was not sufficient; so she had a bit of the breast of a Turkey (a very nice turkey it proved) which with bread & a little gravy she relished much.  After dinner she begged so hard for a little of my warm wine & water that I could not find the heart to refuse her.  Remembering your injunctions I made it very weak, but really she seemed by her enjoying it to have no doubt of the truth of the maxim—Good eating requires good drinking. We afterwards had a long gossip together; she articulated a great many friends and wanted sadly to tell me more than she was able, played for some time with your letter.   She continued very merry, without any inclination to sleep till after tea time. 

   I had forestalled nearly all your ideas respecting the advertisement, to which I prefixed the Title—Robinson’s Works—Genuine Edition.  Then “B.  Flower Cambridge respectfully informs &c.”—Then comes the N.B. “The public are cautioned &c.” Altho’ I have not mentioned Edwards’s name yet I have alluded to the incorrect sermons.  I have sent up one for the Theoll and one for the Evang Mage. I have likewise sent up a notice for Conder to get in Phillips’s list in the Monthly Mag. The new proposals will be finished this week, but I think they had better not be circulated till nearly the time of publishing the Mages, lest Edwards should try and get some Counter Adt: but I really think I shall cut him up pretty well.  I am resolved to write to every bookseller mentioned in his title page.  I have written to Conder about the number of Watts’s Lyrics; but I think we had better say nothing about them in an Adt.  The Miscells Thoughts I will farther think of.

   I have read to Ann all your messages, and we will take care and have things as you wish.  Yesterday and to day the weather tho’ rather mild has been foggy and rainy.  I hope you will have a little clear fine weather whilst you are on the Island: and that by the time you receive this you will have seen Standon; I long, not so much for minutiae, as for your opinion about [these] matters.  I have spent one evening [and] drank Tea at Randalls, who particularly inquired after you, and desired to be kindly remembered. Mrs R- wanted my Turkey; as she thought with the Ducks & Geese we should have more than we should know what to do with; but I told her, we had not more than sufficient for the week; Greene pressed me to drink tea yesterday, which I did, but my cold was so troublesome that I declined staying the evening; and was glad to get home.

   Your letters have kept up my spirits very well, as the accounts of your health, your seeping cold & fatigue; were so much better not only than what I feared but even expected.  The perfect health of our dear Girl—both my Girls well!  I can never be low spirited.  Farewell my Dear Love.  You will not fail to write on Friday (I hope your Thursday’s letter is written before you receive this) because you will recollect there is no Post on Saturday.  Remember me respectfully to Mr & Mrs A- and all friends who were so kind to me when at Newport, and who I doubt not are encreasing our obligations by their kindness to you.

                                 Ever your own

                                             B Flower

P.S. If Mr Aspland saw so much of Burke in Mr Halls former Sermon, I think he will see still more of him in his new one—What a ridiculous puff of Wilberforce’s book! Just 8 o’clock.  I assure you I find the good effects of staying at home to day.  I continue mending.  Indeed I am comfortable compared to what I was last night.

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. 280-84 (a more annotated text than that which appears on this site). 

References above include The Theological Magazine and Review, which first appeared in January 1803. It was operated by the Committee of Evangelical Dissenting Ministers, with the proceeds of the magazine designed for “charitable uses,” according to an advertisement in the London Times on 20 November 1802. Thomas Conder was one of its chief London distributors.  The Evangelical Magazine, published in London between 1793 and 1813 by Calvinist Dissenters, placed great emphasis upon chronicling the work of the newly formed Baptist Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society.  The name was changed in 1814 to the Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle. The Monthly Magazine (1796-1843) was originally published by Richard Phillips from his shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Another reference is to Watts’s Horæ lyrice: poems, chiefly of the lyric kind, in three books: sacred:  I. To devotion and piety, II. To virtue, honour, and friendship, III. To the memory of the dead.

The controversy Flower is describing above originated with the publication by a London printer, Richard Edwards, of Robert Robinson’s Sermons, Preached on particular occasions: to which are added, three original discourses, taken in short-hand, and a funeral oration, delivered at the interment of Mrs. S. Birley (1804); John Greene (d. 1844), a shop man and linen draper, was a member at St. Andrew’s Street who later published Reminiscences of the Rev. Robert Hall, A. M.  late of Bristol, and sketches of his sermons preached at Cambridge prior to 1806 (1832); Robert Aspland at the Isle of Wight; William Wilberforce, whose popular book, A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country contrasted with Real Christianity, appeared in 1797.