Eliza Gould at Dodbrook to Benjamin Flower at Cambridge, Wednesday, 13 November 1799.

                                         Dodbrook

Wednesday Novr 13. 1799

   Indeed my dearest Love we must now rejoice together and bless in a peculiar manner the goodness of our Heavenly Father our Benefactor our Friend—already do I feel the reviving glow of health my strength daily returns and my spirits have in some degree recovered their accustomed vigor—never at any former period of my life do I recollect to have felt so much of the influence of fervent & pious gratitude operating on my mind as under the present dispensation.

   With the gloomy prospect which bounded all my views in this world time has been when I should have felt but little anxiety for the recovery of a constitution so often worn down by affliction nay by the most poignant distress.  I will when I am better—indeed I cannot refrain from giving you a short outline of my History commencing at the eighteenth year of my age to which the statement of Facts respecting Feltham will serve as an appendix[1]—but I am now tranquil and gaining strength daily & as yet for your sake & my own I will do nothing that might in any wise retard that complete recovery which we both so ardently desire.  How differently now are my views of things.  Tho I trust I have endeavoured to cultivate a resignation of mind to the will of Heaven—yet with so fair a view of Felicity before me I have felt a desire—perhaps a too anxious desire to enjoy in this life the apparent happiness that awaited me neither has selfishness predominated for I have speculated highly on the happiness you have so warmly anticipated & often does my imagination lend its aid to my heart in devising schemes, in the execution of which, your pleasure & your joy might be augmented.

   When I again & again read your letters then I feel how imperfectly my feelings are expressed in mine but the more I know of you the more I am convinced of the strong affinity of soul by which we are united & tho my language is inadequate to convey or I would rather say to express my feelings I anticipate with a high degree of pleasure that the day will shortly arrive which will unite us for ever give us to enjoy the sweet intercourse of social Friendship—“& in one Fate our Hearts our Fortunes & our Beings blend.”[2]

   I will in order that as you say we might lose no time return to Walworth as soon as possible. I know by my own anxieties exactly the complexion of ours & I am not believe me enclined to make either you or myself uncomfortable—it was my intention to have left Dodbrook if possible next week my Mother & Father loudly protest against such a measure & insist on my staying a fortnight from this time in order in the first place that my health might be fully confirmed & in the next that they might enjoy my company a little longer indeed till now their whole pleasure has consisted in nursing & paying tender attention to an invalid.  However my father considering himself as under promise to his son in law else will not act without his concurrence.  I allude to a promise my father made to you of not keeping me a day longer in Devonshire than was agreeable.  I am quite passive in the matter—I mean till the expiration of a fortnight & then neither wind nor weather shall hinder me from entering on my journey, —respecting the disposal of my very important self during the intervening period my father & my Benjamin must determine.  I will not take Tiverton in my return but go immediately on from Exeter to Wellington this will both save me ground & time—then from Wellington to Bath where I must stay 2 or 3 days being under promises to do.  I shall if I am able take the Mail from Bath to London or the 2 day coach in case I am not strong enough to bear the fatigue of travelling in the Mail—at any rate I fully intend returning in time to satisfy the surrogate (3 weeks residence will do this)[3] & to tye with you the gordian knot either on the day which closes this century or that which commences another—I know of no circumstance so soon as that but illness.  In one of your letters you mention my going down to Cambridge on my return.  If we are to settle for a while with Miss Jennings I do not see the necessity of so doing—unless your house is in repair to admit of your going into immediately on our marriage[4] I could for one reason wish this might be the case as I should be happy to have Miss Gurney with me for a little while—indeed we had so planned it I should be very happy to pass the winter with Miss Jennings & will in the affair be entirely guided by you.  I know not whether such a plan might not be the most comfortable & as my health is yet in a delicate state the most prudent for I do not yet think myself equal to the bustle of furnishing a House—or would it perhaps be advisable to go to sales &c at so unpleasant a season of the year—we can purchase our Linen & Beds in London & getting things forward in that way would employ me during the winter.  I am going out shall expect a long letter from you on my return in the evening—do not send my trumpery letters to London.  I have written to Miss Hawes—& shall soon write my dear Mamma Gurney.  We must be married at Walworth & Mr Gurney will present you with your “arm full of gold”—that was a neat compliment of Thellwalls[5]—adieu my dearest Benjamin  

                                 I am unalterably your own

                                             Eliza Gould

kind love to Miss Jennings

My father [&] Mother send you their Blessing—be sure & be a good Boy—no no   we desire to [be] affectionately remembered

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. 191-93.

As a result of Lord Hardwicke’s “Act for the Better Preventing of Clandestine Marriages” (1753), Eliza and Benjamin, even though they were Dissenters, could be legally married only by an Anglican priest after thrice-called banns, which generally required a four-week residence by at least one of the marriage partners in the parish where the wedding was to take place (Gillis 140-41). The Flowers would remain for several months with Mrs. Jennings. On 31 May 1800, Flower announced in the Intelligencer that he had recently entered into his new house in Bridge Street, near Trinity Church, from which he would continue to operate his business as a printer, bookseller, and stationer, selling medicines as well (CI 31 May 1800).  He had moved in sometime in April, for he had his new house licensed as a place of religious worship on 20 April 1800 (Church Book: St. Andrew’s Street 148).

John Thelwall (1764-1834) was a popular figure among the proponents of constitutional reform in the early and mid-1790s.  His radical views caused the followers of Pitt to label him a Jacobin, eventually charging him, along with Thomas Hardy, Horn Tooke, and several others, with treason in May 1794. He was acquitted in December 1794, and turned to lecturing in the provinces, eventually retiring to a farm in Brecon, Wales, in 1798.