Eliza Gould at Dodbrook to Benjamin Flower at Cambridge, Monday evening, 18 November 1799.

                                                                 Dodbrook Novr 18 1799

My dear Benjamin

   From our Friend Miss Gurney I have just received a Letter which has had on me almost an electrical influence tho on examining all circumstances I still think a mistake must lay somewhere because I have a letter from you written on the same day you meant to write her which so far from hinting any thing of the kind rather plans my return from Devonshire according to our original intention—I will copy a few lines from her letter—“Once more only my friend I suppose may I venture to address you as Eliza Gould for from a note I received yesterday evening from my father (she writes from Ponders end) I find I have more claim to the character of a prophetess than you have.  Mr Flower is really going to take this very long journey which you deemed it so impossible for him to leave his business long enough to accomplish.  I wish him a safe and a pleasant journey pleasant I have no doubt it will be in one respect for the anticipation of may I not say the promised reward of his persevering attention will beguile the tediousness of the road.  You see I take it for granted that as he is to bring you up you return as his Bride.”  Now what my dearest Love am I to infer from this letter the whole drift of which is to prepare my mind for the very important & solemn event—is it your wish & intention to fetch me from Devonshire & have you taken this delicate method of preparing me for a letter on the subject from you—I am almost afraid to say how happy such a plan would make me lest you should subject your self to inconvenience. I would by no means wish you to leave your business (and such a business is yours that you can scarcely with safety leave to another) without an assurance that you could find a friend in whom you could confide to select your articles of intelligence and write your paragraphs for one paper.  You will (I cannot help discovering it) see something like an anxious wish to have you for a companion in any journey tho I never would have hinted such a wish had not the subject been already started & in spite of various contradict­ions for which I am unable to account I am at times enclined to think that you really intend to take your wife from Dodbrook.

   How ill does this style of writing—this sang froid way in which I have express’d myself—convey to you the feelings of my mind in the near view of the most solemn event of my Life. When I reflect on the past—from the time when by the misfortune of my father I was left without a home & at that instant I thought almost without an earthly friend.  When I view the hand of providence leading me on from difficulty to difficulty & strengthening my mind by every trial wherewith it pleased him to exercise me the scene for years ever varying—but my confidence the same that my Heavenly Father was an unchangeable God—& my everlasting Friend my mind is forcibly struck & often if I may so express myself the faculties of my soul are as it were absorbed when reflecting on the continuation of Providence which has marked my whole life—& more especially in the escape from the certain misery to which I should have been doomed in a connection with Feltham—& now my prospects brightening before me—my warmest hopes realised in as much as the partner of my life—the friend of my bosom has tasted with me that the Lord is gracious.   Surely (& with ecstacy I repeat it) goodness & mercy hath followed me all the days of my life.

   I am invited to dine in the country to day—a Farmer who lives a few miles out of Town—has promised to send Horses for us—I shall expect a letter from you to morrow—but perhaps shall get it in time to reply—I will leave the space below—& if I do not return to Dodbrook again this evening I will leave word that this letter might be sealed & forwarded to morrow & if it requires an immediate answer I will write by next post.

   My health mends daily  I encrease in strength & spirits & eat my food with a better appetite.  I have still those blushings which are occasioned by weakness but I am indeed a great deal better—nothing fatigues me so much as writing—but even in this respect I improve—my affectionate regards to Miss Jennings—adieu my dearest Love

                                 I am your affectionate

                                             Eliza Gould

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. 195-97.