Eliza Gould at Sherford, near Dodbrook, to Benjamin Flower at Cambridge, Friday, 8 November 1799.

                                                         Sherford

Friday Novr 8 1799

My dear Benjamin

   I shall feel anxious untill this letter reaches you because the information it will contain will be such as to give you pleasure.  I am better than when I left Dodbrook—my strength is encreased & I feel it every day encreasing—my spirits are better & my appetite in some degree returned.  Those successive returns of fever which weakened me so much are entirely removed never I trust to return  my sleep is more sound & refreshing than it used to be indeed I sleep well in proportion as I am enabled to take the advantage of air & exercise during the day—tho I am still so weak & relaxed as to feel tired by using but very little exercise that is what I should have called little 6 months ago—walking is much more fatiguing to me than riding on Horseback. I have walked a mile to day—heretofore I have walked ten with less fatigue & with less resting by the way—your letter of Novr the 2nd I have again read—indeed to read & reread your affectionate letters is a solace to my mind & constitutes one of the chief pleasures of my life—the perusing of this letter makes me again bitterly regret my ever removing at such a distance from you & again I resolve that when it shall please my heavenly father (tho to his will I would bow submissively) to restore me to health or but to the enjoyment of a tolerable share of that blessing that I will immediately return to you for I do believe that the anxiety of mind I now experience contributes in a great measure to disorder me.

   The consequence of my procrastination you say you sensibly feel—but my dearest Love I have never procrastinated a moment that my health would allow me to devote to you.  In the letter to which you allude I was glad to say the post hurried me to close at least in one sense I was glad because the writing of 2 pages only has made me more weak & weary than I can describe to you.  I cannot write you my dearest love such letters as my heart would dictate—& surely Benjamin the reflection of a moment will tell you that the deprivation of such a pleasure is tryal enough  do not my beloved add to it by charging me (as in effect you have) with negligence.  You say in your speaking of Betsey Gurney’s letter “I shall begin answering it in the course of to day—& not leave it till to morrow lest I should disappoint her too”—I know your earnestness proceeds from the warmth of your affections—but you must not again add to my uneasiness by thinking me negligent—indeed my Love you must not—adieu for the present.

   Your Letter of the fifth has just reached me—I will, I assure you I will, leave Devon the moment I am able—am just returned with recruited strength from an airing on Horseback.   I mind every day but the anxiety of mind with which you write is a great drawback on my recovering health—for your own sake for my sake endeavour to possess yourself.  Have we not a Father in Heaven “Whose promises are all Yea & Amen”—Yes a Father a Friend—the chastening of whose hand you have in time passed had reason to bless, & have not I also in a thousand instances seen great deliverances wrought out for me & shall I not to the latest period of my life, yea through the countless ages of Eternity praise him for the severest of his dispensations as a God of providence inasmuch as thro great afflictions I have been led to view him & to rely upon him as a God of Grace.

   I shall my dearest Love anxiously expect a letter from you to day when I get to Dodbrook.  I will write every day & as long a letter as I can.  I shall not return thro Tiverton. If I do it will detain me 2 day’s as the coach runs but 3 times a week—my hand shakes from the exercise I have taken to day but I assure you I am much better & hope to leave Dodbrook in the course of 10 or 12 days & to be enabled to write you a long letter in a post or two.

   Have heard from Mr Haskins by yesterdays post enclosing a d[ra]ft for 50 pounds.  I am anxious to inform you of the result of that affair but do not attribute my short letters to negligence.

   Sherford is 4 miles from Dodbrook.  I shall go in after dinner to

   I am now summoned by my kind Host & Hostess.  I ought to have had your last letter yesterday evening but as [there] will be time to put the letter in the Post Office as soon perhaps as [we] get in—I only have time to acknowledge the receipt of your next.  Adieu my dearest Love

                       I am your affectionate

                                   Eliza Gould

Sherford

Saturday  2 oclock

I have your last letter.

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. 185-86.