Eliza Gould, Wellington, to Benjamin Flower, Mr. Kirby’s, Old Bailey, Newgate Prison, London, Tuesday, 15 October 1799.

                                                         Wellington   Octr 15. 1799

My dearest Friend

   Amidst the congratulations of friendship which will the day you receive this meet your ear, your imagination will often recur to what the sensations must be of your best friend—your affectionate Eliza—your Cambridge friends will also hail your return.   Forget not that I am a partaker of general joy.

   Your first letter from Bath distressd me exceedingly—the last I received to day, and am more satisfied & the accounts I can now send of my health are good in the superlative degree—my disorder has entirely left me—that is I have no inflammation on my lungs & but a trifling degree of fever (comparatively speaking) I tell you exactly how I am—a little exertion I now find fatiguing & no wonder for I have not yet recovered the effects of my journey & of the exercise I took at Bath.  I now sleep soundly for a whole night together with but very little fever & without experiencing any of those excessive perspirations by which my constitut­ion was so much debilitated—the Gentn whom I consulted at Bristol thought me in a fair way of soon recovering my health & gave me full directions in what manner to act in case of a return of any complaint—I shall not be myself until I reach Dodbrook then & not till then my dear Benjn can I talk to you as I wish.  I am now subject to much interruption I cannot do as I would—cannot bid my friends hold their tongue when they talk to me—cannot without being thought rude & unmannerly retire & shut myself up for an hour or two much as I wish to do it—you will not be uneasy should I be prevented from writing to morr­ow—my present intention is to go to Exeter on Thursday thence to Totness on Friday to be with my parents on Saturday—Saturday write a line from Exeter & direct to Cambridge where I take for granted you purpose being on Saturday—you said you had much to say about that “important personage yourself”—you cannot say anything my dear Benjamin on that subject that will not be important to me so take a larger sheet of paper when you write again & tell me of all that has happen’d to you since we parted—enter a little into minutiae of interesting conversation.  I have many questions to ask, much to enquire into—set your imagination at work & anticipate me—I have also much to inform you of one sort and another—& I shall stick close to a folio when I am quiet at Dodbrook—you will see my Walworth friends on Friday—inform them with my kind regards of the contents of this  I will write them from Dodbrook when you return to Cambridge give my love to Miss Jennings.

   When you write say how you are pleased with the profiles.

   I am my dearest friend your ever affectionate

                                 Eliza Gould

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), p. 156.