Eliza Gould, Three Tuns, Bath, to Benjamin Flower, Mr. Kirby’s, Old Bailey, Newgate Prison, London, Sunday, 6 October 1799.

                                                                     Three Tuns Bath

                                                                     Sunday Octr 6th 99

My dearest Friend

   I would not waste a single line to inform you of the progress of my journey but gratitude demands my respectful mention of the name of a Lady who was my travelling companion from London to Bath—The kind the humane Mrs Bowdler I must ever esteem.

   Soon after I had written my dear Benjn from Newbury I found myself exceedingly ill & with the assistance of Mrs B-s maid servant I went to Bed—the symptoms of my complaint became very alarming.  Mrs B- sent for an apothec­ary, sat up with me herself half the night & no intreaties could prevail on her to leave me for a moment untill she found me comfortable & enclined to sleep—& more, she recommended me to the care of a friend in the neighbourhood in case I should be unfit the next day to travel.  I thought of your remark of “finding favor in the sight &c” & blessed & thankd that gracious providence (which has in an especial manner followed me through life) for enclining the Heart of this kind & most interesting woman—her servant informd me she is the grandaughter  of the late Sir James Cotton & the niece of Lady Denbeigh. The next morning I found myself better & travell’d on with less fatigue than before & to day I find myself in better health & spirits than for many weeks passed.  With what pleasure my dearest Benjamin shall I not recount to you the discoveries I have made by a conference with my kind friend Mr Haskins but you must have patience for I cannot allow myself to give you such a story as I have to relate by halves.   I will take a large sheet to morrow & fill it at my leisure.  All!  yes all is right on that doubtful point, & I am very—very happy—now indeed is my heart light as an unfreighted vessel!

   You have no occasion to write to Feltham.  Mr Haskins will undertake every thing—he warmly congratulates me on my pleasing prospects  you would have been pleased my Benjamin to have witness’d the joy which kindled in his sensible & interesting countenance when to my great surprize (for I did not know that he was already in the secret) he express’d his happiness in the view of mine.  He has acted towards me like a Brother   he must be your friend—you shall first know him & then you cannot refuse him a place in your esteem.  I now feel so much recovered that to morrow I mean to take a folio sheet in hand & practice on the new Lessons you have given me.  I believe you will not find me an untractible pupil—& with all your threatnings of putting me to the torture &c I find I have so much the upper hand of you in some respects that I believe I may not only promise to obey you in all things but also to suffer every thing you can poss­ibly inflict—for by the bye Mr Ben we shall be mutual sufferers—but I will indeed write in an erect posture without the aid of “collar or backboard”—no more apologies will I make to you.  I feel & confess the picture of your remarks, they are frivolous in themselves, & vexatious to you.  

   If Feltham calls Mr Haskins hopes you will not degrade yourself by conversing with him on any subject.  Haskins will write to you shortly   do not be uneasy if I omit to write for one day that I might not mutilate the subject on which I must fully inform you. Haskins will write as my friend to Benjn Hawes—he says he cannot as an honest man & as a friend of mine allow himself to be a silent spectator of so much ill treatment without resenting it—Ben Hawes’s futile answer to my letter provoked him. “I shall most assuredly take the matter up Miss Gould was his remark on finishing Ben H’s letter—you shall find that friend in me   it is an affair in which Mr Flower cannot act—there would be a manifest impropriety in his taking any part in the affair—but I will defend you”—that money matter will be settled in a way most congenial to my feelings but in a way most mortifying to Feltham—Haskins & he are not on any terms of friendship.

   Mr Haskins will remain here this week only   he wishes to introduce me to his friends here.  I have through him received invitations to make the house of a friend of his my home whilst I stay at Bath—he will introduce them to me to day   the weather has been too bad this morning to allow of my hearing Mr Jay which we intended.   The Inn at which I am is as quiet as a private House & we dine with the family & am very comfortable & perhaps had better remain here as long as I stay in Bath—do not address me at Tiverton   perhaps I shall go on from Exeter to Kingsbridge—at present direct as usual—Mr Haskins will write you soon a long letter—write him a long one in return—I wish you knew him—he has promised to come at some future time to Cambridge to visit us.

   Write Miss Gurney or on second thought I think you had better send her this—I have no reserves of any kind to her.   She is the Sister & the friend of my Heart—she must be yours also.  I have not thanked you for the means you have been in communicating to me the greatest pleasure I have experienced since I left you—your parcel of yesterday—which met my eye the moment I enter’d the room & I found myself in conversation with you immediately—it was very kind of you my dearest friend thus to anticipate my wishes. I shall treasure the remembrance of this as well as every other mark of your affection & I shall ever be your faithful friend & affectionate

                                             Eliza Gould

I have not yet calld on Mrs Britton—hope to see her to morrow—will answer your letter of yesterday & to day which (latter I have not received) in my next.

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), pp. 138-40. 

Henrietta Maria Bowdler (1754-1830) was a member of one of Bath’s most prominent literary families. Her mother, Elizabeth Stuart (1717?-97), second daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Cotton, married Thomas Bowdler in 1742 and settled at Ashley, a country estate near Bath.   Henrietta, her sister Jane (1743-84), and brothers John (1746-1823) and Thomas (1754-1825), were all raised in a strictly pious Anglican home, and it would show in their lives and writings. Jane Bowdler gained considerable acclaim for her posthumous publication, Poems and Essays (2 vols., 1786), which went through sixteen editions by 1830. Another work, Practical observations on the Revelations of St. John, written in the year 1775 (Bath, 1800), may have been by Jane, or possibly her mother, Elizabeth. Henrietta authored Sermons on the Doctrines and Duties of Christianity (1804), which went through some forty editions in her lifetime; Hymns on Various Subjects: extracted from the Psalms (1806); Pen Tamar, or, The History of an Old Maid (1830), a posthumous novel; and Essay on the Proper Employment of Time, Talents, Fortune, &c. (1837).  She also edited the popular volume, Fragments in Prose and Verse, by a Young Lady, lately deceased.  With Some Account of her Life and Character (1808), by Elizabeth Smith (1776-1806). Henrietta’s two brothers were also authors. John Bowdler was best known for Reform or Ruin! (1795), which went through eight editions by 1797. Thomas Bowdler may be the most famous of all the siblings, gaining considerable notoriety with his publication of The Family Shakespeare (10 vols., 1818).  Though popular with many readers, Bowdler’s Shakespeare was severely attacked by critics for his prudish censorship of Shakespeare's language, giving rise to the pejorative term “to bowdlerize.” In 1757, Basil, the 6th Earl of Denbigh (1719-1800), married Mary (d. 1782), the third daughter of Sir John Cotton and sister to Henrietta Bowdler’s mother, Elizabeth.

Joseph Haskins was a benefactor for a time of John Feltham but by 1799 Feltham's behaviour gave rise to Haskins disassociating himself with him and becoming, as Eliza's letters reveal, her benefactor instead. Haskins was most likely a Unitarian, for the Presbyterian chapel at Shaugh, where his farm was located, had been introduced to Unitarian doctrines under the ministry of Dr. William Harris (1720-70). Shaugh was situated about four miles north of Honiton in the parish of Luppit (sometimes spelled Luppitt), in the hundred of Axminster in Devon. Shaugh had apparently been the home of Joseph Haskins’s ancestors since the late 1500s.  Around 1794 it appears that Joseph Haskins began living on the Overday farm at Shaugh, most likely having removed from Bath, where Eliza says in a letter to Flower that he had previously lived.  Haskins probably met Feltham through their mutual friend, Richard Northcote of Honiton. Eliza first mentions Haskins in her letter to Feltham of June 1794. Two months later, Haskins’s acquaintance, Tom Poole of Nether Stowey, Somerset, would meet two enthusiastic university students, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, who were propagating the virtues of their communal scheme (Pantisocracy) during a visit to the West Country that August.  Haskins, a “warm democrat” at that time (as Eliza describes him), was intrigued by the duo’s scheme of emigrating to America. He asked Poole in a letter dated 15 September 1794 for more particulars on the proposed plan:  “Your Brother whom I the other day saw at Sherborne informed me of a scheme which some Friends of yours are about putting into execution—that of a migration into America.  As this is an Idea which I have long entertained, I should be much gratified in being favoured with the particulars expecting it—whether (as it seems it is in the plan of forming a new colony) the number of Emigraters are limited or not—what their qualification—what the Ideas in which they proceed takes?” (Poole Correspond­ence, fol.219, ADD. MS. 35344, British Library, London).  Poole responded to Haskins on 22 September 1794, providing the most complete description extant of Coleridge and Southey’s vision of Pantisocracy (see Mrs. Henry Sandford, Thomas Poole and his Friends,  2 vols.  [London:  Macmillan, 1888], 1.96-99). Haskins did not emigrate to America; he maintained his ties with the West Country for many years, serving, along with Tom Poole, as a life-time member of the Bath and West of England Society, for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.

William Jay (1769-1853) was the Independent minister at Bath (1789-1853) for some 60 years. He began preaching as a teenager and became a sensation in London when he preached for Rowland Hill at the Surrey Chapel.  A moderate Calvinist, Jay was an active supporter of the London Missionary Society, the Religious Tract Society, and the British and Foreign Bible Society.  Some of his most widely read works include The Mutual Duties of Husbands and Wives (1801), Morning Exercises in the Closet (1829), Evening Exercises (1831), and several volumes of sermons and hymns.