Eliza Gould, the Gurneys, Walworth, to Benjamin Flower, Mr. Kirby’s, Old Bailey, Newgate Prison, Friday, 20 September 1799.

My dearest Friend

   Since eleven o clock this morning when I thought there was a probability of your having received our friend Miss Gurneys note my mind has been in some degree at rest.  Your letter to me of last even’g & more especially that to Miss [Eliza] Gurney which at my request she reluctantly show’d me considerably agitated my mind.   I found you were unhappy & felt at the same moment how much your present situation was calculated to encrease your anxiety. I expect & with more solicitude than I can describe a letter from you this afternoon—& I assure you feeling as I do on your account—no medicine that could be administered would have so much efficacy as the information that your mind is calm & comfortable.

   I do indeed anxiously wish & desire for strength enough to write you a letter  you have been so very kind to me & I really have not the power to tell you how much I have felt those sincere proofs of your affection—tho in truth I cannot speak my feelings so as to do them justice.

   I find myself every Hour get better—my lungs have less soreness—& I breathe with less difficulty.  I plann’d in my own mind to see you on Sunday—but on getting up to day I find I have lost more bodily strength than I can possibly recover by Sunday so as to render my going out a prudent step.

   Miss Gurney will write in the morning.  I hope if I can to fill a sheet myself to morrow—adieu & believe me your very affectionate

                                 Eliza Gould

Friday afternoon

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. 118-19.