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: 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. 118-19.