Eliza Gould at the Gurneys, Walworth, to Benjamin Flower at Mr. Kirby’s, Old Bailey, Newgate Prison, Saturday, 21 September 1799.

My dearest Friend

   I have been down stairs for several hours and feel myself much better—& much less fatigued than yesterday when I sat up that is alternately resting myself by lying down on the sopha  from one o clock till eight   to day I have ate as good a dinner as any Invalid like me ought to eat & feel myself considerably strengthened   I will my dear Ben implicitly follow your directions—& talk but little—tho I have found it injure me less to day than before.  Mr Saumerez cautioned me on this subject from the first by saying that my lungs were in such a state of inflammation that the exercise of my voice was like applying a caustic to a sore.

   My breathing now is free from all the straitness & difficulty of which I complain’d   my lungs are still sore tho in a trifling degree & tho I gain strength every [day] am still too weak to go up & down stairs without help, taking a great deal of time to accomplish so long a journey—but I hope I shall now from being   allowed to eat animal food soon gain my thoughts & see you about the middle of next week—you are not beforehand with me in any pleasing anticipations you might have form’d on the subject—do not forget this scrawl is from the hand of an invalid—& that you have the whole heart & affection

                                 of your Eliza

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Politics, Religion, and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould, 1794-1808 (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2008), p. 120.