Eliza Flower at Cambridge to Benjamin Flower c/o Mesr Crosby & Co, Stat­ioners Court, London, Sunday, 29 November 1801.

My dear Love

     To day has not passed comfortably at all because I have not heard from you; and from your well known punctuality I am quite at a loss to conjecture how I am disappointed.   To morrow I cannot hear from you.  Heaven grant that you might have reached Town in safety, & be safely returned to me on Wednesday morning.  I am a poor creature without your Society.

         Yesterday was a day replete with fatigue & vexation—the Men plagued me by their blundering in the catalogue & not correcting their proofs & I had a good deal of trouble in arranging the books which were taken to Priors about 10 oclock at night, but I was quite poorly all day & out of spirits besides, & this will in part account for the fatigue I experienced.  In the evening a cold which I caught I cannot tell how, came on as rapidly as yours last week, so that when I got to bed I could scarcely breathe or speak; but you must not be alarmed any dear love, for I have had recourse to my old recipe & pursued the nursing system in true style, & to day (from being so attack’d at all points) I find my old adversary retreating, you may depend upon it.  I shall give him no quarter, but what he can find in a bason of whey and a warm’d bed,—I did not get up to day till after two oclock—I hope my dear Benjamin has not encreased his cold tho I much fear he has.  One capital omission I made when I forgot to put up your flannel cap as perhaps it is an article, which your friends cannot supply you with.

         Nothing particular has occur’d since you left home.  Yesterday’s post brought with one letter an order for a paper—and this mornings 3— Fourdriniers—2 long advertisements from Hogg—& a short one from Leicestershire.  2 papers have been returned from Mr Browne which were continued in mistake to Mr Taylor of Plymouth, but we did not over print the last week, as those are all that are left  the morning post did not come to day, there were some long remarks yesterday & very curious speculations, respecting a new ministerial arrangement in which Fox is to make the conspicuous figure of first Secretary of state, & Tierney is spoken of as our future chancellor of the Exchequer  Mr Grey is to fill some important post also.  Addington is to be made a peer & Lord Hobart to succeed the Marquis of Wellesley in India.   In consequence of these arrangements it is supposed that Sir Fs Burdetts motion is postponed, & some think given up altogether,—but I am wasting time by telling my Benjamin what perhaps he already knows & I shall have him make the “retort Courteous”—“Queen Anne is dead!” however the only paper that I have seen which has speculated on this important subject is the Post—they promised other remarks of the same kind.  I hope they were not in yesterdays paper as I should be sorry to lose their sentiments on the subject—surely Charles Fox & Mr Grey would never disgrace themselves by coalescesing with any of the present administration  without first stipulating for a return of the long lost rights and privileges of the people of Britain; if they do, they will, & deservedly, render their names infamous to the latest posterity—but I will hope better things of them.  Indeed if they procure for us a radical reform of abuses I shall consider the present ministry as joining them—& yielding to their principles; the Junto is in some measure broken up by the succession of Grenville & Windham & if the present men bend to the popular measures which a Fox and a Grey might, from their well known principles be supposed to adopt, liberty will again erect her standard.  I am sorry I did not see your order to Mr Crosby [in] time enough to send it with the pamphlets—but it will make no difference as this letter will find you there—& you can give the order yourself—we are almost out of Moores almanacks & Cambridge with Counties adjoining we shall want also some gold [illegible] saved—you will remember & mention the mistake in last account.

     Were you not to order Fullers sermons—cannot you call at Mr Kirby, if you do remind them of their promised engagements.  Mary sends her kind love she has been seeing spectres according to custom.  I sent a bill to Mr Crosby with the pamphlets—you will not forget my respects to your Mother.  I shall expect as long a letter as you can afford time to write me Tuesday morning, & I depend on your return according to appointments if possible.  I am better tonight than I could expect & much better since I began writing to you—pray be careful to tye your pocket handk’f round your head in the coach lest the night air should increase your cold which I fear London has too much encreased already—you will remember me affectionately to all friends as tho named

                                       Your most faithfully & affectionately

                                                   Eliza Flower

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. 250-53 (a more annotated text than that which appears on this site). 

Thomas Prior was an auctioneer in Cambridge (CI 21 February 1801).  Two other Priors, John and William, lived in Cambridge as well and were both members at St. Andrews’s Street (Church Book: St. Andrew’s Street 156); Alexander Hogg was a London bookseller in Paternoster Row; William Browne was a bookseller and stationer in Bristol (UBD 2.137); Charles James Fox (1749-1806) entered Parliament in 1768 and became endeared to Dissenters by his support of the bills for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (1787, 1788, and 1790), as well as his support of Wilberforce’s proposals to end the slave trade; George Tierney (1761-1830) was a controversial Whig politician and MP for Southwark; Charles Grey (1765-1845) entered Parliament in 1786 and became one of the Dissenters’ chief Parliamentary voices throughout his long career in politics;  Henry Addington (1757-1844) entered Parliament in 1784 and was an ardent supporter of Pitt, serving as Prime Minister between 1802 and 1804; Robert Hobart, fourth Earl of Buckinghamshire (1760-1816), held governmental posts in Ireland and India before being appointed Secretary of State for the Colonial and War Department in the Addington administration; Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1844), entered Parliament for Boroughbridge, near Newcastle, and soon joined the Constitutional Association for Promoting a Reform in Parliament; William Windham (1750-1810) entered Parliament in 1784 for Norwich and between 1794 and 1801 served as Secretary of War; Benjamin Crosby was a bookseller in Stationer’s Alley and Paternoster Row between 1787 and 1808, publishing many works by political reformers and joining with Henry Delahay Symonds (1741-1816) in 1803 to form Crosby and Co, of which he remained a partner until 1812; a final reference above may be to Andrew Fuller’s Three Occasional Sermons, to which are added Two Letters.