Eliza Flower at the Gurneys, Walworth, to Benjamin Flower, Cambridge, Friday, 10 December 1802.

                                                                     Walworth Decr 10

My dear Benjamin

   I can say of your sermon of to day as a country friend has so often remarked on another occasion that you “did it well” —you have stood on the very ground on which I could wish you to stand & your allusion to Cobbets Miscellany pleased me much.  I am also very glad you seized so opportune a moment to fix the period for giving up your paper—because you speak your feelings when you say that Fox’s conduct has fully determined you & glad shall I be when the time arrives not only for resigning that very troublesome concern your newspap­er but for leaving also a place so truly detestable as Cambridge.  Providence who has ordered all our past concerns so well will I trust direct us in every future undertaking  indeed I experience much tranquility of mind—much confidence in wisdom & goodness of an infinite Being & trust my love we shall both be led to feel a corresponding degree of gratitude which may influence us to devote ourselves to our God in such a manner as may be most pleasing in his sight.

   My cold is somewhat better to day tho I am but just down stairs & it is now nearly four oclock.  Mr Addington saw me yesterday & wish[ed] me to nurse & take care of myself so that a cough might be avoided which in my situation he said would be a very unpleasant circumstance & the effects of a cough would be painful.  I took some medicine as a preventative last night & at present I have less inclination to cough than [I] have heretofore had with so bad a cold in my head however my dear Benjamin will rest assured that our friends take good care of myself as the best means of expediting my return.

   I hope you continue free from cold & from any bad effects which your sitting up so lately was calculated to produce.  However I will pardon you for transgressing a little on such an occasion provided you go to be[d] early to night so that your exercise to morrow might not so fatigue as to prevent your enjoying the relaxation of writing your dear Eliza long letters at night.  I hope Mary is better & am pleased that she likes her gown she will not have it made till I return—you will send the accounts that Mr Lee was to settle & Mary will endeavour to send me in the basket a clean pair of drawers—you do not mention dick pray tell how he does—send something in the basket that is worth sending whatever it is let it be good of its kind.   Mrs Gurney bought a very fine couple of fowls yesterday the largest I ever saw for six shillings if you have not provided yourself to your mind you had better defer the Basket till Tuesday.  [Mary] will remember what I desired her to send in my last letter—I wish she would carry Miss Freeman directly the 7s which the Gentm gave her as I fear she is in much distress pray remember this—the whole family join in kind regards.  I am & ever shall be faithfully & affectionately my dear Benjamin

                                                            Eliza Flower

P.S.

Kind love to Mary beg she will have a pair of pattens or clog & not walk out without them—you will pay for the carriage of the basket & say to be left at The Four Swans till called for—don’t drive old Grey fast down hill—adieu.

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. 260-61. 

Eliza is on an extended visit to London; Flower has been in London and preached a sermon (possibly two) at the Gurneys before leaving for Cambridge, but the reference at the beginning of the above letter suggests he had been waxing eloquently about politics to the Gurneys and other friends in the home that day.  In his letter to Eliza on 16 December 1802, he remarks that he preached at the Gurney’s “the preceding Sabbath Evening,” which would have been Sunday the 12th.  It seems unlikely that Flower would have left London on Friday morning the 10th, returned to preach at the Gurney’s home on Sunday the 12th, and departed again for Cambridge. Given his adoration of Eliza, however, and the fact that she was four and a half months pregnant with her first child, Eliza, Benjamin may not have been bothered by riding his horse some 60 miles, which may explain Eliza's reference to his horse "old Grey" in the postscript. 

William Cobbett (1762-1835) was a controversial journalist, politician, and agriculturalist who in January 1802 began publishing Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register. After 1804 he experienced a shift in his views, however, toward the more popular politics of reform.  In 1817, facing imprisonment once again for his political writings, Cobbett fled to America.  Upon his return, he wrote a denunciation of the fledgling English settlement in Albion, Illinois, to which its founders, Morris Birkbeck and Richard Flower (Benjamin's brother), responded with considerable indignation. See Richard Flower’s Letters from Lexington and the Illinois, containing a brief account of the English settlement in the latter territory, and a refutation of the misrepresentation of Mr. Cobbett (1819), and his Letters from the Illinois, 1820, 1821 (1822), the latter work edited by Benjamin Flower.

John Addington of 7 Spital Square was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.  He was also one of the medical assistants for the Royal Humane Society, founded by William Hawes, his neighbor at 8 Spital Square, and whose family were close friends of Eliza Flower and the Gurneys. See Holden’s London Directory for 1805, 1.97, 106.