Eliza Flower at the Gurneys, Walworth, to Benjamin Flower at Cambridge, Friday, 24 December 1802.

Walworth Dec 24 1802

My dear Benjamin

   I write you now from our friend Hemmings where I slept last night & shall spend this day—we had some conversation last evening respecting the best mode of my returning to Cambridge & all advise me by no means to venture in an open Chaise at this time of year.  Mr Hemming said as new years day was a Holliday he should like to take me down—this led to some conversation respecting the boys & your truly kind & affectionate offer at a moment so trying to his feelings as a father—which offer I thought he appeared anxious still to avail himself of—he at length fancied to take me & the lads down in a post chaise on new years day.  I shall now I trust be with my dear Ben on that day which to us ranks first in the calendar of saints days. I shall go to Spital Square on Monday next from thence pay a visit to your mother—Miss Fullers, Mrs Creak—& hold myself in readiness to start from thence Spital Square at the time mentioned.

   The Boys are quite delighted & Mrs Hemmings overjoyed—Mr Hemming is looking out for a school for them.  I am glad, feeling myself now so well & my spirits so good that they will be with us indeed I see nothing of that disorderly conduct of which Mrs Gurney complains & I have no doubt but we shall enjoy their society & that they will be happy in ours.  I famished here to wait till your letter arrived hoping to have had some account of the fate of the Basket for which purpose I took a walk to Mrs Gurneys when at the moment of my entering the House, the basket arrived by coach—your letter by post & Mrs Shepherd from Hackney, to pay me a visit.  I have called also on Mrs Bostock this morning & been using more exercise than I have done for a long time past & without feeling any of that inconvenience to which I have on those occasions been so frequently subject I do assure you my love, that I get better & better every day, & to day I am really very well & have coughed but little.   I am not very sorry that the whisky plan is given up—as I really dread the thought of having again to encounter a cough which I have now nearly conquered.  I feel a cough in my present situation a very uncomfortable companion.  I find the Boys live in a very plain & simple manner they have only bread & milk for breakfast & in the afternoon milk & water & have no supper except on a Sunday evening if they have been good boys—as this is the case Ann will have but little trouble with them.

   Will you my dear Benjamin send me on draft for Mr Lee by next post I should have requested it by this post as I could in that case have paid him on Monday when I go thro the borough to Spital Square as we are to dine at Mr Addingtons on Monday & I would wish to avoid going again into the borough—however it will only make us a little later as I will stay at Walworth till the post comes in.

   The turkeys were very fine ones indeed I have just sent off Harriets to the Square. Mamma Gurney is much obliged by your very kind present there were but very few of the eggs broken & they cook very fine.  I shall have some for my supper.  Mrs Gurney has bought them for me here at 3d a piece—& I have had 2 every morning.  Poor Mr Gurney breaks I fear very fast—Mrs Flowerdews case is very distressing this son of hers which she has lately lost was her principal support she has written Mrs Gurney [Martha Gurney] some very affecting letters on the subject & sent her some proposals for printing by subscription a volume of poems which were written some years since for her amusement but which she now means to publish with the view of raising a sum to enable her to open a school. Mr Evans of Islington is one of her most active friends I much admire his character—Mrs Gurney has collected many names for her the Volume is but 3/6 so I gave her your name & mine.  I will bring some proposals home with me.  Mr Hemming says he shall go with you on the Sunday he has a great regard for you & Mrs H says [she] never will forget the friendship which you have manifested toward him.

   Adieu!  my dear Benjamin I think with truly pleasing sensations that every passing day brings us nearer each other & Oh let us never my dearest love forget that every passing day brings us nearer our last & I trust nearer those regions of blissful immortality where after having weathered the stormy ocean of this tempestuous life we may meet never more to part—give my kind love to Mary  [Eliza's younger sister] if I can see anything that will suit her & cheap I will lay out her 20s/7 she desires   I thought she would want something of the kind for the winter & as she has the fur by her it will last her but a trifle.   Yours ever

                                                         E Flower

Mr Hemmings says remember me to Jonah

An excerpt from Benjamin Flower's letter of 19 December is apropos here:

I think my love you had better comply with Mrs G-’s [Rebecca Gurney's] kind request not to leave Walworth till the day after ’Xmas day, say to morrow sennight.  There is one part of a plan you mention for returning, which I think a little reflection will convince you of the impropriety of—namely any application to return with Mr Hall. I know you feel for my character equally with myself. He has never shown the least disposition to be reconciled to me.  He was as you recollect fearful lest even his services to the B. Society should be construed as making the least overture on the subject. Your waiting on him as you did, considering my official situation was strictly proper: but feeling as I think I ought to do the baseness of some of his conduct to me, I think anything that looks like courting him to a personal acquaintance would be improper: were you to return with him would not the world have some colour for saying that Mrs F- wished to cultivate Mr  H-’s acquaintance, but that my disposition was such, I would not suffer it.  I cannot I confess but have a very low idea of Hall’s piety, till I perceive some evidence of his unfeigned repentance for some parts of his conduct to me.  This sentiment I wish all my friends whenever the subject is mentioned, to be informed of as mine

(Whelan, Politics, Religion, and Romance, 267)

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. 271-73. 

Eliza's reference to "the boys" is to John Hemming’s two sons who will live for a time with the Flowers in Harlow; apparently, in an attempt to ease Hemming’s financial burden, Flower volunteered to serve for a time as their tutor and allow them to live with him in Cambridge.  References above are also to the Creaks and Flower's relations on his mother's side, the Fullers, all beneficiaries (except for Benjamin) of the great wealth amassed by Flower's uncle, William Fuller, through his work with the Bank of England. 

A Mr. Bostock, “late of Trinity College, Cambridge,” appeared in a news item in the Intelligencer on 7 February 1795, having signed a petition for peace from the Borough of Southwark. According to the report, Bostock opened the meeting in Southwark on 5 February 1795 and pushed for the petition to be sent to Henry Thorton and Le Mescrier, their representatives in Parliament.

Mrs. Alice Flowerdew (1759-1830) published Poems, on moral and religious subjects in London in 1803, which was sold by Flower’s friend, H. D. Symonds, as well as Martha Gurney.  Mrs. Flowerdew, a General Baptist and Unitarian, was preparing to open a boarding school for young ladies at No. 1, Upper Terrace, High Street, Islington, with a focus on “writing, geography, drawing, music, and dancing.” She notes in her advertisement to Poems that she had been “long engaged in the Education of Youth.” The last poem in her book was titled “Elegiac Lines, on the death of Charles Frederic Flowerdew, who died November 29th, 1802, aged 21 years.”  Her stepson, Charles (the second son of her deceased husband, Daniel, by a former wife), had died suddenly of a fever and was interred in the burial grounds at the General Baptist church in Worship Street, where Mrs. Flowerdew attended. John Evans, her pastor, preached her son’s funeral sermon.  She writes in “Elegiac Lines,”

’Tis fled-the sweetest solace of my care,

Cut down in all the pride of youthful bloom,

I’ve seen thee hurried to th’ untimely tomb-

My fond aspiring hope for ever crost;

My Son, my Friend, my Help forever lost!

Among the subscribers to her Poems were several individuals who appear in the Flower letters: Mrs. John Addington of Spital Square; Flower’s friends, John Copland and his daughter Ann of Saxthorpe Hall; Mrs. William Chaplin of Bishop Stortford; James Finch, Esq., of Castle Hedingham; John Gurney, Esq., of Walworth; Henry Gunning of Ickleton, Cambridgeshire and his wife and daughter; Martha Gurney of Holborn; William Hawes of Spital Square; Mrs. Benjamin Hawes of Blackfriars; Miss Ann Jones; and the Rev. Russell Scott of Portsmouth (Poems, 121-58).  Oddly enough, despite Eliza’s statement in the above letter, the Flowers do not appear among the list of subscribers.  Mrs. Flowerdew would later become a member of the “Glasshouse” congregation in Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk; she also published a popular hymn on the seasons in 1811. 

John Evans (1767-1827), a Baptist minister and schoolmaster, was a descendant of the Evans family of Radnorshire, Wales; he was the grandson of Caleb Evans (d. 1790), a Baptist preacher and schoolmaster in Wales, who was the half-brother of Hugh Evans (1712-81), President of Bristol Baptist Academy and pastor at Broadmead in Bristol, 1758-81.  John Evans was educated for the ministry at Bristol Academy, where Robert Hall served as his tutor. He then became a Ward scholar at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, graduating from the latter with an M.A. in 1790. While in Scotland, he became a Unitarian.  He was ordained in 1792 by the General Baptist congregation at Worship Street, London, remaining there as pastor until shortly before his death in 1827.  He opened his school at Islington in 1796 and earned much renown for his work with young preachers, continuing in that capacity until 1821.  He was a friend and correspondent of Russell Scott, son-in-law of Dr. Hawes, and Mary Hays, and was a close friend of Thomas Mullett, Mary Steele's old friend and executor who was also a close friend of Henry Crabb Robinson (Mullett most likely attended at Evans's congregation in Worship Street along with Mrs. Flowerdew and, on occasion, Mary and Elizabeth Hays).  Evans published some forty works in his lifetime, including his influential A Sketch of the Denominations of the Christian World (1795).