Eliza Flower at Mrs. Copland’s, Saxthorpe Hall, Aylsham, to Benjamin Flower at Cambridge, undated [Wednesday, 21 September 1803].

Saxthorpe Hall Wednesday

My dear Benjamin

   Until this moment I was quite mistaken respecting the mean’s of conveying a letter to the post office & expected that the carrier would have gone to Norwich on Thursday instead of which he went yesterday & returns to morrow so that I have now no opportunity of writing to you but by sending over on purpose to Aylsham.   Mrs Copland will let the boy take this letter there to day which will go into the Norwich post to morrow & you will have it on Friday morning.  I wrote you by the carrier yesterday.

   I trust that providence is again restoring my health.  I sleep well & my appetite is in some degree returned—nor do I feel myself so fatigued as lately by every little exertion—we walk or ride out every day & I find the sweet air of the country refreshing & invigorating.

   Yesterday I took a ride with Mr & Mrs Copland about 3 miles & drank Tea with Mrs Godwin.  Miss Godwin (who is home from Town to see her mother) informs me that her brother William is married again and to a widow with three children—who has had one child since her marriage with Godwin.  How would my Benjamin feel in such a situation with the branches of five families sitting round his fire side which is the case with Godwin.  There is one of Imlay’s children one of Mary Wolstonecrafts by Godwin—one child which they adopted (a blind girl of one of their domestics) three children part of the dowry of his pres­ent wife & one since their marriage.

   I hope you got home safely—do pray write me a very long & circumstantial letter as I can so seldom hear from you.  If the Horse fair day is on wednesday next I think I had better return on Tuesday the Norwich coach goes through Newmarket & it is worth consideration whether from the uncertainty of our being able to procure a place on the day we get to Norwich it would be more advisable for you to meet us at Newmarket or that we should come on to Cambridge in a post chaise or whisky—as posting is now done at a shilling a mile perhaps the former mode would be almost as little expensive as the latter & either plan would be attended with much less inconvenience & expence than your giving up a day from home & so near the fair, at the risk too of not meeting us—but my dear Benjamin will make his own arrangements & whatever plan he may propose will be adhered to.

   I have been exceedingly comfortable with Mrs Copland she is kindly attentive to my comfort & happiness but yet I cannot forget that I have a home & a husband where is centered every thing that is dear to my heart & I feel the distance we are now removed from each other but tends to enhance the value of the blessing.  If you write & direct my letters to be left at Aylsham office I shall have them directly as Mrs Copland has desired the post woman to send on any letters for Saxthorpe Hall directly so if my dear Ben will write me on Friday & send a paper also I shall receive the letter on Sunday.  We shall send to Aylsham on Friday & hope I shall hear from you on that day

                                             adieu

                                                         Yours ever E F—

P.S. 

I wish Mary would send Mrs Plant [a] bit of something off our table when we have any thing she could relish  you will not forget to give my plants some water —give my love to Mary & Miss Copland. I hope they are very comfortable together.  I think there are some books in the drawer upstory that Miss Copland would like to read   tell her that her chickens are very well & her turtle doves very safe the Blackbird & all her live stock.  Mrs Copland sends her kind respects & Miss Paul & all unite in kind love to Ann. Mary will take notice that I did not mean for the Horse to be dressed till Horse fair day when ever it happens.

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. 275-76.

William Godwin’s mother, Ann Hull Godwin (1722-1809), formerly of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, spent her last years living near Godwins’ younger brother Philip, first at his farm at Wood Dalling, Norfolk, then later at another farm in Bradenham, Norfolk, where she died in 1809. At the time of the above letter, Mrs. Godwin was living at Wood Dalling, about three miles from the Coplands.  The “Miss Godwin” mentioned here is Godwin’s sister Hannah (1762-1817), who lived in London and never married.  Godwin’s two children from his marriage to Mary Wollstonecraft were Fanny Imlay (Mary’s child by Gilbert Imlay in 1794,) and Mary (later Mary Shelley), whose birth in 1797 led to Wollstonecraft’s death.  The reference in the letter to an adopted child by Godwin and Wollstonecraft does not appear in any account of either individual and remains a mystery. Godwin later married Mary Jane Clairmont (actually de Vial) on 21 December 1802.  She had two illegitimate children, Charles and Mary Jane, with two different men.  A son, William, was born to Godwin and his new wife on 28 March 1803.  William St.  Clair also notes the oddity of Godwin’s family situation: “In 1797 [Godwin] was a solitary bachelor.  Mary Wollstonecraft had left him with two children, and two years after meeting Mary Jane he had three more. All five were under the age of eight.  They were an unusual family. Charles Clairmont was the half-brother of Jane Clairmont who was the half-sister of William Godwin Junior who was the half-brother of Mary Godwin who was the half-sister of Fanny Imlay. Four of the five had either Godwin or Mary Jane as a natural parent, but no two of them had the same father and the same mother“ (254).   For more on this, see Peter H. Marshall, William Godwin (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), 12-13, 252; C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, 2 vols. (London: H. S. King, 1876), 2.91-92; William St. Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys: The Biography of a Family (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), 248-54.