Eliza Flower at Harlow to her brother John in London, undated, but sometime in 1805 [letter is incomplete].

My dear Brother

   In consequence of your sending us a message by Mr Freeman that you intended being at Harlow on last Saturday, we of course expected you, tho after having been so often disappointed in this way I almost wonder that I placed any confidence in your appointment, only that we are all too ready to anticipate what we wish.

   I cannot help thinking with some degree of concern, on the manner in which you appear to show all those of your friends who have your interest at heart, & whose best advice would have been given you with friendship and sincerity, friends, whom you will allow me to say, who have seen a little more of the world than you can have had an opportunity of seeing, & who perhaps have learned a little wisdom by experience.  In a multitude of course there is security, and the longer you live the more, depend upon it, you will find the truth of this adage verified. 

   From the experience I have had of mankind, I have not to learn how many baits are laid for the unwary, I now allude to a partnership which Mr Freeman tells me you are about to form, & to say the truth I tremble for the consequences.  It is but a very little while ago that an acquaintance of mine, a Mr Morgan, who married a Miss Davis of Exeter, entered to partnership with a dry salter, who conducted a business on a very extensive scale; he had property with his wife to the amount of upwards of ten thousand pounds, his partner appeared to be also a man of considerable property, but in this he was grossly deceived, & in such a way as he could not guard against: the fact was, the person with whom he went into business had purposely borrowed, on his own private accounts, every shilling with which he went into business, & passed it on Mr Morgan as his own private property.  This money was demanded by the lender, & the whole of Mr Morgans property was sacrificed to pay the debt; himself declared a Bankrupt, & he his wife & little ones brought to extreme distress, & reduced to live in a humble lodging. 

   I need not tell you how often such actions are committed, & I need not say the grief it would be to me, were you to fall into such dishonest hands; & from your very unsuspecting disposition you must allow me to say that I know no one who is more likely to be trappan’d this way than yourself.  You have always given me to understand, that the business you should embark in would not require a capital, or be involved in any risk, as it would be merely a commission business; judge of my surprise when Mr Freeman told me you were to advance 3000 pounds, & to a broker too where nothing can be required for stock in trade—this appears to me as very suspicious, because how can a broker require such a capital if he pretends to have property of his own to meet the sum you might advance, & should he be in debt, you will remember that every shilling you possess in the world his creditors would have a right to claim; I cannot help viewing you on the brink of [a] precipice from which one false step might involve you in ruin—with regard to your keeping house, & at so remote a part of the Town, you know best how it will promote your interest & your comfort, but if you had asked my advice I should have recommended a more economical plan, not but I know that Mary is an economist, & a good manager, but if you are to be in partnership the interest of the money which you have sunk in the purchase of your house &c, would have paid for your board, & you might in that way have saved at the least 3 or 400 a year—my advice was “make the best of what you have acquired, & lay by in retirement & devote a few years to the improvement of your mind” & I wish my dear brother you might now have reason to repent your not having followed advice, that was given with a tender regard to your interest and welfare.  This is the last letter I shall ever address to you on the subject, & I hope you will receive it as it is meant, & should you profit by any hint I have given you, I shall not think my labor or concern in vain. 

   I understand that your partners name is Noding, or some such name, it surely cannot be that person on whom I called with you when last in Town, somewhere in the neighborhood of Tower Street, who had nothing but a little dirty counting house to command.  It surely cannot be that person who wants you to advance him 3000 pounds, if so I consider you as little better than swindled, surely a man who would have £3000 of your property should have at least the appearance of respectability, should have an establishment, & a stock in Trade, should at least be a Housekeeper, & then why not board in his family, at least you ought I think to have a provision of this kind, for the ample advance you have made or are to make; tho after the imposition which I am afraid is practiced on you, I should not wonder if you were obliged to keep this same Gentleman into the bargain.  It has always been great pleasure to me, to hear you boast of your good connections in Town, of “one respectable merchant and another making dinner parties for the purpose of introducing you,” but if my fears respecting you are true, I think they must have bestowed upon you, & your interest, labour in vain—if what you have told me of your de Tastets& Coles’s Macdonnells & Bushells, be true, & if they ever have been, & still are your friends, they must reprobate in the strongest terms such a connection—young Rattenbury whose name is not yet in the directory, & who but a little while ago was nothing more than a clerk in Lombard Street, appears to me to be in an infinitely more respectable situation.

   Mr & Mrs Flower came over yesterday to see my poor Husband who has been extremely ill, & my brother Richard is exceeding concerned on your acc­ount; he heard a great deal about you from Sykes at whose fathers he puts up his horse and chaise, he thinks you are got into bad hands and hopes you will get your friends who must be better acquainted with your partners connections than you are, to examine what the returns of a concern are for which you are to pay 3000 pounds, and as he says, take likewise the whole of your property; but as you appear to set your own Judgment against that of your more experienced friends, you must abide the consequences.  I wish you had consulted Mr Creak in this affair. I hear from his connections, if he where to make use of them, he has the opportunity of knowing the situation of any mercantile House in Town, & by ascertaining their credit in the Bill way; for if a man does business to any extent he must do it with his own capital, or that of another, & I need not tell you to what extent paper accommodation is carried & no people know better the respectability & credit of a House than those whose business it is to discount bills in the way of accommodation—with the most considerable people in this line Mr Creak is acquainted and he could have obtained information that perhaps would have served you, but I find you have shunned them as well as us.  It has always thro life been a mission with me, that whenever persons are averse to consulting their friends, a bitter self inquiry will convince them that something at the root of their conduct must be wrong, to produce such unnatural consequences; but I fear my dear brother that in this instance your conduct will hardly bear the test of your own private examination. 

   Another thing I have heard respecting you is, that you are in the habit of intimacy with that despicable fellow Sykes—and you lately dined at his house with a party.  I most sincerely hope this is not true, because if it be, you have sinned against your better judgement, against the prior convictions of your own mind, and then this, there is not a sin of a more hateful nature, or one that ought to sink a man more in his own opinion—when a man [h]as a due reverance and respect for his own character, he will shun as a pestilence such a character as Sykes—for Heavens sake my dear Brother reflect for a moment on the moral purity your mind must have lost, since the time you fled from the Brothel where Sykes had trappan’d you, to the present, when you now caress him & seek his company.  You then felt that dignity of mind to which nothing but virtue can aspire, & now in the cool moments of reflection do you not feel contaminated & disgraced, you then felt a respect for your character, & gloried in the escape you had had, but how vain was that boasting!  you then was imposed on—you now have imposed on yourself—I do intreat you my dear Brother—for your own sake, & for the sake of your friends, to retrace your steps—the hour of reflection is at some time or another silently the attendant on every thinking being, & may you always so act, as to have the approbation of your own conscience; because only in the same deg­ree as you possess that, can you obtain the favor of heaven—As I have always considered Mary as more immediately my concern, I have one stipulation to make for her, which is, that if you ever mean to receive Sykes under your roof, that you give her timely notice of your intentions, so that she might avoid his society; hearing what she has of him, she detests him as much as I do, and I hope she will never be insulted by an introduction to his company, or to that of any of the same description …

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. 306-09 (a more annotated text than that which appears on this site). 

Apparently, at the time of the above letter, John Gould had been living in London with his sister, Mary, and was contemplating going into business there.  He changed his mind, possibly as a result of Eliza’s letter, for by July 1806 he was working in Plymouth, involved, like his father, in the shipping trade, and his sister was engaged to someone from Plymouth.

References above are to Stephen Freeman, General Baptist (Unitarian) minister, who operated a boarding school and ministerial academy in Ponder’s End, near London; John Nodin was a broker and agent in the Custom House and Excise Office, as well as an appraiser and auctioneer, with offices at 1 Leadenhall Street, London (UBD 1.ii.240).  He was a friend of William Hawes, Joseph Gurney, and Michael Pearson, having served with them as a fellow Director of the Humane Society in 1778 (Milne 11).  The reference here, however, may be to his son; some of the businesses John Gould had dealings with during his time in London: De Tastet, Fermin, and Company, merchants, 10 Bury Court, St. Mary Axe (UBD 1.ii.127); Carston Henry Cole, merchant in New North Street, Red Lion Square (1.ii.108); John McDonald, coal merchant in Cavendish Street, Cavendish Square (1.ii.218); and James Bushell, warehouseman, 50 Coleman Street (1.ii.94); Charles Thomas Ratttenbury was asolicitor at 2 Thomas Street, Horsleydown, not far from the Gurney’s home in Walworth; he was the son of Thomas Rattenbury, shipwright (Pigot’s 324); John’s friend was the son of the Mr. Sykes who operated the Catharine-wheel Inn in Bishopsgate Street, from whence the Cambridge mail coach departed and arrived, stopping along the way at Ware, near Richard Flower’s home in Hertfordshire (UBD 1.ii.482).  It is probable that Richard Flower used this inn to stable his horse when making visits to town, and if so, would have had ample opportunity to become acquainted with Mr. Sykes.