Politics, Religion, and Romance: Letters of Eliza Gould Flower, 1794-1802

During the 1790s, perhaps no radical was more consistent in his criticism of the policies of the Pitt administration and his advocacy of political reform than Benjamin Flower (1755-1829), editor of the Cambridge Intelligencer from 1793 to 1803. Flower, like many other radicals, paid for his political opinions--six months in Newgate in 1799 for calling the Bishop of Llandaff "the Right Reverend time server and apostate" (Cambridge Intelligencer, April 20, 1799). Flower later described the government's efforts to silence him as a great blessing, for "considering my late imprisonment, with all its circumstances, my heart cannot but expand with gratitude to that all-wise and all-gracious providence, who in the concerns of individuals as well as in the concerns of the universe, brings order out of confusion, and good out of evil" (Proceedings 31). The "order" and "good" were the result of his relationship with Eliza Gould (1770-1810), a twenty-nine-year-old governess whom he met in July, 1799, while in Newgate. They were engaged two months later and married on January 1, 1800. Even before their first meeting, their lives had intertwined in the early 1790's while Eliza was serving as a governess and schoolmistress in Devon. Of the correspondence, only her letters to Flower have survived, along with some other letters she wrote between 1794 and 1799. Her letters reveal a woman of intellectual and spiritual integrity, literary aspirations, radical political opinions, and deeply held romantic ideals, determined to find intellectual fulfillment, financial security, and domestic happiness in the midst of circumstances that constantly threatened her with the loss of all three. (1) Born in Bampton, Devon, where her father, John Gould, was a tanner and deacon/trustee in the local Baptist church, Eliza was educated, first, in a school conducted by the local Baptist minister's wife, then by her father who allowed her to follow her own inclinations, inclinations that led her to adopt democratic ideals and romantic notions. "Plutarch--Telemachus & Jerusalem delivered--The tender Fenelon," she later wrote, moved my heart & Tasso fired my imagination--with Telemachus I read Eucharis & Herminion with Tancred--completely transformed into those personages I had no consciousness of any other existence--I reflected not on myself I was regardless of everything around me I was the very characters themselves & I saw only the objects that existed for them--the works which I have been speaking of gave place to others & their impressions were softened Some of the writings of Voltaire in particular were instrumental in producing this effect-- father made some whimsical presents of books for instance he gave me Fenelon on female education & Locke on the Education of Children thus putting into the hand of the pupil what was designed for the tutor but it was of service ... Rousseau['s] Heloise I was acquainted with a considerable number of contin [ental] historians learned one[s] & philosophers but Rousseau made an impression on me similar to that which Plutarch had done when I was eight years old it appear's that this was the proper food for my mind & the intestines of those Ideas which I entertained but which he alone knew how to explain to me Plutarch had prepared me to become a republican he roused that strength & stateliness of character which constitute one--he inspired me with a real enthusiasm in favor of public virtues & liberty Rousseau pointed out to me the domestic Happiness to which I could aspire & the ineffable enjoyments which I was capable of tasting ... I was arrived at considerable maturity I love[d] to reflect I thought with seriousness of forming my character that is I studied [the] movements of my mind. I sought to know myself I felt I had a destination which I must enable myself to fill--The regularity of a life occupied with a variety of exercises was perfectly suitable to the activity of my mind as well as to my natural taste for method & application. …