Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/2/11

Letter from John Dickenson to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


I have lamented that I could not
send of my Letters to you regularly
as to write to my dearest Wife wd.
be ye only pleasure I could here enjoy
except that of thinking of her, wh.
indeed I enjoy every moment --
      Oh my Mary! I wish yr D—— could
imitate that excellent Example
which you set before him -- don't
despair of working a thorough
Reformation -- I hope always  ------ [1]
pay the utmost deference to your
advice -- which, without compliment
I can truly say, I have always
found to be just and perfectly right
      You are very dear to me -- and no
Language can express [ho]w sinc[erely]
I love you
      My good  ------ 

[2]
adieu my  ------------ 
tell you how sincerely I am you[r]
                                                         John Dickenson

▼

▼ I should be very undutiful not to take
notice of my dear Father, and my
Sisters are near my Heart -- where you
will reign for ever Sole Empreʃs --
God bless you           Adieu
13[3]

[4]Mrs. Dickenson
Taxal Cheshire
To the Care of Jno: Goddard
Fountain
Market Street Lan[e][5]
Manchester[6]

(hover over blue text or annotations for clarification;
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)


Notes


 1. Almost certainly the word to has been torn away with the seal.
 2. We have inverted p.2 of the image for ease of presentation. The image therefore differs from that in the University of Manchester LUNA catalogue.
 3. Moved annotation here from foot of page, written upside down (top left of p.2 in original orientation).
 4. Moved address here from middle of p.2, written vertically.
 5. John Dickenson Senior's father had owned a town house in Market Street Lane, Manchester.
 6. For the direction, compare HAM/1/3/2/7 of 1791, likewise directed to Mrs. Dickenson at Taxal, and ‘To be left at Miʃs Goulbourne's | King Street | Manchester’.

Normalised Text


I have lamented that I could not
send off my Letters to you regularly
as to write to my dearest Wife would
be the only pleasure I could here enjoy
except that of thinking of her, which
indeed I enjoy every moment --
      Oh my Mary! I wish your Dickenson could
imitate that excellent Example
which you set before him -- don't
despair of working a thorough
Reformation -- I hope always  ------ 
pay the utmost deference to your
advice -- which, without compliment
I can truly say, I have always
found to be just and perfectly right
      You are very dear to me -- and no
Language can express how sincerely
I love you
      My good  ------ 


adieu my  ------------ 
tell you how sincerely I am your
                                                         John Dickenson

▼

▼ I should be very undutiful not to take
notice of my dear Father, and my
Sisters are near my Heart -- where you
will reign for ever Sole Empress --
God bless you           Adieu


Mrs. Dickenson
Taxal Cheshire
To the Care of John Goddard
Fountain
Market Street Lane
Manchester

(consult diplomatic text or XML for annotations, deletions, clarifications, persons,
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)



 1. Almost certainly the word to has been torn away with the seal.
 2. We have inverted p.2 of the image for ease of presentation. The image therefore differs from that in the University of Manchester LUNA catalogue.
 3. Moved annotation here from foot of page, written upside down (top left of p.2 in original orientation).
 4. Moved address here from middle of p.2, written vertically.
 5. John Dickenson Senior's father had owned a town house in Market Street Lane, Manchester.
 6. For the direction, compare HAM/1/3/2/7 of 1791, likewise directed to Mrs. Dickenson at Taxal, and ‘To be left at Miʃs Goulbourne's | King Street | Manchester’.

Metadata

Library References

Repository: John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from John Dickenson to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/2/11

Correspondence Details

Sender: John Dickenson

Place sent: unknown

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: Taxal, near Chapel-en-le-Frith

Date sent: between June 1785 and December 1786
notBefore 13 June 1785 (precision: high)
notAfter 1786 (precision: medium)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from John Dickenson to his wife Mary née Hamilton. The letter relates to Dickenson's feelings for Mary.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 169 words

Transliteration Information

Editorial declaration: First edited in the project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers' (Hannah Barker, Sophie Coulombeau, David Denison, Tino Oudesluijs, Cassandra Ulph, Christine Wallis & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, 2019-2023).

All quotation marks are retained in the text and are represented by appropriate Unicode characters. Words split across two lines may have a hyphen on the first, the second or both fragments (reco-|ver, imperfect|-ly, satisfacti-|-on); or a double hyphen (pur=|port, dan|=ger, qua=|=litys); or none (respect|ing). Any point in abbreviations with superscripted letter(s) is placed last, regardless of relative left-right orientation in the original. Thus, Mrs. or Mrs may occur, but M.rs or Mr.s do not.

Acknowledgements: Transcription and XML version created as part of project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers', funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council under grant AH/S007121/1.

Transliterator: Tino Oudesluijs, editorial team (completed 2 July 2020)

Cataloguer: Lisa Crawley, Archivist, The John Rylands Library

Cataloguer: John Hodgson, Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Research Institute and Library

Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors

Revision date: 2 November 2021

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