Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/6/1/6

Note from Frances Evelyn Boscawen to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


      I hope Mr & Mrs. Dickenson had a pleasant Walk
this fine Day, but I was sorry I did not profit by It: I
was gone to London on Busineʃs. Do They go to Strawberry-
-Hill[1] to Morrow Evening? & can I be of any Use to carry
or bring back?                               Their Obedient
                                                         FBoscawen


      Rosedale[2] Friday Night    July 18th
                                                         1788


To Mrs. Dickenson[3]


Honble. Mrs. Boscawen
July 1788[4]

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


Notes


 1. Strawberry Hill House was the Gothic Revival villa built by Horace Walpole in Twickenham, whom Hamilton often visited. Boscawen refers to the house here, rather than the area in Richmond (now part of Greater London) named after it, which was not developed until the nineteenth century.
 2. This refers to present-day Rosedale-house in Richmond, Surrey (now part of Greater London), where the Scottish poet and playwright James Thomson lived during the first half of the eighteenth century (cf. Poetical Works of James Thomson, vol. 1, edited by Robert Bell, 1855 (London), p.23).
 3. This line appears on the back of the letter. The addressee's name is split in two, with two different orientations, by unfolding.
 4. This annotation is written vertically in the left-hand margin of the page.

Normalised Text


      I hope Mr & Mrs. Dickenson had a pleasant Walk
this fine Day, but I was sorry I did not profit by It: I
was gone to London on Business. Do They go to Strawberry-Hill
 to Morrow Evening? & can I be of any Use to carry
or bring back?                Their Obedient
                                                         Frances Boscawen


      Rosedale Friday Night    


To Mrs. Dickenson


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



 1. Strawberry Hill House was the Gothic Revival villa built by Horace Walpole in Twickenham, whom Hamilton often visited. Boscawen refers to the house here, rather than the area in Richmond (now part of Greater London) named after it, which was not developed until the nineteenth century.
 2. This refers to present-day Rosedale-house in Richmond, Surrey (now part of Greater London), where the Scottish poet and playwright James Thomson lived during the first half of the eighteenth century (cf. Poetical Works of James Thomson, vol. 1, edited by Robert Bell, 1855 (London), p.23).
 3. This line appears on the back of the letter. The addressee's name is split in two, with two different orientations, by unfolding.
 4. This annotation is written vertically in the left-hand margin of the page.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Note from Frances Evelyn Boscawen to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/6/1/6

Correspondence Details

Sender: Frances Evelyn Boscawen (née Glanville)

Place sent: Richmond

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: unknown

Date sent: 18 July 1788

Letter Description

Summary: Note from Frances Evelyn Boscawen to Mary Hamilton. She hopes that Hamilton and her husband had a pleasant walk today and was sorry that she was unable to join them. She asks if they are to visit Strawberry Hill the following evening [home of Horace Walpole (1717-1797), 4th Earl of Orford, author, politician and patron of the arts] and if so she can she 'be of any Use to carry or bring back?'
    Dated at Rosedale.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 60 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 17 August 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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