Diplomatic Text
9.
your Secretary & my Correspondant[1] gn
to Country Quarters how can I forbear
asking dear Miʃs Hamilton how she does
if painful to your Eys I call upon
any one of yr numberleʃ friends to write
a line I wish it was otherwise but I believe
those Educated in Court amongst the great & what
is still more pleasant amongst Society are
better content to act Wife & Mother
with a single Person of their Choise
than those educated in the Country
I am call'd down to Supper adieu my
dr Miʃs Hamilton I am call'd to Supper
good Night love your Vesey
Margate Octbr. 1784
your secretary[2]
[4]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. Probably one of the sisters Caterina Jackson or Anna Maria Clarke. Clarke was with the Jacksons at Harwood from 12 September 1784 and was still there when Hamilton left for the Stormonts on 28 September. (Isabella Clarke, another correspondent of Vesey's, seems to have remained in town.) The present letter is not mentioned in Hamilton's diary.
2. This line, which echoes the first two words of the letter, is written upside down, and seems to indicate that Elizabeth Vesey initially intended to start the letter here.
3. This line is written vertically in the middle of the page.
4. Remains of a seal, in red wax.
Normalised Text
your Secretary & my Correspondent gone
to Country Quarters how can I forbear
asking dear Miss Hamilton how she does
if painful to your Eyes I call upon
any one of your numberless friends to write
a line I wish it was otherwise but I believe
those Educated in Court amongst the great & what
is still more pleasant amongst Society are
better content to act Wife & Mother
with a single Person of their choice
than those educated in the Country
I am called down to Supper adieu my
dear Miss Hamilton I am called to Supper
good Night love your Vesey
your secretary
Miss Hamilton
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Notes
Metadata
Library References
Repository: John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester
Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers
Item title: Letter from Elizabeth Vesey to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: HAM/1/6/2/9
Correspondence Details
Sender: Elizabeth Vesey (née Vesey, later Handcock)
Place sent: Margate
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: unknown
Date sent: October 1784
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from Elizabeth Vesey to Mary Hamilton. She begins her letter 'your secretary & my correspondent'. The note is concerned with women and education. She believes that 'those educated in court amongst the great & what is still more pleasant amongst society are better content to act wife & mother with a single person of their choice than those educated in the Country'.
Dated at Margate.
Original reference No. 9.
Length: 1 sheet, 108 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