Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/6/8/10

Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text

[1]
      Forgive me my dear, Miʃs Hamilton, for
not waiting on you to Tea. -- The Sorrows
of my friends & those of my FriendOwn are
too much for me in one day. -- I have
taken a Walk of two hours, to drive
away Care; but am come home rather
more burthen'd with Thought, than
when I ʃuddenly left your House. --
      If you ʃhould not hereafter ʃee
me so frequently as I could wiʃh,
impute it not to Ingratitude for the
Share your Mama & you have
taken in my Distreʃs, but to my
unwillingneʃs to prove troubleʃome
to my friends, or to disturb their happier
cheerful Hours. -- When I am ʃerene
I ʃhall pay my Respects to my friends
again, 'till then my beʃt & fervent
Wiʃhes attend them. -- Your ʃincereʃt
                                                         Friend

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


Notes


 1. The order of the John Hope material differs greatly from the sequence in the catalogue, where items were left in the order they were found in. We have attempted to produce an approximate chronological sequence, but there is often great uncertainty over dating, with especial difficulty in the letters numbered 3, 8 and 25. The order of the HAM/1/6/8 series tentatively offered in this edition runs 10, 28, 29, 35, 5, 9, 21, 1, 6, 12, 25, 8, 15, 27, 22, 23, 18, 19, 3, 7, 24, 26, 17, 16, 20, 30, 33, 2, 34, 11, 32, 31, 13, 14, 4, 36, and the previous and next item links have been arranged accordingly. This undated letter is almost certainly from early 1773, as suggested by a letter of William Napier of 23 January 1773 that mentions Hamilton's ‘attending a Gentleman & friend that was in so very precarious a state of health’ (HAM/1/19/28), as well as later letters from the same year such as HAM/1/19/36 of 7 March, referring to Hope's troubles.

Normalised Text


      Forgive me my dear, Miss Hamilton, for
not waiting on you to Tea. -- The Sorrows
of my friends & those of my Own are
too much for me in one day. -- I have
taken a Walk of two hours, to drive
away Care; but am come home rather
more burdened with Thought, than
when I suddenly left your House. --
      If you should not hereafter see
me so frequently as I could wish,
impute it not to Ingratitude for the
Share your Mama & you have
taken in my Distress, but to my
unwillingness to prove troublesome
to my friends, or to disturb their happier
cheerful Hours. -- When I am serene
I shall pay my Respects to my friends
again, till then my best & fervent
Wishes attend them. -- Your sincerest
                                                         Friend

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



 1. The order of the John Hope material differs greatly from the sequence in the catalogue, where items were left in the order they were found in. We have attempted to produce an approximate chronological sequence, but there is often great uncertainty over dating, with especial difficulty in the letters numbered 3, 8 and 25. The order of the HAM/1/6/8 series tentatively offered in this edition runs 10, 28, 29, 35, 5, 9, 21, 1, 6, 12, 25, 8, 15, 27, 22, 23, 18, 19, 3, 7, 24, 26, 17, 16, 20, 30, 33, 2, 34, 11, 32, 31, 13, 14, 4, 36, and the previous and next item links have been arranged accordingly. This undated letter is almost certainly from early 1773, as suggested by a letter of William Napier of 23 January 1773 that mentions Hamilton's ‘attending a Gentleman & friend that was in so very precarious a state of health’ (HAM/1/19/28), as well as later letters from the same year such as HAM/1/19/36 of 7 March, referring to Hope's troubles.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/6/8/10

Correspondence Details

Sender: John Hope

Place sent: Northampton (certainty: medium)

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: Northampton (certainty: medium)

Date sent: c.1773
when 1773 (precision: low)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton, concerning his distress. He apologises to Hamilton for not waiting on her to tea but that his own and his friends sorrows are too much for him in one day. He has walked for two hours in an attempt to ‘drive away his cares’ but has returned more burdened than he was before he left her house. Hope writes that if he does not visit her as often it is not through ingratitude to the concern that Hamilton and her mother have taken in his distress but to his own resolve not to be troublesome to his friends.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 131 words

Transliteration Information

Editorial declaration: First edited in the project 'Image to Text' (David Denison & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, 2013-2019), now incorporated 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: XML version: Research Assistant funding in 2018/19 provided by the Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester.

Research assistant: Chenming Gao, undergraduate student, University of Manchester

Transliterator: Emma Alonso-Ramonet, dissertation student, University of Vigo (submitted April 2019)

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: 6 January 2022

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