Single Letter

HAM/1/7/6/13

Letter from an unknown author to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


                                                         Sun: Evg:
                                                         5 Novbr. 1782


      A thousand Thanks to you my Dr.
Madam
for indulging me with the Perusal of
2 Such Letters. I am much amus'd with
both, but greatly struck with the Superiority of
Mrs: Carter's Stile. it is so plain so simple &
what my poor Dr Provost us'd to call so chaste.
I think Mrs Moore is rather too diffuse, but
her Criticisms are Very Just.
      if Miʃs Pulteney should be as compleatly
dégourdi, as a young Lady of my Acquaintance
was by going to the Same Convent,[1] I shall think they
have an infallible Recipe for the Care of awkward
Girls; she was Very thick, Very short neck'd, & clumsy,
when she went; but return'd, in leʃs than 2 Years,
one of the genteelest Figures I ever saw, but I
never could get her to own, what Sort of Screw
Preʃs she had been put into. Adieu -- I cannot say
au Revoir, because I never see you at all.

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Notes


 1. Harriet Laura Pulteney was educated at the convent of Montparnasse in Paris until 1783.

Normalised Text


                                                         Sunday Evening
                                                        


      A thousand Thanks to you my Dear
Madam for indulging me with the Perusal of
2 Such Letters. I am much amused with
both, but greatly struck with the Superiority of
Mrs: Carter's Style. it is so plain so simple &
what my poor Dear Provost used to call so chaste.
I think Mrs Moore is rather too diffuse, but
her Criticisms are Very Just.
      if Miss Pulteney should be as completely
dégourdi, as a young Lady of my Acquaintance
was by going to the Same Convent, I shall think they
have an infallible Recipe for the Care of awkward
Girls; she was Very thick, Very short necked, & clumsy,
when she went; but returned, in less than 2 Years,
one of the genteelest Figures I ever saw, but I
never could get her to own, what Sort of Screw
Press she had been put into. Adieu -- I cannot say
au Revoir, because I never see you at all.

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quotations,
spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)



 1. Harriet Laura Pulteney was educated at the convent of Montparnasse in Paris until 1783.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from an unknown author to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/7/6/13

Correspondence Details

Sender:

Place sent: unknown

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: unknown

Date sent: 3 November 1782
when 3 November 1782 (precision: medium)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from an unknown author to Mary Hamilton, concerning two letters that Hamilton had passed to them, one written by Elizabeth Carter and one by Hannah More. The author found the letters amusing, especially the one by Carter. They are impressed by her 'superiority of [...] stile, it is so plain so simple and [...] so chaste'.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 164 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: Cassandra Ulph, editorial team (completed 28 October 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: 5 February 2024

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