Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/7/11/2

Letter from the Duchess of Portland to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


My Dear Miʃs Hamilton

Tho' Her Majesty in Her great Indulgence
& Condescension has forbid me to pay
my duty at Windsor; I can't be easy
without making this Inquiry after
Her Majesty & the Princeʃses; & that you
will present my Humble duty &
acknowledgements for the Honour they
did me.
Mrs Delany attempted to write to you to
expreʃs her gratefull acknowledgements
to the Queen, for the magnificent present
Her Majesty did her the Honour to bestow
on her; but is miserable to find her
Eyes fail her too much to gratifye her
sensibility on this occasion; indeed I think
                                                         nothing


nothing can exceed her gratitude, she
was delighted! with the Elegance & taste
of the pocket book & it's contents; but
when I read the Letter to her (her Eyes
being too weak to read it her self) she
was quite overcome, to receive such a
mark of high Honour & great Condescension
of Her Majesty; which she shall ever
esteem as a Treasure of the greatest
value.
I hope very soon to have the pleasure
of seeing Dear Miʃs Hamilton Mrs D. says
in St James's place & her kind love
                             I am Dear Madam
                             Your Obliged &
                               Affectionate Humble
                                  Servant
                                     MC: Portland

Bullstrode Decber 16th
1781[1]

I am ashamed of the
Blunder I made to Her
Majesty Mrs Delany's Birthday is the 25th of May[2]

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


Notes


 1. This dateline appears to the left of the closing salutation.
 2. This postscript begins to the left of the signature.

Normalised Text


My Dear Miss Hamilton

Though Her Majesty in Her great Indulgence
& Condescension has forbidden me to pay
my duty at Windsor; I can't be easy
without making this Inquiry after
Her Majesty & the Princesses; & that you
will present my Humble duty &
acknowledgements for the Honour they
did me.
Mrs Delany attempted to write to you to
express her grateful acknowledgements
to the Queen, for the magnificent present
Her Majesty did her the Honour to bestow
on her; but is miserable to find her
Eyes fail her too much to gratify her
sensibility on this occasion; indeed I think
                                                        


nothing can exceed her gratitude, she
was delighted! with the Elegance & taste
of the pocket book & its contents; but
when I read the Letter to her (her Eyes
being too weak to read it her self) she
was quite overcome, to receive such a
mark of high Honour & great Condescension
of Her Majesty; which she shall ever
esteem as a Treasure of the greatest
value.
I hope very soon to have the pleasure
of seeing Dear Miss Hamilton Mrs Delany says
in St James's place & her kind love
                             I am Dear Madam
                             Your Obliged &
                               Affectionate Humble
                                  Servant
                                     Margaret Cavendish Portland

Bulstrode December 16th
1781

I am ashamed of the
Blunder I made to Her
Majesty Mrs Delany's Birthday is the 25th of May

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



 1. This dateline appears to the left of the closing salutation.
 2. This postscript begins to the left of the signature.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from the Duchess of Portland to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/7/11/2

Correspondence Details

Sender: Margaret Bentinck (née Cavendish-Harley), Duchess of Portland

Place sent: Gerrards Cross

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: Windsor (certainty: low)

Date sent: 16 December 1781

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from the Duchess of Portland to Mary Hamilton. The letter relates to a present given by the Queen to Mrs Delany. The Duchess of Portland writes to Hamilton with a message to the Queen. Mrs Delany wanted to write her thanks and gratitude to the Queen herself but was unable to do so as 'her Eyes fail her too much'. Mrs Delany was delighted with the 'pocket book and it's [sic] contents'.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 230 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 2014/15 and 2015/16 provided by the Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester.

Research assistant: Isabella Formisano, former MA student, University of Manchester

Transliterator: Jennifer van Hees, undergraduate student, University of Manchester (submitted May 2016)

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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