Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/12/69

Letter from Charlotte Finch to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


My Dear Miʃs Hamilton

      I have just receiv'd a very moving
Letter from Mr Planta informing me of his
Sisters Death,[1] & expreʃsing in the most grateful
terms his Sense of her Majestys Gracious Good-
-neʃs to her. He adds, As I suppose it will be
Improper to leave the Corpse in the Palace any
longer than is absolutely neceʃsary I beg your
Laʃps. directions when it should be removed.
      I wish you would desire Mrs Hagerdorn
to shew this to her Majesty tonight, that I
may receive her Orders concerning the Answer
I should make; as her Majesty probably goes


to Kew tomorrow Morning, it might be late in the day
before I could have the honor of speaking to her.
                             I am Ever most Sincerely Yrs.
                                       CFinch

Monday Night. ¼ past Ten

      We have recd. a sad Account of Mr Dawson.[2]

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


Notes


 1. Frederica Planta died on 2 February 1778.
 2. Charlotte's nephew Richard Dawson, the stepson of Hamilton's friend Lady Dartrey, died of consumption aged 18 on 3 March 1778. This postscript thus seems to refer to either his illness or death.

Normalised Text


My Dear Miss Hamilton

      I have just received a very moving
Letter from Mr Planta informing me of his
Sisters Death, & expressing in the most grateful
terms his Sense of her Majestys Gracious Goodness
 to her. He adds, As I suppose it will be
Improper to leave the Corpse in the Palace any
longer than is absolutely necessary I beg your
Ladyships directions when it should be removed.
      I wish you would desire Mrs Hagerdorn
to show this to her Majesty tonight, that I
may receive her Orders concerning the Answer
I should make; as her Majesty probably goes


to Kew tomorrow Morning, it might be late in the day
before I could have the honour of speaking to her.
                             I am Ever most Sincerely Yours
                                       Charlotte Finch

Monday Night. ¼ past Ten

      We have received a sad Account of Mr Dawson.

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



 1. Frederica Planta died on 2 February 1778.
 2. Charlotte's nephew Richard Dawson, the stepson of Hamilton's friend Lady Dartrey, died of consumption aged 18 on 3 March 1778. This postscript thus seems to refer to either his illness or death.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from Charlotte Finch to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/12/69

Correspondence Details

Sender: Lady Charlotte Finch (née Fermor)

Place sent: unknown

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: unknown

Date sent: between 2 February and 9 March 1778
notBefore 2 February 1778 (precision: high)
notAfter 9 March 1778 (precision: medium)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from Charlotte Finch to Mary Hamilton. She has received a note from Mr Planta informing her of his sister's death. He writes of the Queen’s goodness to his sister and adds that ‘I suppose it will be improper to leave the Corpse in the Palace any longer than is absolutely necessary [...] [and trusts to Finche’s] discretions when it should be removed’. She asks Hamilton to ask Mrs Hagedorn to show the letter to the Queen that evening so she can receive orders as to what to do as she knows that the Queen goes to Kew in the morning and Finch may not get the opportunity of speaking with her.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 143 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: Christine Wallis, editorial team (completed 28 May 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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