Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/12/75

Note from Harriet Finch to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


My dear Miʃs Hamilton    I have got a Crotchet in my
head this Moment -- as tomorrow is your
Liberty night,  ------ yt you & I  ------ shd go to ye Opera
together -- Do you think we cd- make Ly- Wake
Chaperon[1] us -- or any one whom we could
both ask -- The opera is a Charming
Serious one -- Demofoonte[2] -- If the
Above cd be contrived I shd quite enjoy it
      Adieu much yrs
                             H Finch
Monday 15th. Febry 1779

pray forgive this Scribble[3]



Miss      Hamilton
St      James's[4]

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


Notes


 1. This occurrence of the verb chaperone, ‘to act as chaperon to (a young lady); to escort’, predates the earliest attestation in the OED (dated 1811) by 32 years.
 2. Demofoonte, a pasticcio of Metastasio's Opera Seria of the same name arr. Ferdinando Bertoni (1725-1813) was performed during the 1778-1779 season (D. Burrows and R. Dunhill (eds), Music and Theatre in Handel's World: The Family Papers of James Harris, 1732-1780 [OUP, 2002], p.1001). Susan Burney describes attending a public rehearsal at The King's Theatre on 24 January 1780 at which songs from the pasticcio are performed (P. Olleson ([ed.), The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney [Ashgate: 2012], p.114).
 3. The postscript appears to the right of the dateline.
 4. The direction is split in two, with different orientations, by unfolding.

Normalised Text


My dear Miss Hamilton    I have got a Crotchet in my
head this Moment -- as tomorrow is your
Liberty night, that you & I should go to the Opera
together -- Do you think we could make Lady Wake
Chaperone us -- or any one whom we could
both ask -- The opera is a Charming
Serious one -- Demofoonte -- If the
Above could be contrived I should quite enjoy it
      Adieu much yours
                             Harriet Finch
Monday 15th. February 1779

pray forgive this Scribble



Miss      Hamilton
St      James's

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



 1. This occurrence of the verb chaperone, ‘to act as chaperon to (a young lady); to escort’, predates the earliest attestation in the OED (dated 1811) by 32 years.
 2. Demofoonte, a pasticcio of Metastasio's Opera Seria of the same name arr. Ferdinando Bertoni (1725-1813) was performed during the 1778-1779 season (D. Burrows and R. Dunhill (eds), Music and Theatre in Handel's World: The Family Papers of James Harris, 1732-1780 [OUP, 2002], p.1001). Susan Burney describes attending a public rehearsal at The King's Theatre on 24 January 1780 at which songs from the pasticcio are performed (P. Olleson ([ed.), The Journals and Letters of Susan Burney [Ashgate: 2012], p.114).
 3. The postscript appears to the right of the dateline.
 4. The direction is split in two, with different orientations, by unfolding.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Note from Harriet Finch to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/12/75

Correspondence Details

Sender: Harriet Finch

Place sent: unknown

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: London

Date sent: 15 February 1779

Letter Description

Summary: Note from Harriet Finch to Mary Hamilton, relating to attending the Opera.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 84 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 27 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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