Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/15/1/28(1)

Note from Charlotte Margaret Gunning to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


                                                         7th may 1788 25
My dear Friend! How fare you & your dear little Louisa
I think it an age since I have seen you, indeed it is very
long since last Thursday & then you only staid a minute
come & breakfast with me tomorrow morning, I shall
go to Chapel & walk till 9 & then breakfast you had bette[r]
do so too, or if that is too early come at 9 -- if you
are engaged tomorrow, come Friday & spend the morning
with me, I want to see you in comfort & have never don[e]
it but when you have been occupied & anxious -- I have
not recovered Ld Henry's vararies[1] last night, about whi[ch]
I feel too much to say anything, he is infinitly beyond
praise & encomiun -- adieu my dear -- my Father
returns Friday, I believe we shall go with him to Harrowga[te]
in a fortnight -- ever your affce: C. M. Gunning


                                                         Wednesday
                                                         antient M. to night


7th. May 1788
London[2]

                                                         Mrs Dickensons[3]

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


Notes


 1. We have assumed that vararies is a slip of the pen. The corrected reading, ‘I have not recovered Lord Henry's vagaries’, would then mean ‘I have not recalled Lord Henry's digressions’ (OED s.vv. recover v.1, 6.b., vagary n., 2. Accessed 27-01-2023).
 2. The full dateline (written vertically) is not visible on the image due to how the note has been pasted onto the sheet, but has been checked when viewing the document in person.
 3. This address line is not visible on the image due to how the note has been pasted onto the sheet, but has been checked when viewing the document in person.

Normalised Text


                                                        
My dear Friend! How fare you & your dear little Louisa
I think it an age since I have seen you, indeed it is very
long since last Thursday & then you only stayed a minute
come & breakfast with me tomorrow morning, I shall
go to Chapel & walk till 9 & then breakfast you had better
do so too, or if that is too early come at 9 -- if you
are engaged tomorrow, come Friday & spend the morning
with me, I want to see you in comfort & have never done
it but when you have been occupied & anxious -- I have
not recovered Lord Henry's vagaries last night, about which
I feel too much to say anything, he is infinitely beyond
praise & encomium -- adieu my dear -- my Father
returns Friday, I believe we shall go with him to Harrogate
in a fortnight -- ever your affectionate Charlotte Margaret Gunning


                                                         Wednesday
                                                         ancient Music to night




                                                         Mrs Dickensons

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



 1. We have assumed that vararies is a slip of the pen. The corrected reading, ‘I have not recovered Lord Henry's vagaries’, would then mean ‘I have not recalled Lord Henry's digressions’ (OED s.vv. recover v.1, 6.b., vagary n., 2. Accessed 27-01-2023).
 2. The full dateline (written vertically) is not visible on the image due to how the note has been pasted onto the sheet, but has been checked when viewing the document in person.
 3. This address line is not visible on the image due to how the note has been pasted onto the sheet, but has been checked when viewing the document in person.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Note from Charlotte Margaret Gunning to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/15/1/28(1)

Correspondence Details

Sender: Charlotte Margaret Digby (née Gunning)

Place sent: London

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: London

Date sent: 7 May 1788

Letter Description

Summary: In this note, dated 7 May 1788, Gunning asks Hamilton to breakfast with her.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 160 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

Research assistant: Carla Seabra-Dacosta, MA student, University of Vigo

Transliterator: Georgia Wadsworth, 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: 28 April 2023

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