Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/15/2/10

Incomplete letter from Mary Hamilton to Charlotte Margaret Gunning

Diplomatic Text

[1]
                                                         9
                                                         July 20th. 1780
these letters of mine remain unanswer'd my Astrea?![2]
Why do you not write every post? The letters come in
here but three times a week -- when you miʃs two
posts -- think what a long long time it seems to me,
& how anxious & impatient I grow to hear of you.
how mortified & disappointed to find no letter
from you -- This is just wt. I feel at present -- the
letters are deliver'd[3]

 ------------  -- I am well -- not quite happy for I have
read a letter from D[4] -- I fear that young Man suffers
from much from an unfortunate attachment -- the
Father wrote to me -- a sensible genteel, well expreʃs'd
letter -- very flattering to your friend -- it
      throws me into a dreadful em-
      barraʃsment -- I know not wt- to
      do -- I wd-. wish to act wth- discretion,
      yet Honor must be my guide
      I never can, or will be base enough from
prudential motives alone to retract what
I have once said -- Adieu[5]

[6]
July 20th
      1780[7]

[8]                                    [9]

[Th]e Honble
      Miʃs Gunni[ng] [10]
           St. James['s]
           London
Free
Wake[11]

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


Notes


 1. This letter is incomplete and only two parts remain. It is unknown how much of the original is missing.
 2. It seems that Mary Hamilton initially wrote ‘?’ and then decided that ‘!’ was more appropriate, although a combination of the two (known as an ‘interrobang’, the concept of which is usually dated 1962, see OED s.v. interrobang n. Accessed 01-11-2021) cannot be ruled out completely, as this opening of Hamilton's letter can be interpreted as conveying ‘exclamative surprise’.
 3. The first part of the letter has been cut and ends here.
 4. Possibly a reference to John Dickenson, her future husband.
 5. The remainder of the letter has been cut away.
 6. The image has been rotated 90 degrees for ease of reading.
 7. This dateline is on the back of the first part of the letter and is not visible on the image due to how it was pasted onto the sheet, but has been checked when viewing the document in person.
 8. Remains of a postmark which reads '22 JY', indicating the date the note went through the post.
 9. Remains of a postmark which reads '22 JY', indicating the date the note went through the post.
 10. Remains of a frank, reading 'FR[EE]'.
 11. These two lines, which attribute the free frank to 'Wake' (possibly Sir William Wake), appear to the left of the address.

Normalised Text


                                                        
                                                         July 20th. 1780
these letters of mine remain unanswered my Astrea!
Why do you not write every post? The letters come in
here but three times a week -- when you miss two
posts -- think what a long long time it seems to me,
& how anxious & impatient I grow to hear of you.
how mortified & disappointed to find no letter
from you -- This is just what I feel at present -- the
letters are delivered

 ------------  -- I am well -- not quite happy for I have
read a letter from D -- I fear that young Man suffers
much from an unfortunate attachment -- the
Father wrote to me -- a sensible genteel, well expressed
letter -- very flattering to your friend -- it
      throws me into a dreadful embarrassment
      -- I know not what to
      do -- I would wish to act with discretion,
      yet Honour must be my guide
      I never can, or will be base enough from
prudential motives alone to retract what
I have once said -- Adieu


July 20th
      1780

               

The Honourable
      Miss Gunning
           St. James's
           London
Free
Wake

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



 1. This letter is incomplete and only two parts remain. It is unknown how much of the original is missing.
 2. It seems that Mary Hamilton initially wrote ‘?’ and then decided that ‘!’ was more appropriate, although a combination of the two (known as an ‘interrobang’, the concept of which is usually dated 1962, see OED s.v. interrobang n. Accessed 01-11-2021) cannot be ruled out completely, as this opening of Hamilton's letter can be interpreted as conveying ‘exclamative surprise’.
 3. The first part of the letter has been cut and ends here.
 4. Possibly a reference to John Dickenson, her future husband.
 5. The remainder of the letter has been cut away.
 6. The image has been rotated 90 degrees for ease of reading.
 7. This dateline is on the back of the first part of the letter and is not visible on the image due to how it was pasted onto the sheet, but has been checked when viewing the document in person.
 8. Remains of a postmark which reads '22 JY', indicating the date the note went through the post.
 9. Remains of a postmark which reads '22 JY', indicating the date the note went through the post.
 10. Remains of a frank, reading 'FR[EE]'.
 11. These two lines, which attribute the free frank to 'Wake' (possibly Sir William Wake), appear to the left of the address.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Incomplete letter from Mary Hamilton to Charlotte Margaret Gunning

Shelfmark: HAM/1/15/2/10

Correspondence Details

Sender: Mary Hamilton

Place sent: unknown

Addressee: Charlotte Margaret Digby (née Gunning)

Place received: London

Date sent: 20 July 1780

Letter Description

Summary: Incomplete letter from Mary Hamilton to Charlotte Gunning, dated 20 July 1780. Hamilton complains that her letters remain unanswered by Gunning. Hamilton then says that she is well but not 'quite happy', as she has had letters from 'D' [possibly John Dickenson] and his father.
    Original reference No. 9.
   

Length: 2 sheets, 175 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: Donald Alasdair Morrison, undergraduate student, University of Manchester

Transliterator: Joseph Branker, undergraduate student, University of Manchester (submitted November 2014)

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: 10 December 2021

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