Diplomatic Text
[1]
10
Dover St December 9th 1783
▼
My dearest Friend --
I have refused going to Lord Dartreys
this Evening on purpose to write to you, and tell you
my feelings, tho' they are much beyond the Power
of Description, even by a much better writer than
I. I do not know I ever experienced such a disappoint=
-ment in my Life as the news you sent us of Your
farther stay. With what pleasure did I look
forward to the approaching Day when I was once
more to see my dear Friend. How had I cun
counted the Days I may even say Hours, and
Minutes; and looked upon the whole as so
much lost time till your return. I am sure
I may safely say it was the first thing I thought
of in a morning and the last at night.
It was my only consolation for our [be]ing in
Town, and your being absent for these 3
Weeks, that we should have one fortnight
comfortably together; and now see how all my
hopes are vanished! If we meet at all it will
only be to part again; to part perhaps not to
meet again this Winter; for if once the Northam[p]
=tonshire Clay lays hold of us, I fear it will
detain us the whole Winter. And then I shall
have no other method of conversing with the
dear object of my Heart than by letter, and
that I fear not half so often as I shall wish.
I think you pity me; perhaps you only laugh
at my Weakneʃs; Your Friends that you are
now with are much finer and greater than I am,
or ever shall be, and have much greater Powers
of amusing, but that may not make them more
sincere; I only hope that some occasion may
happyhappen to shew you that tho' your
Friend is much humbler he is quite as sincere,
and I really think it from my Heart; that I
would willingly and chearfully part with my
Life, and any or every thing I have in the World,
could it be of the smallest service to my dear
Miʃs Hamilton. Indeed if I was not to act so,
I should be most ungrateful as you have always
been my kindest monitor, and Friend, and
from whose charming Counsels I hope to receive
the greatest advantage; be aʃsured I shall
never prove ungrateful; and shall always look
upon your approbation as the chief happineʃs
of my life, and the standard of what is virtuous
and --- amiable. We have been in Eʃsex for
a day and came to London yesterday in full
perʃsu persuasion that we should have spent this
Evening, with you; but instead of that we only
heard that piercing --- news; the account was immedi=
=ately and triumphantly brought to be me (by
a Person whom good nature forbids me to name,) before
I was hardly off my Horse, with such a face as bespoke
the pleasure it the Person had in declaring ------ and
the knowledge of the Pain it would give me. I am
certain that that Person can have very little aff[ec]tion
regard for you or feeling for me. We are engaged
to a Ball at Epping next Friday and I was vain
enough to think that you would perhaps have been
of the party, not for any pleasure you could have
derived from a Country aʃsembly, but for the
sake of accompanying my Mother who cannot go
since she has no Lady to go with her; and therefore
we shall be a party from London of six Gentlemen,
without a single Lady; how shocking! I thought
it would have been a pleasant Scheme to me, but
since you cannot be of the party I am sure it
will be quite the contrary; for I have not seen
a Woman I canno endure since I had the pleasure
(perhaps I should say the misfortune) of knowing
you. I fear I have intruded to much on your time
already, and I am sadly afraid I have wrote nothing but a
a parcel of nonsense, yet I shall have no Scruples in making
you read it as that will be some little punishment for the disappoin
=tment you have given me
if I have you are the
cause -- [2]
Adieu my dearest --
believe me to [be] [y]our sincere, much obliged and ever devoted friend
to your old Friend in those 7
Sheets you write my Mother.
Marianne is really in a very
alarming way: I shall never
forgive you if you fail on the
18th.[3]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. Although catalogued with letters from Frances Harpur, this letter is written by William Wake. An examination of HAM/1/8/8/10 and HAM/1/8/8/11 shows that Wake's letters to Hamilton have been numbered, and that the numbering jumps from '8' (HAM/1/8/8/10) to '11' (HAM/1/8/8/11); HAM/1/16/16 (numbered '9') and this letter (numbered '10') restore order to the run of letters. Wake's letters from November 1783-January 1784 show that he was living in London at the time and match the location for the writing of this letter. Furthermore, the evidence of the salutations, punctuation and handwriting in this letter and HAM/1/16/16 confirms that the writer is William Wake rather than Frances Harpur. Hamilton notes receipt of this letter in her diary (HAM/2/6 p.43).
2. These two lines are squeezed to the left of the closing salutation.
3. Moved postscript here from top of p.1, written below the dateline and to the right of the opening salutation.
Normalised Text
Dover Street December 9th 1783
▼
My dearest Friend --
I have refused going to Lord Dartreys
this Evening on purpose to write to you, and tell you
my feelings, though they are much beyond the Power
of Description, even by a much better writer than
I. I do not know I ever experienced such a disappointment
in my Life as the news you sent us of Your
farther stay. With what pleasure did I look
forward to the approaching Day when I was once
more to see my dear Friend. How had I
counted the Days I may even say Hours, and
Minutes; and looked upon the whole as so
much lost time till your return. I am sure
I may safely say it was the first thing I thought
of in a morning and the last at night.
It was my only consolation for our being in
Town, and your being absent for these 3
Weeks, that we should have one fortnight
comfortably together; and now see how all my
hopes are vanished! If we meet at all it will
only be to part again; to part perhaps not to
meet again this Winter; for if once the Northamptonshire
Clay lays hold of us, I fear it will
detain us the whole Winter. And then I shall
have no other method of conversing with the
dear object of my Heart than by letter, and
that I fear not half so often as I shall wish.
I think you pity me; perhaps you only laugh
at my Weakness; Your Friends that you are
now with are much finer and greater than I am,
or ever shall be, and have much greater Powers
of amusing, but that may not make them more
sincere; I only hope that some occasion may
happen to show you that though your
Friend is much humbler he is quite as sincere,
and I really think it from my Heart; that I
would willingly and cheerfully part with my
Life, and any or every thing I have in the World,
could it be of the smallest service to my dear
Miss Hamilton. Indeed if I was not to act so,
I should be most ungrateful as you have always
been my kindest monitor, and Friend, and
from whose charming Counsels I hope to receive
the greatest advantage; be assured I shall
never prove ungrateful; and shall always look
upon your approbation as the chief happiness
of my life, and the standard of what is virtuous
and amiable. We have been in Essex for
a day and came to London yesterday in full
persuasion that we should have spent this
Evening, with you; but instead of that we only
heard that piercing news; the account was immediately
and triumphantly brought to me (by
a Person whom good nature forbids me to name,) before
I was hardly off my Horse, with such a face as bespoke
the pleasure the Person had in declaring ------ and
the knowledge of the Pain it would give me. I am
certain that that Person can have very little
regard for you or feeling for me. We are engaged
to a Ball at Epping next Friday and I was vain
enough to think that you would perhaps have been
of the party, not for any pleasure you could have
derived from a Country assembly, but for the
sake of accompanying my Mother who cannot go
since she has no Lady to go with her; and therefore
we shall be a party from London of six Gentlemen,
without a single Lady; how shocking! I thought
it would have been a pleasant Scheme to me, but
since you cannot be of the party I am sure it
will be quite the contrary; for I have not seen
a Woman I can endure since I had the pleasure
(perhaps I should say the misfortune) of knowing
you. I fear I have intruded too much on your time
already, and I am sadly afraid I have written nothing but
a parcel of nonsense, yet I shall have no Scruples in making
you read it as that will be some little punishment for the disappointment
you have given me
if I have you are the
cause --
Adieu my dearest --
believe me to be your sincere, much obliged and ever devoted friend
to your old Friend in those 7
Sheets you write my Mother.
Marianne is really in a very
alarming way: I shall never
forgive you if you fail on the
18th.
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Notes
Metadata
Library References
Repository: John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester
Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers
Item title: Letter from William Wake to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: HAM/1/16/17
Correspondence Details
Sender: William Wake, 9th Baronet
Place sent: London
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: unknown
Date sent: 9 December 1783
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from William Wake to Mary Hamilton. He has refused an
invitation to Lord Dartrey's that evening purposely so that he can write to
Hamilton on his 'feelings'. He expresses his regard for Hamilton and
discusses a party that is to attend a Ball.
Dated at Dover Street, [London].
Original reference No. 10.
Length: 1 sheet, 757 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: Trevor Le Grand Irwin, MA student, Uppsala University (submitted 12 July 2022)
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 November 2022