Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

GEO/ADD/3/83/49

Letter from Mary Hamilton to George, Prince of Wales

Diplomatic Text

[1]
      The little Gentleman[2] has certainly been  --- Shot with one of
Cupids most powerful Darts -- he offered an 100 Guineas for a
small lock of my Hair“The Divine Miʃs H's hair[3] -- this he
could not get without an application to me -- I laugh'd at
his folly & replied, upon condition he would have his
Hair, of wch. he is coxcombically proud, cut off, & wear a little
Brown Bob wig[4] -- & then he must wear it
in full dreʃs Clothes[5] -- he might apply to my maid for the
Combings of my Hair



Does this refer to a letter
in the packet Dated
Nov. 18[6]


[7]

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


Notes


 1. This letter is undated and carries no explicit indication that it is addressed to the Prince, but it may well belong in this part of their correspondence, especially if it is what provokes the Prince to call her ‘whimsical’ in GEO/ADD/3/82/64.
 2. The same episode appears to be discussed in a letter to Charlotte Gunning (HAM/1/15/2/27(2)), where the ‘little Gentleman’ is more forthrightly called ‘[t]hat little fool’, and his partially-erased name has the initial ‘B’.
 3. The cancelled of is not restored as part of the substitution, and there is no closing quotation mark.
 4. A bob-wig is ‘a wig having the bottom locks turned up into “bobs” or short curls, as opposed to a “full-bottomed wig”’ (OED s.v. bob n. 1, 4b. Accessed 30-09-2019). Admiration for Hamilton's idea is expressed in the Prince's reply (GEO/ADD/3/82/66).
 5. A pair of small crosses indicates that the condition on dress clothes, the last words on the page, belongs with the condition on wearing a wig.
 6. The annotator must be referring to GEO/ADD/3/82/63, though it is unclear why.
 7. This page is blank, apart from traces of writing at the top right where the sheet has been cut.

Normalised Text


      The little Gentleman has certainly been  --- Shot with one of
Cupids most powerful Darts -- he offered an 100 Guineas for a
small lock “The Divine Miss Hamilton's hair -- this he
could not get without an application to me -- I laughed at
his folly & replied, upon condition he would have his
Hair, of which he is coxcombically proud, cut off, & wear a little
Bob wig -- & then he must wear it
in full dress Clothes -- he might apply to my maid for the
Combings of my Hair





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



 1. This letter is undated and carries no explicit indication that it is addressed to the Prince, but it may well belong in this part of their correspondence, especially if it is what provokes the Prince to call her ‘whimsical’ in GEO/ADD/3/82/64.
 2. The same episode appears to be discussed in a letter to Charlotte Gunning (HAM/1/15/2/27(2)), where the ‘little Gentleman’ is more forthrightly called ‘[t]hat little fool’, and his partially-erased name has the initial ‘B’.
 3. The cancelled of is not restored as part of the substitution, and there is no closing quotation mark.
 4. A bob-wig is ‘a wig having the bottom locks turned up into “bobs” or short curls, as opposed to a “full-bottomed wig”’ (OED s.v. bob n. 1, 4b. Accessed 30-09-2019). Admiration for Hamilton's idea is expressed in the Prince's reply (GEO/ADD/3/82/66).
 5. A pair of small crosses indicates that the condition on dress clothes, the last words on the page, belongs with the condition on wearing a wig.
 6. The annotator must be referring to GEO/ADD/3/82/63, though it is unclear why.
 7. This page is blank, apart from traces of writing at the top right where the sheet has been cut.

Metadata

Library References

Repository: Windsor Castle, The Royal Archives

Archive: GEO/ADD/3 Additional papers of George IV, as Prince, Regent, and King

Item title: Letter from Mary Hamilton to George, Prince of Wales

Shelfmark: GEO/ADD/3/83/49

Correspondence Details

Sender: Mary Hamilton

Place sent: London (certainty: medium)

Addressee: George, Prince of Wales (later George IV)

Place received: unknown

Date sent: not after 19 November 1779
notAfter 22 November 1779 (precision: low)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from Mary Hamilton to George, Prince of Wales, on the wish of 'the little Gentleman' to have a lock of her hair.
    Hamilton writes that this gentleman has been 'shot with one of Cupid's most powerful darts', and had offered her 100 guineas for her hair. She explains that she would give him the hair on the condition that he would have his hair, of which he is excessively proud, cut off, '& wear a little Bob wig'.
    [Draft.]
   

Length: 1 sheet, 88 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: Transcription and Research Assistant funding in 2018/19 provided by the Student Experience Internship programme of the University of Manchester.

Research assistant: Emma Donington Kiey, undergraduate student, University of Manchester

Transliterator: Emma Donington Kiey (submitted August 2019)

Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors

Revision date: 10 December 2021

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