Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

LWL Mss Vol. 75(87)

Note from Elizabeth Montagu to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


                                                         84

Mrs. Montagu presents her Compts.
to Mrs. Dickinson -- and will be
Very happy to see her & Miʃs
Dickinson to Morrow Morning
betwixt twelve & one o'Clock
to see ye. Chimney Spweepers &c[1]

Portman Square[2]

      Tuesday Ev——
1799 May[3]

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


Notes


 1. On 1 May every year Elizabeth Montagu hosted an annual celebration for London 'climbing boys' (chimney sweeps). The date she began this practice is unknown, but certainly before 1793, and after the completion of the construction of Montagu House in 1781. See here: George L. Phillips, 'Mrs Montagu and the Climbing-Boys', The Review of English Studies, 25:99 (1949) pp.237-244.
 2. Montagu House (No 22) was built by James Stuart between 1777 and 1781 for Elizabeth Montagu.
 3. Mrs Montagu's feast for the Chimney Sweeps took place on 1 May, which was a Wednesday. This annotation was written on a Tuesday, thus 30 April 1799, inviting Hamilton for the following morning. Hamilton dates the note as 'May 1799', probably referring to the date of either the receipt or the event itself.

Normalised Text


                                                        

Mrs. Montagu presents her Compliments
to Mrs. Dickinson -- and will be
Very happy to see her & Miss
Dickinson to Morrow Morning
betwixt twelve & one o'Clock
to see the Chimney Sweepers &c

Portman Square

      Tuesday Evening

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



 1. On 1 May every year Elizabeth Montagu hosted an annual celebration for London 'climbing boys' (chimney sweeps). The date she began this practice is unknown, but certainly before 1793, and after the completion of the construction of Montagu House in 1781. See here: George L. Phillips, 'Mrs Montagu and the Climbing-Boys', The Review of English Studies, 25:99 (1949) pp.237-244.
 2. Montagu House (No 22) was built by James Stuart between 1777 and 1781 for Elizabeth Montagu.
 3. Mrs Montagu's feast for the Chimney Sweeps took place on 1 May, which was a Wednesday. This annotation was written on a Tuesday, thus 30 April 1799, inviting Hamilton for the following morning. Hamilton dates the note as 'May 1799', probably referring to the date of either the receipt or the event itself.

Metadata

Library References

Repository: Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University

Archive: Mrs. Delany correspondence

Item title: Note from Elizabeth Montagu to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: LWL Mss Vol. 75(87)

Correspondence Details

Sender: Elizabeth Montagu (née Robinson)

Place sent: London

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: unknown

Date sent: 30 April 1799

Letter Description

Summary: Note from Elizabeth Montagu to Mary Hamilton, telling her how happy she will be seeing her and her Louisa the next day to see the "Chimney Sweepers", referring to an annual celebration for London 'climbing boys' (chimney sweeps) on 1 May that Montagu organised.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 37 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: Tino Oudesluijs, editorial team (completed 13 April 2021)

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

Revision date: 2 November 2021

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