Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/2/14

Letter from John Dickenson to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


2

From J Dickenson Junr
 ------ 
                             Bell Derby[1] 17 Feby 1789[2]
My dearest Mary
      Here am I arrived, at 3 oClock
tolerably dry from the Knees upwards --
but below that point in a miserable
plight indeed -- I should not have
wrote to you to day, but to inform
you of something that will call
forth feelings of a different Nature --
That poor wretch Sir Hry Harpur
is dead' -- he died on Tuesday last --
& is to be buried on Saturday -- I am
sensible that our dear friend Ly
Frances will be in great distreʃs
Yet I cannot help rejoicing that
an End is put to the uncomfortable


State in which She lived --
      Kiʃs our dear Child an hundred
times for me -- Sweet little Creature
how affectionate She is -- I still see
her sitting in State with the pillow
before her, & enjoying herself -- If it
shall please God to bleʃs her & me by
sparing your precious Life -- She may
grow up an Ornament to Society &
an example of Excellence to her Sex -- and
I live the happiest of Husbands
      I am Yours entirely
                             And Most Affly
                                                         JD

Say every thing that is proper to the
Tredrille[3] party --

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


Notes


 1. Likely referring to The Old Bell, a coaching inn built in 1650 and still in use today.
 2. The year has obviously been added later, but whether by Dickenson or by Hamilton is uncertain.
 3. ‘A card-game played by three persons, usually with thirty cards’ (OED s.v. tredrille n. Accessed 02-07-2020).

Normalised Text




                             Bell Derby 17 February 1789
My dearest Mary
      Here am I arrived, at 3 o'Clock
tolerably dry from the Knees upwards --
but below that point in a miserable
plight indeed -- I should not have
written to you to day, but to inform
you of something that will call
forth feelings of a different Nature --
That poor wretch Sir Henry Harpur
is dead' -- he died on Tuesday last --
& is to be buried on Saturday -- I am
sensible that our dear friend Lady
Frances will be in great distress
Yet I cannot help rejoicing that
an End is put to the uncomfortable


State in which She lived --
      Kiss our dear Child an hundred
times for me -- Sweet little Creature
how affectionate She is -- I still see
her sitting in State with the pillow
before her, & enjoying herself -- If it
shall please God to bless her & me by
sparing your precious Life -- She may
grow up an Ornament to Society &
an example of Excellence to her Sex -- and
I live the happiest of Husbands
      I am Yours entirely
                             And Most Affectionately
                                                         John Dickenson

Say every thing that is proper to the
Tredrille party --

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



 1. Likely referring to The Old Bell, a coaching inn built in 1650 and still in use today.
 2. The year has obviously been added later, but whether by Dickenson or by Hamilton is uncertain.
 3. ‘A card-game played by three persons, usually with thirty cards’ (OED s.v. tredrille n. Accessed 02-07-2020).

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from John Dickenson to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/2/14

Correspondence Details

Sender: John Dickenson

Place sent: Derby

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: unknown

Date sent: 17 February 1789

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from John Dickenson to his wife Mary née Hamilton, relating to the death of Hamilton's relation, Sir Harpur (see HAM/1/16).
   

Length: 1 sheet, 194 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 2 July 2020)

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: 2 November 2021

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