Diplomatic Text
From J Dickenson Senr to Mrs Mary Dickenson 1785 July 13
I have received a few Lines wrote by your
fair hand & nothing coud have pleaʃed me more than to find
you have reaʃon to hate & detest your Husband. I will now
never suffer him to return to me without you, for all the Love
& Affection I ever had for him I will from this moment
transfer over to you. Let him complain as much as he chuses.
I will not attend to a Syllable of what he says -- perhaps he
may tell you I want you to come into the Country -- if he
[d]oes he is mistaken, for I will never lay Dear Mary Hamilton
under any restraint whatever not but we shall be glad to
see this dear Creature when it is perfectly agreeable. In caʃe
I shoud take it into my Head to disinherit Mr J D you shall
succeed to every penny I formerly meant to do for him. Thiʃ
Day you have been marryed a whole month -- God help you,
for I see you stand little chance of runing away with the Flitch[1]
of Bacon. I shall ever be Dear Mary HD ------ affectionate
J Dickenʃon
[2]
------------------------ for their money -- It was only yesterday I came to the
knowledge of histhese matters when I lost no time in sounding the Alarm. Tell
Mr. D that Mr. Wild the agent is in advance 570£ Mr Cooper of London
acts for the annuiat[ants] & is sending down Executions to secure the Rents, but
we shall soon let them ------------------------------[3]
now approve of what I wd. have had done last Year, only Mr. Wild will be ------------------
It is not unlikely but General Birch may be sending your Father ------------------
other world, & all I deʃire is that your friend may not think of revenging my ------------------ [4] [5]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. 'The “flitch” [side of bacon] presented yearly at Dunmow, in Essex, to any married couple who could prove that they had lived in conjugal harmony for a year and a day' (OED s.v. 1 n. 1b).
2. Over 50 letters by John Dickenson Sr. from the Legh of Lyme Muniments in the John Rylands Research Institute and Library are transcribed in 'A Corpus of late 18c Prose', edited by David Denison and Linda van Bergen, 2002. Another Dickenson letter, BAG/19/2/27, is in the Bagshawe Muniments in the same library. The Lancashire Archives in Preston hold a large collection of documents relating to the Dickenson family.
3. This section is written at the bottom of the page.
4. This section is written vertically on left side of the page and clearly belongs together with the other passage on that page.
5. The letter ends abruptly here.
Normalised Text
I have received a few Lines written by your
fair hand & nothing could have pleased me more than to find
you have reason to hate & detest your Husband. I will now
never suffer him to return to me without you, for all the Love
& Affection I ever had for him I will from this moment
transfer over to you. Let him complain as much as he chooses.
I will not attend to a Syllable of what he says -- perhaps he
may tell you I want you to come into the Country -- if he
does he is mistaken, for I will never lay Dear Mary Hamilton
under any restraint whatever not but we shall be glad to
see this dear Creature when it is perfectly agreeable. In case
I should take it into my Head to disinherit Mr John Dickenson you shall
succeed to every penny I formerly meant to do for him. This
Day you have been married a whole month -- God help you,
for I see you stand little chance of running away with the Flitch
of Bacon. I shall ever be Dear Mary Hamilton Dickenson affectionate
John Dickenson
for their money -- It was only yesterday I came to the
knowledge of these matters when I lost no time in sounding the Alarm. Tell
Mr. Dickenson that Mr. Wild the agent is in advance 570£ Mr Cooper of London
acts for the annuitants & is sending down Executions to secure the Rents, but
we shall soon let them ------------------------------
now approve of what I would have had done last Year, only Mr. Wild will be ------------------
It is not unlikely but General Birch may be sending your Father ------------------
other word, & all I desire is that your friend may not think of revenging my ------------------
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 John Dickenson Snr to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: HAM/1/3/2/2
Correspondence Details
Sender: John, Snr Dickenson
Place sent: unknown
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: unknown
Date sent: 13 July 1785
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from John Dickenson [Hamilton's father-in-law (1726-1810)] to Mary Hamilton. In this light-hearted letter Dickenson writes that it is a month to the day since her marriage ('God help you'), that he is pleased that she now has reason to 'detest' her husband, and that he has transferred to her all the affection he once had for him and 'will now never suffer him to return to me without you'. Dickenson continues that if he ever considers disinheriting his son, she will be named in his place.
The text on the back of the sheet is part of a different letter and relates to rents and mentions a Mr Wild, who is an agent.
Length: 1 sheet, 296 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: Isabella Formisano, former MA student, University of Manchester
Transliterator: Laura García-Castro, MA student, University of Vigo (submitted March 2016)
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