Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/4/7/30

Letter from Robert Keith to Mrs Mary Catherine Hamilton (née Dufresne)

Diplomatic Text


1.

      From Robt Keith
20 Sept 1771

      Madam,

      After so long silence, you will no doubt wonder at my begging
leave to offer you these two or three lines; but I was always waiting in expectation
of having the pleasure of hearing from your family in answer to my last which I
sent long ago, 'have hitherto, however, waited in vain; being upon Guard the begin-
-ing of this week and taking up a newspaper, I must own, I was exceedingly
surprised and grieved at reading a paragraph from Northampton, which gave me
notice of the death of so good a Friend and acquaintence as the late Mr: Ham-
-ilton was to me, and imediately resolved to trouble you, Madam, with this
to aʃsure you, that my sorrow is indeed very great; the news struck me the more,
as it was so little expected; never having heard a word of his illneʃs till then:
believe me, Madam, nothing can aleviate the gri[e]f I have, in not having had the oppor-
-tunity of seeing him before his death, but my hearing of the welfare of you and
Miʃs Hamilton, to whome, I beg my most sincere complements and hope you will
please to accept the same from
                             Madam,
                                                         your most obedient and
                                                         most Obliged Servant
                                                                   Robt: Keith.
London,
Sept: the 20th:
      1771.


To
      The Honble: Mrs: Hamilton[1]

Mr. Keith 1771[2]
                                                         Mr Keith[3]

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


Notes


 1. Postmark '21 SP' below address when unfolded.
 2. This line appears in the left margin, written vertically.
 3. This line appears in the right margin, written vertically.

Normalised Text





      Madam,

      After so long silence, you will no doubt wonder at my begging
leave to offer you these two or three lines; but I was always waiting in expectation
of having the pleasure of hearing from your family in answer to my last which I
sent long ago, 'have hitherto, however, waited in vain; being upon Guard the beginning
 of this week and taking up a newspaper, I must own, I was exceedingly
surprised and grieved at reading a paragraph from Northampton, which gave me
notice of the death of so good a Friend and acquaintance as the late Mr: Hamilton
 was to me, and immediately resolved to trouble you, Madam, with this
to assure you, that my sorrow is indeed very great; the news struck me the more,
as it was so little expected; never having heard a word of his illness till then:
believe me, Madam, nothing can alleviate the grief I have, in not having had the opportunity
 of seeing him before his death, but my hearing of the welfare of you and
Miss Hamilton, to whom, I beg my most sincere compliments and hope you will
please to accept the same from
                             Madam,
                                                         your most obedient and
                                                         most Obliged Servant
                                                                   Robert Keith.
London,
September the 20th:
      1771.


To
      The Honourable Mrs: Hamilton


                                                        

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



 1. Postmark '21 SP' below address when unfolded.
 2. This line appears in the left margin, written vertically.
 3. This line appears in the right margin, written vertically.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from Robert Keith to Mrs Mary Catherine Hamilton (née Dufresne)

Shelfmark: HAM/1/4/7/30

Correspondence Details

Sender: Robert Keith

Place sent: London

Addressee: Mary Catherine Hamilton (née Dufresne)

Place received: Northampton (certainty: medium)

Date sent: 20 September 1771

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from Robert Keith [possibly Sir Robert Murray, of Murrayshall (1730-1795), diplomatist and army officer] to Mrs Hamilton, concerning the death of her husband, which he had read of in the newspaper. Dated at London.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 216 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 2013/14 provided by G.L. Brook bequest, University of Manchester.

Research assistant: George Bailey, undergraduate student, University of Manchester

Transliterator: George Bailey (submitted December 2013)

Transliterator: Rui Zhang, undergraduate student, University of Manchester (submitted December 2013)

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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