Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/11/13

Letter from Lady Dartrey (later Lady Cremorne) to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


                             12.           Sept. 1781

My Dear Miʃs Hamilton
      I recd: your Letter & the
pretty Work Bag too late last night, to send
my thanks for them; -- Lord Dartrey & I are
vastly happy to hear Prince Alfred is
so well recovered. pray aʃsure the Queen with our duty
how we rejoiced in the good account you
sent us. I beg you to give my Duty to
Princeʃs Elizabeth, & thank her Royal
Highness, a thousand times for her pretty
present; I shall value it as it deserves, & f - tell
her, I shall take care of it as her gift, & leave
it as such to little Julia's great grand Daughter. --
      I beg you to present my Duty to Princeʃs
Royal, & tell her Royal Highneʃs how much



I wish her many very happy returns of
this Day.[1] -- my duty attends Princeʃs Augusta
& your two pretty little Princeʃses. Julia
cannot, She says, fold up her Gloves like
Princess Sophia -- but She will try -- She did
try to be sure, but she could not do it quite --
She is at this moment with her pencil &
paper, & I asked her what She was drawing,
& she said not drawing, Mama, only writing
my proper Dipthongs ai, ae, au. aw &c
only thingk how ridiculous! --
                             Adieu my Dr: Miʃs Hamilton
believe me
                             Yrs: very Affectionately
                                                         PDartrey

Chelsea
      Sept: 29th: 1781 --

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


Notes


 1. 29 September was the Princess Royal's birthday. She would have been 15.

Normalised Text


                                       

My Dear Miss Hamilton
      I received your Letter & the
pretty Work Bag too late last night, to send
my thanks for them; -- Lord Dartrey & I are
vastly happy to hear Prince Alfred is
so well recovered. pray assure the Queen with our duty
how we rejoiced in the good account you
sent us. I beg you to give my Duty to
Princess Elizabeth, & thank her Royal
Highness, a thousand times for her pretty
present; I shall value it as it deserves, & tell
her, I shall take care of it as her gift, & leave
it as such to little Julia's great grand Daughter. --
      I beg you to present my Duty to Princess
Royal, & tell her Royal Highness how much



I wish her many very happy returns of
this Day. -- my duty attends Princess Augusta
& your two pretty little Princesses. Julia
cannot, She says, fold up her Gloves like
Princess Sophia -- but She will try -- She did
try to be sure, but she could not do it quite --
She is at this moment with her pencil &
paper, & I asked her what She was drawing,
& she said not drawing, Mama, only writing
my proper Diphthongs ai, ae, au. aw &c
only think how ridiculous! --
                             Adieu my Dear Miss Hamilton
believe me
                             Yours very Affectionately
                                                         Philadelphia Dartrey

Chelsea
      September 29th: 1781 --

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



 1. 29 September was the Princess Royal's birthday. She would have been 15.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from Lady Dartrey (later Lady Cremorne) to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/11/13

Correspondence Details

Sender: Philadelphia Hannah, Baroness Cremorne Dawson (née Freame)

Place sent: Chelsea

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: unknown

Date sent: 29 September 1781

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from Lady Dartrey to Mary Hamilton. She thanks Hamilton for her letter and her 'pretty work box'. Lord Dartrey is happy to know that Prince Alfred is better and she asks that Hamilton assure the Queen how happy they are at Hamilton's account of him. She thanks Princess Elizabeth for her present and notes that she will value it and leave it for her future great grand-daughter. The letter continues on the subject of the princesses and on Dartrey's daughter, Julia who when she was asked what it was she was drawing replied that she was not drawing but 'writing her proper Diphthongs ai, ae, air [...] only think how ridiculous!'.
    Dated at Chelsea.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 227 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 March 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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