HAM/1/11/20
Letter from Philadelphia Dawson, Lady Dartrey (later Cremorne) to Mary Hamilton
Diplomatic Text
19
1782
My Dear Miʃs Hamilton
It is impoʃsible for
me to expreʃs how sensibly I feel the
Queen's gracious goodneʃs to me, & how
very happy I shall feel tomorrow at
nine o'Clock -- how I hope the Sun will
shine, & how I wish the Trees were
full of Leaves, & the Garden full of
Flowers -- in short I wish for every thing
that could make our little Cottage
more worthy the Honor Her Majesty so
graciously confers upon us. I beg my
humble Duty -- how good of the Queen to
bring the Princeʃses with Her! --
In the greatest haste
Yrs: most Affly:
PD
I fear you have
miʃsed my two Letters --
about your poor Woman.[1]
Wednesday 2 o'Clock --
23d Octbr. 1782
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. This is presumably a reference not to Dartrey's recent object of charity, the ‘Magdalen’ of HAM/1/11/16, but to someone whose case Hamilton has raised. Various candidates were in discussion around this time, among them Eleanor Glover's ‘distreſsd family’ (see HAM/1/13/12) and Hannah More's ‘Louisa, the Maid of the Haystack’ (see MS Eng 1778 116), but it is unknown whether the ‘poor Woman’ concerns one of these or someone else entirely.
Normalised Text
My Dear Miss Hamilton
It is impossible for
me to express how sensibly I feel the
Queen's gracious goodness to me, & how
very happy I shall feel tomorrow at
nine o'Clock -- how I hope the Sun will
shine, & how I wish the Trees were
full of Leaves, & the Garden full of
Flowers -- in short I wish for every thing
that could make our little Cottage
more worthy the Honour Her Majesty so
graciously confers upon us. I beg my
humble Duty -- how good of the Queen to
bring the Princesses with Her! --
In the greatest haste
Yours most Affectionately
Philadelphia Dartrey
I fear you have
missed my two Letters --
about your poor Woman.
Wednesday 2 o'Clock --
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 Philadelphia Dawson, Lady Dartrey (later Cremorne) to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: HAM/1/11/20
Correspondence Details
Sender: Lady Dartrey Philadelphia Hannah Dawson (née Freame)
Place sent: Chelsea
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: unknown
Date sent: not after 23 October 1782
notAfter 23 October 1782 (precision: high)
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from Lady Dartrey to Mary Hamilton. She is honoured that the Queen and the princesses are to visit her cottage and writes that she hopes 'the Sun will shine', and wishes 'the Trees were full of Leaves & the Garden full of Flowers'.
Original reference No. 19.
Length: 1 sheet, 119 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: Christine Wallis, 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 August 2025