Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/15/1/1(4)

Note from Charlotte Margaret Gunning (later Digby) to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text


      My dearest Friend, in case I should not find you at
home, I leave this, to tell you I am well & that I am as
grateful & pleased as poʃsible with your dear, beautiful
Present -- which I shall ever value, for its [o]wn & your sake
Bell is vastly better thank God -- I was much satisfied
with her Health & more so wth her Spirits -- Have you any
thoughts of Mrs Delany tonight, or Mrs Vesie, or both --
I have my coach, & could carry you &c I wish to do all
this because I shall have no carriage for 10 Days to come
again -- send me an immediate answer -- yours &c
                                                         &c CMG[1]
Tuesday 11th. Janry. 1784[2]

11 Jany 1784[3]

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


Notes


 1. The signature is written to the right of the dateline.
 2. 11 January 1784 was a Sunday, not a Tuesday. Several possibilities present themselves. For example, the annotators may have got the year wrong, the note actually being written on Tuesday 11 January 1780, while the date 11 January 1784 might have been suggested by the fact that Gunning collected Hamilton for dinner at Mrs. Walsingham's on that day (see HAM/2/6 p.111). The opening of the note, which anticipates Gunning calling on Hamilton when she was not at home and then refers to a present received, might suggest Tuesday 23 December 1783, as Gunning called twice the next morning, Christmas Eve, 24 December, when Hamilton was out (see HAM/2/6 p.83). However, for now these are merely speculations.
 3. This annotation is written vertically in the right-hand margin.

Normalised Text


      My dearest Friend, in case I should not find you at
home, I leave this, to tell you I am well & that I am as
grateful & pleased as possible with your dear, beautiful
Present -- which I shall ever value, for its own & your sake
Bell is vastly better thank God -- I was much satisfied
with her Health & more so with her Spirits -- Have you any
thoughts of Mrs Delany tonight, or Mrs Vesie, or both --
I have my coach, & could carry you &c I wish to do all
this because I shall have no carriage for 10 Days to come
again -- send me an immediate answer -- yours &c
                                                         &c Charlotte Margaret Gunning
Tuesday

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



 1. The signature is written to the right of the dateline.
 2. 11 January 1784 was a Sunday, not a Tuesday. Several possibilities present themselves. For example, the annotators may have got the year wrong, the note actually being written on Tuesday 11 January 1780, while the date 11 January 1784 might have been suggested by the fact that Gunning collected Hamilton for dinner at Mrs. Walsingham's on that day (see HAM/2/6 p.111). The opening of the note, which anticipates Gunning calling on Hamilton when she was not at home and then refers to a present received, might suggest Tuesday 23 December 1783, as Gunning called twice the next morning, Christmas Eve, 24 December, when Hamilton was out (see HAM/2/6 p.83). However, for now these are merely speculations.
 3. This annotation is written vertically in the right-hand margin.

Metadata

Library References

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

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Note from Charlotte Margaret Gunning (later Digby) to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/15/1/1(4)

Correspondence Details

Sender: Charlotte Margaret Digby (née Gunning)

Place sent: unknown

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: London (certainty: medium)

Date sent: between 23 December 1783 and 11 January 1784
notBefore 23 December 1783 (precision: low)
notAfter 11 January 1784 (precision: medium)

Letter Description

Summary: Gunning anticipates calling on Hamilton but finding her not at home. She wishes to thank her for her present. She asks if Hamilton intends visiting Mrs Delany that evening and notes that her coach would be available.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 118 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 13 October 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: 18 February 2025

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