Diplomatic Text
Deal
August 6: 1779
I am bitterly afraid my dear
Miʃs Hamilton that I must be in sad
and seemingly deserved disgrace with you,
since I verily apprehend that you have
never received a long letter I writ you six
or seven weeks ago. If you have, I shall
certainly call up all my scolding abilities,
in which I can aʃsure you I am by no
means --- defecient, and use them as seems meet
on such an occasion. Seriously however
if you have received my letter, I hope Illneʃs
have not mhas not been the cause of your
silence. When you have any spare time from
from your various engagements, will you write
if it be but two or three lines just to say
how you do, and whether you have had my
letter, which for a particular reason I very
much wish to know. I have been at Mill Hill
for five weeks, from which place I intended
to have made you a visit, as I mentioned in
my letter, but waited to hear from you till
I lost the opportunity of going to you.
On my return to this place, I had the happineʃs
of finding my beloved friend no worse than
usual. she desires her love to you. Next
Tuesday sen- night I shall set out with
an aking heart (as I always do when I
leave my dearest friend) for Tunbridge
Wells. my lodgings will be on Mount
Ephraim. Adieu I positively will not
not write one word more till I hear from
you. Write soon therefore & say pray pray
prettily to Yr
Affecte Friend
M. Sharpe.
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Normalised Text
Deal
August 6: 1779
I am bitterly afraid my dear
Miss Hamilton that I must be in sad
and seemingly deserved disgrace with you,
since I verily apprehend that you have
never received a long letter I wrote you six
or seven weeks ago. If you have, I shall
certainly call up all my scolding abilities,
in which I can assure you I am by no
means deficient, and use them as seems meet
on such an occasion. Seriously however
if you have received my letter, I hope Illness
has not been the cause of your
silence. When you have any spare time
from your various engagements, will you write
if it be but two or three lines just to say
how you do, and whether you have had my
letter, which for a particular reason I very
much wish to know. I have been at Mill Hill
for five weeks, from which place I intended
to have made you a visit, as I mentioned in
my letter, but waited to hear from you till
I lost the opportunity of going to you.
On my return to this place, I had the happiness
of finding my beloved friend no worse than
usual. she desires her love to you. Next
Tuesday sen- night I shall set out with
an aching heart (as I always do when I
leave my dearest friend) for Tunbridge
Wells. my lodgings will be on Mount
Ephraim. Adieu I positively will
not write one word more till I hear from
you. Write soon therefore & say pray pray
prettily to Your
Affectionate Friend
Mary Sharpe.
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Metadata
Library References
Repository: John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester
Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers
Item title: Letter from Mary Sharpe (later Beauvoir) to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: HAM/1/22/11
Correspondence Details
Sender: Mary Beauvoir (née Sharpe, later Douglas)
Place sent: Deal
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: to be determined
Date sent: 6 August 1779
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from Mary Sharpe to Mary Hamilton. Sharpe writes concerning a long letter she had written to Hamilton a number of weeks before, and fears that she did not receive it. Sharpe writes if Hamilton had received her letter that she hopes that illness is not the cause of her silence. She asks that she write a few lines to her. Sharpe had spent some time at Mill Hill, from which point she intended to visit Hamilton. She had mentioned her intention of this in her lost letter and had waited to hear from her and had since lost the opportunity to visit. On her return to Mill Hill she found her friend [Mrs Carter] 'no worse than usual'. Sharpe ends her letter noting that she is to leave Mrs Carter the following week for Tunbridge Wells, and that she does so as she always takes leave of her 'with an [aching] heart'.
Dated at Deal, [Kent].
Length: 1 sheet, 270 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: XML version first created without transcription as part of project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers', funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council under grant AH/S007121/1. Transcription added after the funded period under the supervision of David Denison and Nuria Yáñez-Bouza.
Transliterator: Pete Morris, Artificial Intelligence and Ideas Adoption (AIIA), The University of Manchester Library (Plain text transliteration submitted 22 May 2025)
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: 7 April 2026
