HAM/1/22/57

Note from Mary Sharpe (later Beauvoir) to Mary Hamilton

diplomatic | normalised | metadata | image (pdf)

Diplomatic Text

^[1]
      I am sorry that being engaged to go to
the ancient musick will not permit me to
wait on you. To say truth I am engaged all this
week, and this day sen- night in the next. I hope
I shall have better luck the next time you are
at liberty.      Yours Sincerely
                             M. B.
17^th. Feb^ry 1783
rec^d in y^e. Eve^g.^[2]

Miʃs Hamilton

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red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)

Notes

1. This note, marked as being received in the evening, is actually the last item in the correspondence for the year 1783 (confirmed in HAM/1/22/54 p.2 col.2) and must follow HAM/1/22/56, sent earlier that day. There is then no correspondence between Mary Beauvoir and Mary Hamilton until the bitter exchanges of 1789. The sequence has been adjusted accordingly.
2. This annotation appears to the left of the signature.

Normalised Text

      I am sorry that being engaged to go to
the ancient music will not permit me to
wait on you. To say truth I am engaged all this
week, and this day sen- night in the next. I hope
I shall have better luck the next time you are
at liberty.      Yours Sincerely
                             Mary Beauvoir

Miss Hamilton

(consult diplomatic text or XML for annotations, deletions, clarifications, persons,
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: Note from Mary Sharpe (later Beauvoir) to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/22/57

Correspondence Details

Sender: Mary Beauvoir (née Sharpe, later Douglas)

Place sent: London (certainty: medium)

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: London (certainty: medium)

Date sent: 17 February 1783

Letter Description

Summary: Note from Mary Beauvoir (née Sharpe, wife of Osmond Beauvoir) to Mary Hamilton. She writes that she is unable to visit Hamilton as she is engaged to go to the 'Ancient Musick'. On Hamilton's reaction years later to this note and that in HAM/1/22/56, see HAM/1/22/54.
Formerly catalogued as HAM/1/9/63.

Length: 1 sheet, 57 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, M^rs. or M^rs may occur, but M.^rs or M^r.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 7 June 2025)

Cataloguer: Lisa Crawley, Archivist, The John Rylands Library

Cataloguer: John Hodgson, Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Research Institute and Library

Revision date: 7 April 2026

Single Letter