Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

Egerton MS 3698 ff. 162-163

Letter from Mary Hamilton to Frances Burney

Diplomatic Text

[1]

   Thames Ditton
near Kinston[2]      162
   July 1st.2d. 1783[3]


      Indeed my Dear Miʃs Burney
I feel quite ashamed to be obliged to tell
You. that I cannot have the pleasure of
seeing You on Friday -- for I am apprehen-
sive You will imagine I am one of those
who make unmeaning Compts.. as I profeʃsed
so great a desire to have the pleasure
of Your Company -- Mrs: Walsingham
must answer for all this -- & she has
faithfully promised to do so if You
will comply with her desire of coming


here tomorrow -- Mrs. W—— cannot have the
pleasure of sending her Carriage for you as
she goes to Windsor in ye. Morng -- but she will
carry You to Town on Monday --

                             I am my Dr. Miʃs Burney
                                  Your Obliged & Afft Humble Servt.
                                            Mary Hamilton


[4]
                                                         163
                                                         [5]


Hamilton
H:3

                                                         [6]

                             Miʃs Burney
                                St. Martins Street
                                   Liecester fields[7]

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


Notes


 1. Hamilton notes the sending of this letter on 2 July 1783 in her diary (see HAM/2/3/1 p.13).
 2. Kingston-upon-Thames.
 3. A faint <t> is the only give-away of Hamilton's otherwise very neat alteration of the date from ‘1st’ to ‘2d’.
 4. This page is blank, apart from the archival pagination.
 5. Remains of a wafer. Francis Napier comments disparagingly on Hamilton's use of wafers rather than seals, e.g. ‘Having in due form spit on the Green Wafer, and closed your Note [...]’ (see HAM/1/20/146 p.1); his postscript on p.3 reads: ‘To convince You that I have Wafers I shall now make use of one, though the practice is filthy’.
 6. Remains of a wafer.
 7. The address is written at right angles to the text of the letter.

Normalised Text


   Thames Ditton
near Kinston      
   July 2d. 1783


      Indeed my Dear Miss Burney
I feel quite ashamed to be obliged to tell
You. that I cannot have the pleasure of
seeing You on Friday -- for I am apprehensive
 You will imagine I am one of those
who make unmeaning Compliments as I professed
so great a desire to have the pleasure
of Your Company -- Mrs: Walsingham
must answer for all this -- & she has
faithfully promised to do so if You
will comply with her desire of coming


here tomorrow -- Mrs. Walsingham cannot have the
pleasure of sending her Carriage for you as
she goes to Windsor in the Morning -- but she will
carry You to Town on Monday --

                             I am my Dear Miss Burney
                                  Your Obliged & Affectionate Humble Servant
                                            Mary Hamilton



                                                        
                                                        



                                                        

                             Miss Burney
                                St. Martins Street
                                   Liecester fields

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



 1. Hamilton notes the sending of this letter on 2 July 1783 in her diary (see HAM/2/3/1 p.13).
 2. Kingston-upon-Thames.
 3. A faint <t> is the only give-away of Hamilton's otherwise very neat alteration of the date from ‘1st’ to ‘2d’.
 4. This page is blank, apart from the archival pagination.
 5. Remains of a wafer. Francis Napier comments disparagingly on Hamilton's use of wafers rather than seals, e.g. ‘Having in due form spit on the Green Wafer, and closed your Note [...]’ (see HAM/1/20/146 p.1); his postscript on p.3 reads: ‘To convince You that I have Wafers I shall now make use of one, though the practice is filthy’.
 6. Remains of a wafer.
 7. The address is written at right angles to the text of the letter.

Metadata

Library References

Repository: Archives and Manuscripts, BL, The British Library

Archive: Western Manuscripts. Barrett Collection

Item title: Letter from Mary Hamilton to Frances Burney

Shelfmark: Egerton MS 3698 ff. 162-163

Correspondence Details

Sender: Mary Hamilton

Place sent: Thames Ditton

Addressee: Frances D'Arblay (née Burney)

Place received: London

Date sent: 2 July 1783

Letter Description

Summary: Mary Hamilton, afterwards Dickenson: Letter to Frances Burney: 2 July 1783.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 139 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: Sophie Coulombeau (submitted 5 October 2022)

Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors

Revision date: 19 January 2026

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