Single Letter

Egerton MS 3698 f. 164

Note from Mary Hamilton to Frances Burney

Diplomatic Text


                                                         164

[1]
Miʃs Burney
      St Martins Street
         Liecester Square
Saturday Morng


      May I flatter myself my Dr Miʃs
Burney
that there is yet a chance of my
enjoying the pleasure of your company before
I leave Town? I shall be happy to receive
You any Afternoon next week except Monday,
will You bring Your work & be satisfied with
a tête a tête, & feel as if we were old acquaintance[s]
You have already taught me to feel this, but
I am better acquainted wth. You than You imagine



therefore I do not pay you a common place
Compt. when I say I wish to become Your
friend as well as that I am Your sincere admirer
                             M: Hamilton


Clarges Street
      July 12th. 1783

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


Notes


 1. A triangular London penny post mark, and a round time stamp with ‘O'CLOCK’ surrounding an uncertain numeral, and ‘W’ probably standing for the Westminster office.

Normalised Text


                                                        


Miss Burney
      St Martins Street
         Liecester Square
Saturday Morning


      May I flatter myself my Dear Miss
Burney that there is yet a chance of my
enjoying the pleasure of your company before
I leave Town? I shall be happy to receive
You any Afternoon next week except Monday,
will You bring Your work & be satisfied with
a tête a tête, & feel as if we were old acquaintances
You have already taught me to feel this, but
I am better acquainted with You than You imagine



therefore I do not pay you a common place
Compliment when I say I wish to become Your
friend as well as that I am Your sincere admirer
                             Mary Hamilton


Clarges Street
      July 12th. 1783

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



 1. A triangular London penny post mark, and a round time stamp with ‘O'CLOCK’ surrounding an uncertain numeral, and ‘W’ probably standing for the Westminster office.

Metadata

Library References

Repository: Archives and Manuscripts, BL, The British Library

Archive: Western Manuscripts. Barrett Collection

Item title: Note from Mary Hamilton to Frances Burney

Shelfmark: Egerton MS 3698 f. 164

Correspondence Details

Sender: Mary Hamilton

Place sent: London

Addressee: Frances D'Arblay (née Burney)

Place received: London

Date sent: 12 July 1783

Letter Description

Summary: Mary Hamilton, afterwards Dickenson: Note to Frances Burney: 12 July 1783.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 122 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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