Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

Egerton MS 3698 f. 166

Note from Mary Hamilton to Frances Burney

Diplomatic Text


                                                         166
My Dr. Miʃs Burney
      I have only time to say I shall be
very happy to see you tomorrow Afternoon
                             Most Affly Yours
                                            M. Hamilton

Thursday[1]


Miʃs Burney

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


Notes


 1. The date of this invitation is unknown, but a possibility is 26 June 1783, as Burney visited ‘for an hour very pleasant agreeable’ on Friday 27 June, probably in the early afternoon (see HAM/2/3/1 p.6). Less likely is 17 July 1783, as ‘Miſs Burney came to Tea’ on Friday 18 July and ‘left me at ½ past 9’ (see HAM/2/4 p.9), which sounds rather late for an afternoon invitation. (Drinking tea in the Clarges period usually seems to take place after dinner, after 6 or 7pm.) It is also entirely possible, of course, that the invitation in this note was not taken up.

Normalised Text


                                                        
My Dear Miss Burney
      I have only time to say I shall be
very happy to see you tomorrow Afternoon
                             Most Affectionately Yours
                                            Mary Hamilton

Thursday


Miss Burney

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



 1. The date of this invitation is unknown, but a possibility is 26 June 1783, as Burney visited ‘for an hour very pleasant agreeable’ on Friday 27 June, probably in the early afternoon (see HAM/2/3/1 p.6). Less likely is 17 July 1783, as ‘Miſs Burney came to Tea’ on Friday 18 July and ‘left me at ½ past 9’ (see HAM/2/4 p.9), which sounds rather late for an afternoon invitation. (Drinking tea in the Clarges period usually seems to take place after dinner, after 6 or 7pm.) It is also entirely possible, of course, that the invitation in this note was not taken up.

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. 166

Correspondence Details

Sender: Mary Hamilton

Place sent: unknown

Addressee: Frances D'Arblay (née Burney)

Place received: unknown

Date sent: between 1783 and 13 June 1785
notBefore 1783 (precision: medium)
notAfter 13 June 1785 (precision: high)

Letter Description

Summary: Mary Hamilton, afterwards Dickenson: Note to Frances Burney: before 13 June 1785.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 28 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: 26 December 2025

Document Image (pdf)