Diplomatic Text
5
1781
A thousand Thanks to you, my
dear Miʃs Hamilton, for an Attention, of which
I very sensibly feel the Obligation. Indeed
it did rejoyce my Heart to receive so com
fortable an Account of our Friends at
Lisbon.[1] God restore them to us in Health &
prosperity!
I am greatly obliged to you for
Your kind present, which I shall read with
much the greater pleasure from the Endearing
Title which you have given it of a “Gage
d'Amitiè.[2] I should be obligedglad to have Kleist[3]
sent for me to Miʃs Sharpe's in Stanhope Street.
As to Klopstock[4] which Mr Schrader is so good to
lend me, it may remain with Miʃs Gunning
or be returned to him as it will scarcely
be in my power to read it before the Winter,
as I am likely to lead so vagabond a Life
till then. By the last Accounts from dear
Miʃs Sharpe she seems to be much in the
Same State, except that her Sickneʃses are not
so frequent. I imagine she will leave Bath
in about 10 Days. We propose to set out on
our Northern Expedition about the middle of
July.[5]
As to my Self about whom you kindly
inquire, I am pretty much in the Same State
with my tiresome Head. Indeed I can have
but little Hope that it will ever be much
better. I always think on Health & the Joys
of Heaven together. En attendant I am thank
ful that Things are no worse at present,
& enjoy allevery Interval of tolerable Ease.
I have been very busy since I came
Home, among other Thingsdomestic Concerns, in
cultivating my little Garden, watering & trans
planting my Geraniums & Myrtles, & watching
the Blowing[6] of every Flower.
Adieu my dear Miʃs Hamilton
I am with every good wish your obliged &
affectionate
ECarter
Deal June 8. 1781
[7]
June 8th. 1781
Mrs. Carter
20
3 - 6 [8]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. Hamilton would have received at least one of Sophia Feilding's letters about her ship's capture at sea. Her seriously ill brother, George, and their mother, Lady Charlotte Finch, are in Lisbon (see HAM/1/7/5/9), as also her sister Harriet (see HAM/1/12/33 p.2 col.2, HAM/1/22/35).
2. French gage d'amitié ‘pledge of friendship’. On Carter's odd placement of some apostrophes, see the note on MS Eng 1778 4a p.1.. We have chosen to transcribe the mark above e as an approximate accent rather than a mismatched single closing quotation mark.
3. Possibly Ewald Christian von Kleist (1715-1759), a German poet best known for his poem Der Frühling (1749) ‘The Spring’. His collected works were published in several editions between 1756 and 1760.
4. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803), German poet. He is best known for his epic poem Der Messias (‘The Messiah’), published 1748-1773, to which this probably refers. A copy brought from Hanover is mentioned by Hamilton in a letter to Charlotte Margaret Gunning on 8 August 1781 (see HAM/1/15/2/19 p.3).
5. See Carter's letter from County Durham on 7 August 1781 (MS Eng 1778 7).
6. A late occurrence of the word blowing ‘action of blossoming or blooming’, apparently obsolete after the eighteenth century (OED s.v., n.2, a. Accessed 06-03-2026).
7. This page is blank.
8. This simple sum is written vertically on the support.
Normalised Text
A thousand Thanks to you, my
dear Miss Hamilton, for an Attention, of which
I very sensibly feel the Obligation. Indeed
it did rejoyce my Heart to receive so comfortable
an Account of our Friends at
Lisbon. God restore them to us in Health &
prosperity!
I am greatly obliged to you for
Your kind present, which I shall read with
much the greater pleasure from the Endearing
Title which you have given it of a “Gage
d'Amitiè. I should be glad to have Kleist
sent for me to Miss Sharpe's in Stanhope Street.
As to Klopstock which Mr Schrader is so good to
lend me, it may remain with Miss Gunning
or be returned to him as it will scarcely
be in my power to read it before the Winter,
as I am likely to lead so vagabond a Life
till then. By the last Accounts from dear
Miss Sharpe she seems to be much in the
Same State, except that her Sicknesses are not
so frequent. I imagine she will leave Bath
in about 10 Days. We propose to set out on
our Northern Expedition about the middle of
July.
As to my Self about whom you kindly
inquire, I am pretty much in the Same State
with my tiresome Head. Indeed I can have
but little Hope that it will ever be much
better. I always think on Health & the Joys
of Heaven together. En attendant I am thankful
that Things are no worse at present,
& enjoy every Interval of tolerable Ease.
I have been very busy since I came
Home, among other domestic Concerns, in
cultivating my little Garden, watering & transplanting
my Geraniums & Myrtles, & watching
the Blowing of every Flower.
Adieu my dear Miss Hamilton
I am with every good wish your obliged &
affectionate
Elizabeth Carter
Deal June 8. 1781
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Notes
Metadata
Library References
Repository: Houghton Library Repository, Harvard University
Archive: Elizabeth Carter and Hannah More letters to Mary Hamilton
Item title: Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: MS Eng 1778 5
Correspondence Details
Sender: Elizabeth Carter
Place sent: Deal
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: unknown
Date sent: 8 June 1781
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Mary Hamilton, thanking her for good news about Lady Charlotte Finch and family, stranded in Lisbon, and for a present. She gives instructions about works by Kleist and Klopstock and reports on Mary Sharpe at Bath, saying that she and Sharpe plan to set out on their ‘Northern Expedition’ in mid-July. Carter thinks her headaches will only end with death, but she enjoys ‘every Interval of tolerable Ease’ and has been busy gardening.
Original entry in Houghton Library catalogue: Carter, Elizabeth, 1717-1806. Autograph manuscript letter (signed) to Mary Hamilton; Deal, 1781 June 8.
Length: 1 sheet, 000 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 13 January 2026)
Cataloguer: Bonnie B. Salt, Archivist, Houghton Library
Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors
Revision date: 27 July 2026
