Diplomatic Text
Nothing would have prevented me my dear Friend from calling
upon you before this, but my having been too ill to walk. I have
got another Cold which seized my Head, & has produced moreover a swelled
Face, so that I am not in plight to go to Mrs Boscawen's this Eveni[ng]
I am better however than I was yesterday & hope to be able to go to
the Committee to morrow Morning. I am sorry to find you have a Cold
too. If we had not, probably the Air Balloon would have provided us
with one.[1] My Head is so confused I can only add most affectionately yours
E Carter
13th. Janry. 1784
46a
Clarges Street
84[2]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. Hamilton had written to Carter and to Frances Burney that morning to cancel the air balloon outing; see HAM/2/6 p.115.
2. This figure is written vertically relative to the orientation of the image as presented.
Normalised Text
Nothing would have prevented me my dear Friend from calling
upon you before this, but my having been too ill to walk. I have
got another Cold which seized my Head, & has produced moreover a swelled
Face, so that I am not in plight to go to Mrs Boscawen's this Evening
I am better however than I was yesterday & hope to be able to go to
the Committee to morrow Morning. I am sorry to find you have a Cold
too. If we had not, probably the Air Balloon would have provided us
with one. My Head is so confused I can only add most affectionately yours
Elizabeth Carter
Clarges Street
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: Note from Elizabeth Carter to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: MS Eng 1778 46a
Correspondence Details
Sender: Elizabeth Carter
Place sent: London (certainty: medium)
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: London (certainty: medium)
Date sent: 13 January 1784
Letter Description
Summary: Note from Elizabeth Carter to Mary Hamilton, attributing her failure to visit to a cold, and suggesting that if they had not both had colds already, ‘probably the Air Balloon would have provided us with one’.
Original entry in Houghton Library catalogue: Carter, Elizabeth, 1717-1806. Autograph manuscript letter (signed) to Mary Hamilton, 1784 January 13.
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 26 February 2026)
Cataloguer: Bonnie B. Salt, Archivist, Houghton Library
Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors
Revision date: 2 October 2026
