Diplomatic Text
12th Janry- 1785
I am very sorry for your Poor Bones.[1]
I wd with pleasure have come to you
to morrow morning, but had engaged my self about
an Hour before your note arrived. adieu[2] my
Dear.
If it should rain to morrow
I will come to your Break --- [3] [4]
58b
Miʃs Ha[milton][5]
Mrs. Carter
12 Janry. 85[6]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. From Hamilton's long walk the day before (see HAM/2/15/3 p.23).
2. The dot on the <i> in ‘adieu’ is misplaced, which may explain why the <u> seems to have been retraced.
3. We assume the scrawled fragmentary word ‘Breakfast’ is abbreviated rather than cut off.
4. Perhaps Carter's postscript means that rain would lead her to cancel her other appointment and thus be available. NB. Hamilton reports to John Dickenson on 13 January 1785 ‘that I gave a very smart breakfast this morning’, with eight guests, including Carter (see HAM/2/15/3 p.24).
5. The part of the name covered by pasting the sheet to the support can be read from the image of p.2 in Mirador by enhancing and flipping the image. The direction is written upside down as displayed.
6. The annotation is written vertically.
Normalised Text
I am very sorry for your Poor Bones.
I would with pleasure have come to you
to morrow morning, but had engaged my self about
an Hour before your note arrived. adieu my
Dear.
If it should rain to morrow
I will come to your Breakfast
Miss Hamilton
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 58b
Correspondence Details
Sender: Elizabeth Carter
Place sent: London (certainty: medium)
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: London (certainty: medium)
Date sent: 12 January 1785
Letter Description
Summary: Note from Elizabeth Carter to Mary Hamilton. Hamilton's invitation to breakfast the next day arrived shortly after Carter had accepted another invitation, but a postscript suggests she would still be able to attend in the event of rain.
Original entry in Houghton Library catalogue: Carter, Elizabeth, 1717-1806. Autograph manuscript letter (signed) to Mary Hamilton, 1785 January 12.
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: 6 October 2026
