Diplomatic Text
61
1785
Many Thanks to you, my dear Friend
for the Kindneʃs of writing to me amidst
all your Hurry of leaving London. I ought to
have thanked you sooner, but indeed for some
Days my Spirits were so low about our
dear Friends in Clarges Street, that I had not
the Heart to set about any Thing. I did however
as you advised me, & wrote to Mrs Vesey, though
it was a sad Task, & I had no Hope of do-
ing her any Good. since that Miʃs A. Clarke
has been so kind to send me an Account, which
I thank God gives me very comfortable Hopes
of Mrs Handcock's Recovery. If his Goodneʃs re
-stores this Bleʃsing to dear Mrs Vesey, I hope
it will render her Mind more composed & cheer
ful with Regard to her other Distreʃses, which
were nothing to what she must of[1] suffered
from the Loʃs of so excellent & inestimable a
Friend.
/I was much obliged to you for your
over
/ Communication of the most generous Attention of their
Magesties to our Friend.[2] It is an Act of truely
royal munificence: & the manner of conferring
the Favour does the utmost Honour to their
Hearts. But tell me my dear, could you have
Supposed from the long & most intimate Connexion
between Mrs D. & the Dʃs, that she should have left
her to feel any other Loʃs than that of her self?
These Omiʃsions it is true are not uncommon in
the World, but let them happen ever so often, they
must be surprizing & painful to every feeling
Heart. If you can account for this Instance,
tell me, for it is very unpleasant to feel any
diminution of Esteem for a character that has
past with Approbation through the world.
It gave me great pleasure to get a
Sight of dear Lady Wake, who seemed in a more
Comfortable Situation with Regard to the Health
of her Family than she has been for a long
Time. Sr Wm. was more agreeable than I almost
ever saw him: cheerful & good humoured, &
neither boistrous, nor facetious. Lady W. &
I sympathized with our absent Friends by talking
you over, & joining in the kindest wishes.
/ I hope you have by this Time recovered
all the Fatigues, & Tryal of your Spirits, which
you must have suffered during your most
kind & friendly Attentions to Mrs Delany, &
Mrs Vesey, & that I shall hear you are
very Comfortably settled in your new
Situation. I beg my Compliments to
Mr Dickenson, & am
my dear Friend
your obliged & affectionate
ECarter[3]
Deal Augst 13. 1785
Miʃs Bloʃset, who did not know you were in
Town writ to me for your direction (which I
did not then know) as she wished to have
congratulated you on your Marriage.
[4]
London fifteenth Augt 1785[5]
Mrs. Dickenson
Taxal
chapel-le-Frith
Derbyshire
Free WPulteney
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. The use of of for infinitive have, enabled by their homonymy when unstressed, is noted by OED as occurring ‘[f]requently in representations of nonstandard speech’ (OED s.v. of v. Accessed 19-09-2026). The only eighteenth-century example in OED, by a writer of limited education, was cited in Denison (2007: 121-2), as was an 1819 one by Keats. A written example from a highly educated writer like Carter is surely an inadvertent slip and so is marked up in this edition as an error, but the early date makes it linguistically highly significant. (Denison, David. 2007. Syntactic surprises in some English letters: The underlying progress of the language. In Stephan Elspaß, Nils Langer, Joachim Scharloth & Wim Vandenbussche (eds.), Germanic language histories 'from below' (1700-2000), 115-27. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.)
2. They gave her a house at Windsor and a pension of £300.
3. Remains of gummed wafer.
4. This address is in the hand of Sir William Pulteney, MP for Shrewsbury, provider of the frank.
5. ‘FREE’ frank in red ink.
Normalised Text
Many Thanks to you, my dear Friend
for the Kindness of writing to me amidst
all your Hurry of leaving London. I ought to
have thanked you sooner, but indeed for some
Days my Spirits were so low about our
dear Friends in Clarges Street, that I had not
the Heart to set about any Thing. I did however
as you advised me, & wrote to Mrs Vesey, though
it was a sad Task, & I had no Hope of doing
her any Good. since that Miss Anna Clarke
has been so kind to send me an Account, which
I thank God gives me very comfortable Hopes
of Mrs Handcock's Recovery. If his Goodness restores
this Blessing to dear Mrs Vesey, I hope
it will render her Mind more composed & cheerful
with Regard to her other Distresses, which
were nothing to what she must have suffered
from the Loss of so excellent & inestimable a
Friend.
I was much obliged to you for your
Communication of the most generous Attention of their
Majesties to our Friend. It is an Act of truly
royal munificence: & the manner of conferring
the Favour does the utmost Honour to their
Hearts. But tell me my dear, could you have
Supposed from the long & most intimate Connexion
between Mrs Delany & the Duchess, that she should have left
her to feel any other Loss than that of her self?
These Omissions it is true are not uncommon in
the World, but let them happen ever so often, they
must be surprising & painful to every feeling
Heart. If you can account for this Instance,
tell me, for it is very unpleasant to feel any
diminution of Esteem for a character that has
passed with Approbation through the world.
It gave me great pleasure to get a
Sight of dear Lady Wake, who seemed in a more
Comfortable Situation with Regard to the Health
of her Family than she has been for a long
Time. Sir William was more agreeable than I almost
ever saw him: cheerful & good humoured, &
neither boisterous, nor facetious. Lady Wake &
I sympathized with our absent Friends by talking
you over, & joining in the kindest wishes.
I hope you have by this Time recovered
all the Fatigues, & Trial of your Spirits, which
you must have suffered during your most
kind & friendly Attentions to Mrs Delany, &
Mrs Vesey, & that I shall hear you are
very Comfortably settled in your new
Situation. I beg my Compliments to
Mr Dickenson, & am
my dear Friend
your obliged & affectionate
Elizabeth Carter
Deal August 13. 1785
Miss Blosset, who did not know you were in
Town wrote to me for your direction (which I
did not then know) as she wished to have
congratulated you on your Marriage.
London fifteenth August 1785
Mrs. Dickenson
Taxal
chapel-le-Frith
Derbyshire
Free William Pulteney
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 61
Correspondence Details
Sender: Elizabeth Carter
Place sent: Deal
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: Taxal, near Chapel-en-le-Frith
Date sent: 15 August 1785
Letter Description
Summary: Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Mary Hamilton. Carter was depressed by thinking of ‘our dear Friends in Clarges Street’ but was relieved to hear from Anna Maria Clarke that there were good hopes of Mrs Handcock's recovery, whose loss would have been the worst of distresses for Mrs Vesey. Carter is delighted to hear of the King and Queen's generosity towards Mrs Delany [in the form of a house and a pension] but is uncomfortable that the Duchess of Portland had apparently not made provision for her. Carter has seen Lady Wake, whose family was in a better situation than for a long time. In a postscript, Carter tells Hamilton that Miss Blosset had wanted to congratulate her on her marriage, but at the time Carter could not provide Hamilton's address.
Original entry in Houghton Library catalogue: Carter, Elizabeth, 1717-1806. Autograph manuscript letter (signed) to Mary Hamilton; Deal, 1785 August 13.
Length: 2 sheets, 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: 15 October 2026
