Diplomatic Text
[1]
As I imagine ye. Dear little
questioning Note without a
Name came from you -- I lose
not an instant to inform You
that I shall be very happy
to have you comfortably tomorrow
Afternoon -- I have just been
& so has Mr. D. to your House &
Mrs. Vesey wants you & Dr. B to go to her
this Eveg. perhaps you may
get a glimpse of Your
very Afft friend
Mry. Dickenson
[2]
Miʃs Burney
St. Martins Street
Leicester Fields
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. This undated note cannot belong to the period between Burney's release from Court duties (7 July 1791) and her marriage (28 July 1793), if only because of the mention of Elizabeth Vesey (died early 1791, but inactive much earlier). Its date ought rather to satisfy the following indications in the text: Burney is living at her father's and not yet apparently subject to the constraints of her Court appointment, while Hamilton is married, but no mention is made of her being a mother. Taken together, these would suggest a time between autumn 1785 and summer 1786. So far, however, no evidence has emerged of Hamilton visiting London during this period, for example from her base in Courteenhall near Northampton, where she was was a guest of Lady Wake from January to June 1786. Although she certainly was in London and Richmond in summer 1788, that later period would not fit so well.
2. This page is blank.
Normalised Text
As I imagine the Dear little
questioning Note without a
Name came from you -- I lose
not an instant to inform You
that I shall be very happy
to have you comfortably tomorrow
Afternoon -- I have just been
& so has Mr. Dickenson to your House &
Mrs. Vesey wants you & Dr. Burney to go to her
this Evening perhaps you may
get a glimpse of Your
very Affectionate friend
Mary Dickenson
Miss Burney
St. Martins Street
Leicester Fields
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Notes
Metadata
Library References
Repository: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, New York Public Library
Archive: Frances Burney d'Arblay collection of papers
Item title: Note from Mary Hamilton to Frances Burney
Shelfmark: NYPL 526189(2)
Correspondence Details
Sender: Mary Hamilton
Place sent: London (certainty: high)
Addressee: Frances D'Arblay (née Burney)
Place received: London
Date sent: between 13 June 1785 and 17 July 1786
notBefore 13 June 1785 (precision: high)
notAfter 1793 (precision: low)
Letter Description
Summary: Note from Mary Hamilton to Frances Burney, undated.
Length: 1 sheet, 80 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: 6 January 2026
