Single Letter

GEO/ADD/3/82/3

Letter from George, Prince of Wales, to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text

[1]

3

Tuesday
afternoon
                             25th May 1779


My dearest Miʃs Hamilton

      According to my promise
I will now inform you who the person
is I meant to speak to you of last
Night. As you have bound yourself
to me by such solemn promises of
secrescy and of friendship I dare
now reveal to you the most secret
thoughts of my Soul, such is the
confidence I place in you. When
I promised to name you the Lady;
you declared you would not think
the worse of me on her account, or
indeed on any, therefore trusting



totally to yr. honor, I now declare
that my fair incognita, is yr dear,
dear, dear Self
. Yr. manners,
yr. sentiments, the tender feelings
of yr. heart, so totally coincide
with my ideas, not to mention
the many advantages you have
in point [of] person over many other
Ladies, that I not only highly,
esteem you, but even love you more
than Words or ideas can expreʃs.
Nothing should have drawn this
secret out of my lips, but the mutual
promises of friendship & secresy



we so lately made each other. Let not
this declaration contribute to add
any weightsink yr. spirits as I am convinced
you have already too great weight
upon them. I mean this totally
as an act of confidence, or else
I would not have mentioned it even
to yourself. Adieu
      Dearest Miʃs Hamilton
& allow me to sign myself
him who will esteem, & love you
to the end of his life,
                             G P.[2]



Typed

To
            Miʃs Hamilton

(hover over blue text or annotations for clarification;
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)


Notes


 1. This letter appears in Anson & Anson (1925: 72).
 2. The florid initial appears to be a combination of G and P ('George Princeps'). In GEO/ADD/3/82/4 and GEO/ADD/3/83/5 the intertwined letters do not overlap so much.

Normalised Text





My dearest Miss Hamilton

      According to my promise
I will now inform you who the person
is I meant to speak to you of last
Night. As you have bound yourself
to me by such solemn promises of
secrecy and of friendship I dare
now reveal to you the most secret
thoughts of my Soul, such is the
confidence I place in you. When
I promised to name you the Lady;
you declared you would not think
the worse of me on her account, or
indeed on any, therefore trusting



totally to your honour, I now declare
that my fair incognita, is your dear,
dear, dear Self. Your manners,
your sentiments, the tender feelings
of your heart, so totally coincide
with my ideas, not to mention
the many advantages you have
in point of person over many other
Ladies, that I not only highly,
esteem you, but even love you more
than Words or ideas can express.
Nothing should have drawn this
secret out of my lips, but the mutual
promises of friendship & secrecy



we so lately made each other. Let not
this declaration contribute to
sink your spirits as I am convinced
you have already too great weight
upon them. I mean this totally
as an act of confidence, or else
I would not have mentioned it even
to yourself. Adieu
      Dearest Miss Hamilton
& allow me to sign myself
him who will esteem, & love you
to the end of his life,
                             George Princeps





To
            Miss Hamilton

(consult diplomatic text or XML for annotations, deletions, clarifications, persons,
quotations,
spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)



 1. This letter appears in Anson & Anson (1925: 72).
 2. The florid initial appears to be a combination of G and P ('George Princeps'). In GEO/ADD/3/82/4 and GEO/ADD/3/83/5 the intertwined letters do not overlap so much.

Metadata

Library References

Repository: Windsor Castle, The Royal Archives

Archive: GEO/ADD/3 Additional papers of George IV, as Prince, Regent, and King

Item title: Letter from George, Prince of Wales, to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: GEO/ADD/3/82/3

Correspondence Details

Sender: George, Prince of Wales (later George IV)

Place sent: unknown

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: unknown

Date sent: 25 May 1779
notBefore 25 May 1779 (precision: medium)
notAfter 25 May 1779 (precision: high)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from George, Prince of Wales, to Mary Hamilton, declaring his feelings for her.
    The Prince refers to his promise to reveal his secret to Hamilton, following the 'mutual promises of friendship & secrecy we so lately made each other'. The Prince reveals that his 'fair incognita' is Hamilton herself, and praises her attributes.
    Written Tuesday afternoon.
    Signed.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 250 words

Transliteration Information

Editorial declaration: First edited in the project 'Image to Text' (David Denison & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, 2013-2019), now incorporated 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:

Transliterator: Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, editorial team (completed October 2019)

Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors

Revision date: 2 November 2021

Document Image (pdf)