Diplomatic Text
Dr. Burney preʃents his beʃt respects to
Miʃs Hamilton, & has the honour to acquaint her
that he did not delay a ʃingle day making the
neceʃsary enquiries after Piano-Fortes; & that his
agent Pohlman[1] has aʃsured him that one will
be ready for Dr. Burney's inspection before the
expiration of the preʃent week, & another ʃoon
after. Miʃs B. is not at home, but will
be flattered & comforted by Miʃs Hamilton's
kind remembrances, at her return.
Thursday 197th. June 1785[2]
Miʃs Hamilton[3]
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)
Notes
1. John Pohlman, an anglicised version of Johannes Pohlmann, ‘is one of the so-called “12 Apostles” of piano making in the late 18th century in England. These were instrument makers who left the continent after the Seven Years War in Germany to immigrate to England.’ (quoted from a description of a Pohlman piano in the website Historical Keyboard Instruments: The Collection of Eric Feller).
2. The date was apparently added by Hamilton, and she seems to have written ‘19th’ and then corrected it to ‘17th’, perhaps the date of receipt, as Burney's ‘Thursday’ must have been 16 June 1785.
3. The direction is written vertically.
Normalised Text
Dr. Burney presents his best respects to
Miss Hamilton, & has the honour to acquaint her
that he did not delay a single day making the
necessary enquiries after Piano-Fortes; & that his
agent Pohlman has assured him that one will
be ready for Dr. Burney's inspection before the
expiration of the present week, & another soon
after. Miss Burney is not at home, but will
be flattered & comforted by Miss Hamilton's
kind remembrances, at her return.
Thursday 17th. June 1785
Miss Hamilton
quotations, spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)
Notes
Metadata
Library References
Repository: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
Archive: Burney family collection
Item title: Note from Charles Burney to Mary Hamilton
Shelfmark: OSB MSS 3 Series I (Box 4 Fol. 246)(2)
Correspondence Details
Sender: Charles Burney
Place sent: unknown
Addressee: Mary Hamilton
Place received: unknown
Date sent: 16 June 1785
when 16 June 1785 (precision: high)
Letter Description
Summary: Note from Charles Burney to Miss Hamilton, June 1785.
Length: 1 sheet, 84 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: 7 April 2026
