Unlocking the Mary Hamilton papers

Single Letter

HAM/1/6/8/26

Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton

Diplomatic Text

[1]
      I am sorry, my dear Miʃs Hamilton,
that my vanity ʃhould have imputed to
the tenderneʃs of Love, what can only
proceeded from a moʃt disintereʃted
friendʃhip. -- As your compaʃsion for
my misfortunes was above the common
feelings  --- of the World, the miʃtake was
natural, & I could not but aʃk a Heart
that I thought was bias'd in my favour. --
      Your Refuʃal, however, ʃhall never
obliterate from my Mind the remembrance
of your kindneʃs to me, Dear friend -  nor
leʃsen the attachment with which I ʃhall
 ------  [yo]ur friend
                                                         John Hope[2]



To
      Miʃs Hamilton -- [3]

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


Notes


 1. There is little evidence to go on in dating this letter. It has been provisionally assigned to the end of December 1773, on the strength of a hint by William Napier (HAM/1/19/59 of 7 January 1774) that Hamilton had recently refused an offer, and in the light of Hope's declaration to Mrs Hamilton (HAM/1/6/8/3, itself of uncertain date). In truth, the present letter might belong in almost any period of 1773 or 1774.
 2. Hope's signature has been blotted and cancelled, presumably by Hamilton.
 3. These lines appear in the middle of p.2, written vertically.

Normalised Text


      I am sorry, my dear Miss Hamilton,
that my vanity should have imputed to
the tenderness of Love, what only
proceeded from a most disinterested
friendship. -- As your compassion for
my misfortunes was above the common
feelings of the World, the mistake was
natural, & I could not but ask a Heart
that I thought was biased in my favour. --
      Your Refusal, however, shall never
obliterate from my Mind the remembrance
of your kindness to me, nor
lessen the attachment with which I shall
 ------  your friend
                                                         John Hope



To
      Miss Hamilton --

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



 1. There is little evidence to go on in dating this letter. It has been provisionally assigned to the end of December 1773, on the strength of a hint by William Napier (HAM/1/19/59 of 7 January 1774) that Hamilton had recently refused an offer, and in the light of Hope's declaration to Mrs Hamilton (HAM/1/6/8/3, itself of uncertain date). In truth, the present letter might belong in almost any period of 1773 or 1774.
 2. Hope's signature has been blotted and cancelled, presumably by Hamilton.
 3. These lines appear in the middle of p.2, written vertically.

Metadata

Library References

Repository: John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton

Shelfmark: HAM/1/6/8/26

Correspondence Details

Sender: John Hope

Place sent: Northampton (certainty: medium)

Addressee: Mary Hamilton

Place received: Northampton (certainty: medium)

Date sent: between December 1773 and January 1774
notBefore December 1773 (precision: low)
notAfter January 1774 (precision: low)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from John Hope to Mary Hamilton. The letter relates to Hamilton's refusal of marriage to Hope. He writes that he is sorry that his 'vanity should have imputed to the tenderness of Love, what only proceeded from a most disinterested friendship'. Given Hamilton's 'compassion' for Hope's misfortunes "the mistake was natural, & I could not but ask a Heart that I thought was bias[e]d in my favour". Hope continues that Hamilton's refusal will not remove from his mind her kindness to him or lessen his attachment to her.
    Hamilton has crossed Hope's signature from the letter.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 91 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: XML version: Research Assistant funding in 2018/19 provided by the Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Manchester.

Research assistant: Chenming Gao, undergraduate student, University of Manchester

Transliterator: Emma Alonso-Ramonet, dissertation student, University of Vigo (submitted April 2019)

Cataloguer: Lisa Crawley, Archivist, The John Rylands Library

Cataloguer: John Hodgson, Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Research Institute and Library

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

Revision date: 24 December 2021

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