Single Letter

GEO/ADD/3/83/58

Letter from Mary Hamilton to George, Prince of Wales

Diplomatic Text

[1]

1

Forgive me Sir disappointing you for you
probably expected an Answer to day to your last,
I had wroteitten one but committed it to the flames --
The Prayers & the best & sincerest wishes of
an honest heart & affte. friend are & will be
Yours. --
O what wretches are those who lead you into vice
& Folly & -- will you plunge into ye. pit of destruction
with your Eyes Open?



[2]

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red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)


Notes


 1. The position of this note differs from that in the Georgian Papers Online catalogue. The reference to committing an answer to the flames strongly suggests that it immediately preceded the Prince's GEO/ADD/3/82/28 of c.29 August, an ordering corroborated by the fact that she here calls him ‘Sir’ and only uses ‘friend’ once. The Prince's distress in GEO/ADD/3/82/29 of later the same day might have been provoked by the apocalyptic closing words of this short note, which otherwise seem more appropriate to the events of December.
 2. The second page is blank.

Normalised Text



Forgive me Sir disappointing you for you
probably expected an Answer to day to your last,
I had written one but committed it to the flames --
The Prayers & the best & sincerest wishes of
an honest heart & affectionate friend are & will be
Yours. --
O what wretches are those who lead you into vice
& Folly -- will you plunge into the pit of destruction
with your Eyes Open?



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



 1. The position of this note differs from that in the Georgian Papers Online catalogue. The reference to committing an answer to the flames strongly suggests that it immediately preceded the Prince's GEO/ADD/3/82/28 of c.29 August, an ordering corroborated by the fact that she here calls him ‘Sir’ and only uses ‘friend’ once. The Prince's distress in GEO/ADD/3/82/29 of later the same day might have been provoked by the apocalyptic closing words of this short note, which otherwise seem more appropriate to the events of December.
 2. The second page is blank.

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 Mary Hamilton to George, Prince of Wales

Shelfmark: GEO/ADD/3/83/58

Correspondence Details

Sender: Mary Hamilton

Place sent: unknown

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

Place received: unknown

Date sent: c.28 August 1779
notBefore 21 August 1779 (precision: medium)
notAfter 28 August 1779 (precision: medium)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from Mary Hamilton to George, Prince of Wales, on not writing an answer to his letter; and on those who lead him into vice.
    Hamilton writes 'O what wretches are those who lead you into vice & Folly & will you plunge into the pit of destruction with your Eyes open?'.
    [Draft.]
   

Length: 1 sheet, 70 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: Transcription and XML version created as part of project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers', funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council under grant AH/S007121/1.

Transliterator: Christine Wallis, editorial team (completed January 2020)

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

Revision date: 10 December 2021

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