The Mary Hamilton Papers : Letter from Charlotte Margaret Gunning to Mary Hamilton

Digby (née Gunning), Charlotte Margaret

The Mary Hamilton Papers

<p style='text-align: justify;'>Letter from Charlotte Gunning to Mary Hamilton. She chides Hamilton for never writing, and entreats her for news of whether John Dickenson's father has recovered from illness. She spent a fortnight at Horton with her sister Bell, before returning to London for a 'drawing room'. She is now at Horton for the summer, enjoying life in the country: 'the weather is heavenly, intensely hot, but we keep ourselves perfectly cool in the Salloon, where Bell & I have made our comfortable etablissement,& where we loll, & indulge our disposition to idleness for hours'. This evening she is visiting Lady Wake at Courteenhall [near Northampton]. 'I am impatient to see L[ad]y Wake, & to have some comfortable conversa[tion] with her, in London we met two or three times but you know what a morning visit is there.' Gunning saw Lady Cremorne the other morning in chapel at St James's; she looked well but Gunning 'pitied her from my Soul' [perhaps a reference to the declining health of Cremorne's son Thomas, who died in October 1787 (see HAM/1/11/33-HAM/1/11/37)].</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>She longs to see Hamilton and her husband over the summer: 'I shall really be seriously angry with you if you do not come whilst I am here'. The Gunnings have been in Northamptonshire for six years and Hamilton has visited almost as often, yet '3 hours are the outside of the time you have passed with me'.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dated at Wolton Lodge.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Original reference No. 15.</p>