Carter, Elizabeth and Hannah More.

107 autograph letters and notes signed by Elizabeth Carter, 70 autograph letters and notes signed by Hannah More, five autograph letters and notes signed by Hannah More's sisters Patty and Martha More and typed copies of three further letters by Hannah More; together with a loosely inserted manuscript copy of more's poem "le bas bleu", possibly in the author's fair hand with extensive revisions and additions in the hand of Mary Hamilton, and a manuscript fair copy of More's poem "An heroic Epistle To Miss Sally Horne aged three years"; approximately 535 pages in all, 4to and 8vo, integral blanks, address leaves and address panels, some remains of wax seal impressions, postal franks, 14 February 1780 to 26 September 1803, laid onto paper stubs in calf-backed marbled boards; some tears at seals and extremities, occasional light soiling, spotting, and general wear and tear, hinges, boards, and fore-edges worn 

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This major correspondence is a rich and significant source for eighteenth century women's history. It preserves the correspondence of two leading female writers and intellectuals of the day with Mary Hamilton. Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806) was one of the original "bluestocking" circle; she was a poet, had a good knowledge of about ten languages, and translated the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus. Hannah More (1745-1833) had been part of the bluestocking circle since the 1770s. A highly popular writer of drama and books on the education of women, she was also an evangelical Christian and a philanthropist who was engaged in causes from the abolition of slavery to education reform in Somerset. A small portion of these letters were printed in Elizabeth and Florence Anson, Mary Hamilton (London, 1925), and the importance of More’s letters to Hamilton as a biographical source has been shown in their use by Anne Stott in her recent biography Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford, 2003), but there remains a great deal to be excavated from this important correspondence.

Both sets of correspondence are mostly focused on the first half of the 1780s. Elizabeth Carter’s first letter dates from 1780 and she maintains a correspondence with Hamilton for the next twenty years. Hannah More’s letters, in contrast, all fall within a five year span of intense friendship between 1782-87. Both sets of correspondence are full of references to shared acquaintances within London society such as Mary Delany, Elizabeth Vesey, Frances Burney, Elizabeth Montagu, Eve Marie Garrick, Horace Walpole, Montagu Pennington, Samuel Johnson, and Leonard Smelt. Friendship, linked with learning and virtue, was an integral part of the bluestocking philosophy, and these letters provide considerable information about the social exchanges that were a crucial dynamic to this group.

The letters cover important events in Hamilton’s life such as her departure from royal service (about which More writes on 18 November 1782 that “If you found that a Court life and happiness, were incompatible you have acted nobly in daring to regain your peace of mind by sacrifice”) and her courtship, engagement and marriage to John Dickenson. When she initially refused him, Carter (speaking, she says, from personal experience) advises her not to provide any explanation: “Men … never fail to interpret it as an Encouragement to their Hopes, when ever a woman Enters into any Explanation of the Reasons of her Refusal” (16 June 1784). Soon afterwards, however, Hamilton agreed to marry Dickenson, and in 1785 moved with him to Derbyshire. The letters from both correspondents lessen in number after her departure from London.

Although both part of the same close-knit social and intellectual circle, the very different characters of the two women are apparent in these letters. Carter’s letters are characterised by intense intellectual curiosity. On 2 April 1782 she speaks of her distrust of La Metaphysique (“…I have a strong objection to every mode of reasoning, & perplexed speculation which has any Tendency to weaken the Authority of the simple & natural dictates of Common Sense…”), and on 22 April of the same year explains to Hamilton her criticisms of the concept of "edification" as popularly understood. Her interests are impressively wide: in one letter dated 13 September 1783 she shows a shrewd understanding of the complexities of friendship, discusses a recent meteor (“I am obliged to you for your description of the Meteor … In return I will give you its Dimensions”), and asks for a description of “any remains of Waltham Abbey” which she presumes Hamilton will have studied.

Carter travels to the north of England in the summer of 1781 and to Paris in October 1782, and her letters at these times include detailed accounts of places visited. She also comments on public affairs, most interestingly in a letter of 30 November 1799 on the French revolutionary government:

“...One thing … seems probable, that a Government without any principles of Religion to God, or of Justice or Humanity to man, can stand no longer than to fullfil their office of serving as a Scourge to a guilty world...”

Hannah More’s letters are very different in tone. Her intellectual interests are less wide ranging, but these letters give a vivid impression of More’s capacity to take up a cause with formidable enthusiasm. This is seen, for example, when she becomes interested in the poetry of the labourer’s wife Anna Yearsley in October – November 1784:

“...a poor Creature, born and bred a milkwoman … who writes most excellent Verses. She has a free Imagination, stored with abundence of Images, a great variety of Poetical Expression, and an ear so finely tuned, that in five hundred lines I have not been able to detect an unmusical one...”

More quotes from Yearsley’s poems at length, cites “the terrible circumstance of seeing her beloved mother die of hunger”, discusses her husband (“…so stupid as to be incapable of any but the most slavish and least profitable employments…”), her knowledge of poetry (“…Dryden was quite new to her…”), and her own “thoughts … of publishing a small Volume in the spring of the best of her Poems”.

a fascinating insight into philanthropic responses to madness in the eighteenth-century is provided by another worthy cause taken up by More and discussed at length in her letters, and also by Elizabeth Carter. The ‘Lady of the Haystack’ was a well-spoken young woman of mysterious origins (she had, apparently, a German accent) who was living rough near Bristol in 1781. More named her Louisa and began a press campaign that brought her to national attention. Louisa’s mental condition soon deteriorated and she spent the rest of her life in asylums, paid for and visited regularly by More. There was evidently some concern at Louisa's treatment, as More defends herself on 21 October 1783:

"...She is not in a Cell ... nor indeed is she in confinement at all, but in a chamber, where she lies constantly in bed; but, I thank God, it has never been necessary to use any violence, or personal harsh treatment..."

It is, above all, around literature that the women's thoughts and feelings coalesce. A wide range of books are discussed by both More and Carter, ranging from the Classics to contemporary French and German literature. More (30 October 1782) discusses editions of Shakespeare and advises on how he is best read ("...the pleasantest way of reading the Historical Plays, is to get them in single Plays..."), writers such as Wieland and Madame de Genlis are discussed by both women, and on 17 April 1780 Elizabeth Carter provides a four-page critique of Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther. Believing that all writing must be judged by its “moral tendency”, she is appalled by the novel’s hero (“His mind appears to be in a constant State of Rebellion against God, & of the most savage Pride & ill Temper towards Men”) and concerned – like many of her contemporaries – with the book’s likely effect on impressionable readers.

The most significant contribution this correspondence makes to our knowledge of literature of the period, however, is the light it sheds on the composition of Hannah More’s important poem Le Bas Bleu. The poem is referred to in many of her letters from the summer of 1783 (when, on 20 July, More entrusts Hamilton with the “great secret” of the poem’s composition). It was Hamilton whom More (wishing to stay anonymous) asked to send half of the poem to its dedicatee, Elizabeth Vesey (the other half was to come from Sir William Pepys). Hamilton's own copy of the poem, sent to her by More, is loosely inserted within the volume. In her letters More describes the poem’s initial composition, her initial attempts to restrict its circulation in manuscript form, and gives responses to queries from Hamilton and other readers. Of particular interest are More's repeated instructions asking Hamilton to revise her copy of the poem even after its initial circulation. This provides a fascinating insight into the fluidity of manuscript poetry of the period. More makes changes for a number of reasons (responses by readers, the widening readership of the poem, and her own second thoughts); a letter dated 25 January 1784 reveals her revising the poem out of concern that Samuel Johnson might see a copy: “as I have the greatest respect for him, I shou’d be grieved that he shou’d take any thing ill, that was meant so much otherwise”. These revisions can be traced in detail through Hamilton's own copy, in which these revisions have been dutifully inserted.