Deciphering a Private Sign Alphabet in a Sanguszko Family Letter from Dubno

A four-page letter in the Sanguszko family archive at the National Archives in Kraków (Archiwum Sanguszków, teka 414/14), photographed for the DECODE database as record R7516, mixes French, Polish and a private alphabet of invented signs. The signs are a simple substitution of the Polish alphabet with the words kept apart. This note gives the key and reads 138 of the 140 words written in it. The writer, a young woman travelling from Sławuta to Dubno in Volhynia, used the alphabet for the opening of her letter and for gossip about her hosts at Ostróg, among them an old Princess Jabłonowska, voivodess of Bracław, whom she found tête-à-tête with Józef Sierakowski. The only Jabłonowska who bore that title was Anna Paulina née Sapieha (d. 1800). A pencil note on the letter attributes it to a daughter of Prince Hieronim Sanguszko writing to her sister Anna, but the letter itself does not quite bear this out. Files: the paper (PDF), the transcription of the signs, the key with sign counts, and a line-by-line decoding. No images of the manuscript are included.