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Dear Sir (Source)

Your letter to Genl Dumas was deliverd by me to his lady from whom in consequence of it I receivd during my stay in Paris the most polite & flattering attentions. She deliverd me the inclosd answer which was written in Copenhagen & forwarded to her. Having heard that Mrs Marshall is in Winchester I shall immediately set out for that place.
Permit me Sir to acknowledge the receipt of your very polite & obliging letter in answer to that which I did myself the honor to address to you from the Hague.

1. Would someone please expound the differences between "that which" and "which"? Why not "...polite & obliging letter in answer to which I did myself the honor ..." ?

2. Is the expression "to do the honour to someone" or "to do someone the honour" or both? Why not the other?

3. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/do+honor+to says

I. to show respect to. II. to be a credit to.

Would someone please explain how "to do honour to" engenders these meanings? Is "do" a synonym of "bestow/convey/impart" here?

4. How would John Marshall be doing himself the honour to address a letter to George Washington from the Hague?

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  1. To that which means to the one which. Marshall acknowledges receiving a letter from his correspondent which was a response to the one which he had sent previously.

  2. Myself is the indirect object and honour the direct object in either phrasing. This follows the usual ordering rule: a ‘light’ IO (a pronoun or name, for instance) precedes the DO, a ‘heavy’ IO (longer and bearing multiple stresses) follows the DO. However: if what is in play is not the bare expression do IO honour but the expanded expression do IO the honor of ... (see 3, below), the DO is likewise heavy, and the sentence reverts to the do IO DO sequence:

    The King did [IO the representatives of the three Estates] [DO the extraordinary honour of rising when they entered his presence].

  3. To do X honour means to “perform some act which confers honour upon X”; if a specific act is named then honour becomes determinate, the honour, and the act is expressed with a preposition phrase headed by of and taking a gerund clause as its object: of VERBing &c.

  4. In the elaborate courtesy which prevailed in the upper ranks of 18th-century society, merely the opportunity of addressing so distinguished a person as President (late General) Washington reflects great honour on the writer; Marshall acknowledges his temerity in conferring that honour upon himself.

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  • It would do my head in to have to fully "unthread" the references in OP's convoluted citation, but it seems to me that this is one of those cases where that is grammatically and semantically required (unlike the first instance of the same word in my comment here). If it wasn't there, you'd have to tweak something in the words following (remove the last to, perhaps?) to retain grammatical credibility - and the meaning would radically change too.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 31, 2014 at 18:24
  • @FumbleFingers Perzackly. That is the demonstrative pronoun and the antecedent of which.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Jan 31, 2014 at 18:43
  • and yet (I think) you can (just about) discard the word which itself without trashing either the grammar or the meaning. But (again, I think) you can't discard that with such gay abandon.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jan 31, 2014 at 18:54
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    @FumbleFingers Yes. which may be replaced with the 'null-relativizer', but that is the object of the preposition to and cannot be omitted.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Jan 31, 2014 at 19:51
  • +1. Thank you very much. I'd be grateful if you could respond to my updated #2 and #3 in my OP.
    – user50720
    Commented Feb 1, 2014 at 3:17

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