POTTER, Helen Beatrix. Autograph letter, signed (H B Heelis)...

Estimate

£1,200 - £1,600

POTTER, Helen Beatrix. Autograph letter, signed (H B Heelis) to Elizabeth Tyson. Castle Cottage, Sawrey, August 20, 1937. Unpublished and unrecorded.

One sheet, 25 x 20cm, 2 pages, creased where folded, with autograph envelope address Miss Tyson, Busk House, Ambleside (2)

'An embarrassing Georgian House.' An important letter about Belmount Hall, Hawkshead and its eccentric owner, confiding much to her friend, the local antique dealer

"I want to tell you a little more about Belmount Hall than would be prudent over the telephone. I have bought the land; and along with the land an embarrassing Georgian house. So long as Miss Owen* cares to use it she is most welcome to do so. She is divided between reluctance to part with old family furniture and china etc, and an objection to paying rates and caretaking and firing when she lives in Rome for nine months of the year.
The house is frightfully wet. I do not know how much is due to perishing of the lead gutters or how much is neglect of gutters and water spouts. Neither do I care! The house wants pulling down when Miss Owen is no longer living. If it were on the outskirts of Ambleside it would have made a perfect setting for a library or public building (or a showroom)! But being where it is, and with a reputation for ghosts and horrid back premises - I simply leave the house out of account! I am very fond of the park-like land and its old garden; Miss Owen and I both hated to think of its being broken up and trees felled. She cannot last very long, she is so frail, sooner or later both house and the contents will have come into the market. She is not popular is Hawkshead. I recognise and admit her peculiarities. But I have always been rather fond of her, and I am truly sorry for her now, in her old age. One of her peculiarities is continually losing things and thinking they have been stolen. At present moment she has lost her whole bunch of keys! She knows a lot but at the same time she will get a shock if she sends the upstairs furniture to a saleroom, heavy early Victorian. I think her present idea is to clear out some rubbish, and pay partial rates and one or two rooms used as a store. She is an R[oman] C[atholic] which accounts for some items which you will notice
The veneered walnut is in a sad state. Miss Owen lays all the blame on lack of fires during the caretaker's unhappy illness.
Ventilation would have helped, as you say, I am afraid she did harm herself by incessant fires when she came back, which warped the veneered wood. I really don't know whether she wants to have a sale or not. She is never of the same mind two days together. She will enjoy talking about her china with you, I know I had suggested it and she was quite inclined for it. She invited Cookson, but he did not jump at it and the stupid book seller seems to have been a disagreeable man." [with postscript] "Purchase completed this day 20th ghosts & all (except the furnishings, which are most tempting.) It does not yet appear wise or right Better let her come to auction"

*Miss Rebekah Owen (1858-1939) a wealthy and eccentric collector with literary interests who bought Belmount Hall, Hawkshead. In a letter Beatrix Potter wrote "We have an American neighbour and friend... who has proved to us that Americans can be educated and literary - in fact Miss Rebeccah [sic] O - is alarming!"

Provenance: Elizabeth Tyson (1878-1970) thence by descent in her extended family to the present vendor