ID: 2707
Four autograph letters signed
POTTER, Beatrix (Beatrix Heelis)
Category: History
Place/Publisher/Date:
Castle Cottage, Sawrey, Ambleside. No Publisher.
Description:
Four autograph letters signed ("H.B. Heelis"), to Professor and Mrs James Hanley, arranging a visit ("…I shall be pleased to offer such rations as available, mainly lettuces!..."), then discussing wartime food production and land management on her Lake District farms ("…The most useful work is draining, fox killing, keeping walls repaired, and brackens…"), 9 pages, 4to and 8vo, Castle Cottage, Sawrey, Ambleside, 16 July 1942–26 March 1943, with an autograph copy of a letter to the Kendal War Agricultural Executive Committee on fields that they have demanded she bring into food production (2 pages, 13 March 1943), an autograph envelope, two retained copies of letters by Hanley. During World War II farmers were called upon to bring more land into production, and War Agricultural Executive Committees were established in every county with wide-ranging powers to manage and direct the actions of farmers. Beatrix Heelis (as she was known following her marriage to William Heelis in 1912) had spent decades building up extensive holdings in the Lake District—at her death in 1943 she left 4000 acres and 14 farms to the National Trust, a hugely important bequest that has helped to ensure the survival of the Lakeland landscape. In 1942, however, her concern was that those estates play should their part in the war effort, so she invited J.A. Hanley, Professor of Agriculture at Leeds University, to visit and give advice on how to increase production. The letters discuss such subjects as the difficulties in ploughing the stony hills of the Lake District for potatoes, the unreliability of the weather, sheep and cattle farming, her sometimes testy relationship with the Cumbrian WAEC, and the need for government support ("…The present lime subsidy stands in a class apart. It is a gift to the soil—what is the old saying 'Earth's honest, what you give it—it will repay.'…"). Also included is a signed photographic studio portrait of Hanley dated 1932. In 1920, Hanley, was declared bankrupt, the case being widely reported in the Yorkshire press as his debts were racked up due to the extravagant lifestyle of his wife, Una Hanley. According to his testimony, she had a taste for expensive clothing, fancy meals in Leeds's best restaurants and lavish household goods. Hanley said he contracted most of the debts without his knowledge. Her alleged life story included, in no particular order: vagrancy in London, posing as a doctor, a gilded childhood, being an artist's model in Paris, bigamy, gambling a fortune in Monte Carlo, mixing with European aristocracy and spending two Christmases in Holloway prison. Their son Sir Michael Bowen Hanley became director-general of MI5, and he received a knighthood in 1974. A fine set.
Price £7500.00
