There was a certain Bath emphasis, according to Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium), but this leather-bound octavo album would appear to have been compiled by a Miss Harvey Bonnell of Pelling Place, Old Windsor – with a little help from her friends and family.
A Cotswold Auction Company (20% buyer’s premium) sale of the same day, February 6, included a lot, sold at £2400, that offered manuscripts compiled in the late 18th or early 19th century by members of the Beaufort family.
In one of them a Mary Beaufort describes a 1789 tour to Harrogate and London that began with a voyage aboard the Prince of Wales.
It may have originated in Ireland, as another item, a memoir bearing the inscription “Ecrites a Cork ad 1800 par WL d’B” reveals that the writer was born at Navan, Co Meath, where her father was rector of the parish.
The third item, comprising two bound stories, one called ‘The History of Lady Clementine Douglas’, bore the name of a Louisa L d Beaufort.
