The discovery of LaMotte’s will transforms the dispute over the Ash–LaMotte correspondence from a question of scholarly access into a specific, though contestable, claim of inheritance. Dictated shortly before Christabel LaMotte’s death, the document left her papers and copyrights to her niece Maia Thomasine Bailey; its rediscovery gives Maud Bailey a family-based claim to the manuscripts and to copyright in LaMotte’s side of the correspondence, while leaving the letters’ legal status open to challenge.

Background and the Bailey Archive

The will matters because LaMotte’s surviving papers have reached the present through an incomplete and uncertain chain of custody. LaMotte’s desk papers were sent to her niece Maia in the hope that she might come to care about poetry. Maia married a cousin, moved to Norfolk, and raised ten children; she did not, as far as Maud knows, become interested in poetry. Maud, her descendant, later persuaded her father to lodge the family papers in the archive where she worked. The surviving collection included manuscripts of the Tales, undated lyrics on loose slips, a commonplace book, a few letters, and multiple revisions of Melusina, which LaMotte rewrote at least eight times. The collection’s small scale and the absence of further material are themselves part of its history: Maud says that little care was taken of the papers and that nothing more has come to light. The archive was not a complete record of LaMotte’s relationships or working life. The will would later explain why LaMotte’s papers and copyrights were intended to pass through Maia, but it could not fill the gaps left by missing documents. Maud says LaMotte almost certainly kept no journal and had advised a niece against habitual self-examination, arguing that a woman should either shape her thoughts into art or live within daily obligations and affections. In the novel’s documentary world, therefore, inheritance preserves a body of writing while the archive’s omissions continue to limit what its later readers can know.

Recovery of the Document

The immediate route to the will ran through legal and family records rather than through the literary archive. Euan MacIntyre, acting with Toby Byng’s help, searched old deed boxes held by Toby’s firm, which served Sir George Bailey’s family. They found a document among accounts belonging to LaMotte’s sister Sophia Bailey. Euan produced a Xerox copy and said he had checked the signature in Maud’s women’s-studies department while she was away. The paper had been folded among Sophia’s accounts, not preserved as a conspicuous literary testament; its survival depended on an ordinary household record remaining among the documents. The will states that it was dictated to Sophia on May 1, 1890, because LaMotte was too weak to write clearly. It left her money, furniture, and china to Sophia; provided a possible bequest of £60 to Jane Summers of Richmond; and gave all her books, papers, and copyrights to Maia Thomasine Bailey, in the hope that Maia might eventually become interested in poetry. LaMotte signed the document before Lucy Tuck, her lady’s maid, and William Marchmont, her gardener. Euan said the accounts showed that Sophia found Jane Summers and paid her bequest, then retained the paper after carrying out her sister’s intentions. That trace of performance—the recorded payment—helped establish that the document had not simply remained an unacted-upon wish.

From Bequest to Ownership Claim

The document’s significance depends on separating rights that can easily be conflated. Euan explained that copyright in an unpublished letter belongs to its writer, whereas the physical letter belongs to its recipient. Because the correspondence had been returned to LaMotte, he argued, the letters themselves had also returned to her possession. If the will transferred her papers and copyrights to Maia, the inheritance could therefore support Maud’s claim not only to LaMotte’s manuscripts and copyright, but to the physical correspondence, including Ash’s letters that had been returned to LaMotte. Maud’s question about whether this made the letters hers prompted Euan to set out the distinction: ownership of the sheets and copyright in their words were related claims, but not the same one. The case remained legally uncertain. Euan acknowledged that the document was not a properly registered will and that there were loopholes through which Sir George could contest it. His professional opinion was nevertheless that Maud should be able to prove title to the collection, both LaMotte’s letters and Ash’s. The claim also depended on the family’s transmission of the papers: Maud’s father, still living, was in principle the heir through Maia, but he had already given Maud the manuscripts that had come down to the family. Euan later summarized the position before the assembled scholars, saying that Maud was certainly heir to ownership of LaMotte’s letters and almost certainly to the Ash letters as manuscripts, but not to the copyright in Ash’s letters, which belonged to Randolph Henry Ash’s heirs.

Consequences and Limits

The will changes the terms of the struggle over the correspondence without settling every part of it. Maud’s family claim conflicts with Sir George Bailey’s belief that he owns the letters and with Mortimer Cropper’s efforts to obtain them for the Stant Foundation. Maud is concerned that the documents remain in Britain, while Cropper’s large offers to Sir George sharpen the practical stakes of any claim. Euan warns that litigation could consume the proceeds in legal fees; the document provides a substantial basis for action, not a guarantee of an uncontested result. Questions of physical possession, inheritance, copyright, and the authority to publish must still be considered separately. The distinction becomes especially consequential because the correspondence has a complicated material history. After Randolph Henry Ash’s death, Ellen Ash burned papers she believed should remain private, but preserved the letters she and Ash had exchanged with LaMotte and buried them with him. Later, when the bundle was recovered from Ash’s grave, the letters’ ownership and the rights in their contents could no longer be reduced to the question of who held the box. The rediscovered will supplies one missing link in that history: it connects LaMotte’s intention to a named heir and makes the buried papers legible as an inherited archive as well as evidence of a private relationship. The novel does not present the will as a final answer to archival ethics. The legal argument can establish a possible title and clarify which rights belong to sender, recipient, and heir; it does not erase the competing concerns about privacy, preservation, scholarly access, or publication. Nor can the testament restore letters and other materials that were destroyed or lost. Its force lies in making LaMotte’s own disposition of her work visible within a history in which other people have repeatedly managed, concealed, preserved, and pursued her papers.