Donating household items from my late mother’s home to the YMCA charity shop in Knebworth High Street, Martha and I were delighted to be offered a fine original edition of “Letters of Constance Lytton” kindly held back for Knebworth House by the shop’s Nicola Latimer. We happily paid £10 for the book (+ Gift Aid, register if you haven’t).
The hardback has two photographs tucked in it of my great-great-aunt Constance, one sat with an elderly lady and the other petting a beautiful dog. Our Archives team did not recognise the dog, but they did recognise the lady as Frau Betty Oser, Constance’s beloved Austrian piano teacher. Frau Oser, who had been admired by Brahms, was a pupil and good friend of Clara Schumann, with whom she travelled to England in 1881. Beyond inspiring Constance to become a fine pianist, Frau Oser became a good friend of the Lytton family, and we have another photo in our Archive of her sitting with Constance’s mother Edith, in front of Constance and two unidentified ladies.
The inscription handwritten on the book’s flyleaf reveals its original owner as ‘Hedwig Pauli’. Our bloodhound-of-the-keyboard archivist, Jill Campbell, quickly discovered that this was Frau Oser’s niece. Perhaps she is one of the ladies in the photograph? How this book came to be in the Knebworth YMCA charity shop is a mystery we will probably never solve. But I returned to the shop to donate an extra £20 for this treasured fine and for Nicola’s thoughtfulness in putting it aside for us.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH 
