Typed Letter Signed ('Walter Besant') to Mrs [Alice] Westlake.

12mo, 2 pp. Seventeen lines of text. On lightly aged and creased paper. Attractive arts and crafts letterhead. Sending his 'mosts profound sympathy in the danger which threatens Chelsea'. He will sign 'the paper [...] with the greatest of pleasure', although he anticipates 'very little good as a possible result'. Suggests a time at which the paper can be sent to him. He doubts whether it will be 'any consolation', but 'the London County Council are at this moment allowing the most beautiful suburb in London, namely Frognal, to be ruined by the erection of hideous barracks that they call flats. Their architect says that he can do nothing in the matter.' Besant's signature has a diagonal line through it, apparently in the same ink, and it is not clear whether this is a stylistic flourish, or a cancellation by Besant, possibly on the letter being returned to him with the papers referred to in the letter. Alice Westlake, daughter of Thomas Hare, and advocate of proportional representation, was the wife of the jurist John Westlake (1828-1913; DNB), of River House, Chelsea Embankment.