Elizabeth Craven, Jane Austen and the Vernons
Jane Austen and Elizabeth Craven were contemporaries but it is not known whether they ever met. It remains an intriguing possibility as they had many acquaintances in common, and were often only one link apart in the social network of late Georgian England.
There are many literary connections between them. Jane Austen certainly read some of Craven's books and was influenced by them. She was probably also aware of Craven by reputation... and the reputation was rather a racy one.
Lady Susan is the title of one of Jane Austen's most accomplished pieces of juvenilia, a relatively short epistolary novel with a sophisticated, far-from-saintly anti-heroine, Lady Susan Vernon, who, in her private letters to her best friend, boasts of her skills in flirting, adultery and general scheming. It is thought that Austen later put some of these traits into the character of Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park and that her sister-in-law, Eliza de Feuillide, may have served as a model.
But why did she choose the name Vernon and what connotations did it have for her readers? There were many branches of the Vernon family in England. They were of Norman descent, wealthy and aristocratic, and owned various fine estates, mostly in the midlands, including Sudbury Hall, Haddon Hall and Hilton Hall. A Lady Henrietta Vernon was lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, so her name figured often in court circulars and Jane Austen would have come across it.
In 1771, her daughter,
another Henrietta Vernon, was divorced by her husband Richard, Lord Grosvenor,
for having an affair with the Duke of Cumberland, brother of the King. The full scandalous and salacious details were published, relating how the two had met many times at a house in Cavendish Square, in the West End of London. A witness had seen Lady Grosvenor "lying upon her back upon the couch with her petticoats up and his said royal highness the duke of Cumberland's breeches were unbuttoned". All of this lent the name of Vernon a definite notoriety; it combined aristocratic lineage with a whiff of scandal.
Jane Austen's Lady Susan recalls how her late husband had to sell the family's ancestral home, Vernon Castle, because of her debts and extravagance. While there was no real Vernon Castle, there was a Wentworth Castle, that was inherited in the 1790s by a Mr Frederick Wentworth, a distant cousin of the last possessor. Such inheritances were reported in the press and would have been much talked of. As a recent critic has pointed out, Jane Austen clearly took an interest in this piece of news as she took the name for the hero of Persuasion. The real Mr Frederick Wentworth died childless, eight years after inheriting the castle, and the estate was a disputed property, but was eventually inherited by Frederick William Thomas Vernon (1795-1885), second son of Henry Vernon of Hilton Hall in Staffordshire.
Now it so happens that this Mr Henry Vernon, Lady Henrietta's son, was a very close friend of Elizabeth Craven - more than a friend in fact. There was gossip about both of them circulating in the 1790s and Horace Walpole was not the only person to record and report it.
Could it be that Jane Austen chose the name Vernon because she was thinking of Elizabeth Craven when she wrote Lady Susan? She certainly knew that Elizabeth Craven was a letter-writer, as two of Craven's published books took that particular form.
There is also a similarity between the names Crawford, used in Mansfield Park, and Craven. If you look them up in the naval gazette or other reference works, the two names are side by side.
To find out more about Elizabeth Craven, her books and her extraordinary life, read Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European, Vernon Press 2017.
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Vernon_family
Copies of the depositions of the Witnesses examined in the Cause of Divorce ...
By Richard GROSVENOR (1st Earl Grosvenor.) London 1771.
With acknowledgement to:- Janine Barchas, Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity, JHU Press, 2012 .
There are many literary connections between them. Jane Austen certainly read some of Craven's books and was influenced by them. She was probably also aware of Craven by reputation... and the reputation was rather a racy one.
Lady Susan is the title of one of Jane Austen's most accomplished pieces of juvenilia, a relatively short epistolary novel with a sophisticated, far-from-saintly anti-heroine, Lady Susan Vernon, who, in her private letters to her best friend, boasts of her skills in flirting, adultery and general scheming. It is thought that Austen later put some of these traits into the character of Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park and that her sister-in-law, Eliza de Feuillide, may have served as a model.
Hilton Hall, Staffordshire, Henry Vernon's home
But why did she choose the name Vernon and what connotations did it have for her readers? There were many branches of the Vernon family in England. They were of Norman descent, wealthy and aristocratic, and owned various fine estates, mostly in the midlands, including Sudbury Hall, Haddon Hall and Hilton Hall. A Lady Henrietta Vernon was lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, so her name figured often in court circulars and Jane Austen would have come across it.
Jane Austen's Lady Susan recalls how her late husband had to sell the family's ancestral home, Vernon Castle, because of her debts and extravagance. While there was no real Vernon Castle, there was a Wentworth Castle, that was inherited in the 1790s by a Mr Frederick Wentworth, a distant cousin of the last possessor. Such inheritances were reported in the press and would have been much talked of. As a recent critic has pointed out, Jane Austen clearly took an interest in this piece of news as she took the name for the hero of Persuasion. The real Mr Frederick Wentworth died childless, eight years after inheriting the castle, and the estate was a disputed property, but was eventually inherited by Frederick William Thomas Vernon (1795-1885), second son of Henry Vernon of Hilton Hall in Staffordshire.
Frederick Vernon and his sister, the younger children of Henry Vernon, painted by George Romney.
There is also a similarity between the names Crawford, used in Mansfield Park, and Craven. If you look them up in the naval gazette or other reference works, the two names are side by side.
To find out more about Elizabeth Craven, her books and her extraordinary life, read Elizabeth Craven: Writer, Feminist and European, Vernon Press 2017.
https://wikivisually.com/wiki/Vernon_family
Copies of the depositions of the Witnesses examined in the Cause of Divorce ...
By Richard GROSVENOR (1st Earl Grosvenor.) London 1771.
With acknowledgement to:- Janine Barchas, Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity, JHU Press, 2012 .
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