ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

If you go to Hamstead Marshall, near Newbury, in Berkshire, you will see a pair of enigmatic gateposts standing in the middle of what looks like open farmland. They lead nowhere, and the effect is surreal. There are seven other pairs of gateposts of similar style in the locality, giving a clue to the existence of a now-vanished house and park. In fact there have been many buildings on this site, including a mediaeval castle. The name comes from the Marshall family who owned it in the reign of Henry II. In 1550, Edward VI gave the estate to his sister, the young Princess Elizabeth.  There are some scandalous rumours that the Tudor house was a hiding-place for a secret love-child the Queen bore in her youth, but this is probably legend. Elizabeth I when a Princess   c.1546. Did she have a secret love-child  at Hampstead Marshall? After she came to the throne, the Queen gave Hamstead to  Sir Thomas Parry, formerly her bursar, who built a new reside...

As you are passing through Berkshire on the London to Bath road, you may notice this rather imposing gateway. It is the entrance to Benham Place, sometimes called Benham Park,  an elegant Georgian mansion.   You might think that this gateway, with its double entrance lodges, is a little grand even for an aristocratic mansion. The archways suggest guardposts, as if it were a royal residence, and in fact the house was at once time exactly that. The royal associations of Benham go back a long way. In 1086, the Domesday Book mentions Beneham as a manor in Berkshire held by one Wigar, who is "the King's thane". This meant that he was a noble with special privileges. Only the King had jurisdiction over him.  In 1251, the manor was given by King Henry III to his young half-brother  William de Valence, hence it became known as Benham Valence. Tomb of William de Valence in Westminster Abbey In 1548, the manor was given by Henry VIII   to Sir Walter ...

The writer Elizabeth Craven had seven children while she was married to her first husband, William, Lord Craven. This group portrait shows six of them, and is dated 1777. They are standing in front of an archway of classical design, through which a landscaped park can be seen. It may be that of Benham Place, in Berkshire, where Capability Brown had just landscaped the park for Lord Craven. The painting was in the Craven family collection until sold by Sotheby's in 2013 for only £25,000, which sounds like a bargain to me. Four of the children are standing, one is sitting on a woman's lap and the youngest of all is a baby in the arms of another woman, at the back of the picture.      But which child is which? And who are the women holding the youngest ones? Certainly neither is Elizabeth Craven.     One identification is easy.  The boy in the greenish-blue jacket and yellow waistcoat, with a dog at his side, is Elizabeth Craven's eldest son, William, who l...

The name Craven Cottage today means a famous football ground  in London, home of th e Fulham team. But why is it called Craven Cottage? The name derives from an earlier building on the site, and links it with Elizabeth Craven , the Georgian feminist writer. A View of Fulham from Putney with Old Fulham Bridge, All Saints’ Church and the Bridge Toll House, painted by Joseph Nichols c. 1750. Two hundred years ago, Fulham was a peaceful, green, picturesque village on the Thames where people might go to find a rural retreat from London. Elizabeth Craven wanted a quiet place she could retreat to on her own, so she had a little cottage built here in 1776. She could use it when she wanted to write her books and plays. It did not take her long to travel here by road or river from central London and then home again. Craven Cottage, a photograph taken c.1850.  The cottage had a thatched roof and a large garden that went right down to the edge of the river. After Craven...

Elizabeth Craven was painted many times. This portrait of her by Ozias Humphry (1742-1810) is one of the most fascinating images as it captures a certain shrewdness and humorous twinkle in the eye. She is not just a pretty face!  Ozias Humphrey, self-portrait. The date of the painting is not recorded, but has to be deduced from the style of the sitter's clothes and hair, her age and from biographical details of the artist and the sitter. Ozias Humphry was a tremendously talented artist whose career was blighted by an accident that damaged his eyesight, and by 1797 he became completely blind. He did not spend his entire working life in England; he was in Italy from 1773 until 1777, and left for India in 1785.  So the portrait could either have been commissioned before 1773 (when Elizabeth was aged 23) or in the period 1777-1783 when she was a little older, and Humphry was again in England; or in the 1790s. It seems unlikely to be the work of a man whose ey...

Emma, Lady Hamilton was a beautiful artist's model who became, because of her love affair with Admiral Nelson, one of the most celebrated women in Georgian England.  Emma Hamilton painted by George Romney. Elizabeth Craven was also famous, or perhaps one should say notorious, for her love affairs, in the same period, and although they came from vastly different social backgrounds, their paths did cross and they had quite a few friends and acquaintances in common. Emma painted by Romney again. The luscious Emma was painted by Romney many times, as he could sell the pictures to collectors who wanted to contemplate her classical beauty, often arrayed in some mythological or theatrical costume. Elizabeth Craven was also painted by Romney, and this oval portrait is dated 1778. Craven moved in the upper echelons of society then found herself relegated to its periphery when she transgressed its codes of behaviour.  Emma, whose original name was Amy Lyon, came fr...

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 mod...