Autograph MS letter of Elizabeth Craven about Her Son

The Elizabeth Craven Society has now acquired this original manuscript letter written by Elizabeth Craven in April 1802, from London, to the Comte de Perrégaux, a banker in Paris.




She describes herself devotedly looking after her son Keppel, who has suffered a riding accident. His horse crushed his leg against a tree, and although no bones were broken, he is so severely bruised and grazed that he has been laid up on a sofa for a fortnight.

Actually there was nothing Elizabeth enjoyed doing more than looking after Keppel. Her youngest child, he was now aged 23, and had travelled in Paris for a while after he left Oxford, but she loved him to return home to Brandenburgh House where she could molly-coddle him and warn him of every possible risk to his delicate health. She also loved him to invite his friends to stay and fill the house with high-spirited young people.



There are other surviving letters from Elizabeth Craven to this Parisian banker, who was probably the Margrave's banker, and one of them mentions that she is paying a pension to a former maid of hers who had retired back to France. That was typical of her generous and considerate nature.

Keppel happily recovered from the riding accident, and lived to the age of seventy-two. He wrote several books about his extensive travels in Greece and Italy, as well as an account of the revolution in Naples in 1820.



















La voyageuse anglaise Elisabeth Craven d'Anspach soigne son fils.

Type de document : lettre autographe signée
Nb documents : 1 - Nb pages : 1 - Format : In-4
Lieu : Londres
Date : 10/04/1802
Destinataire : le comte de Perrégaux (1750/1808), banquier à Paris.
Etat : déchirures dues à l'ouverture de la lettre.
Elisabeth Craven charge Perrégaux de remercier Mme de La Fréville. «Dites-lui que sa lettre à mon fils arriva au moment où il était cloué sur une chaise longue. Il s’est blessé à la jambe. Son cheval le froissa contre un arbre. Il y a près de 15 jours que je le soigne […]».
Adresse, marques postales et cachet de cire au dos. Ecrite en français.
Elisabeth Craven Anspach (margravine d') (Spring-Garden, 1750/1828)
Femme de lettres et voyageuse anglaise, épouse du margrave d'Anspach, auteur d'un Voyage à Constantinople en passant par la Crimée (1789).

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