Pleasant Pastime for A Christmas Evening. A Christmas Entertainment by Elizabeth Craven.

A Pleasant Pastime for A Christmas Evening, or, the Predictions of Cosmopolitus Occultarius Philanthropos Foresight, is the title of a rare book in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, in Paris. It is a small volume bound in leather beautifully tooled with gold leaf and it is unique in the world. No other copy has survived of this book, written by Elizabeth Craven in 1795 as a Christmas gift for her favourite son, Keppel.

We could have guessed the authorship from the fact that it says it is "Dedicated, without permission, to the Hon. Richard Keppel Craven" - very typical of Elizabeth Craven's whimsical sense of humour. In case we were in any doubt, somebody, possibly Keppel himself, has inscribed on it in best copperplate script "By HSH the Margravine of Anspach".

The book is a parody of the sort of superstitious, astrological fortune-telling books that were then sold widely, particularly at Christmas when people were curious to hear predictions for the coming year. And there are still similar things on sale today - astrological columns in newspapers and magazines, annual forecasts offered by psychics and sages... they still proliferate. For the unwary, there are invitations to pay for your personal forecast!
In Elizabeth Craven's spoof, astrology is mixed with a smattering of science or quasi-science as the Preface refers both to Nostradamus and to "Mr Herschell's telescope", which has been used for studying the stars. But the "method" of the book is sheer hocus-pocus and most of the prognostications concern love, finding your future spouse, and discovering what lies in store for you after marriage to your destined mate.

The lists of possible outcomes are full of Elizabeth Craven's observation, variety and wit as well as her occasionally caustic satire. Writing the book has been a game for her and using it will be an amusing game for Keppel and their Christmas guests. Elizabeth enjoyed inviting a large party of family, friends and young people to stay with them at Benham, and the amusements included music and private theatricals.

The book has a Preface dedicated to Keppel, who was then aged 17. It tells him how to use the book "This learned and elaborate performance" to find out his future and discover what people are thinking.

For example, consider a certain Mr Reeves, who is in deep trouble right now in 1795 for publishing a book that says the King of England can rule legally without a House of Lords or Commons. Consulting our mystical tome tells us that at this moment, Mr Reeves is thinking about a gibbet. But then we consult it again and find that under another heading, he is "ordered to hide his ears as much as he can" - in other words, he is an ass.

John Reeves was a printer with ultra-Tory views, who published a royalist pamphlet called Thoughts on the English Government, and became the only person ever to be prosecuted for alleged "libel on the English constitution". It was the height of the French Revolutionary period, and the British government was frantically harassing and prosecuting radicals. Then the opposition decided to prosecute Reeves for being far too conservative! There was a funny side - albeit black humour - to this. Happily the outcome was that the jury acquitted him.

The book is divided into sections, so that the reader may choose what part of their destiny to consult. It purports to tell each player in the game what they are thinking of now, what they like best, what sort of prospective wife or husband awaits them, and even what that destined spouse will be doing at the moment they first meet.

A What the woman is thinking of at present.
B.What the man is thinking of.
C. What a man likes best.
D. What a woman likes best.
E. What the wife is to be.
F. What the husband is to be.
G. What people may get upon, or fall into, after marriage.
H. What people will do after they are married.
I. Where the gentleman is to see the lady, and the lady the gentleman, for the first time.
[ no J]
K. What the wife will be doing the first time you see her.
L. What the gentleman will be doing.
M. A cure for any untoward foregoing predictions.

The list of things that a woman may "like best" starts with some innocent and innocuous ideas -
"romance", "A walk by moonlight", "a present", or "a surprise", but what is that we read in between - a "devil highly seasoned"? When we read on we find "A masked ball" ..."an assignation" ... "gambling"....husbands, beware! And below there is the startling possibility of "Animal Magnetism". Animal Magnetism was a fashionable theory started by the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer who used magnets and hypnosis on his patients in the 1780s. He was regarded as a fraud by most men of science. Whether the term had already acquired, in the 1790s, any sexual connotation, is worth wondering. It certainly did so later.

The list of possible places where a woman will be and what she is doing when her future husband sees her for the first time is far-ranging. She might be at Bartholemew Fair, or she might be in the wolds of Yorkshire, and she might be somewhere rather romantic - "At Netley-abbey, sitting on a fragment". Netley Abbey was - and is - a Gothic ruined monastery in Hampshire near to the South Coast, a place that attracted travellers in search of quaint and picturesque scenery. So the future bride could be sitting on a fragment of stone tracery musing like the heroine of a romantic novel.

But the future spouse might also be somewhere far less romantic, such as Lincoln's Inn, or the dentist's - or Bedlam.

All this is calculated to create outcomes that are surprising, embarrassing or hilarious when used as a parlour game. But there is more than teasing and hilarity here. It transpires that some prospective wives are harbouring secret thoughts that are far more treasonable and seditious than those of Mr Reeves.

Not only do some women think that they could write a play - a very audacious ambition - but their bold imaginations go so far as to think, "Of a female parliament" and "That women are as fit to rule as men".

When we look at the list of "What the Husband is to Be", it includes "A nobleman", "a gentleman", "a farmer", "a soldier", "a sailor" etc. But it also includes "A Bully", "a coxcomb", "a coward", "A swindler" and "A liar".

In fact, "A Bully" comes right at the top of the list. Possibly Elizabeth Craven was remembering her own first, far from ideal, experience of marriage, to Lord Craven.

If the husband is not a bully, he may be a fox-hunter, or a drunkard - both of which Lord Craven certainly was - or he may be perfidious, ungrateful, or revengeful. He may be capricious, very cold, very warm or just insignificant. Most curious of all, he may turn out to be "A titled man without birth". This sounds like a paradox, but it could mean a self-made man who is raised to the peerage, or it could mean a man like Lord Craven who succeeds to his uncle's title although he is only the son of a country vicar.

And what is going to happen to the married pair when they have met and sealed the knot? The possible outcomes are far from being all rosy. Things they may fall into include "the fear of never being unmarried", "wishing that one day of the year might be wiped from the calendar of their memory", "wishing that marriage was short and sweet, or either," or most bluntly "Into purgatory."

When we come to peruse the list of things that a husband may do after marriage, they include, along with building two new rooms to your house, and going to the pharo (gambling) table, the possibilities "Run away from your spouse" and "Lock up your spouse". Even more worrying at number 32, we find "Never have a cane in your house bigger than your thumb". It seems to imply that he may have a cane in the house, and even one no thicker than his thumb could be a very dangerous weapon.

It starts to remind us of Elizabeth Craven's protest, in Letters to Her Son, that under the laws of England, a man could lock up his wife, or beat her, and she had no legal redress.

Other things that people may be fated to do after marriage include "Think that two heads are not so good as one", "Smile when your heart aches" and "Take care how you pronounce the word Society lest you should mistake it for Satiety".

If people are not prepared to put up with purgatory, alternative destinations include "The Dover stage coach", "The Lisbon packet" and "The East Indies".

Elizabeth Craven herself certainly got into a lot of stage coaches, packets and other long-distance vehicles in the years after she parted with her husband.

As for the people not satisfied with the predictions that the learned sage and his book have provided for them, they get short shrift. They are offered a range of drastic, painful or absurd remedies, from plunging their heads in cold water to hanging themselves in their own garters.