ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

Elizabeth Craven's eldest daughter, also named Elizabeth, seems to have been of rather a serious turn of mind.  Children of Baron Craven by Thomas Beach 1777. In the only portrait we seem to have of her, aged ten with her brother William, she is holding a book in her hand. Eleven years later, h er name "Hon Miss Craven" is found among the subscribers to  this interesting volume, Thoughts of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Selected from His Writings... and Translated by Miss Henrietta Colebrooke (London, 1788), which suggests that the intensive education she got from Madame de Vaucluse was not wasted.  She also subscribed to various volumes of printed music and sermons. (1)      Elizabeth was fifteen when her parents separated. Three years later, while her mother was travelling abroad, she came out in society. It appears that she and her younger sister Maria were presented at the same time as they are always mentioned together. Both attended the ball given for the Ki...

     Arabella Craven was Elizabeth Craven's fourth and youngest daughter, and the one who resembled her most in bold, adventurous, spirit. In fact she was an intrepid traveller whose journeys were just as daring and risky as those of her famous mother.       Arabella was born in 1774 at the Craven ancestral home of Coombe Abbey. This portrait of Arabella as a child with her mother was done by Sir Joshua Reynolds and shows the affection there was between mother and daughter. (1)      Arabella was aged only eight when her parents separated, and her mother had to leave England for many years. The four girls saw little of their mother thereafter, as their father, Lord Craven, would not let them meet or correspond. Arabella and her sisters were mainly brought up at Benham Place, in Berkshire, while her father lived with a mistress, either there or in London.      Arabella's first taste of travel came in 1791, when she was seven...