ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

      AVIGNON , the beautiful city on the Rhône in Southern France, was the birthplace of Anne-Marie Fauques de Vaucluse (1720-1804), a writer of the Enlightenment period who deserves to be better known. She was a poet, novelist and daring satirist who was well-known in her own time and her life was both extraordinary and fascinating. Clocher des Augustins Her family name was Fauques and she adopted the pen-name of Madame de Vaucluse because although she left Avignon and settled in England, she remembered the city of her birth with affection and described the Fontaine de Vaucluse as the most beautiful place on earth.       Fauques' life was extraordinary and scandalous in many ways. In her youth, she was forced by her family to enter a nunnery, which she contrived to escape after twelve years of intolerable confinement. Seeking love and adventure, she found both  - perhaps a little too much sometimes - and wrote about them in her poems and novels....

     This double portrait of two of Elizabeth Craven's sons, Henry Augustus Berkeley Craven and Richard Keppel Craven, by John Hoppner (1758-1810) is currently owned by the  Indianapolis Museum of Art in the USA.  It is dated  on the museum website  1800, when Berkeley and Keppel (as they were always known) were aged 24 and 21 respectively. I wonder if it was done a little earlier, because Keppel does not look as if he is more than eighteen.     The painting is, according to the curator of the museum, neither signed nor dated. Apparently Hoppner never did sign his pictures, nor did he keep a record of this commission, so attribution depends on contemporary references and on style. Nevertheless, Hoppner experts all agree that it is his work.      Until 1821, the portrait used to hang at Brandenburgh House, the London home of Elizabeth Craven after she married the Margrave of Anspach. It was seen there by the MP Th...

     In 2021, Berkshire was shocked by the murder of Sir Richard Sutton, the owner of Elizabeth Craven's beloved home, Benham Place, or Benham Park as it is now known, near Speen, Newbury.       Sir Richard had bought the house in 2017 after its skilful restoration by a team of Georgian enthusiasts.      Few people realize that Sir Richard Lexington Sutton was a direct descendant of the Sir Richard Sutton who owned Benham in the nineteenth century. Indeed, it appears that when Sir Richard bought the estate in 2017, he was not only buying back the home of his ancestors, but the same estate he had previously, in 1981, sold.  Sir Richard Sutton who was murdered in 2021 aged 83.      In 1848, the Benham estate was bought by Frederick Villebois from Richard Keppel Craven, who had inherited it from his mother. Then in 1868 on Villebois's death it was bought by Sir Richard Sutton, 4th Baronet, who enlarged the house consider...

Rockley Manor.          The highlight of the year was the talk given in February 2022 by author Nicola Cornick to the Friends of Lydiard Park,  entitled "A Georgian Love Story" about the marriage of General the Hon. Frederick St. John and Arabella Craven, the youngest daughter of Elizabeth Craven. Many interesting details emerged about their eventful lives, including the fact that when they went to India they took their three sons with them, and nearly lost all three when the ship caught fire. On their return to England  they lived at Rockley Manor in Wiltshire, halfway between Lydiard Park and Ashdown House. The house survives (above).  Ms Cornick has used the manuscripts in the Lydiard Archives as her source, and we look forward to many more fascinating discoveries about the Cravens and St. Johns, two closely connected families with estates in the neighbouring counties of Berkshire and Wiltshire.      Elizabeth  Craven i...