Cornelia, the American Countess of Craven

 Like many other great English families, in the late nineteenth century the Cravens were strapped for cash. Running numerous stately homes and mixing in London society had become ruinously expensive, particularly after the ambitious building projects of the third Earl. So the fourth Earl decided to follow the trend and in 1893 he married an American heiress, which was the obvious solution.

Cornelia Martin, 1877-1961.

    The Martins, an immensely wealthy family of New York bankers, bought an an estate in Scotland where in the early 1890s they met William George Robert Craven, the fourth Earl, and introduced him to their daughter Cornelia. With no discouragement from her parents, he proposed to Cornelia and married her in 1893 when he was twenty-four, and she was only sixteen. 

    Cornelia entered London society, where other American heiresses such as Lady Randolph Churchill and the Duchess of Marlborough, took a leading rôle. With her handsome dowry, William could afford to keep up his position. He was a Liberal member of the House of Lords, Captain of the Yeoman of the Guard and Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire. He was at one time an aide-de-camp to the Viceroy of Ireland.  According to the Eton Register, he had four addresses, Coombe Abbey, Ashdown Park, Hamstead Marshall and a Mayfair home at 3, Chesterfield Gardens. This was a much smaller house than the Cravens' previous mansion in Charles Street, which by now was probably leased out for the income. Like all the Cravens before him, the young earl enjoyed country sports. This photograph shows him shooting on an estate in Yorkshire, and must have been taken in the 1890s.

    

    A few years after her marriage, a social columnist commented: "It is three years now since the fair young Cornelia became the Countess of Craven, and at nineteen she is tall, sweet-faced, and graceful. She is very happy, for the marriage, strange to say, was a love-match". [1]

   In 1897 Cornelia's parents gave a lavish costume ball that was the most extravagant New York social event of its era. The Bradley-Martin Ball was given at the old (now vanished) Waldorf Hotel, on Fifth Avenue, and newspapers reported not altogether favourably on the event's ostentatious display of wealth. There were eight hundred guests, dressed as kings and queens of past eras, and the hotel was decked with tapestries and roses to resemble Versailles. Cornelia's mother wore a ruby necklace that had belonged to French royalty, a knick-knack which she later bequeathed to her daughter.

    In 1901, when Queen Victoria died, Cornelia along with George took part in the coronation of King Edward VII, where all the peers were decked out in their ermine-trimmed robes and coronets. 

William George Robert Craven, 4th Earl of Craven, 1868-1921.

       She and William had one child, William George Bradley Craven, born in 1897, and pictured here with his mother on the steps in front of Coombe Abbey. When they were not at one of their own estates, or in London, they frequently visited Scotland or went on holidays to foreign spas. And in 1916 the Cravens were listed as one of the "royal and titled owners of a Knight motor car".

    The marriage was a successful one but it came to a sudden and tragic end. Like his ancestor, Elizabeth Craven (and her son William, the first Earl), the fourth Earl was fond of sailing. He drowned in a yachting accident in 1921 off the Isle of Wight.

    It seems that the terms of Cornelia's marriage settlement were designed to protect her inheritance, as she became owner of many of the Craven estates and the valuable contents of Coombe Abbey, which were not sold to pay inheritance tax until after her death in 1961. Her parents had been very canny in negotiating the deal. They had no intention of letting any son-in-law, however apparently trustworthy, squander their daughter's assets or leave her in poverty after his own death.

    I am grateful to Pauline Wiltshire and Clive Williams for drawing my attention to this splendid oil portrait of Cornelia.

 

It was done by the artist John da Costa (1867–1931) and now hangs at Cliveden House at Taplow in Berkshire. It shows her in the bloom of youth and beauty, aged probably no more than 21, as the fashions are those of c.1900. Her naturally dramatic looks - tall, with a long neck and striking eyes - are heightened by her serious expression. 

 

    After her husband's death, Cornelia sold Coombe Abbey to a builder named John Grey in 1923 and moved to the Craven estate at Hamstead Marshall, where she lived modestly at Hamstead Lodge. Here she often hosted Princess Marie-Louise, Queen Victoria's granddaughter, who divorced her husband Prince Aribert in 1900 at age 28, and never remarried.

A little-known fact about Cornelia is that had became a practising Catholic at the time of her marriage and even kept a private chaplain, Father Harry Malden, at Ashdown House until 1926.[2]

    Cornelia lived on as a widow for another forty years, seeing successive generations of her family survive into an era of world wars, social change and rocketing death duties.

               

    The National Trust owes its ownership of the land in Berkshire where the Uffington White Horse, a Bronze Age landmark, is carved into the hillside, to Cornelia Craven, whose gift it was, together with the site of Uffington Castle which for centuries had been part of the Craven estates. [3] Likewise in 1956, she gave Ashdown House to the National Trust.

    And at her death, Cornelia bequeathed some significant works of art to the National Portrait Gallery, including a portrait of Prince Charles Louis, Count Palatine, by Anthony van Dyck.

  [1] Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper 1897 (Volume 85) 83,

  [2] John Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (2011), 299.

  [3] Kelly's Directory of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire (1939), 236.