Newsletter of the Elizabeth Craven Society 2023

                        Newsletter of the Elizabeth Craven Society 2023

    We await news about the future of 16, Charles Street, the former Mayfair home of the Craven family from the 18th to the 20th century. There have been many objections raised to the plan to turn it into a large-scale restaurant, particularly to proposals to alter the front and other parts of the structure. We hope that English Heritage, which has been alerted, is now taking appropriate action.

        

16, Charles Street, Mayfair, once
home of Elizabeth Craven

    Publications.

    Clive Williams' book The Cravens is the most significant recent publication, and it has been separately reviewed on this site. 

    In academic circles, it is Elizabeth Craven's travelogue that has received most critical attention. An essay by A.Ö.Çalik et al "The Cultural Heritage of Ottoman Anatolia Through the Eyes of Female Traveller" that mentions Craven among other female travellers to Constantinople appears in Heritage Tourism Beyond Borders and Civilisations (ed İnci Oya Coşkun, ‎Alan Lew, ‎Norain Othman, 2020). Unlike most critical discussions of Craven's travel writing this one acknowledges that she actually gives a very positive as well as accurately observed account of the Turkish capital. 

    A Journey to Constantinople is discussed again in Exploring Borders and Boundaries in the Humanities (ed. Melih Karakuzu, ‎Hasan Baktır, ‎Banu Akçeşme, 2021). Chapter 10 written by Hassan Baktir and M. Kasim Özgen, groups Craven with Penelope Aubin, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The authors claims that Craven is contradictory in praising the beauty of two young Greek brides, one of whom has "dark eyelids" while deploring the fact that some Turkish women paint their eyebrows with black lines. In fact what she says about the latter is, "no doubt that Nature intended some of these women to be very handsome, but white and red ill-applied, their eyebrows hid under one or two black lines - teeth black by smoaking, and an universal stoop in the shoulders, made them appear rather disgusting than handsome". I don't find anything contradictory here. Craven is saying that bad make-up and bad habits can ruin a beautiful face or form, which is fair enough.

     A book with the odd title The Social Life of Biometrics by George C Grinnell (2020) is one of many that interpret Craven's travelogue as an example of imperialistic thought or "Orientalism". He claims that it is an early expression of "preoccupations with the East that coincide with Britain establishing its Empire in the region". In fact Turkey is part of Europe, not of the East, and was regarded as such in the 18th century. Britain has never had an empire in that region. Grinnell rather conveniently ignores the fact that it was the Turks who had an empire ruling the Christian peoples of Southern and Eastern Europe despotically for many centuries, enslaving them, impoverishing them and imposing arbitrary capital punishment. In recent times Christian refugees have been driven out of Turkey and I know some of them. He says that writing about the Orient was a mode of "hallucinating Middle Eastern and Indian cultures", not seeing what was there but what the viewer chooses to see there. His example is Craven's description of the interior of Hagia Sophia, where she describes the figures wrapped up like mummies, whispering to each other, in what appeared to be an ideal venue for hatching plots. From this he jumps immediately to accusing her of depicting Mahommedans as terrorists, planning to attack Europeans. Of course she has not said anything of the sort. In her book, Craven describes how palace plots are the means of putting the Sultan's ministers into power and removing them, usually at the cost of their heads, giving named examples (vol. II 207-209). So she is not hallucinating anything, but Grinnell only looks at a few excerpts.

    Hastily, he then jumps to bigger accusations, "She anticipates a form of biometric thought that identifies Muslims as potential terrorists first and individuals with human dignity a distant second". There is a lot of anger behind what he writes, and he clothes it in a lot of pomposity, but it is complete nonsense. He is supposing that the fifty thousand or so Muslim terrorist attacks in the Western world since 9/11 are all "hallucinations" and that wicked white people are guilty of making it all up. The murder of David Amess, the murderous attack on Salman Rushdie, the public decapitations of innocent victims by ISIS, and the innumerable similar atrocities carried out by Muslim terrorists all over the world, are apparently "hallucinations". He complains about Craven's "dispiriting stereotype" and accuses her of "a work of unreason" all on the basis of one rather clumsy misreading. 

    It never crosses the mind of people like Grinnell to consider Craven's travelogue in the light of the imminent liberation of the Greek people from tyrannical Turkish rule. The examples she gives of injustice towards Greeks are based on good authority. And personally I am glad the Greeks were liberated.

                Fair Greece, sad relic of departed worth! 

                    Immortal, though no more; though fallen, great,

                   Who now shall lead thy fallen children forth

                   And long-accustomed bondage uncreate?

    An essay by Susanne Schmid about Craven's private theatricals at Brandenburgh House, "Elizabeth Craven, Private Theatricals and Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers" in British Sociability in the European Enlightenment (ed. Domsch and Hansen, Springer: 2021) appears in comparison with Grinnell at least to be sane, if a touch pedestrian.

Events.

There is a forthcoming event to be held in July.  Several authors will be speaking and Craven enthusiasts from far and wide have been invited. It should be very stimulating.