ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

   The novelist Lady Helen Emily Craven (1874-1926), was a direct descendant of Elizabeth Craven. The daughter of the 3 rd  Earl of Craven, she is usually known by her married name, Forbes, under which her novels were published.   She first ventured into print writing newspaper articles about fashion at the age of sixteen. On 7th October 1890 she advised readers of The Guardian :- "A fine and warm September has delayed considerably the production of autumnal novelties, for in these days of cheap imitation the best milliners and dressmakers jealously withhold their newest inventions till the last possible moment. Despite the rumours that reach us from Paris of a threatened revolution in dress, of stiff Holbein bodices, with padded rolls upon the hips, as yet the simple, graceful gored skirt and Princess polonaise continue to hold their ground. It is in the Tudor times, the long-past days of pearl-broidered kirtles and jewelled stomachers, that we shall find the o...

Hon Henry Berkeley Craven, miniature on ivory by George Sanders. Henry Augustus Berkeley Craven was Elizabeth Craven's sixth child, and second son. Born in December 1776, he was always known as Berkeley, a name chosen in honour of his mother's family.  He is to be seen aged three in this Berkeley-Granard group portrait at Berkeley Castle, where he is the merry little boy being carried on his mother's back. This image of him as a fun-loving imp matches everything we know about him throughout most of his life. A high-spirited, pleasure-loving sportsman and tearaway, he was daring, and perhaps a little inclined to show off.      Berkeley was sent to Eton and grew up to be tall and extremely handsome, the m ost robust of his brothers. He was fifteen when his father died. When he left school, his mother wanted to send him to university but her brother Frederick, who had been appointed one of his guardians by Lord Craven, refused. [1] So i n 1794, aged only 17, young Berk...

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...

DR671/56 Jane Austen is listed as receiving jewellery after the death of Mary Leigh in 1806 This document from the archives of Stoneleigh Abbey is a page from the Will of the Hon. Mary Leigh who died in 1806, listing the names of female relatives to whom she left small bequests of jewellry. On the left hand side are listed "Miss Austen" and "Miss Jane Austen" - that is, the novelist and her elder sister Cassandra. On the right hand page we find the names of three of the daughters of Elizabeth Craven, the writer who was at one time married to the 6th Lord Craven. The married daughters are "The Countess of Sefton" and "The honourable Mrs St. John" while the unmarried Georgiana is "The honourable Miss Craven". Both the Cravens and the Austen family were related to the Leigh family, and so they are mentioned side by side in this list of beneficiaries. This common link was one of several connections Jane Austen had with the family of Elizabe...

The name Elizabeth Craven cropped up again and again in the history of the Craven family. In the middle of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Gwendolen Theresa Johnstone-Douglas married the 6th Earl of Craven, and so she became another Elizabeth Craven. But becoming Countess of Craven was no means a smooth or easy path. Eliza, as she was known, was born in 1916. She was the daughter of an artist, Sholto Johnstone-Douglas, a distant relative of the Marquess of Queensberry. Sholto was a war-artist in World War I, and in 1926 he and his family moved into the Villa Marie at Valescure near Saint-Raphael in the South of France. The house had previously been occupied by Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. The French Riviera was the playground of rich aristocrats in the interwar years, and the social scene was distinctly lively. In 1935, Eliza was invited to a fancy-dress party given by the Marquis and Marquise de Chabannes, known as the "Cous-Cous party" as they loved all ...

St Mary's Church in Kintbury, West Berkshire, contains a curious monument dating from the late eighteenth-century, when Jane Austen sometimes stayed in the village as a guest of her friend Eliza, wife of the vicar, the Rev. Fulwar Craven Fowle. He owed his job to his second cousin once removed, Lord Craven, who was the patron of the parish.  The Rev. Fowle  commanded the local company of military volunteers, and did so very admirably, by all accounts. In 1799, he was complimented by George III in person. The monument is one of a pair of very handsome marble memorials to members of the Raymond family, who owned the local manor house of Barton Court. It commemorates a Mr Jemmet Raymond and his second wife, Elizabeth who, before she married Jemmet Raymond, was Mrs Charles Craven, grandmother of both the vicar and his wife. There are life-sized marble busts of both of them, in Roman attire, a large classical urn and this inscription: "Sacred to the memory ...