ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

When Elizabeth Craven travelled from London down to Southampton to visit the Isle of Wight, which she loved, she must have passed through Alton in Hampshire, and may even have driven right past the house, Chawton Cottage, where Jane Austen was living from 1809 until 1817. There was a family connection between them as Jane's sister Cassandra had been engaged to Elizabeth Craven's son's chaplain, who died tragically on a military expedition to the West Indies. And with the Austens was living Martha Lloyd, who was related to the Craven family. Her mother had been born a Craven. This red brick house on a corner in the village of Chawton was the property of Austen's wealthy brother Edward who also owned the local manor house. He provided a former bailiff's cottage on the estate for his widowed mother and two sisters, and it was here that Jane lived for the last eight years of her life, while she wrote most of her best novels. Nowadays the house is preserved as a tribute ...

This portrait in oils of Adrienne, Comtesse de Tessé, the foster mother of Sophie de Tott, was reproduced in the late François Schlumberger's book Chaville et Viroflay , published in 1997. It portrays her in a very sympathetic manner, as a thoughtful, gentle and sensitive person. She is dressed in a delicate shade of cream with trimmings of pale salmon pink. The light seems to bathe her in an almost golden hue, allowing the gown and her skin to blend into each other without any harsh boundaries. We know that Mme de Tessé was not considered beautiful but the portrait depicts her as gracious and kind. There is something relaxed and informal about her posture that is very pleasing and gives the impression that we are meeting her on intimate terms. Schlumberger said that the original painting was at the time of publication in the private collection of a certain Monsieur Léotard, a descendant of the family of the Comte de Mun, a close friend of the Tessé family. M. Léotard ...

Five-star ratings and reviews are coming in for " Sophie de Tott, Artist in a Time of Revolution, " on book websites such as Goodreads and Amazon, and on social media.  Amazon Customer 5.0 out of 5 stars   Artist, novelist, musician, refugee Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2020 I found this a fascinating read. Sometime in the year 1800, 42-year-old Sophie de Tott from Paris, artist, novelist, refugee and strong supporter of the Bourbon monarchy, flees from Hamburg to Maddox Street, London, to escape Napoleon's agents and the likely guillotine. In London she continues to paint portraits for a living, as she has done with some success in the Hanseatic city. The French Revolution had upended so many lives - occasionally for the better, as would be the case with Fanny Burney and her French refugee husband. Julia Gasper's absorbing account of the daring, peripatetic existence of Sophie de Tott, however, makes it clear that in this...

Since most public places in the UK are still not open because of the quarantine restrictions, try taking a virtual tour of some of the gorgeous places you would like to visit. Here are some pictures of Coombe Abbey, in Warwickshire, once the ancestral home of the Craven family. Elizabeth Craven spent a lot of time there while she was married to William, 6th Baron Craven. The house was owned by the Craven family until the 20th century, when it became a hotel. The house was built out of the remains of a mediaeval monastery, and as you approach the front entrance you see the oldest parts of the building. There are one or two Gothic style windows still remaining in the Tudor structure. This central courtyard combines Tudor and Jacobean features. It is on the site of the quadrangle of the original monastery, and some vestiges of this remain here and there, well covered in ivy.  On the Eastern side of the house, the architecture changes dramatically, morphing into a...

How did Georgians wash their hair? Did they wash it at all? Didn't they just wear wigs, which were full of revolting powder? Well, it wasn't quite as bad as that. In Culpeper's English Physician; and Complete Herbal, one of the most frequently reprinted herbals of the period, we find this observation: "The hair washed with the lye made of the ashes of the [barberry] tree, and water, will make it turn yellow. " Elsewhere he claims that infusions of the herbs wall-rue and maiden-hair can be used to prevent hair falling out, and also observes of the Southernwood tree that its ashes will, if mixed with old salad-oil and used to wash the hair or scalp, cure baldness. [1] Whether or not any of these plants will have any effect on hair growth, the recommendation proves that people must have been using herbal infusions as well as lye mixed with ashes to wash their hair, in the absence of anything better. Why would anyone use ashes to wash their hair? Because the...

There have been several noteworthy events in the past year or so.  The Eighteenth Century Poetry website has now got an updated and far more comprehensive entry on Elizabeth Craven. It used to list only one poem, and that was spurious! It has now got a far more accurate and comprehensive list together with an updated bibliography. https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/authors/pers00215.shtml Gale publications has brought out a new printed edition of Craven's story Modern Anecdote of the Ancient Family of the Kinkvervankotsdarsprakengotchderns, originally published in 1780. This is well deserved.  Ecco, Print Editions (April 20, 2018)  ISBN-10: 1379900565      ISBN-13: 978-1379900566  I have published my biography of Craven's close friend, the artist and novelist Sophie de Tott, who spent some years living with her at Brandenburgh House in Hammersmith,  Sophie de Tott, Artist in a Time of Revolution. This has bearings...

I spent more than a year researching for my book on Sophie de Tott, the artist who was a close associate of Elizabeth Craven. She lived at Brandenburgh House at one time and you could almost say she was part of the family. One of the things I did was to visit Paris and look at some of the places where she lived. In particular I wanted to see the Hotel de Tessé, the home of the Comte and Comtesse de Tessé who adopted Sophie in 1780. Luckily it is still there despite Revolutions and major re-development over more than two hundred years. At one time it was used as a government building, and now it has been turned into private apartments. It is a very handsome neo-classical building on the banks of the Seine right opposite the Louvre. When you looked out of the front windows this is what you saw:- It is an unrivalled view. Paris doesn't get any better than this. In this house Mme de Tessé held her salon where she received Voltaire, Beaumarchais, André Chenier, the Abbé Grég...

Sophie de Tott by Vigée-Lebrun Of all the emigrés who were welcomed to Brandenburgh House by Elizabeth Craven in the aftermath of the French Revolution, none was more remarkable than Sophie de Tott. She was an artist who exhibited her paintings at the British Royal Academy and when she came to stay at Brandenburgh House she painted portraits of Elizabeth's second husband the Margrave of Anspach and her son Keppel. Madame de Tott had once lived in Paris among the highest French aristocracy. As a girl she had been adopted by a rich Countess and lived in the heart of the capital, meeting all the leading intellectuals and enjoying the most cultivated salons. Laudatory poems had been written about her. She had known Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Lafayette, Madame de Stael and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun who painted this oval portrait of her in 1786. Since fleeing from Paris in the Revolution of 1789 she had lived in Switzerland and Germany, earning a living with her paintbrush. When...