The 20th Century Elizabeth Craven
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 ...