The Beautiful Lady Craven

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Please do not assume that a book's appearance in 'The Builder' library means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. The Webmaster ,i!:.!r. ,. .\nuv THE BEAUTIFUL LADY C RAV E N + + + / I* p \ >i« * L .^^^m'-m^m.^.^^^if^-^^^M^.u. I -/t^ \u y c m x/ BOOKS BY A. M. BROADLEY DR. JOHNSON AND MRS. THRALE With 24 Illustrations from rare Originals. Demy 8vo. NAPOLEON IN CARICATURE: 1795-1821 With 24 Illustrations in Colour and upwards of 200 in Black and White. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. With J. HOLLAND ROSE DUMOURIEZ AND THE DEFENCE OF ENGLAND AGAINST NAPOLEON With numerous Portraits, Maps and Facsimiles. Demy 8vo. With H. F. B. WHEELER NAPOLEON AND THE INVASION OF ENGLAND With 114 Illustrations, including 8 in Colour. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. THE WAR IN WEXFORD With numerous Reproductions of Contemporary Portraits and Engravings, Demy 8vo. BOOKS BY LEWIS MELVILLE PHILIP DUKE OF WHARTON With numerous Illustrations. Demy 8vo, THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM COBBETT IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA With numerous Illustrations. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY With numerous Illustrations. 2 vols. Demy 8vo, JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, LONDON THE BEAUTIFUL LADY CRAVEN The Original Memoirs of Elizabeth Baroness Craven afterwards Margravine of Anspach and Bayreuth and Princess Berkeley of the Holy Roman Empire (1750- 1828) Edited with Notes and a Biographical afid Historical Introduction containing fnuch unpublished matter by A. M. BROADLEY Gf LEWIS MELVILLE WITH 48 ILLUSTRATIONS IN TWO VOLS. VOL.1 Ch^ - -<. LONDON : JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY TORONTO : BELL & COCKBURN MCMXIV e^ 3 TO ALFRED AND SOPHIE BREWIS OF East Ellesmere, Newcastle-upon-Tyne THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED June \%th, 191 EDITORS' NOTE Elizabeth, Margravine of Branden- WHEN Princess burgh, Anspach, and Bayreuth, and Berkeley of the Holy Roman Empire, published her Atitohiographical Memoirs in 1826, she was in her seventy-sixth year. The appearance of the book, abounding as it does in personal and often pungent reminiscences, unquestionably aroused consider- able interest both in England and on the Continent, for the versatile writer during the last decade of the eighteenth and the first two decades of the nineteenth cen- turies, disregarding the social veto of her kinswoman Queen Charlotte, had contrived to make her Court at Brandenburgh House in Hammersmith and Benham Valence, Newbury, sometimes called Benham Place and Benham Park, a social imperium in imperio. In this task she had achieved a great measure of success, for the enter- tainments over which she presided, first as the wife of the Margrave of Anspach and then as his widow, were probably infinitely more amusing than those given at the Queen's House, Windsor, Kew, Frogmore or Wey- mouth. If Good Queen Charlotte set her face sternly against the amiable and tolerant hostess who had married the great -nephew of her predecessor and the great- grandson of George I, she obtained the friendship and patronage of the heir to the throne and his royal X THE BEAUTIFUL LADY CRAVEN brothers, and a great many fashionable and distinguished people, following their example, flocked to the Hammer- smith fetes for which Bartolozzi, Wigstead, and other distinguished artists designed the cards of invitation and programmes. The personal charms of the graceful and gifted mistress of Brandenburgh House have been successfully perpetuated by the skill of Gainsborough, Beach, Romney, Reynolds, Angelica Kauffmann, Madame La Vigee Lebrun, and other painters of the artistic period to which she belongs, as well as by the chisel of Houdon, whose bust of her was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1803. It is not at all surprising that a French translation of the Memoirs, now re-edited, was immediately called for, and that German historians have since discovered in them a fruitful source of information. That the Margravine of Anspach can be charged with more than one " terminological inexactitude " it is im- possible to deny. She was writing rather for the sake of her reputation with posterity than for the amusement of her contemporaries, the greater part of whom had vanished when her final literary effort was given to the world. Possibly her age accounts for the errors which the Editors here and there have endeavoured to correct. While adhering as much as possible to the original text, they have deleted certain portions of the work which are either redundant or were obviously borrowed from now obsolete histories. In the Introduction they have endeavoured to reconstitute the life-story of an exceptionally attractive lady, who flourished in an age which could boast of such remarkable women as Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Frances Anne Crewe, Albinia, Countess of F.I.IZABETH, I.ADY CRAVEN, WIFE OF WILLIAM, SIXTH LORD CRAVEN, NEE LADY EI.IZABEIH BERKELEY, AFTERWARDS MARGRAVINE OF ANSPACH AND PRINCESS BERKELEY From the portrait at Combe Abbey, attributeii to Thomas Beach EDITORS' NOTE xi Buckinghamshire, EHzabeth Montagu, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Hannah More, Mary and Agnes Berry, and many others. Streatham Park was closed, and the hospitaUties of the " Chateau Portman " were on the wane, when the splendours of Brandenburgh House burst upon the astonished and gratified metropolis. In elucidation of allusions to persons and places mentioned in the text the Editors have endeavoured to supply, without unduly interfering with the course of the narrative, such notes as they deem essential. They desire to express their grateful acknowledgment for the valuable assistance rendered them by Lady Helen Forbes, herself a lineal descendant of the Margravine of Anspach ; Mr. Walter Money, f.s.a., of Shaw Dene, Donnington, Newbury ; Mr. Horace Bleackley, the bio- grapher of John Wilkes and the " Beautiful Gunnings " ; Lady Sutton, the mother of the present owner of Ben- ham ; Sir J, Wrench Towse, Clerk to the Fishmongers' Company, of which the Margrave of Anspach was a Freeman; Mr. William Leeds, H.M.'s, Secretary of Lega- tion at Lisbon ; Dr. J. Holland Rose ; Mr. B. P. Lascelles, Librarian of the Vaughan Library at Harrow ; Mrs. Con- stance Hutton, Signor Salvatore di Giacomo of Naples ; the Commendatore Roberto de Sanna, the present owner of the Villa Craven, and Mr. G. J. A. Churchill, His Britannic Majesty's Consul at Naples ; the Rev. R. Bruce Dickson, Vicar of Speen ; Mr. T. A. Cook, Editor of The Field; Mr. W. S. Dixon, of Fairlight, Luton; Sir WilHam Bull, m.p. ; Mr. Samuel Martin, Chief Librarian of the Hammersmith Free Library ; Mr. E. T. Morgan, of Bristol ; Mrs. Chmenson, the biogi*apher of Elizabeth Montagu ; T. H. B. Vade-Walpole ; and Mr. Tom Floyd, 3 xii THE BEAUTIFUL LADY CRAVEN of the Hermitage, near Newbury ; Dr. Hammond, Librarian at Freemasons' Hall ; and Miss Lucy Rosalie Henderson, of St. Leonards, the owner of the exceptionally interesting letter from the Margravine of Anspach to Mr. Francis James Jackson, British Minister at Berlin. Messrs. William Blackwood and Sons have kindly permitted the insertion of a letter written about Lady Craven by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. For the pedigree of the Berkeley and Craven families the Editors are indebted to Lady Helen Forbes, and Mrs. Edith E. Cuthell, the author of Wilhelmina, Margravine of Baireuth, has very kindly supplied them with a pedigree showing the close connection between Elizabeth, Lady Craven's second husband and the royal families of England and Prussia. The Editors also desire to express their gratitude to Mr. John Lane, who has made a special study of the iconography of the eighteenth century, for his assistance and advice in selecting the illustrations, and especially for the list of the known portraits of the Margravine of Anspach and her husband by the great artists who were their contemporaries.

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