Eliza has seen Lord Craven at Barton, and probably by this time at Kintbury, where he was expected for one day this week…She found his manners very pleasing indeed.
Lord Craven was prevented by company at home from paying his visit at Kintbury, but, as I told you before, Eliza is greatly pleased with him and they seem likely to be on the most friendly terms.
Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra, January 1801
The Eliza to whom Jane refers is Eliza Fowle, wife of Fulwar Craven Fowle, vicar of Kintbury and sister to Jane’s close friend Martha Lloyd. Barton – or Barton Court – was the home of Charles Dundas, M.P. and is a large house about half a mile north of Kintbury church on what would have been the old coaching road into Kintbury.
Lord Craven was a distinguished military gentleman who served in Flanders and was AD to the King and a favourite of Queen Charlotte. He was reputed to be a bit of a rake before his marriage – as Jane Austen remarked in her letter to Cassandra:
The little flaw of having a mistress now living with him at Ashdown Park seems to be the only unpleasing circumstance about him.
Some people believe that Jane based Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility on Lord Craven. However, the novelist R. L. Delderfield wrote as a preface to one of his books that,
…every character in fiction is an amalgam of factors drawn from the author’s memory and imagination.
I disagree with the assumption that Willoughby’s character was based on Lord Craven’s. Why? Well Craven’s mistress was the young Harriet Wilson. Craven was 31 and unmarried at the time. Harriett was much younger and does not give Craven a good press. Her memoirs start with the line,
I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven…
Harriet leaves the reader in no doubt that she finds the Earl boring and old-fashioned, with his night caps and his endless talk of his cocoa trees on his estates in the Indies. She left him for Lord Melbourne. Mind you if as a teenager one had been isolated in Ashdown House on the Lambourn Downs I think most of us would have been a tad miffed even if our career was that of ‘entertaining men’!
Christopher Hibbert wrote that Harriet had a Swiss father and was renowned not so much for her beauty as easy manners, gaity and flighty charm. Sir Water Scott described her as smart, saucy with the manners of a wild schoolboy. Harriet was a well-known ‘lady’ in certain circles. When she grew too old to charm, she wrote her memoirs, sent the relevant passages to the gentlemen concerned and offered to suppress it for a fee. This caused the famous reply of Wellington: Publish and be damned!
So, I believe Harriet Wilson did not resemble the girl described as Colonel Brandon’s ward. She was seduced by Willoughby aged 17, and left without help, friend or home. He promised to return but didn’t and after breaking another girl’s heart married a rich wife.
Lord Craven on the other hand went on to marry an actress, Louisa Brunton, (without informing his very formidable mother) after Harriet had left him. They lived in Hamstead as a close family and the Countess was renowned for her gracious generosity. Obviously unlike Willoughby, Craven did not marry Louisa for money
The Georgian gossip collector Creevy, wrote that in January 1816, Lord Craven embarked, on his own yacht, for the Mediterranean. There were 70 members of his family on board at an expense of £40,000. Creevy added, somewhat ominously, that it gave a good chance to his brother Berkley, especially as he would rely much upon his own skill in the management of the vessel! Evidently they all survived Lord Craven’s seamanship and Berkley was disappointed.
Lord Craven died at Cowes in 1825 aged 55.
Penny Fletcher, May 2023
Kintbury and Beyond 