THE MARGRAVINE OF ANSPACH.
The death, in London, a few weeks ago, of a daughter of the celebrated Lady Craven, afterwards Margravine of Anspach, has recalled attention to the history of that remarkable and celebrated person, whose life has the interest of a romance.
Elizabeth Berkeley, Margravine of Anspach, was born in December, 1750. She was the daughter of Augustus, fourth Earl of Berkeley, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Drax of Charborough. She was brought up under the care of a native of Switzerland, the wife of a German tutor of her uncle. She describes herself as having been a delicate, diminutive child, addicted at an early age to reading, and of timid and retired habits. She first beheld a play when she was twelve years old, and from that occasion she dates the growth of her subsequent partiality for theatrical entertainments. At the age of thirteen she paid a short visit to France with her mother and her elder sister, and at fourteen she had been, as she says she afterwards discovered, "in love without knowing it" with the Marquis de Fitz James. On the 10th May, 1767, she was married to William Craven, nephew and heir of the fifth Lord Craven, whom he succeeded in 1769. She professes to have felt indifference when receiving his addresses, but the marriage was for some time a happy one, and she says, "My husband seemed to have no other delight than in procuring for me all the luxuries and enjoyments within his power, and it was an eternal dispute (how amiable a dispute!) between us; he always offering presents, and I refusing whenever I could." Gifted with genius and beauty, both of which she knew well how to apply; a woman of Lady Craven's rank naturally drew around her a large circle of admirers. She says of herself very characteristically, "In London the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough showed their partiality to me, and Mr. Walpole, afterwards Lord Orford, Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and his friend Colman, were among my numerous admirers; and Sir Joshua Reynolds did not conceal his high opinion of me. Charles Fox almost quarrelled with me because I was unwilling to interfere with politics—a thing which I always said I detested, and considered as being out of the province of a woman."
It appears to have been in the year 1779 that Lady Craven discovered the infidelities with which she charged her husband, when she requested of him the favor "that he would not permit his mistress to call herself Lady Craven." After an interval of about three years spent in partial reconciliation, a separation took place. The indifferent tone in which she treats the whole of this transaction, and her professed readiness to overlook every slight that was not public and glaring, are a stain on her character, which she has by her own animated pen exhibited to an age which had forgotten the accusations to which she was subjected. At the time of her separation from her husband she was the mother of seven children.
Lady Craven had in the mean time produced her first play, "The Sleepwalker," a translation from the French, printed in 1778, at her friend Walpole's press at Strawberry Hill. In 1779 she published "Modern Anecdotes of the Family of Kinvervankotsprakengatchdern, a Tale for Christmas." This was a caricature of the ceremonious pomposity of the petty German courts; it was dramatized by Mr. M. P. Andrews. Soon after the separation, she passed some time in France, where she met with the Margrave of Anspach. They formed a sudden friendship for each other, and agreed to consider each other (we are told) as brother and sister. In June, 1785, Lady Craven commenced a tour, in which, starting from Paris, she passed by the Rhine to Italy, went thence by the Tyrol to Vienna, passed on to Warsaw, Petersburg, and Moscow, proceeded by the Don to Turkey, and returned by Vienna, which she reached in August, 1786. On this occasion she ran, by her own account, a serious risk of being made Empress of Austria. In 1789 she published an account of her tour (1 vol. 4to), in letters addressed to the margrave, saying in the dedication, "Beside curiosity, my friends will in these letters see, at least for some time, where the real Lady Craven has been, and where she is to be found—it having been the practice for some years past for a Birmingham coin of myself to pass in most of the inns in France, Switzerland, and England, for the wife of my husband. My arms and coronet sometimes supporting in some measure this insolent deception; by which, probably, I may have been seen to behave very improperly." This work is interesting from the many sketches it contains of eminent people—such as the Empress Catharine, the Princess Dashcoff, Prince Potemkin, Count Romanzoff, Admiral Mordvinoff, the Duc de Choiseul, and others. It is full of accurate observation and lively description, expressed in clear and simple English—a style from which in later life she considerably diverged. She descended into the grotto of Antiparos, being the first female to undertake the adventure. The French biographers maintain that the tameness of her description of the scene shows a deficiency of appreciation of the wonderful and sublime. She does not indeed ornament her description with hyperboles and exclamations, but it is clear and expressive, and by the distinctness of the impression which it conveys to the reader, shows that the scene was fully noticed and comprehended by the writer. After her return from her journey, she visited England to see her children, and then proceeded to France, where she joined the margrave and accompanied him to Anspach. Here, during a residence of a few years, she established a theatre, which was chiefly supplied with dramatic entertainments of her own composition. They were collected into two volumes 8vo, under the title of "Nouveau Théâtre d'Anspach et de Triesdorf," the latter being the name of a country seat nine miles from Anspach, where she laid out a park and garden in the English manner. She established at the same time "a society for the encouragement of arts and sciences." She soon afterwards visited, in company with the margrave, the congenial court of Naples, where she made the acquaintance of Sir William and Lady Hamilton. Her conduct was the subject of much censure both in England and among the officials of the court of Anspach, to whom her interference was a natural subject of distrust; and if it should even be admitted that her own account of the purity of her motives and conduct is correct, it cannot be denied that she afforded material for forming the worst interpretations of them. She maintains that she always opposed the cession of his dominions to the crown of Prussia by the margrave in 1791, but she was almost his sole adviser on the occasion. She states that she received the first hint of his design at Naples. One day while she was dressing for dinner, a servant intimated that the margrave desired to see her. On her appearance he said, "I must go to Berlin incog.—will you go with me? it is the only sacrifice of your time I will ever require of you." They set out together, and on the way through Anspach they found the establishment nearly in open revolt against her influence. The king, however, was kind and generous in the extreme, and the contracting parties are represented as only striving to excel each other in generosity. Meanwhile the margrave's first wife died, and Lord Craven's death occurred six months afterwards, on the 26th September, 1791. Immediately on hearing of this event, Lady Craven was married to the margrave. "It was six weeks," she says, "after Lord Craven's decease that I gave my hand to the margrave, which I should have done six hours after, had I known it at the time." As the cession of the margraviate to Prussia dates 2d December, 1791, the marriage must have taken place about three weeks before it. The nuptials were solemnized at Lisbon, whence the new married pair passed through Spain and France to England.
The margrave, on the sale of his principality, resolved to spend his days with his wife in England. They had no sooner arrived, however, than the storm of family and public indignation which had been brewing against the margravine burst upon her head. She received a letter from her three daughters, saying, "with due deference to the Margravine of Anspach, the Miss Cravens inform her that, out of respect to their father, they cannot wait upon her," and her eldest son, Lord Craven, refused to countenance her. The margrave received a message from the queen, through the Prussian minister, to the effect that his wife, though she had received a diploma from the emperor, could not be received at court as a princess of the empire. She says that she refused to derogate from her dignity by appearing merely as a peeress of England; but it is not clear that she would have been received in that capacity. She addressed a memorial on the subject to the House of Lords, but they gave her no redress; indeed it would not have been consistent with the practice of that body to interfere on such an occasion. Soon after their arrival, the margrave purchased through trustees, Lord Craven's estate of Benham, and the mansion of Brandenburgh House, a place celebrated as afterwards affording a retreat to Queen Caroline, the wife of George IV. Until the margrave's death in 1806, it was a scene of continued profusion and gayety, in which the luxuries and amusements of an English mansion were united with those of a German court, "My whole enjoyment," says the margravine, "during the margrave's valuable life, was to do every thing in my power, to make him not only comfortable, but happy. Under my management, the world imagined that he spent double his income." Her attachment to her second husband was strong. She speaks of him with an enthusiasm and devotion which bear the stamp of sincerity. "I believe," she says, "a better man never existed. There never was a being who could act upon more sincere principles. Nothing could divert him from what was right. None could bear with patience, like himself, the ill conduct of those to whom he was attached. None could more easily forgive." After his decease, the margravine, who succeeded to the large property which he left, felt impatient to recommence her wanderings. On the restoration she sailed for France, and, after being interrupted in her movements by the reign of the hundred days, reached Rome, where it was said that she kept open house for all the revolutionists of all countries who chose to accept her hospitalities. The King of Naples afterwards presented her with a small estate, in which she built a palace, where she resided till her death, which occurred on January 13, 1828. Only two years previously, and when she was seventy-six years old, she surprised and delighted the English world by the publication of her well-known memoirs. This work is perhaps one of the best examples of the French memoirs which English literature possesses. It is indeed thoroughly French, not only in spirit but in idiom, and, to the reader, has all the appearance of a translation from that language. It thus affords, in its style, a remarkable contrast to the book of travels above noticed. It contains a vast variety of anecdotes and sketches of character, always amusing if not always accurate. It has no continuity of narrative, leaping backwards and forwards through all ages, and among every variety of subject: from a description of the monument which she erected to the memory of her husband, she takes occasion to give a rapid sketch of the history of the art of sculpture. The least pleasing feature in the work is its intense egotism. The margravine was a woman of wonderfully versatile genius. She wrote with fluency in French and German. She was an accomplished musician and actress; and she tells us, "I have executed many busts myself, and among others one of the margrave, which is generally allowed to be extremely like him."