Persuasion family tree

Because the son of 1789 was still-born, the baronetcy and Kellynch will pass to a distant cousin. The Baronetage ends with the words “Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson of the second Sir Walter”.¹ Elizabeth had meant to marry Mr Elliot, but he married a rich woman of inferior birth instead.¹

Debts force Sir Walter to let Kellynch and move to Bath.² Elizabeth brings with her Mrs Clay, the daughter of the family’s agent, who has come home after an unprosperous marriage with two children.² Anne warns her sister that Mrs Clay has designs on their father.⁵ In Bath Mr Elliot, now a widower, courts the family and Anne, and Anne’s old schoolfellow Mrs Smith tells her what he is.^10,12 At the end he leaves Bath, and Mrs Clay follows to live under his protection in London.¹⁵

Mrs Smith also explains why the heir came back. Mr Elliot has learned to value the title he will inherit and “cannot bear the idea of not being Sir William”. A marriage between Sir Walter and Mrs Clay was the danger, so he settled in Bath to watch them both.¹² The last chapter leaves it a doubtful point whether Mrs Clay may yet become “the wife of Sir William”. Sir Walter accepts Wentworth, though he can give Anne only a small part of the ten thousand pounds that must be hers one day.¹⁵

Mary’s marriage joins the Elliots to the Musgroves of Uppercross. Mr and Mrs Musgrove are hospitable country people, and their grown children besides Charles are Henrietta and Louisa, aged nineteen and twenty.⁵ Mary and Charles have two boys, little Charles and Walter.⁵

Henrietta has long been attached to her cousin Charles Hayter, the eldest of the Hayter cousins, and by the end she is buying her wedding clothes.^7,13 Louisa falls from the steps of the Cobb at Lyme and is carried up lifeless.⁹ While she recovers she engages herself to Captain Benwick.¹¹

The tenant of Kellynch is Admiral Croft, a rear admiral of the white, and his wife Sophia is the sister of Frederick Wentworth.^3,6 In the summer of 1806 Wentworth, newly made commander, became engaged to Anne, and Lady Russell persuaded her to end it.⁴

At Lyme the chart adds his friend Captain Harville and Captain Benwick, who was engaged to Harville’s sister Fanny. She died while he was at sea.⁸ The novel itself counts the years apart differently as it goes, “more than seven” in Volume I and “eight years and a half” in Wentworth’s letter.^4,14 Wikipedia gives both seven and eight, so the chart keeps the date of 1806 and the novel’s own words.¹⁶