Note: Persuasion is very much tied to historical events, including the naval activities of Wentworth and his brother-in-law Admiral Croft. I basically agree with Ellen Moody’s chronology of the book.

Jane Austen gives a thorough summary of the Elliots as a family, in the shape of a fictional entry in the Baronetage: ““Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester, by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, November 5, 1789; Mary, born November 20, 1791.”

Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer’s hands; but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary’s birth—“Married, December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove, Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset,” and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife.

Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family, in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff, representing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II, with all the Marys and Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two handsome duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto:—“Principal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset,” and Sir Walter’s handwriting again in this finale:—

“Heir presumptive, William Walter Elliot, Esq., great grandson of the second Sir Walter.”“

There is a tendency in adaptations to portray Sir Walter as overly ogre-like and ungracious, when he should probably be rather droll and waspish and dandified instead. As a young man, he was very good-looking, and probably charming, since he managed to attract Miss Elizabeth Stevenson, “an excellent woman, sensible and amiable.” Family friend Lady Russell sees Anne as being a reflection of her mother, so any prequels dealing with the courtship of the Elliot parents circa 1783-1784 are basically imagining a prototype of Anne Elliot involved with a more benign Willoughby or a more pretentious Frank Churchill. Sir Walter was 24 when he married; we do not have a birthdate for his wife, but I think we have to assume that the austere Miss Austen would not have characterized her as a sensible woman if she had married any younger than 18-19.

Lady Russell is Anne’s godmother, and therefore probably also an Anne. She settled near Lady Elliot an indeterminate number of years before Lady Elliot’s untimely death in 1800, and was presumably widowed sometime before that. She doesn’t seem to have any children of her own. These details all seem to point to her late husband Sir —- Russell being a much older man or a very infirm one, or both. I think possibly my notes on the elder Woodhouses apply to the Russells as well. Lady Russell is well-off financially, which speaks well of either her late husband’s fortune or birth-family’s. Her tendency to be overawed by Sir Walter and his pedigree suggests that her late husband’s baronetcy does not go as far back as Charles II.

She could perhaps have been kind of a Charlotte Lucas type relative to her friend Miss Elizabeth Stevenson, including being six-plus years older than her friend. If she were good-looking and close in age to his late wife, I think Sir Walter would have gone for Lady Russell after a suitable period of morning, and given the lady’s affection and concern for the Elliot daughters and respect for his title, I don’t think she’d have turned him down if he’d offered. This is why I think Lady Russell might have been a relatively homely woman, some years older than her friend. It is worth noting in passing that Anne doesn’t think much of Lady Russell as an audience for her music; it is implied that since the death of her mother only Wentworth has ever listened to Anne play with real appreciation and taste.

Somewhere around 1802-1804, Elizabeth Elliot had hoped to marry the heir presumptive, William Elliot. He is a cousin of the Elliot sisters, two or three times removed, if I read the Baronetage entry correctly. He was a very young man studying the law, Moody thinks he was about 22 at this point. He snubbed Elizabeth in favor of a rich woman.

Anne met, fell in love with, and broke up with Frederick Wentworth in the summer of 1806, when she was nineteen and he was old enough to captain the Asp later that fall. Admiral Nelson got his first command at age twenty, and I think we are supposed to see Wentworth as that kind of prodigy. (Also, his immature behavior in the present day of the book makes more sense if he’s close to Anne’s age than if he’s thirty mumble years old in the present day of the book.) I’ve said elsewhere that I think of Wentworth as being Frank Churchill with a day-job, and although his initial courtship of Anne was not nearly that clandestine, pretty much anything you could imagine about the emotional dynamics between cultured, reserved Jane Fairfax and sanguine Frank Churchill probably applies to Anne and Frederick in 1806.

Mary, the youngest Elliot sister, married Charles Musgrove on the rebound from his failed courtship of Anne. This wedding was late in 1810, and we could imagine Charles’s initial befriending of Anne as being a late summertime event, and his courtship of Mary occurring in the fall. Adaptations tend to portray Mary as a flat-out harridan; but in order for her to attract Charles, I think we have to assume she is good-looking in rather the same style as Anne, with something of the waspish, self-centered charm of her father.

The Musgroves are landed but untitled gentry, “of respectability and large fortune,” and Charles’s father is second in status to Sir Walter himself. In addition to Charles and his parents (of whom the father is probably also a Charles), there are two giggly, good-natured sisters, Henrietta and Louisa, and a dissipated, deceased brother named Richard, who served briefly under Wentworth in 1812 and then died in the same year at age twenty. Anne thinks Henrietta the prettier of the two sisters, and Louisa the livelier. I assume Charles to have been 22 or thereabouts in 1810 when he was chasing Elliot sisters, since the switch in love interests feels very Charles Bingley. Since he is the eldest son and seems to be the eldest child, his parents married around 1888 at the latest. There are also an indeterminate number of younger Musgrove children (Austen calls the Musgroves a numerous family) who are not old enough to mix with the grownups. Charles is a jolly, unsophisticated fellow, basically a softer, less nosy version of Sir John Middleton from S&S. He and Mary have two small rambunctious sons, Charles (aka “Collarbone Out of Joint”) and Walter (aka “Climbs On Aunts”). They seem to be spoiled by all relevant parties, with the possible exception of Sir Walter, who takes no notice of his only grandchildren, but the narrator puts the bulk of the blame for their bad behavior on Mary.

Here is Austen’s summary of the Musgroves: “The father and mother were in the old English style, and the young people in the new. Mr and Mrs Musgrove were a very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable, not much educated, and not at all elegant. Their children had more modern minds and manners. There was a numerous family; but the only two grown up, excepting Charles, were Henrietta and Louisa, young ladies of nineteen and twenty, who had brought from school at Exeter all the usual stock of accomplishments, and were now like thousands of other young ladies, living to be fashionable, happy, and merry.“

Charles Musgrove’s mother is sister to Mrs. Hayter. Mr. Hayter has some property but not enough to count for much next to the Musgroves, let alone the Elliots. The elder Hayters are described as living a retired and unpolished lifestyle, and their children described as poorly educated, except for their eldest son, a scholarly curate named Charles Hayter, who was courting Henrietta before Wentworth showed up. He does not show to advantage, since we only see him when he is being ungracious about having to compete with Wentworth for Henrietta’s attention. The Miss Hayters seem to be in the mode of Kitty and Lydia Bennet: rambunctious, unsophisticated young ladies who are always up for a dance, and are good friends with the Miss Musgroves, to the deep disapproval of Anne’s sister, Mrs. Mary Musgrove.