page_title: Eliza Courtney
section_title: Upbringing
hierarchical_section_title: Eliza Courtney / Upbringing
context_page_description: Eliza Courtney was the illegitimate daughter of the Whig politician and future Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, and socialite Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, while Georgiana was married to William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire.
  The Duchess was forced by her husband to relinquish Eliza shortly after her birth, to be raised by Charles Grey's parents, Charles Grey, 1st Earl Grey, and Elizabeth Grey, Countess Grey. The Duchess came to visit Eliza in secret. Eliza named her firstborn daughter Georgiana.
  The name Courtney, extinct since the death of Charles Kelland Courtney in 1761, was derived from her great-uncle, her maternal grandmother's brother, William Poyntz, having married Isabella, sister and co-heiress of the aforementioned Charles Courtney, the last of the west country family of Courtney of Trethurfe and Courtney of Tremeer.
context_section_description: Eliza Courtney was born in France, in Aix-en-Provence on 20 February 1792. She was brought to Falloden, Northumberland in northern England and adopted by her paternal grandparents. Unlike her mother's legitimate children from her marriage, Eliza was not raised as part of the Devonshire House set in London. Her mother, Georgiana, could not acknowledge her daughter and visited her in secret until her own death. Several anguish-ridden poems from mother to daughter survive; two are reproduced below:
  And yet remote from public view flower there is of timid hue,
  
  Beneath a sacred shade it grows,
  
  But sweet in native fragrance blows.
  
  From storms secure, from tempests free,
  
  But ah! too seldom seen by me.
  
  For scarce permitted to behold
  
  With longing eyes each grace unfold.
  
  My bosom struggles with its pain
  
  And checks the wishes form'd in vain;
  
  Yet when I perchance supremely blest,
  
  I hold the floweret to my breast,
  
  Enraptur'd watch its purple glow
  
  And blessings (all I have) bestow.
  
  The gentle fragrance soothes my care
  
  And fervent is my humble prayer
  
  That no dread evil may beset
  
  My sweet but hidden violet.
  Unhappy child of indiscretion,
  
  poor slumberer on a breast forlorn
  
  pledge of reproof of past transgression
  
  Dear tho' unfortunate to be born
  
  For thee a suppliant wish addressing
  
  To Heaven thy mother fain would dare
  
  But conscious blushes stain the blessing
  
  And sighs suppress my broken prayer
  
  But in spite of these my mind unshaken
  
  In present duty turns to thee
  
  Tho' long repented ne'er forgotten
  
  Thy days shall lov'd and guarded be
  
  And should th'ungenerous world upbraid thee
  
  for mine and for thy father's ill
  
  A nameless mother oft shall assist thee
  
  A hand unseen protect thee still
  
  And tho' to rank and wealth a stranger
  
  Thy life a humble course must run
  
  Soon shalt thou learn to fly the danger
  
  Which I too late have learnt to shun
  
  Meanwhile in these sequested vallies
  
  Here may'st thou live in safe content
  
  For innocence may smile at malice
  
  And thou-Oh ! Thou art innocent
  Georgiana was allowed to see her daughter occasionally when the Greys brought Eliza to London, and acted as a sort of unofficial godmother.
  In 1808, her maternal aunt Henrietta Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough, who didn't know she was Eliza's aunt, visited the Greys and was dismayed at what she observed:
  Eliza is a fine girl, and will, I think, be handsome; but tho' they are kind to her, it goes to my heart to see her—she is so evidently thrown into the background, and has such a look of mortification about her that it is not pleasant, yet he [Charles Grey] seems very fond of her. Lord B. [Harriet's husband] has this moment ask'd me whether she is not the Governess.
  Eliza was not informed of her true parentage until after the death of her mother in 1806.
caption: Her mother with an elder sibling
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