Lady Eleanor Eden was the attractive daughter of Lord Auckland, best known for at one time being rumoured to be engaged to William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt the Younger was a British politician of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He became the youngest Prime Minister in 1783 at the age of 24 . He left office in 1801, but was Prime Minister again from 1804 until his death in 1806...

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Pitt and Eleanor met at her father's home at Beckenham

Beckenham

Beckenham is a town in the London Borough of Bromley, England. It is located 8.4 miles south east of Charing Cross and 1.75 miles west of Bromley town...

, during Pitt's repeated visits there from his own home at nearby Holwood, near Bromley

Bromley

Bromley is a large suburban town in south east London, England and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Bromley. It was historically a market town, and prior to 1963 was in the county of Kent and formed the administrative centre of the Municipal Borough of Bromley...

 in Kent, but early in 1797 Pitt quashed spreading rumours that he intended to marry her by writing to Auckland:

"My Dear Lord . . . It can hardly, I think, be necessary to say that the time I have passed among your family has led to my forming sentiments of very real attachment towards them all, and of much more than attachment to one whom I need not name . . . Nor should I do justice to my own feelings . . . if I did not own that every hour of my acquaintance with the person to whom you will easily conceive I refer . . . has convinced me that whoever may have the good fortune to be united to her is destined to more than his share of human happiness.

"Whether I could have had any ground to hope that such might have been my lot, I have to reproach myself for ever having indulged the idea as far as I have done without asking myself carefully and early enough what were the difficulties in the way of it being realised . . . Having now at length reflected as fully and as calmly as I am able . . . I am compelled to say that I find the obstacles to it decisive and insurmountable . . . "

Auckland replied:

"We had from an early period every reason to believe that the sentiments formed were most cordially mutual: and we saw with delight that they were ripening into an attachment which might lay the foundation of a system of most perfect happiness . . ."

He also tried to get Pitt to reveal what was the "insurmountable obstacle" he mentioned, but Pitt's only answer was that "further explanation or discussion can answer no good purpose".