Eliza Williams, also known as “Little Eliza,” is the daughter of Colonel Brandon’s childhood sweetheart Eliza, though public opinion in Barton -- personified by Mrs. Jennings -- has mid-identified her as Brandon’s “natural daughter” and Mrs. Jennings goes so far as to speculate that “the Colonel will leave her all his fortune." Though Little Eliza never appears on the page, her backstory--established primarily through Brandon’s monologue--is key to the plot of the novel.
We know that Eliza was born when or just after her mother was divorced by Mr. Brandon (the Colonel's brother) for adultery, suggesting that she was conceived out of wedlock. She spent her early life shifting around with her mother, who appeared to work as a prostitute (perhaps as a more genteel kept woman) before ultimately contracting tuberculosis and landing debtors’ prison. When she was 3 years old, Colonel Brandon found both Elizas and put them into nicer accommodations. The mother died shortly thereafter and Brandon put little Eliza into school and visited as much as he could.
Five years before the novel began, when Eliza would have been 12, Mr. Brandon dies, leaving Delaford to the Colonel. Shortly after he took possession, he invited Eliza to come visit him, giving rise to the speculation that she is is natural daughter. Presumably, he would have given up his commission at this time as well, allowing them more time in each other’s company.
Brandon says “It is now three years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had every reason to be pleased with her situation.”
He goes on to say “last February, almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man, and I thought well of his daughter—better than she deserved, for, with a most obstinate and ill-judged secrecy, she would tell nothing, would give no clue, though she certainly knew all. He, her father, a well-meaning, but not a quick-sighted man, could really, I believe, give no information; for he had been generally confined to the house, while the girls were ranging over the town and making what acquaintance they chose; and he tried to convince me, as thoroughly as he was convinced himself, of his daughter's being entirely unconcerned in the business."
Eliza goes missing for nearly half a year. In that time, she meets John Willoughby -- who may have lured her away at Bath in the first place -- and is impregnated by him before he abandons her. Colonel Brandon finds her in the autumn “near her delivery.” He goes on to explain that “as soon as she recovered from her lying-in…[he] removed her and her child into the country, and there she remains.”
