The Honourable Eleanor Stanley
later Mrs Samuel Long
(1821-1903)

Born in or about 1821, Eleanor Julian Stanley was the daughter of Edward Stanley and Lady Mary Maitland. She married Colonel Samuel Long, son of Samuel Long and Lady Jane Maitland, on 11 December 1866 at St George's Hanover Square.

For twenty years she held the office of Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria, a post which entitled her to style her name with the prefix 'The Honourable' and conferred on her the rank of a Baron's daughter.

She died on 21 January 1903 at 14 Bryanston Square in London, leaving an estate valued at £49,605.

After her death, her letters were published under the title: Twenty years at court, from the correspondence of the Hon. Eleanor Stanley, maid of honour to Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, 1842-1862, edited by Steuart Erskine. 

A somewhat unfavourable review appeared in the Birmingham Daily Post (14 March 1917). 'Miss Eleanor Stanley, afterwards the Hon. Mrs James Long, was Maid of Honour to Queen Victoria from shortly after her Majesty's accession for a period of twenty years. We cannot say if Maids of Honour in those days were under an obligation not to keep a diary, as they are said to be now, but if they were Miss Stanley got over the difficulty very ably by writing long letters to her parents and intimate friends on the events of the day as they passed before her eyes. She seems to have had a certain faculty for the observation of minute detail, and a touch of humour that saved her from utter boredom, but beyond that her vision was limited. The Court was infinitely dull and infinitely hidebound in its pleasures, vocations and outlook. Even Miss Stanley sometimes complained. [...] On the whole, however, Miss Stanley is the creature of her environment, and rarely steps over its boundary line. [...] Miss Stanley's letters may have been interesting to her parents and friends; to us they only serve to explain why the term "Victorian" came to mean so much that was dull and commonplace.'

Today her letters are considered an invaluable eyewitness account of daily life at the court of Victoria and Albert.