Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville ( ; ; 29August 178525November 1862) was a British society hostess and writer. The younger daughter of Lady Georgiana Spencer and William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, she was a member of the wealthy Cavendish and Spencer families and spent her childhood with her two siblings under the care of a governess.
In 1809 Harriet married Granville Leveson-Gower, a diplomat who had been her maternal aunt's lover for seventeen years. The couple's marriage was long lasting and they had five children. During intermittent periods between 1824 and 1841, Granville served as the British ambassador to France, requiring Harriet to perform a relentless array of social duties in Paris that she often found exhausting and frivolous.
Harriet was a prolific writer of letters, which often humorously described the people around her. Her detailed accounts are regarded as valuable sources of information on life as an ambassadress and on the 19th-century aristocracy. Between 1894 and 1990, four edited collections of Harriet's correspondence were published.
Early life and family Lady Henrietta Elizabeth Cavendish was born on 29 August 1785 at Devonshire House, Piccadilly, London. Her parents were William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, and his first wife, Lady Georgiana Spencer. As major landowners, the Spencer family controlled one of the largest fortunes in England. The Duke of Devonshire possessed even more wealth, with an annual income that was twice as much as that of Georgiana's father; in addition to Devonshire House, he owned Chatsworth House and four other estates of similar opulence. Known as "Harriet" or "Harryo" to her family, the new baby was named after the Duchess's sister Henrietta, Countess of Bessborough and her friend Lady Elizabeth Foster.
The Devonshire marriage was contentious. They had little in common and the Duchess had difficulty bringing her pregnancies to term – their initial nine years together were childless. Seeking distraction from an unhappy match, she spent her time socialising and gambling. She became a prominent supporter and hostess of the Whig Party, as well as a leader of fashion. By the mid-1780s, Devonshire House had become the centre of fashionable life in the Georgian era. Elizabeth Foster, who began living with the Cavendishes in 1782, encouraged the Duchess to pursue a healthier lifestyle, which likely contributed to the successful births of Harriet and her elder sister, Georgiana. The birth of the long-desired heir, Harriet's brother William, arrived in 1790 after sixteen years of marriage.
As Harriet was neither the eldest nor the desired male heir, she was probably the least favorite of her parents' three children. She had a somewhat uneasy relationship with her father throughout his life. In her early years she was devoted to her loving mother, though this relationship suffered a temporary setback in the 1790s. The Duchess, pregnant by the future prime minister Charles Grey, was forced to move abroad and give birth in secret. A two-year separation ensued before she saw her children again, and upon her return she observed that eight-year-old Harriet had become reserved and irritable. One biographer posits that this reticence carried into adulthood during "situations of great difficulty and tragedy", when Harriet would hide her emotions even from those to whom she was usually close.
Upbringing and first London season The Duke had two illegitimate children with Elizabeth Foster; they were raised alongside the legitimate Cavendishes. Harriet and her siblings, who did not understand why Elizabeth resided with them, disliked her; they also held antipathy for her two teenage sons from a previous marriage, who joined the household in 1796. The Dowager Countess Spencer felt the Devonshire household was amoral and took a prominent role in her grandchildren's upbringing. When Harriet was three, Lady Spencer hired Miss Selina Trimmer as their new governess. Selina agreed with Lady Spencer that in order to protect the children, the Devonshire household required moral guidance. Deeply religious, Selina encouraged her charges to be morally principled and pious, and strove to provide a stable upbringing with a good education. Though she was often severe, the Cavendish children came to view their governess with affection. Selina became another mother figure in Harriet's life, and had a lasting impact on her piety, which especially thrived in later life.
Harriet began writing letters from a young age; early topics included the activities of family members, and thoughts on the books she was reading. As she grew older it became readily apparent to all, including herself, that she lacked her mother's beauty and slim figure. But she was intelligent and witty in conversation, and lacked her sister's shyness. While Georgiana's first London season quickly drew two eligible admirers and ended in marriage to one of them in 1801, Harriet's first season two years later produced no such offers. As she remained single over the next several years, her family increasingly expected that she would marry her cousin John, Viscount Duncannon. Harriet herself had held this expectation since a young age, though she was unsure whether she cared for him enough to marry. But after three years of indecisiveness, Duncannon married another woman. Her family also unsuccessfully encouraged a match with another cousin, John, Viscount Althorp.
The Duchess's sudden death in 1806 contributed to profound changes in her younger daughter's life. Elizabeth Foster, the Duke's longtime mistress, took control of the Devonshire household and thus usurped this role from his unmarried daughter. Harriet, who had long disliked Elizabeth, avoided her as much as possible. While social norms dictated Harriet could not permanently move out, she was able to frequently stay with other family members, including with her sister at Castle Howard in North Yorkshire. Harriet's son Frederick later wrote that the experience "strengthened the tie of sisterly affection, which bound them together during the whole of their joint lives". From 1801 onwards, Harriet wrote to her sister almost daily until the latter's death in 1858, corresponding in English and French.
Marriage
The Duchess's sister, Henrietta, Countess of Bessborough, felt obliged to help her niece escape a difficult home situation. Harriet had previously been critical of her aunt, but with her mother gone, now turned to her for affection and support. When the Duke announced his desire to marry his mistress, Henrietta began searching for a suitable marriage prospect for her niece. The chosen candidate was Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, a politician and diplomat who had been her lover for seventeen years and the father of her two illegitimate children. Though still infatuated with him, she knew that Granville would need to eventually marry and produce legitimate offspring, and that when he did so, she would likely lose him. Convincing her niece to marry him was one way of keeping him within her social circle.
Though Granville had represented several constituencies in the House of Commons and served briefly in the cabinet of the Second Portland ministry, his career was primarily in diplomacy. He had been stationed in various European courts since 1796, and by 1809 had become a mid-career diplomat. Known to Harriet since her childhood, he was twelve years her senior. She had never particularly cared for him, having disapproved of his hauteur and illicit liaison with her aunt. But Harriet's opinion of him now improved. Though he had little wealth of his own, he was a leading member of society as part of the prominent Leveson-Gower family; his half-brother was the very rich Marquess of Stafford (later Duke of Sutherland). Moreover, as the historian K. D. Reynolds writes, Granville was "considered one of the most handsome men of his time; his curly brown hair, blue eyes, and sensuous features brought him strings of female admirers".
Though eager to leave Devonshire House, Harriet insisted that Granville's affair with her aunt be truly over. The prospective groom was unsure if he wanted the unglamorous Harriet as a marriage partner, however, and spent some time pursuing other candidates; their refusals, often due to his womanising reputation, led Granville to ultimately choose Harriet. They became engaged on 13 November 1809. The Duke provided his younger daughter with a dowry of £10,000 (), a relatively low sum compared to the nearly £30,000 () given to his illegitimate daughter Caroline St. Jules that same year. On 24 December 1809, Harriet married Granville in the drawing room of Chiswick House, an elegant London villa owned by her father.
Social hostess
Despite the unusual circumstances surrounding the marriage, Harriet and Granville's letters reveal both were very happy. After a long and difficult labour, their eldest child Susan was born healthy. They would have five children in total – Susan (1810–1866), later the wife of the 4th Baron Rivers; Lady Georgiana Fullerton (1812–1885), a novelist; Granville, 2nd Earl Granville (1815–1891), the future foreign secretary; William (1816–1833), who died young; and Frederick (1819–1907), a Liberal politician. They also adopted Harriet and George Stewart, Granville's two illegitimate children with Henrietta; the pair flourished in the happy household. The elder Harriet found her twelve-year-old step-daughter and cousin to be a "most amiable little creature", and the two would grow especially close in the years that followed.
During their first few years together, the Leveson-Gowers split their time between London and the various country houses of friends and family. As neither brought significant wealth or an estate into the marriage, the smaller size of Harriet's dowry must have caused some disappointment; upon her father's death in 1811, her brother – now 6th Duke of Devonshire – quickly increased her settlement to £30,000. With this new income they were able to rent Tixall Hall in Staffordshire, taking up residence for eight years to raise their growing family and host visitors. In 1819, seeking to be closer to the government in London, they rented Wherstead Park in Suffolk, living there until 1824. For his service, Granville was raised to the peerage and given a viscountcy in 1815. An earldom followed in 1833, whereupon he and his wife became known as Earl and Countess Granville.
The Leveson-Gowers regularly attended large gatherings and parties at country houses. Harriet was a welcome guest when visiting others. As Granville was gregarious and social, she strove to be a great hostess and subsequently became popular. Clever and good-natured, her letters reveal her amusement at those around her, particularly during the visits of dissimilar guests to Wherstead, where they hosted frequently. After one visit to Tixall Hall, Charles Greville – her normally hypercritical cousin – wrote that he could not "remember so agreeable a party", and described Harriet as possessing "a great deal of genius, humour, strong feelings, enthusiasm, delicacy, refinement, good taste, naïveté which just misses being affectation, and a bonhomie which extends to all around her".
Ambassadress