After a season in Edinburgh she moved to Bristol where David Garrick, who had heard of her remarkable beauty, commissioned the actor John Moody to attend a performance and report back to him.

On 20 July 1772, Moody wrote: Mrs. Hartley is a good figure, with a handsome, small face, and very much freckled; her hair red, and her neck and shoulders well turned.

There is not the least harmony in her voice, but when forced (which she never fails to do on every occasion) is loud and strong, but such an inarticulate gabble that you must be well acquainted with her part to understand her.

"[7] However, writing about her performance in her next role as Queen Catherine in Henry VIII the same journal wrote that she had "frequently sunk into a whining monotony which from the length of some of the speeches became very disagreeable".

A group of young men including Thomas Lyttelton, the notorious libertine,[10] George Robert FitzGerald and Captain Crofts were involved in a drunken brawl which started in the Vauxhall Gardens where Hartley was walking with Rev Henry Bate (later Lord Dudley).

[2][11] In the following summer of 1774 Hartley again made the headlines when she absconded to France with William Smith who played her on-stage lover in Henry II or The Fall of Rosamond.

The author could not have wished a more perfect face and form ..."[14] She worked at the Covent Garden theatre in a numerous roles until 1780 (see below), and also appeared at Drury Lane, Liverpool and Stroud.