Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville (née Lady Henrietta Elizabeth Cavendish; 29 August 1785 – 25 November 1862) was a British society hostess and writer.

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.

[3] 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.

[8][9] 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 Duchess, pregnant by the future prime minister Charles Grey, was forced to move abroad and give birth in secret.

[14][15] 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.

[17] 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.

[19][20][note 1] Selina agreed with Lady Spencer that in order to protect the children, the Devonshire household required moral guidance.

[21] Deeply religious,[22] Selina encouraged her charges to be morally principled and pious,[23][24] and strove to provide a stable upbringing with a good education.

[27] Harriet began writing letters from a young age; early topics included the activities of family members, and thoughts on the books she was reading.

[39][40] 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.

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.

[46][47] 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.

[2] 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).

[51][52] Additionally, the historian K. D. Reynolds writes that 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".

[56][57] On 24 December 1809,[45] Harriet married Granville in the drawing room of Chiswick House,[58] an elegant London villa owned by her father.

[66][67] As neither brought significant wealth[51] 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.

[68][69] 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.

[76] 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".

[82][84] The Leveson-Gowers moved into the Hôtel de Charost, a stately Parisian townhouse purchased for the British government ten years earlier to serve as its embassy.

[90] Despite being inundated with politics from a young age due to her mother's prominence as a Whig supporter, Harriet cared little for the subject until later in life.

[105] When the Leveson-Gowers hosted parties, she paid careful attention to the needs of those in attendance; luxurious comfort was crucial, as was space for private conversation where important diplomatic and political matters could be discussed.

[45][116] Granville's death had an overwhelming effect on his wife's final years; later historians have described her behaviour as that of a typical Victorian era widow, as Harriet descended into a period of acute grief.

[125] The historian Virginia Surtees adds that Harriet's letters "provide an entertaining peepshow into the manners, habits and morals of that much inter-married section of aristocratic nineteenth-century society which also embraced the dandies, wits, and beaux".

[126][note 2] In 1894, her son Frederick published a two-volume edition of letters written during his parents' marriage,[128][129] condensing and cutting some of her correspondence in order to produce a shorter work.

[126] In 1990, Virginia Surtees produced another edited collection that focuses on Harriet's time as a social hostess as well as her close relationship with Georgiana.