Harriet Grote was an English biographer. As the wife of George Grote, she played host to the English philosophical radicals of the earlier 19th century.
Early life
Harriet Lewin was born at The Ridgeway, near Southampton, on 1 July 1792. Her father, Thomas Lewin, had spent some years in the Madrascivil service, before returning in the same ship with the divorced Madame Grand, who afterwards married Talleyrand. Lewin remained with her for a time in Paris in the years preceding the French Revolution. Settling then in England, he married a Miss Hale, daughter of General Hale and Miss Chaloner, who was descended from Thomas Chaloner the regicide. The couple had a large family, lived in style, and kept a house in town as well as in the country. Harriet Lewin grew up to be a high-spirited, brilliant girl. The family were residing at The Hollies, near Bexley in Kent, when at the age of 22, she attracted the devotion of George Grote, her junior by two years, who lived with his parents not far away. They were married in 1820. She began to cultivate foreigners, especially French public men. During Grote's parliamentary period, she supported him by holding together the party of radical reformers socially. She later gave support also to his scholarly work.
On the move
The Grotes' circumstances became easier in 1830. From 1832 to 1837, they lived mainly at Dulwich Wood, then for greater convenience in attending Parliament, at 3 Eccleston Street, which they left in 1848 for the well-known 12 Savile Row, the house associated with the literary fame and administrative activity of Grote's later years. From 1838 until 1850, they also kept a country house at East Burnham in Buckinghamshire. This was replaced by a small house, which they built in the neighbourhood and occupied under the name of "History Hut", from the beginning of 1853 until the end of 1857. Then for reasons detailed by Mrs Grote in an Account of the Hamlet of East Burnham, they decided to leave the area. From 1859, they took the spacious Barrow Green House in Surrey, which had once been occupied by Jeremy Bentham, but it was inconvenient for visits to London, and they left in 1863. In 1864 they settled finally at Shere, Surrey, at The Ridgeway, as it was called by Mrs Grote, after the place of her birth. Herself an accomplished musician, she cultivated friendly relations with Mendelssohn and other composers and performers, including Jenny Lind.
"Mrs Grote sat with one leg overthe other, both high in the air, and talked for two hours, turning with equal facility to Saffi on Italian Literature, Max Müller on Epic Poetry, and Arthur on Ecclesiastical History, and then plunged into a discourse on the best manure for turnips, and the best way of forcing Cotswold mutton, with an interlude first upon the 'harmony of shadow' in water-colour drawing, and then upon rat-hunts at Jemmy Shawe's – a low public-house in Westminster. Upon all these subject she was equally vigorous, and gave all her decisions with the manner and tone of one laying down the laws of Athens.... She was, to the last, one of the most original women in England, shrewd, generous, and excessively vain."
Grote remained active to the last. She died at Shere on 29 December 1878, in her 87th year, and was buried there.
Works
Grote's first acknowledged work was Memoir of the Life of Ary Scheffer, a painter. This sketch reached a second edition in 1860, the year of its publication. Two years later came a volume of Collected Papers. A keeper of diaries and notebooks and a sprightly letter-writer, she began an account of her husband's life while he was still alive. She pushed the work forward after his death in 1871, despite reaching her 80th year. It appeared in 1873 as The Personal Life of George Grote. She had previously, in 1866, printed for private circulation a sketch entitled The Philosophical Radicals of 1832, including a Life of Sir William Molesworth. She also wrote a pamphlet, A brief Retrospect of the Political Events of 1831–1832, as illustrated by the Greville and Althorp Memoirs.
