Harriet Lewin

Harriet Grote (1792–1878) was an English biographer, and as wife to George Grote hostess to the English philosophical radicals of the earlier nineteenth century.

She was born Harriet Lewin at The Ridgeway, near Southampton, on 1 July 1792. Her father, Thomas Lewin, after spending some years in the Madras civil service, came back in the same ship with the divorced Madame Grand (from Pondicherry) who afterwards married Talleyrand, and remained with her for a time at Paris in the years preceding the French Revolution. Settling then in England, and marrying a Miss Hale (daughter of General Hale and a Miss Chaloner, descended from Thomas Chaloner the regicide), who brought him a large family, he lived in style, keeping a house in town as well as in the country.

Harriet Lewin grew up a high-spirited, brilliant girl, and at the age of twenty-two, her father then residing at The Hollies, near Bexley in Kent, attracted the devotion of George Grote, her junior by two years, who lived with his parents not far off. They were married in 1820. She began to cultivate foreigners, especially French public men. During Grote's parliamentary period she supported to him by holding together the party of radical reformers socially; and later supported his scholarly work.

Their circumstances became easier in 1830; from 1832 till 1837 they lived mainly at Dulwich Wood, then, for greater convenience of parliamentary attendance, at 3 Eccleston Street, which they did not give up till 1848 for the well-known 12 Savile Row, associated with the literary fame and administrative activity of all Grote's later years. From 1838 they also established a country house at East Burnham (near Burnham Beeches) in Buckinghamshire, and this they maintained till 1850. It was replaced by a small place, which they built in the neighbourhood and occupied, under the name of 'History Hut,' from the beginning of 1853 till the end of 1857. Then, for reasons detailed by Mrs. Grote in an Account of the Hamlet of East Burnham (privately circulated at the time), they decided to leave the area.

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