User:EE Project/Harriot Hesketh, Lady Hesketh

Harriot Hesketh, Lady Hesketh (1733–1807), English gentlewoman

Harriot Cowper, afterwards Lady Hesketh (1733–1807). Lady Hesketh, the eldest surviving daughter of Ashley Cowper, was Cowper's first cousin and the sister of Theadora Cowper, whom Cowper wished to marry. She was the wife of Thomas Hesketh of Rufford Hall in Lancashire, who was created a baronet in 1761 and died in 1778, leaving Cowper a small legacy. The Heskeths went to Italy after Cowper moved to Olney and lost touch with him. Lady Hesketh resumed correspondence with Cowper after the publication of The Task in 1785, and she henceforth devoted a great deal of her time to his welfare. A person of somewhat austere refinement, she sometimes put people off by her manner. Mrs. Thrale in a diary entry of 10 January 1781 provides a description of her: 'Dear Lady Hesketh! and how like a Naples Washball She is: so round, so sweet, so plump, so polished, so red, so white ... with more Beauty than almost any body, as much Wit as many a body; and six Times the Quantity of polite Literature ... I never can find out what that Woman does to keep the people from adoring her.' (Thraliana, ed. K. Balderston (Oxford, 1942), i. 478.)