Caroline Henrietta Sheridan (1779–1851)

Caroline Henrietta Sheridan, née Callander, was an aristocratic beauty who in 1805 eloped with Thomas Sheridan, a son of the playwright-manager Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The couple had four sons and three daughters, who included the writers Mrs. Caroline Norton and Helen Selina Blackwood, Lady Dufferin. In 1813, she accompanied her husband for his health to the Cape of Good Hope, where he later died four years later while serving as a colonial officer. She received a small pension and was allocated a "grace-and-favor" apartment for her family at Hampton Court Palace near London through the influence of Frederick, Duke of York, a friend of Tom Sheridan. She became a popular poet and novelist in the 1830s. After her children were grown up, Frances Kemble wrote of her in Records of a Girlhood: "Mrs. Sheridan, the mother of the Graces, [is] more beautiful than anybody but her daughters."