It was remarked by Mrs. More that she never lost a friend but by death; and as she continued to the last enlarging the number of this privileged order, she had, in her later years, and in her rural seclusion, less time at command than she had enjoyed at Hampton, when her evenings passed in the crowded saloons of the fashionable and the literary. To save her own time, as well as to accommodate her numerous visitors, she opened her house daily from twelve or one o’clock to three, for what she not inappropriately termed her “levee.” This, however, was far from securing the rest of her time for solitude, as friends from distant quarters were frequently besetting Barley Wood, and making importunate and irresistible demands on her leisure. Ingenious, however, to do good, she now employed herself in manufacturing little useful and ornamental articles, to be sold at fancy fairs for charitable purposes; the fact that they were the produce of her industry investing them with many times their intrinsic value. The same energy which distinguished her literary pursuits, was conspicuous in this humbler path of usefulness. On one occasion of this sort, she knitted so assiduously as to produce an abscess in her hand.

Henry Thompson: ‘Life of Hannah More.’

The energy of her mind in carrying into execution any purpose which had been adopted after sufficient consideration was very remarkable. In conformity with this part of her character, her plan was, in any new resolution which involved the exercise of self-denial, to contend with the most difficult part of the undertaking first, after which she used to say that she found the remaining sacrifices comparatively easy to be submitted to. On this principle, having resolved to desist from going to the theatre about the time her play of ‘Percy’ was revived, she determined to make that the immediate occasion for carrying her new resolution into practice. Mrs. Siddons was then at the height of her glory, and was to act the part of the heroine of the tragedy, a character which she was said to exhibit with remarkable success; and Mrs. Hannah More was in the midst of a brilliant society of friends and admirers, who all attended the representation; but here she was determined to make her first stand against this particular temptation, and to break the spell of the enchantment while standing in the centre of the magic circle.

Another anecdote will show the same principle brought into exercise on a very different occasion. As her limited income began to be sensibly diminished at one time by her travelling expenses, she determined to perform her journeys in stage-coaches; and in order to overcome at once every obstacle that pride might interpose, she resolved to pay a visit to a nobleman on which she was about to set out, in one of these vehicles; which, as there was a public road through the park, set her down at the door of the mansion. She has more than once described her conflicting sensations when his lordship, proceeding through a line of servants in rich liveries, came to hand her out of her conveyance—a conveyance at that time much less used than at present by persons of high respectability. Thus it was the policy of this able tactician to commence her operations by a decisive blow, whereby the main strength of the opposing foe was at once broken and dispersed, and her victory made easy and secure.

Wm. Roberts: ‘Memoirs of Hannah More.’

Her form was small and slight, her features wrinkled with age; but the burden of eighty years had not impaired her gracious smile, nor lessened the fire of her eyes, the clearest, the brightest, and the most searching I have ever seen. They were singularly dark—positively black they seemed as they looked forth among carefully-trained tresses of her own white hair; and absolutely sparkled while she spoke of those of whom she was the venerated link between the present and the long past. Her manner on entering the room, while conversing, and at our departure, was positively spritely; she tripped about from console to console, from window to window, to show us some gift that bore a name immortal, some cherished reminder of other days—almost of another world, certainly of another age; for they were memories of those whose deaths were registered before the present century had birth.

She was clad, I well remember, in a rich dress of pea-green silk. It was an odd whim, and contrasted somewhat oddly with her patriarchal age and venerable countenance, yet was in harmony with the youth of her step and her increasing vivacity, as she laughed and chatted, chatted and laughed; her voice strong and clear as that of a girl.

S. C. Hall: ‘A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age.’ London: Virtue & Co., 1871.

She was a very kind friend to me from childhood. Her notice first called out my literary tastes. Her presents laid the foundation of my library. She was to me what Ninon was to Voltaire—begging her pardon ... and yours for comparing myself to a great man. She really was a second mother to me. I have a real affection for her memory. I, therefore, could not possibly write about her, unless I wrote in her praise; and all the praise which I could give to her writings, even after straining my conscience in her favor, would be far indeed from satisfying any of her admirers.

T. B. Macaulay: Letter to W. Napier, in the former’s ‘Life and Letters,’ by G. Otto Trevelyan. New York: Harper & Bros., 1876.

Have you read ‘Cælebs’? It has reached eight editions in so many weeks, yet literally it is one of the very poorest sort of common novels, with the drawback of dull religion in it. Had the religion been high and flavored, it would have been something. I borrowed this ‘Cælebs in Search of a Wife,’ from a very careful, neat lady, and returned it with this stuff written in the beginning:—

If ever I marry a wife
I’d marry a landlord’s daughter,
For then I may sit in the bar,
And drink cold brandy-and-water.

Charles Lamb: Letter to Coleridge, in ‘Final Memorials’ of the former, by T. N. Talfourd. London: Edward Moxon, 1848.

I like neither her letters, nor her books, nor her character. She was that most disagreeable of all monsters, a blue-stocking—a monster that can only exist in a miserably false state of society, in which a woman with but a smattering of learning or philosophy is classed along with singing mice or card-playing pigs.

George Eliot: Letter to J. Sibree, 1848, in ‘Life,’ edited by J. W. Cross. New York: Harper & Bros., 1885.

Though I think that Mrs. More’s[3] very great notoriety was more the work of circumstances, and the popular turn of her mind, than owing to a strong original genius, I am far from thinking her an ordinary woman. She must have had great energy of character, and a spritely, versatile mind, which did not originate much, but which readily caught the spirit of the day and reflected all the phases of opinion in the pious and well-disposed portion of society in a clear and lively manner.

Sara Coleridge: Letter to Miss E. Treveren, 1834, in the former’s ‘Memoir and Letters,’ by her daughter. New York: Harper & Bros., 1874.

Mrs. More and her sisters had accumulated by their industry handsome competencies; by her pen alone she had realized £30,000.... Much of her property was bequeathed to public institutions.

Henry Thompson: ‘Life of Hannah More.’