Once, when she was ill, a well-known doctor was called in to attend her. He had paid her many visits, when one day she began to talk to him on many interesting subjects. At last he went; but when he was half-way downstairs, he cried out, “Bless me! I quite forgot to ask the girl how she was!” and returning to the room he inquired tenderly, “And how are you to-day my poor child?”
The following year she wrote a drama called “The Search after Happiness.” “The public have taken ten thousand copies,” she says, “but I have not the patience to read it!”
When she went to London she was introduced to Garrick the actor, Sir Joshua Reynolds the artist, and many other clever people. Sir Joshua Reynolds one day took her to see Dr. Johnson, or “Dictionary Johnson,” as she called him. She was very nervous, as no one knew how the great doctor would receive her, or what temper he would be in. But it was all right. He came to meet her “with good humour on his countenance,” and with royal grace greeted her with a verse out of her own “Morning Hymn.”
When she went to see him one day alone, he was out. So Hannah More went into his parlour, and seated herself in his great chair, hoping to feel inspired by so doing. When Dr. Johnson entered, she explained to him why she was sitting there; at which he went into fits of laughing, and cried out that it was a chair he never sat in.
After this he became a frequent visitor at the house of the five sisters—
“I have spent a happy evening,” he cried one night. “I love you all five; I am glad I came. I will come and see you again.”
In 1777, Hannah More wrote a play called “Percy.” Hidden in the corner of a box at the theatre, she anxiously watched the performance of her play; she heard her hero speak through the voice of her friend Garrick; she saw her audience—even the men—shedding tears, and she knew it was a success. So much did her writings apply to the feelings of her audience, that after the performance of one of her plays called the “Fatal Falsehood,” when a lady said to her servant girl, who had been to the play, that her eyes looked red, as if she had been crying, the girl answered:
“Well, ma’am, if I did, it was no harm; a great many respectable people cried too!”
The death of David Garrick affected Hannah More deeply. Mrs. Garrick sent for her at once in her trouble, and, though ill in bed at the time, Hannah More came to comfort her friend. After this she spent much time with Mrs. Garrick, often in the depths of the country giving up her time to reading and writing, and taking long walks to the pretty villages round.
Then she built herself a little house near Bristol, where she went to live with her sister Patty. They made long expeditions together to villages round, and they soon discovered what a bad state the country people were in.