Among the pupils of the Misses More were two Misses Turner, who were in the habit of passing the vacations at the house of a bachelor cousin of the same name. They were permitted to bring some of their young friends with them, and took the two youngest of their governesses, Hannah and Patty More. “The consequence was natural. Hannah was clever and fascinating; Mr. T. was generous and sensible: he became attached, and made his offer, which was accepted. She gave up her interest in the school, and was at much expense in fitting herself out to be the wife of a man of fortune.” The day was fixed more than once for the wedding, and Mr. Turner each time postponed it. Her sisters and friends interfered, and broke off the engagement, and would not suffer her to listen to any of his subsequent proposals. To compensate her, as he said, for the robbery he had committed on her time, and to enable her to devote herself to literary pursuits, Mr. Turner settled upon her an annuity; and at his death, to show that he still retained his esteem, he left her a legacy. The distress and disturbance which this event occasioned her, led to a resolution, on her part, never again to incur a similar hazard—a resolution the strength of which was tested by actual trial.
Among the favorite sports of Hannah’s childhood 135 was the making a carriage of a chair, and playing at riding to London to visit bishops and booksellers—a day-dream which became a reality in 1784. Of the circumstances which led to the journey we have no record. A few days after her arrival in London, she was, by a fortunate accident, brought to the notice of Garrick. A letter written by her to a mutual friend, describing the effect produced upon her mind by his representation of Lear, was shown to him, and excited in him a curiosity to see and converse with her. The desire was gratified; they were reciprocally pleased, and Miss More was soon domesticated with Mr. Garrick and his affectionate wife; and, for the next twenty years, she spent six months of each year under their hospitable roof. Through them she was at once received on terms of cordial kindness into their wide and splendid circle. She was welcomed as a sister spirit by the coterie which she has so elaborately eulogized in the “Bas Bleu.” She has often been heard to describe, very humorously, her raptures on her first introduction to a “live author,” and her sisters long remembered her strong desire to get a sight, from some hiding-place, of Dr. Johnson. She was now to meet him face to face. The first interview was at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s. She had been prepared by Sir Joshua for finding him in one of his sombre moods, but was surprised and delighted at his coming to meet her, as she entered the room, with good-humor on his countenance, and a macaw of Sir Joshua’s on his hand; and still more at his accosting her with a verse from a morning hymn, which she had 136 written at the desire of her early and firm friend, Dr. Stonehouse.
A few extracts from the sprightly letters of a sister who accompanied her, will furnish the best picture of the scenes in which Miss More now bore a part. “Hannah has been introduced to Burke—the Sublime and Beautiful Burke! From a large party of literary persons assembled at Sir Joshua’s she received the most encouraging compliments; and the spirit with which she returned them was acknowledged by all present.” “The most amiable and obliging of women—Miss Reynolds—has taken us to Dr. Johnson’s very own house! Can you picture to yourselves the palpitation of our hearts as we approached his mansion? Miss Reynolds told the doctor of all our rapturous exclamations on the road. He shook his scientific head at Hannah, and said, ‘she was a silly thing.’ When our visit was ended, he called for his hat to attend us down a very long entry to our coach, and not Rasselas could have acquitted himself more en cavalier. I forgot to mention, that, not finding Johnson in his parlor when we came in, Hannah seated herself in a great chair, hoping to catch a little ray of his genius: when he heard of it, he laughed heartily, and told her it was a chair on which he never sat. He said it reminded him of Boswell and himself, when they stopped a night at the spot—as they imagined—where the weird sisters appeared to Macbeth; the idea so worked upon their enthusiasm that it deprived them of rest; however, they learned, the next morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were quite in another part of the country.”
Johnson was not always, however, in the humor to swallow the flattery which she lavished upon him; Mrs. Thrale records a surly enough rebuke which the doctor administered to her: “Consider, madam, what your flattery is worth before you choke me with it.” As he was complaining, upon another occasion, that he had been obliged to ask Miss Reynolds to give her a hint on the subject, somebody observed that she flattered Garrick also; “Ay,” said the doctor, “and she is right there; first, she has the world with her; and, secondly, Garrick rewards her. I can do nothing for her. Let her carry her praise to a better market.” But in this flattery there was no want of sincerity and no disingenuousness. At the age of thirty-one she had brought to London the fresh, ecstatic enthusiasm of a country girl of seventeen; when, instead of having Johnson pointed out to her as he rolled along the pavement of Fleet Street, and gazing at Garrick from the side boxes, she found herself at once admitted to the inmost circle of the literary magnets—it is not wonderful that her feelings should overflow in language and gesture rather too warm for the acclimated inhabitants of the temperate zone.
The same hyperbolical style is to be found in the letters intended only for the eyes of her sisters. “Mrs. Montagu is not only the finest genius, but the finest lady, I ever saw; she lives in the highest style of magnificence; her apartments and tables are in the most splendid taste; but what baubles are these when speaking of a Montagu! Her form—for she has no body—is delicate to fragility; her countenance the most animated in the world; she has the sprightly vivacity of 138 sixteen, with the judgment and experience of a Nestor. Mrs. Carter has in her person a great deal of what the gentlemen mean when they speak of a ‘poetical lady:’ independently of her great talents and learning, I like her much: she has affability, kindness, and goodness; and I honor her heart more than her talents; but I do not like one of them better than Mrs. Boscawen; she is at once learned, polite, judicious, and humble.” At a party at which all these and other luminaries were collected, Dr. Johnson asked Miss More her opinion of the new tragedy of “Braganza.” “I was afraid,” says she, “to speak before them all, as I knew there was a diversity of opinion: however, as I thought it a less evil to dissent from a fellow-creature than to tell a falsity, I ventured to give my sentiments, and was satisfied with Johnson’s answering, ‘You are right, madam.’”
Stimulated by the approbation of such judges, Miss More turned to literature with redoubled energy; and from this period, the important part of her personal history may be read in that of a succession of works, all in their season popular; all commendable for moral tone; considerably above mediocrity in literary execution; and some of them worthy to survive their age.
After her return home, she one day laughingly said to her sisters, “I have been so fed with praise, that I think I will try what is my real value, by writing a slight poem, and offering it to Cadell.” Accordingly she wrote and sent him “Sir Eldred of the Bower,” a ballad in the style which Dr. Percy had rendered popular. Cadell offered her a price far exceeding her idea of its worth; adding that, if she would ascertain what Goldsmith 139 received for the “Deserted Village,” he would make it up to the same sum. With the public the poem met with a success which its merits by no means justify. At a tea-visit in her own lodgings, where she had Johnson all to herself,—and as she tells us he ought always to be had, for he did not care to speak in mixed companies,—the new poem was discussed. The leviathan of letters, instead of expressing his contempt for compositions of this class, and treating her to a new stanza,—like
“I put my hat upon my head,
And walked into the Strand,