Hannah went out occasionally to spend a few days with friends in London. She met Dr. Burney and his daughter, and was one of those who thought of Fanny as that curious person wished to be regarded: "This Evelina is an extraordinary girl; she is not more than twenty, and of a very retired disposition."
At the end of the year of widowhood, Mrs. Garrick moved to her house at the Adelphi, and Hannah was admitted to good old Mrs. Delany's little select parties, never exceeding eight in number, where she met among others the brilliant Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and that clever dilettante, able satirist, and admirable correspondent, Horace Walpole, who formed a warm friendship for "Saint Hannah," as he was wont to term her.
This visit of 1780 ended by a journey to Oxford, where Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott welcomed her affectionately, and where she formed a friendship with Dr. Horne, President of Magdalen, afterwards the admirable Bishop of Norwich, and author of the most beautiful of English Commentaries on the Psalms. To his little daughter, Sally, Miss More gave a copy of Mother Bunch's Fairy Tales, with a playful dedication in verse. Copies were much sought after, and so precious were they, that Mrs. Kennicott refused one to the Bishop of London—Lowth—whose comment on Isaiah is still a standard book. On his making a
