Margaret was an admirer of Joanna Baillie, and
considered her and the French Madame Roland as
“the best specimens hitherto offered of women of a
Roman strength and singleness of mind, adorned by
the various culture and capable of the various action
opened to them by the progress of the Christian idea."
She thus chronicles her visit to Miss Baillie:—
“We found her in her little calm retreat at Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose character she has, in one of her last poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humour, and tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline. Although no autograph hunter, I asked for theirs; and when the elder gave hers as “ sister to Joanna Baillie," it drew a tear from my eye,—a good tear, a genuine pearl, fit homage to that fairest product of the soul of man, humble, disinterested tenderness."
Margaret also visited Miss Berry, the friend of Horace Walpole, long a celebrity, and at that time more than eighty years old. In spite of this, Margaret found her still characterised by the charm, “careless nature or refined art," which had made her a social power once and always.
But of all the notable personages who might have been seen in the London of that time, no one probably interested Margaret so much as did Thomas Carlyle. Her introduction to him was from Emerson, his friend and correspondent; and it was such as to open to her, more than once, the doors of the retired and reserved house, in which neither time nor money was lavished upon the entertainment of strangers.
