Farrar's. It was not,
however, till the next July, after a little diplomatizing in billets
by the ladies, that her first visit to our house was arranged, and
she came to spend a fortnight with my wife. I still remember the first
half-hour of Margaret's conversation. She was then twenty-six years
old. She had a face and frame that would indicate fulness and tenacity
of life. She was rather under the middle height; her complexion was
fair, with strong fair hair. She was then, as always, carefully and
becomingly dressed, and of ladylike self-possession. For the rest, her
appearance had nothing prepossessing. Her extreme plainness,--a trick
of incessantly opening and shutting her eyelids,--the nasal tone of
her voice,--all repelled; and I said to myself, we shall never
get far. It is to be said, that Margaret made a disagreeable first
impression on most persons, including those who became afterwards her
best friends, to such an extreme that they did not wish to be in the
same room with her. This was partly the effect of her manners, which
expressed an overweening sense of power, and slight esteem of others,
and partly the prejudice of her fame. She had a dangerous reputation
for satire, in addition to her great scholarship.
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