An uncle, Reginald Cholmondeley of Condover Hall, was a host of the American novelist Mark Twain on his visits to England.

[1] Her sister Hester, who died in 1892, wrote poetry and kept a journal: selections appear in Mary's family memoir, Under One Roof (1918).

Much of the first 30 years of her life passed in helping her sickly mother to run the household and her father to do his parish work, although she herself suffered from asthma.

After her father died, she lived with her sister Victoria, moving between Ufford, Suffolk, and 2 Leonard Place, Kensington.

I must strike out a line of some kind, and if I do not marry (for at best that is hardly likely, as I possess neither beauty nor charms) I should want some definite occupation, besides the home duties.

It was equally sensational when exploring "the issues of female sexuality and vocation", recurring topics in late Victorian debates about the New Women.