Julia Wedgwood was the great granddaughter of the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood, a man she did not come to appreciate fully until late in her life. As a writer she was more drawn to the romantic reputation of her Scottish maternal grandfather, Sir James Mackintosh, who died shortly before she was born. Just as her mother enjoyed being described as his daughter, so Julia, in turn, delighted in being identified as his granddaughter. Mackintosh, who came of modest Highland stock, made his early way in London as a lawyer before becoming famous in 1791 for his Vindiciae Gallicae, a moderate defence of the early stages of the French Revolution. He went on to serve as a Recorder in Bombay but was happier back in England, where the East India Company appointed him to lecture on law and politics alongside Thomas Malthus. From 1818 until his death, he served as an MP for Knaresborough, a seat in the gift of the Duke of Devonshire. His parliamentary eloquence earned him the title of ‘The Whig Cicero’, but with the Whigs out of office until 1830, he had a long wait for the secure, well-paid government place he needed to enable him to complete his planned masterpiece, the ‘History of Great Britain from the Revolution of 1688 to the French Revolution in 1793’. Though everyone thought him a genius, Mackintosh's achievements never quite equalled his reputation. As a talker, however, he was unmatched. Charles Darwin remembered him as ‘the best converser’ he ever knew, often though his fondness for conversation at breakfast held him back from getting down to work.

They first met at Maer Hall in the village of Maer in Staffordshire, the home of Josiah Wedgwood's second son, Jos, who had been landed with the job of managing the family business. Jos's wife, Bessie, was Mackintosh's sister-in-law through his marriage to Kitty Allen, Bessie's sister. Disentangling the family trees of the Wedgwoods, Darwins and Allens is an arduous task as they intermarried so frequently. Just as Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, so too his sister, Caroline, married Emma's oldest brother, Josiah, while another of her brothers, Harry, married a Wedgwood cousin, Jessie. Rev.