subsisted: this was Kitty Clive, the famous actress; formerly Kitty
Ruftar. Horace had given her a house on his estate, which he called
sometimes 'Little Strawberry Hill,' and sometimes 'Cliveden;' and here
Mrs. Clive lived with her brother, Mr. Ruftar, until 1785. She formed,
for her friend, a sort of outer-home, in which he passed his evenings.
Long had he admired her talents. Those were the days of the drama in all
its glory: the opera was unfashionable. There were, Horace writes in
1742, on the 26th of May, only two-and-forty people in the Opera House,
in the pit and boxes: people were running to see 'Miss Lucy in Town,' at
Drury Lane, and to admire Mrs. Clive, in her imitation of the
Muscovites; but the greatest crowds assembled to wonder at Garrick, in
'Wine Merchant turned Player;' and great and small alike rushed to
Goodman's Fields to see him act all parts, and to laugh at his admirable
mimicry. It was perhaps, somewhat in jealousy of the counter attraction,
that Horace declared he saw nothing wonderful in the acting of Garrick,
though it was then heresy to say so. 'Now I talk of players,' he adds in
the same letter, 'tell Mr. Chute that his friend Bracegirdle breakfasted
with me this morning.' Horace delighted in such intimacies, and in
recalling old times.

Mrs. Abingdon, another charming and clever actress, was also a denizen
of Twickenham, which became the most fashionable village near the
metropolis. Mrs. Pritchard, likewise, was attracted there; but the
proximity of the Countess of Suffolk, who lived at Marble Hill was the
delight of a great portion of Horace Walpole's life. Her reminiscences,
her anecdotes, her experience, were valuable as well as entertaining to
one who was for ever gathering up materials for history, or for
biography, or for letters to absent friends.

In his own family he found little to cheer him: but if he hated one or