The duchess was, therefore, one of the dowagers, ‘thick as flounders,’ whose proximity was irritating to the fastidious bachelor.  There was, however, another Kitty between whom and Horace a tender friendship 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 two more especially—­and no one could hate more intensely than Horace Walpole—­it was his uncle, Lord Wapole, and his cousin, that nobleman’s son, whom he christened Pigwiggin; ‘my monstrous uncle;’ ’that old buffoon, my uncle;’ are terms which occur in his letters, and he speaks of the bloody civil wars between ‘Horatio Walpole’ and ‘Horace Walpole.’

Horatio Walpole, the brother of Sir Robert, was created in June, 1756, Baron Walpole of Wolterton, as a recompense for fifty years passed in the public service—­an honour which he only survived nine months.  He expired in February, 1757.  His death removed one subject of bitter dislike from the mind of Horace; but enough remained in the family to excite grief and resentment.