oft. We understood the hint--left
the room--and so did the smith the door.'

'I must tell you,' he adds in another letter, 'of an admirable reply of
your acquaintance, the Duchess of Queensberry: old Lady Granville, Lord
Carteret's mother, whom they call _the queen-mother_, from taking upon
her to do the honours of her son's power, was pressing the duchess to
ask her for some place for herself or friends, and assured her that she
would procure it, be it what it would. Could she have picked out a
fitter person to be gracious to? The duchess made her a most grave
curtsey, and said, "Indeed, there was one thing she had set her heart
on."--"Dear child, how you oblige me by asking anything! What is it?
Tell me."--"Only that you would speak to my Lord Carteret to get me made
lady of the bedchamber to the Queen of Hungary."'

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