The story of Horace Walpole's deep affection for Mary and Agnes Berry, and in particular for Mary, the elder of the two, unfolds in this selection of his letters to them, its essence 'the grace of friendship', a phrase he uses in the course of the correspondence. When it opens Walpole was seventy-one, mentally still alert but physically infirm with the onset of gout and the vexations of old age. The 'Berrino', as they were sometimes called, were in their early twenties. Young, intelligent and to Walpole wholly delightful, they were his comfort and support in his last years. He made over to the sisters for their lives Little Strawberry Hill, a few hundred yards from his own Gothic 'castle' beside the Thames. Mary Berry's ill-fated love-affair, passionate on her part but brutally ended by O'Hara, is chronicled here in its pitiful detail. Read Less