(1288) The Duke of Bedford and his friends acted several plays at Woburn.
(1289) Sir William Courtenay, said to be the right heir of Louis le Gros. There is a notion that at the coronation of a new King of France, the Courtenays assert their pretensions, and that the King of France says to them, "Apres Nous, Vous." [See Gibbon's beautiful account of this family, in a digression to his History of the Decline and Fall, Vol. xi.]
(1290) Two Jacobite Knights of Wales and Cambridgeshire.
(1291) Sir J. Philipps, of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire; a noted Jacobite. He was first cousin of Catherine Shorter, first wife of Sir Robert Walpole.
506 Letter 219 To sir Horace Mann. Windsor, Oct. 2,1746.
By your own loss YOU may measure My joy at the receipt of the dear Chutes.(1292) I strolled to town one day last week, and there I found them! Poor creatures! there they were! wondering at every thing they saw, but with the difference from Englishmen that go abroad, O keeping their amazement to themselves. They will tell you of wild dukes in the playhouse, of streets dirtier than forests, and of women more uncouth than the streets. I found them extremely surprised at not finding any ready-furnished palace built round two courts. I do all I can to reconcile their country to them; though seriously they have no affectation, and have nothing particular in them, but that they have nothing particular: a fault, of which the climate and their neighbours will soon correct. You may imagine how we have talked you over, and how I have inquired after the state of your Wetbrownpaperhood. Mr. Chute adores you: do you know, that as well as I love you, I never found all those charms in you that he does! I own this to you out of pure honesty, that you may love him as much as he deserves. I don't know how he will succeed here, but to me he has more wit than any body I know: he is altered, and I think, broken: Whitehed is grown leaner considerably, and is a very pretty gentleman.(1293) He did not reply to me as the Turcotti(1294) did bonnement to you when you told her she was a little thinner: do you remember how she puffed and chuckled, and said, "And indeed I think you are too." Mr. Whitehed was not so sensible of the blessing of decrease, as to conclude that it would be acceptable news even to shadows: he thinks me plumped out. I would fain have enticed them down hither, and promised we would live just as if we were at the King's Arms in via di Santo Spirito:(1295) but they were obliged to go chez eux, not pour se d`ecrasser, but pour se crasser. I shall introduce them a tutte le mie conoscenze, and shall try to make questo paese as agreeable to them as possible; except in one point, for I have sworn never to tell Mr. Chute a word of news, for then he will be writing it to you, and I shall have nothing to say. This is a lucky resolution for you, my dear child, for between two friends one generally hears nothing; the one concludes that the other has told all.
I have had two or three letters from you since I wrote. The young Pretender is generally believed to have got off the 18th of last month: if he were not, with the zeal of the Chutes, I believe they would be impatient to send a limb to Cardinal Acquaviva and Monsignor Piccolomini. I quite gain a winter with them, having had no expectation of them till spring'. Adieu!
(1292) John Chute and Francis Whitehed had been several years in Italy, chiefly at Florence.
(1293) Gray, in a letter to Mr. Chute, written at this time, thus describes Mr. Whithead:
"He is a fine young personage in a coat all over spangles, just come over from the tour in Europe to take possession and be married. I desire my hearty congratulations to him, and say I wish him more spangles, and more estates, and more wives." Works, vol. iii. p. 20.-E.