Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (8 page)

Life went on, but with marked differences. James was less visible, Charles and Henry much more so. They received all the attention now, with parties given in their honor where they mingled suavely with cardinals and princes and dignitaries from foreign courts. Once a week Charles and Henry held a musical soiree, where Charles played the viol and Henry sang, to the accompaniment of a small string ensemble. A visiting Frenchman, Charles Des Brosses, heard them. ''Yesterday I entered the room as they were executing the celebrated composition of Corelli, the
Notte di natale
, " he wrote, "and expressed my regret at not having heard the commencement. When it was over they were going to begin a new piece, when Prince Charles stopped them saying, 'Stop, I have just heard that Monsieur Des Brosses wishes to hear the last composition complete.'"
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The Corelli was repeated, and Des Brosses took away an impression of Charles's considerateness and good manners.

He had not yet become the "great and good man" his father often urged him to be, but Charles was progressing well. The world had begun to notice him, to applaud his merits, and to speculate about what chance he might have to succeed where his father had failed.

Chapter 5

James was worried about his elder son. He was growing up, yet he remained, in James's view, "very innocent, and extreme backward in some respects for his age." He was old enough to shave, yet not old enough, it seemed, to take an interest in women, not even the beautiful women of Rome. He was also "wonderfully thoughtless for one of his age," and would not apply his mind to anything. In personality he was more a bright, accomplished child than a young man. He clung to childish pastimes instead of, in his father's words, "endeavoring to cultivate the Talents which Providence had given him." He had not developed the depths and moods of adolescence; he remained a sunny, irrepressible boy, infectiously blithe yet without the dignity and weight of burgeoning maturity.

No doubt James missed in his son the qualities which he himself had in abundance: gravity, excessive seriousness, dutiful religiosity. His younger son Henry was developing all these traits. What was wrong with Charles? How was he ever to muster the sense of responsibility that James felt so keenly and without which he could never hope to accomplish the great task James would one day pass on to him?

Von Stosch reported that James and Charles often went walking together amid the ruins of Rome, talking and planning. Though it seemed to the baron that they were scheming to invade England, the truth may have been that James was trying to impress on his ebullient son just how significant and challenging an undertaking the invasion of England was, and how in order to encompass it Charles would have to develop self-discipline and sober concentration.

Though Charles could not be expected to understand it, there was something weighing on James, and it added poignancy to his efforts to shape his son into a future king.

For the past decade and more the Jacobite cause had been disintegrating. One by one the men who had fought with and for James were dying, and there were few younger men as yet to take their places. The last spark of English resistance to the Hanoverians had come in 1722, when a barrister named Christopher Layer had gathered a small force of men and plotted to capture King George and seize the Tower and St. James's Palace, Layer had been discovered, imprisoned and ultimately hanged, and though the incident had frightened the Whig government it had also strengthened it, by presenting a specter of revolution to be raised whenever the opposition became restive.

There was a Jacobite bloc in the House of Commons, led by William Shippen, but it represented too modest a voting strength to carry much weight, even when on occasion it was joined by discontented Whigs. Shippen declared stoutly that he received his voting instructions from James in Rome, though this was at best a generalization; Rome was too far away, and communication with London too perilous and too difficult to permit James any but the broadest influence over the Jacobite M.P.'s. In the course of the 1730s even James's parliamentary support dwindled, and the prevailing peace between Britain and the continental states allowed the Jacobites no opportunity to offer themselves as allies to Britain's enemies.

Marooned in Italy, forced to endure the dwindling away of his supporters and helpless to change the course of events, James must have felt keenly the weight of his years and the intense frustration of having produced an immature if vigorous son. An unkind fate still pursued him, having made havoc of his once-promising marriage and left him a widower, and having given him at best a marginally satisfactory heir.

Hoping that a broadening of Charles's experience might improve him, James decided in the spring of 1737 to send him on a tour of the principal Italian cities. For more than two months Charles and his traveling companions—including Murray, Sheridan, another tutor called Strickland, five liveried servants and six others—traveled from city to city, with Charles presenting himself as "Count of Albany" though in fact representing the Stuart monarchy.

He began his tour in Bologna, where a troupe of guardsmen escorted him to his palatial lodgings and a great ball was held in his honor. At Parma, where he went next, the dowager duchess presented him with a gold snuffbox and, on his departure, a costly diamond ring. Here he was the guest of honor at a state dinner— hardly an appropriate welcome for a mere Count of Albany—and even inspected the troops as a visiting monarch might be expected to do. At Genoa Charles received the Spanish envoy and was the guest of Cardinal Spinola, while at Milan every prominent person in the city sought to pay his respects to him—except for the representatives of Emperor Charles, who were ordered to ignore him.

The tour was proving to be even more of a success than James had anticipated. Charles was "the fashionable idol at the moment," the central attraction at dances and receptions, the object of attention wherever he went. Tall, fair, bright-eyed and smooth-skinned, he was enviably princely as he moved gracefully over the dance floor, enviably noble as he toured the sights of the cities and received the gifts, compliments and honors that were showered upon him. He wore his blue Garter ribbon and star, and may have worn— as he did in some portraits—tartan dress, which became his fair skin and light hair. His manner, as usual, captivated his public, especially when he spoke of his ambitions. "Had I soldiers," he reportedly said, "I would not be here now but wherever I could serve my friends."
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In Venice Charles was given a kingly reception, sitting on the Bench of Princes at the Assembly of the Grand Council and later conversing with the doge as ruler to ruler—or at least ruler to heir apparent. He rode through the canals in the splendidly appointed gondola of the French ambassador, and was allowed to use one of the gondolas of the Venetian Republic as well.

By this time Charles had been on tour for two months, garnering praise, arousing gossip, his royal and near-royal receptions an insult to the Hanoverian monarchy. Every time Charles Stuart was honored, George II was snubbed, and the English decided that the repeated insults had gone on long enough. The Venetian ambassador in London, Businiello, was expelled from the capital and ordered to leave England within three days. And the English envoy in Florence—where Charles was expected soon—made it known to the grand duke that he and his government hoped the Florentines would not indulge in any unseemly celebrating when the young man arrived.

But despite assurances by the grand duke's secretary that Charles would receive no "improper mark of distinction," the ducal coaches were sent to meet him on his way into the city, and the grand duke himself, heedless of the disapproving British, expressed a strong desire to meet with Charles. The English envoy insisted that such a meeting would be viewed with severe displeasure.

"But you know how curious his Highness is!" burst out one of the Florentine officials to the adamant Englishman. "Surely it cannot be considered a grave political offence to permit a brief interview to take place!"

The envoy at last relented, agreeing not to protest if the grand duke received Charles as a mere private person, and at a time when few people were present to take notice. In the end the grand duke's illness prevented the meeting, averting a possible diplomatic contretemps. Shortly afterward, having been fêted at the customary round of dinners and balls, Charles left Florence and made his way via Lucca, Pisa and Livorno back to Rome.

"I understand that you have behaved very well in all respects on this journey," James wrote Charles on May 19. "I hope you will continue to do so, and that I shall find you quite a man on your return to me."
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He was not yet quite a man, though soon after his tour Charles was fitted out for an adult wig, and not long after that he began to be shaved regularly. In private his bad temper had shown itself, especially to Murray, who wrote James that Charles "gives us rather more uneasiness when he travels." Fortunately, though, Charles was "only a trouble to his own people," and not to strangers. To strangers, in fact, he seemed mature enough to be thinking of marrying, and one result of his Italian tour was a series of rumors about possible brides for him.

The summer passed, and then the fall, and nothing came of these rumors. Charles had very little to do, apart from boating on Lago Albano with his brother and attending water fêtes in the Piazza Navona, throwing coins into the water for the street boys to fish out. There was riding, and dancing, and incessant practice at shooting— but no real enemy to shoot at. Charles was beside himself with impatience to take part, however briefly or peripherally, in another siege or battle. But no army would have him now, not even that of Spain, in which he had already shown his valor. The French turned him down, as did the emperor, who was preparing an expedition to fight the Turks. To have the Stuart heir among one's forces was a provocation to King George in England, and in the late 1730s no ruler or minister wanted to present such a provocation—at least for the time being.

Obsessively energetic, Charles turned his full attention, during the summer and fall at least, to hunting. There was no moderation in him, it seemed; he threw himself into the hunt with the same eagerness and persistence he had shown in the trenches at Gaeta. He craved the stimulation of challenge, of constant change. He felt his powers, and was constantly being reminded of them by his admirers. Yet he had no scope to develop them, no arena in which to prove himself. At the same time, he felt the goad of his father's dissatisfaction, and the annoyance of being held back, overly protected, stifled in his growing desire for independence and bold action. At birth he had inherited a mission—the mission of restoring the Stuart dynasty. By temperament he felt himself ideally suited to fulfilling that mission, as he understood it. He was not troubled by self-doubt. On the contrary, he gained confidence when imperiled, rising to the occasion when confronted with risk and danger as if risk and danger were his natural element. The dull, safe and stagnant world of his father's court was becoming ever harder for him to bear.

In 1742, when Charles was twenty-one, James wrote that Charles was "quite wearied of this country," adding 'T don't wonder at it, for his sole amusement here is to go out shooting, to which he has gone every other day during all this season before daybreak, whether fair or foul." James's secretary James Edgar described how impatient the young man was for his sport, sleeping in a chair in his clothes, "with his riding-coat thrown over him, all gartered and ready," so that he could be away at one or two in the morning with his huntsmen. He had far more stamina than they did. He wore them out, hunting tirelessly and "killing a great deal of game," keeping up a pace which no one could equal and refusing to turn back even when it rained or when the ground was hard with frost. Returning from these expeditions, Charles would sit down and attack the viol with the same vigor he had shown in attacking the game birds and rabbits, "diverting himself with music for an hour or two, as if he had not been abroad."

It was a shame to see such energy dissipated in the insignificant pursuit of hunting. "What a pleasure it would be," Edgar wrote, "to see better game than the shooting of quails."

Charles's capacity for singleness of purpose was remarkable. Apparently he had no vices to distract him. No one, not even Von Stosch, hinted that he was overly fond of gambling, or drinking, or of the other pleasures common to aristocratic young men. He had no cohort of companions his own age, no particular favorite or favorites. He chose solitary pastimes, and though he was convivial he seems to have had no intimate friends at this time. It is tempting to think that in these fallow years he was nurturing his aspirations, brooding inwardly on what he was later to refer to as that which he was "put in this world for," namely to serve his father and Britain as effectually as possible.
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But to presume this one would have to discount the comments James and others made about how Charles lacked depth and seriousness. The observant Englishwoman Mary Wortley Montagu, who saw him at a masque in 1741, wrote that he appeared to be "thoughtless enough."

At the same masque she observed his brother Henry, and was more impressed with him. Henry, she wrote, "is very well made, dances finely, and has an ingenious countenance." Certainly he was more thoughtful, or inward-turned, than the extroverted Charles, though to some he seemed a "warlike young prince," full of the Sobieski fire.
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The "little Duke of York" was growing into a handsome, well-built young man, with "a certain agreeable robustness in his mien, and a more than common sparkle in his eyes." He was noticeably shorter than Charles, and did not have the latter's magnetism. Nor was he passing breezily through adolescence as his brother had. When he was about seventeen, Henry went through a phase in which he became obsessed with religious devotions and "in constant inquietude for fear of not having time for all he ought to do." He began scheduling his time so tightly that there was not a minute to spare, and he consulted his watch constantly in order to make certain not a minute was wasted.