Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico)

by McLynn, Frank

  On the 7th, after sleeping late, the prince dined with the duchess of Parma and impressed her with his charm.10 Given the continuing heavy rains, the prince accepted her invitation to stay until Thursday the 9th. He plunged into a whirl of balls, lavish suppers, tours of picture galleries. He made a day trip to Reggio. While in Parma he also made contact with an important Imperial representative Prince Lobkowicz, commander of the Austrian armies in northern Italy.11 Lobkowicz put his grenadiers through their paces for him on the esplanade of the castle.12 On the morning of the 8th the two princes held a long conversation together, then joined the duchess for dinner. Charles Edward needed all his tact, for the old duchess’s words were difficult to understand. She spoke in Italian without her teeth.13 Nevertheless, he impressed her sufficiently to be presented with a gold snuff box inlaid with diamonds (valued at 500 Roman crowns). Finally, on Wednesday evening there was a concert featuring a violinist billed as the best in Europe, better even than Tartini.14 Here again Charles Edward maintained the good impression he had made on Lobkowicz.

  On Thursday 9 May the prince pressed on to Piacenza. There the tight grip Dunbar had hitherto managed to exert on protocol dissolved. The duchess there disregarded the prince’s incognito and insisted on giving him the honours due a Prince of Wales. Dunbar spent some uncomfortable hours dissuading the envoy from the governor of Milan from addressing him in the same style. The entire tour seemed in danger of getting out of hand. Dunbar was glad to shake the dust of Piacenza off their collective feet.15

  The next two days, from Piacenza to Genoa across the Appenino Ligure, were eighteenth-century travel at its very worst. All the wealth and prestige of the Stuarts could secure nothing more than a second-class, uncomfortable inn at Tortona. The prince arrived in Genoa at 8 p.m. on the evening of the 11th, utterly exhausted.

  In Genoa they were lodged at a monastery belonging to the Roman order of the Apostoli. The prince slept until 10 a.m., then set out for a day’s sightseeing with the marquis of Grimaldi and Cardinal Spinola. There followed a crowded week. Every day he was dined regally by one of the Genoese nobility. In the evening there were parties (‘assemblies’) or the Comedia to go to. As on all ports of call hitherto, the prince’s charisma dazzled his hosts. Sometimes there was a social price to pay for his personal magnetism. At the ball he attended on the night of Wednesday 15 May the salon was too small for the numbers who crowded in to glimpse him, so that the atmosphere at the dance was unbearably hot and stifling.16

  It had originally been intended that the prince would visit Turin, but English pressure led to the visit’s cancellation.17 This hiccup in the plans accounts for the apparent ineptitude of the itinerary, involving as it did the partial retracing of their steps. On Saturday 18 May the prince’s party left Genoa for Milan, arriving there at 10 p.m. that night. On Sunday there was heavy rain and the sky was overcast, so that the prince had to inspect the paintings in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana that afternoon by candlelight.18

  There followed another leisurely week, similar to that in Genoa: concerts, balls, card games, sightseeing. The prince was a frequent visitor at the great Milanese houses of the Stampas and the Lucinis.19 On Sunday 26 May they set out for the long ride to Venice, making a late start because the prince had been dancing until 2 a.m. at one of the endless balls (one a night was laid on for him in Milan). They had expected a tiring journey to Venice on account of the bad roads, but it was made even worse by the shortage of horses, largely monopolised by the Elector of Bavaria, who was then travelling from Verona to Vienna, and by the depredations to the muddy track made by his horses and carriages.20

  The shortage of horses led directly to a singularly unpleasant incident, which revealed once again how heavily the exiled Stuarts depended on papal patronage. Arriving in Verona at 10 p.m. on 27 May, having endured bad roads and with tired horses, Dunbar’s first task was to get his hands on the post horses, so that next morning the prince would be first on the road and could set out the moment the city gates were opened. It turned out that the postmaster had been bribed by one marquis de Bevilacqua to let him have first call on the horses. When the postmaster refused to heed Dunbar’s call next day, the royal tutor soon guessed what was going on. He asked Colonel Terry, in whose house Charles Edward was lodged, to send a dragoon ahead to secure the horses at the first post for the prince.

  When Bevilacqua got there, thinking he had outsmarted the Stuart party, he found himself outwitted and the horses spoken for. In a fury he waited for Charles Edward’s valet-de-chambre to come up, slightly ahead of the main party. Denying the prince’s right to the horses, Bevilacqua swore an oath that he for one did not recognise the Stuarts, that if they wished to exercise their royal prerogative, they should go to England to do it. The marquis’s wife thereupon loosed a volley of fishwife abuse on the unfortunate valet-de-chambre.

  Aroused by the yelling imprecations, the post-mistress came out to adjudicate. In a most unsolomonic judgment, delivered on the basis of the highest rank of those present, she overruled the valet-de-chambre and gave the horses to Bevilacqua. The upshot was that when the prince came up, his fresh mounts were gone. The remaining horses were so tired they could barely crawl.

  In Venice the authorities offered to arrest Bevilacqua for the insult, but since he was a papal subject, it was thought best to refer the matter to Rome. In any case, once in the Most Serene Republic, the prince put such tribulations behind him. Venice was to be the highlight of his tour. The itinerary had been planned so that he would be there in time for the Ascension Fair. He was to spend almost two weeks in the great watery city of the Doges, to the consternation and fury of the English, who had always regarded the Venetians as their loyal allies.21

  Arriving late on the evening of 28 May, hard on the heels of the Elector and Electress of Bavaria, the prince quickly made his mark. On his first day in the city of canals, he was visited by the papal nuncio, the French ambassador and the commander of French galleys in the Mediterranean.22 On Wednesday the 29th the prince attended the opera, seated in Cardinal Davia’s box. On Friday the 31st he was given a sumptuous reception on board a Venetian galley. The Elector and Electress of Bavaria came alongside in their craft and boarded the galley, each side maintaining the fiction of the incognito by wearing masks in the time-honoured Venetian fashion.23 But since both parties had large retinues in tow, no significant conversation ensued. Nevertheless, Cardinal Davia was instructed to tell the prince in confidence from the Elector that the failure to hold a tête-à-tête was not by his choice.

  Any annoyance the English might have felt about cordial relations between Elector and Pretender were as nothing to the anger they felt once the Venetians showed clearly how they meant to proceed with their illustrious visitor. English irritation began in earnest on Ascension Thursday, when the prince went to see the ceremony of the marriage between the Doge and the sea. Lady Gradenigo, who had invited Charles to the ceremony, then took him on to witness the Doge’s feast. As the Doge passed the prince on his way to the public dinner, he made him a very respectful bow.24 Since the prince was not wearing his mask, the fiction of the incognito could not very well be maintained.

  On the following Sunday Charles Edward attended the Assembly of the Grand Council of Venice. Again, since he was incognito, there should have been no question of his receiving full honours. But, again to the horror of the English envoy, the prince was met at the stairs by the Doge’s attendants as he alighted from his gondola. On his approach to the council hall, the door was opened for him. Wearing his sword, the prince then entered and was conducted to the bench reserved exclusively for princes, as opposed to the bench set aside for visitors or strangers.25 Once again, when the Doge entered he made the prince a low bow.

  The English envoy immediately went to the secretary of the Venetian Inquisition to protest at the honours done the prince. He asked that he be expelled forthwith. Disingenuously the secretary replied that the honours were merely those done to a private gentleman. He added fros
tily that he would of course convey English feelings to the Inquisitors.26

  The English torment was not yet over. Later that same Sunday the Elector and Electress of Bavaria again ‘accidentally’ encountered the prince, this time in the library of St George’s convent. In the presence of more than two hundred onlookers, the Elector and Charles Edward stood conversing for fifteen minutes. They were joined by the Imperial Marshal Shullingberg, who questioned the young prince on the siege of Gaeta and found him knowledgeable. The conversation caught fire; the three of them then retired into the convent grounds and talked for more than an hour.27 The fiction that the meeting was accidental fooled no one.

  The second week in Venice saw visits to St Mark’s, trips by pleasure boat in the Muran canal, magnificent dinners at the nuncio’s and the French ambassador’s, and (on Tuesday 4 June) a visit with Lady Gradenigo to the Venetian Arsenal. The governor of the Arsenal treated the prince with every distinction (again the incognito was disregarded), a demonstration launch was made of one of the Doge’s large barges, and a sumptuous collation laid on in the main hall.28

  On Saturday 8 June (Whitsun-eve) an oratorio was performed for the prince at the Hospital of the Incurables by young ladies educated there.29 Dunbar prevailed on his charge to stay in that night, preparatory to the journey to Padua planned for Monday, but this (coupled with a siesta on Sunday afternoon) backfired on Dunbar. The prince was so full of surplus energy that he danced until 5 a.m. at the great farewell ball given for him by Lady Gradenigo on the Sunday night.30 All of Venetian high society was there. Lady Gradenigo and the other fine ladies glittered in their jewels. Charles Edward was at his very best, impressing everyone with his wit and charm and his skill on the ballroom.

  This was the last straw for the exasperated English. Enraged at the consistent lionising of the prince (and the constantly reiterated pretence that these were simply the honours given to a private individual), the English envoy again made strong representations, this time through Foreign Ministry channels. What infuriated the envoy was that Whit Sunday was traditionally a day when no public functions of this kind took place, yet the whole of Venice had gone out of its way to honour one who was openly talked of as ‘the Prince of Wales’.31

  Without question the Venetians had treated the prince with extraordinary courtesy. Their reception of Charles Edward was both unexpected and, by common consent, far beyond anything given to other princes. Officially incognito, the prince had been given actual royal treatment. He had scored a palpable hit in Venice, especially with the women, who clustered around him wherever he went. It is not surprising that George II was so angered by the Doge’s conduct on this occasion that he expelled the Venetian Resident in London.32 The anxiety with which the British government had watched Charles Edward set out on his journey had changed to something very close to alarm.33

  On Monday 10 June the royal party started for Padua very late in the day; they did not arrive until 10 p.m. On Tuesday evening the prince went to the opera, Wednesday morning he spent sightseeing.34 The next leg of the journey was to Ferrara, accomplished on Wednesday afternoon and evening. In Ferrara too the prince was well received. He and his suite were lodged at the house of the Abbé Rota, who had a chef famous for his cuisine. A corso de barbari was laid on for his entertainment. Once again he attended an evening ball and danced until 2 a.m.35

  Rather than face another late start, and fearing a further possible post-horse clash, this time with the Elector of Bavaria, Dunbar elected to press on overnight on the relatively short stretch to Bologna. The prince slept most of the time in the coach and was then in bed in Bologna the best part of the day. In the evening Cardinal Lambertini came to pay his respects, careful to avoid the gaffe he had committed on the prince’s outward visit.

  They rested a week in Bologna, going most nights to the theatre or the opera. By now the strain of the tour was telling on the forty-seven-year-old Dunbar. The Bevilacqua business had shaken him badly. In addition, he became more and more tetchy about Charles Edward’s late nights and increasingly critical of the prince. A letter to James from Bologna on 19 June is typical:

  As H.R.H. cannot enjoy the diversion of dancing with any degree of moderation but overheats himself monstrously on such occasions, I have refused a ball the public intended to give him here tomorrow night … the later he comes home and the more he has of sleep, he will sit the longer at supper, so that it is not possible to get him to bed after an opera till near three in the morning, though he be at home soon after one.36

  This was telling James what he wanted to hear, since he had been nagging his son mercilessly by letter throughout the tour. James’s tone was at best patronising and at worst downright insulting, considering that the sixteen-year-old was already shaving and wearing a wig.37

  Moreover, the reluctant tutor was forced to be on his mettle at Bologna. The Elector of Bavaria was in the city at the same time. Since there was no need for Charles Edward to go about incognito in the papal states, any meeting between the two would oblige the Elector to recognise Charles publicly as Prince of Wales. It had therefore been agreed that the two parties would give each other a wide berth. But by a blunder the same house and balcony had been assigned to both for watching the Corpus Christi procession. Charles Edward was at the very threshold before Dunbar spotted the contretemps and led him away.38

  After a week’s rest, Charles Edward’s party moved on to Florence, arriving at night on 22 June. The Grand Duke of Tuscany had offered to provide honours in the form of coaches, but the Jacobite agent in Florence, Tyrell, insisted on a punctilious observance of the incognito. By now the English were so jumpy that the mere suggestion that coaches might have been offered to the Stuart party worked the British Resident Fane into a lather.39

  Word of Charles Edward’s love of dancing spread like a forest fire through the towns on their projected itinerary homewards. Dunbar had at one time toyed with a route taking them to Rome through Perugia. Hearing of the atrocious state of the Siena–Perugia road, he devised instead an itinerary to take them through Lucca, Pisa, Livorno, Siena and Caprarola. Even while the prince danced the nights away in Florence, Dunbar heard to his horror that similar balls had already been arranged in Lucca, Livorno and Siena.40

  Florence rivalled Venice in the warmth of its welcome and the variety of entertainments laid on. The prince was given magnificent dinners by the nuncio and the Corsinis, saw a ‘singular collection of pictures’ at the Uffizi gallery, and attended a horse-race with coaches which he viewed from the balcony of the Casino Corsini and which ‘seems to be a small remnant of the Olympic games’. There was a side visit to the Pope’s nieces, both nuns. Other lavish dinners and feasts were provided at Villa Castello, Palazzo Antinoni and Palazzo Guadagni.41 The prince’s magnetic appeal for the fine ladies was again in evidence. Nearly one hundred of them crowded in to see him at the illuminated ball at the Villa Corsini on Sunday night 30 June.42 Such was the prince’s popularity in Florence that the ordinary people were said to have lamented their inability to elect a Grand Duke – for they would certainly have chosen Charles Edward.

  There could be no doubting the success of Charles Edward’s 1737 tour of northern Italy. Not only did James regard the expenditure of 5,000 crowns (£1,250 approx.) as remarkably economical, but the possibility of further such journeys was raised, especially to Spain.43 As a propaganda exercise the tour was even more efficacious than the Gaeta excursion. It was absolutely clear that Charles Edward was already a charmer of the first rank; not even the cross-grained Dunbar cared to deny it.44 As General Bulkeley later expressed it in his essay on the prince: ‘The English travellers who then most disliked his cause may remember how much they feared it too at that time from the opinion which they had conceived of that young prince.’45

  Why, then, was James’s reaction to his son’s triumph so grudging? Although he had earlier claimed, in a rare moment of self-knowledge, ‘I should be sorry if the Prince resembled me in everything,’46 that is precise
ly what, on the most charitable view, he was demanding. There was no praise for his huge public relations success, no appreciation of his obvious charisma, simply endless nagging and pedantic fussing. This time the prince tried very hard to keep up his correspondence with his father, even though the constant travelling did not make this an easy thing to do.47 James began by expressing pleasure in the fact that his son was writing to him as promised.48 But before long the predictable carping tendencies returned; James began to find fault with Charles’s spelling, grammar and punctuation.49 The inevitable happened. Faced with this nitpicking response to his efforts, Charles Edward found the incentive for frequent correspondence lacking.

  Soon James was returning to his original tack. All the public success in the world, he told his son, was not enough if he failed to keep up his correspondence.50 Not a word here about the things the prince had achieved, things that were clearly beyond James’s own grasp; merely a remorseless chipping away at peccadilloes.

  So far James’s attitude could be considered merely narrow, blinkered and insensitive. But there soon came dramatic evidence that there was more to it than that, that James was motivated by unconscious jealousy. On 30 July, while the prince was still basking in the golden opinions he had won on the tour, James wrote to Inverness as follows: ‘I am going to cut off the Prince’s hair with which I know not whether he or Sir Thomas are best pleased.’51 The symbolism of this is glaringly obvious. James already felt (and not just from the Italian tour) that he was being eclipsed by his elder son, that most credible Jacobites were now beginning to place their best hopes on Young rather than Old Pretender. For the older man, the symbolic gelding of the warrior returning home flushed with triumph served as a reminder that he was the one who cut not the one who was cut, much as if Cronos had beaten Zeus to the sickle. Charles Edward’s reputation was now too high, and he had gained it too obviously by being unlike either James or Henry. At a symbolic level he had to be castrated and deprived of his power. The inclusion of Sir Thomas Sheridan as the other one, apart from Charles Edward, who would be hurt by the act is also instructive. It suggests that James was also unconsciously striking out at rival father figures.52