The other criticism of Clementina, that her presence made him vulnerable to abduction and assassination, affected the prince deeply. He found himself unable to settle in Ghent, especially when Marischal, from whom he sought advice on his residence, warned him that it was dangerously close to Dutch territory.45 Even his frequent trips to Brussels and Antwerp were now becoming fraught.46 By April 1753 he was thinking of settling in Frankfurt or Cologne.47 Pending a final resolution, he intended to be in Ghent as little as possible and to make frequent excursions to the waters of Spa and Aix.48
The prince’s movements in 1753 denote a morbid fear of being seized by a Hanoverian snatch squad and the perennial terror of being betrayed. In February he made a fleeting trip to Paris, where he attended a Mardi Gras ball in disguise.49 On 12 April he arranged to meet Dormer in Brussels. The next day he cancelled the arrangement and set out for Cologne, hoping to meet Marischal there.50 The prince enjoyed himself, rummaging through the Cologne bookshops for works by Polybius and tomes on the French army.51 But Marischal advised against his continued presence in Cologne on the ground that five or six men could seize him while he went for walks by the Rhine and then spirit him away to the Dutch territories.52
On receipt of this advice, the prince moved on to Coblenz, where he stayed at Les Trois Couronnes inn.53 By the beginning of June he was in Frankfurt, intending to make a long stay. Once again he summoned Marischal.54 Since Charles was staying at the Emperor inn, he suggested that Marischal put up at the Rose in the same street. But again Marischal warned that the presence of Clementina put Charles at risk in any part of the Rhineland.55
Frustrated, but still with a pathetic respect and trust in Marischal, the prince returned to the Netherlands. Passing through Luxembourg and then swinging in a wide arc to throw any pursuers off the scent, he made his way to Louvain and then doubled back to Liège.56 The burgomaster of Liège, to whom Dormer made the introduction, found him a suitable residence.
Charles and Clementina settled in at their new house near the Pont Magen.57 Almost the prince’s first action was to order a crate of wine.58 His state of mind at the time can be gauged from a series of jottings on 21 July that provide almost a textbook illustration of both the positive and negative sides of his personality. ‘I aspire only to war and glory’; ‘I am a man who believes in God but not in men’: these ‘uplifting’ statements are followed by a paean of praise to drink. ‘Le jeu, la chose est à boire.’59
This turning to wine was very significant. Stress had built up again not just with the failure of the Elibank plot but with Clementina’s pregnancy. First reported in June 1753, the pregnancy was a source of ribald and facetious comment in Jacobite circles. A remark from one of Edgar’s Paris correspondents is typical. ‘There is no news here at all but now and then some little talk of the Hibernian Princess who, they say, keeps her ground and begins to be sick in her stomach and pitches now and then of a morning.’60
But to Charles Clementina’s pregnancy was no laughing matter. He had not summoned her to Ghent to produce unwanted infants, especially given his parlous financial position. The hostility to the pregnancy was no surprise; in psychological terms, it threatened to displace the prince as ‘only child’. It is significant that although he and Clementina lived together for another seven years, there was no further issue. Predictably, too, at about the time of Clementina’s confinement, the accumulated stress in the prince emerged as illness.61 When the baby was born, he had ‘such violent fluxions in the cheek that he is scarcely able to hold the pen’.62 This is hardly consistent with Clementina’s later statement that the birth of the child gave the prince great joy.63
Charles Edward’s daughter Charlotte was born and baptised in the church of Sainte Marie des Fonts in Liège on 29 October 1753.64 Her birth precipitated an outburst on the prince’s part that no one has satisfactorily explained. Since the prince’s conversion to Protestantism, he had taken it into his head to dismiss all his Catholic servants, at Avignon and elsewhere. Now, less than a month after Charlotte’s birth, he suddenly added the following to these orders: ‘My mistress has behaved so unworthily that she had put me quite out of patience and as she is a papist too, I discard her also.’65
In his instruction to Goring to get rid of all Catholics in his employment, the prince adds: ‘She told me she had friends that would maintain her, so that, after such a declaration and other impertinences, makes me abandon her. I desire to know who her friends are, that she may be delivered into their hands.’66
Even more bizarre is the following note made by the prince at this time: ‘A mark to be put on the child if I part with it – I am pushed to the last point and so won’t be cajoled any more.’67
The usual explanations for these outbursts – financial worries, anti-Catholic bigotry, alcoholic rage – all fail to convince. They seem excessive even if we postulate the maximum in unconscious rage and resentment towards Clementina and the child. But they are explicable if we assume that at some stage during the pregnancy – possibly even during the delirium of childbirth – Clementina blurted out a hidden secret from her past. The prince’s outbursts would then be a shocked recognition that this was no ingénue he had invited to share his life. The English Jacobites had got it wrong. They suspected Clementina of betraying the cause. Charles Edward now suspected that the betrayal was of an entirely different kind and that it was his ‘honour’ that was at stake.
That there was something very mysterious about Clementina’s life before 1752 has already been hinted. What it is we must now try to establish. The starting point must be her remark to Andrew Lumisden in 1760. ‘I was bred to business about Whitehall and could be of use to him, were there not unluckily an obstacle in the way, which has done him no service and me great hurt.’68
This enigmatic sentence has been passed over as unimportant by all Clementina’s biographers. Only Sir Compton Mackenzie, with his novelist’s intuition, saw what a crucial statement it was:
It is always assumed that the obstacle was her sister Catherine … but as this obstacle was perfectly well known to everybody, why write about it so mysteriously? The longer we ponder that letter, the more clearly we perceive a hint of something we know nothing about, something which perhaps was whispered in Jacobite circles and which created that overwhelming prejudice against Clementina. Had she been some great man’s mistress already? Had she been used by him as a spy for his own ends? Had she even borne him a child?69
To produce a solution to this problem we must take account of a number of factors. First, there were persistent rumours of a second (or preceding) child borne by Clementina, so persistent indeed that the prince later swore an affidavit that he had had only one child with Clementina.70 This would explain why the prince wanted a mark put on his own child. If Clementina departed and took up with a former lover, it might not then be possible for the prince to tell his own offspring.
Second, there is the uniform detestation of all the Jacobites for Clementina – a detestation that goes far beyond security considerations. Isabella Strange, most rabid of all female ‘Prince Charlie’ worshippers was quite willing to meet Louise of Stolberg in 1788, even though the prince’s wife damaged him far more severely than Clementina ever did. But she contemptuously turned down a similar offer to meet Clementina Walkinshaw and Charlotte.71 Why was this?
What is needed to make sense of all of this is a clear statement from a good source that Clementina had indeed had a lover before joining the prince in Ghent. To allow for the bias or unreliability of the source, we ought then to test the statement against circumstantial evidence from unassailable sources, especially the prince himself. Fortunately, there is such a source and it tells us who Clementina’s lover was. It turns out that it was no accident that O’Sullivan alone of the Jacobites knew where to locate her, for it was he who was her lover and, probably, father of the mysterious ‘other’ child. But it is important to be clear that this is a judgment on the basis of probability rather than on the stronger cri
terion of ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’. Cast-iron evidence on this point simply does not exist.
The only extant testimony unequivocally naming O’Sullivan as Clementina’s lover before she came to the prince is that of the double agent Oliver MacAllester.72 How reliable is MacAllester in general? There is no easy answer. Sometimes he is guilty of wild hyperbole. At others he is amazingly accurate and well-informed. Which is he in this case? At the very least, his ‘fingering’ of O’Sullivan is not inconsistent with all that we know of the Irishman and fits the rest of the circumstantial evidence.
Of the prince’s fondness and almost ludicrous partiality for O’Sullivan during the ’45 we have already provided ample proof. Why is it, then, that in 1756, among a list of Charles Edward’s bitterest enemies that he sent to his father – and which includes the predictable names of Tencin, O’Brien, Clare and Pompadour – we find the name of John William O’Sullivan?73 Between 1752, when he was on good terms with the prince, and 1756 O’Sullivan’s name does not appear in the Stuart Papers. What had he done, or rather what had the prince found out about him, to merit such ostracism?
Again, a close reading of the letter O’Sullivan wrote to Clementina on 31 May 1752 throws up an interesting clue. O’Sullivan tells Clementina that she may have complete trust in Charles Edward’s envoy but ‘you must not, under any pretext whatever, confide in him as to the past’.74 Since the prince’s envoy would already have known about the 1746 liaison with Charles, why the fearfulness about the past?
But perhaps the most clinching piece of circumstantial evidence of all comes from Goring. Goring, it will be remembered, excoriated the prince violently for the proposal to bring Clementina to Ghent and resigned his service rather than carry out escort duties. Having stated that such a chore was fit only for a pimp, he went on: ‘if you are determined to have her, let Mr. O’Sullivan bring her to you here.’75 Presumably, the inference was that as a pimp enjoys his whore’s favours, O’Sullivan was the right man for the job.
We are left, then, with the probable conclusion that the prince’s apparently crazed behaviour at the end of 1753 derived from his discovery of Clementina’s earlier liaison with O’Sullivan. The woman he thought would wait for his summons for ever, if necessary, had avenged the loss of her virginity to Charles at Bannockburn by having an affair with one of his favourites. This is entirely consistent with what we know of Clementina. She was nobody’s doormat, as she was to prove. But the prince’s realisation of the truth about her past altered his perception of her irremediably. From this date commences the long saga of rows, abuse and physical beatings that was to characterise their relationship thereafter. One early sign of his new contempt was a message sent to Dormer for ‘my old mistress at Paris’ (presumably the Princesse de Talmont).76
But, for whatever reasons, the prince did not send Clementina away. As 1754 dawned, he had fresh problems. Once again his enemies were closing in. The English had intelligence that he was somewhere in the Imperial territories. The most determined search yet was instituted by British agents.77 The emperor’s representatives in Brussels made it clear that they did not want the embarrassment consequent on the English finding the ‘Young Pretender’ on their territory, if that was where he was.
In some alarm the prince set out for Paris, leaving exact instructions with his servants about the guardianship of his daughter Charlotte.78 His brief excursion yielded no results. The prince again failed to arrange a meeting with Marischal, whose opinion he had asked on the desirability of permanent residence in Orléans.79 Charles decided on a more extended stay in the French capital. He returned to Liège to pick up Clementina and Charlotte and returned to Paris early in April 1754. This was the occasion when Clementina wrote a long memoir about the wardrobe she would need for a long absence from Liège, including a long cloak for Charlotte.80
It was in Paris that the full extent of the breakdown in the relationship between the prince and Clementina became clear. From 27 April they were lodging with a M. Florentin, a French supporter of the Stuarts, who however made a great fuss about the risk he was allegedly running in putting up the prince, for he was still officially barred from French territory.81 Florentin was taken aback when on 29 April a furious row erupted between the prince and Clementina in his presence. It began with a commonplace of domestic dissension. Clementina was tired and wanted to go to bed. The prince, being a night owl, wanted her to stay up with him. Clementina lost her temper and railed at him, half in French, half in English. The prince’s cold smirking fuelled her rage. She made use of several injudicious expressions that brought Florentin into the fray. He rebuked her both for her impertinence to the prince and for her careless use of expressions like ‘Your Royal Highness’, which gave the game away to the servants. At this Clementina stormed off to bed. To add to the confusion, Florentin’s sister-in-law, who had overheard the row, was smarting from the ‘humiliation’ of not being allowed to dine with the prince. She threatened to walk out.82
The feuding couple continued to make public scenes, oblivious or indifferent both about indelicacy and security. A little later a ‘devilish warm’ dispute arose between them in the Bois de Boulogne. This became the talk of Paris and blew the incognito sky-high.83
The prince toyed with the idea of moving out into the country where he and Clementina could row with greater freedom. His departure was also necessary to permit the hue and cry over his much-bruited presence in Paris to die down.84 Florentin rented them a house at Araneil. Characteristically, Charles changed his mind at the last moment. He took Clementina with him to another country village in the environs of Paris. There they remained until Pentecost.85
While the two of them were away, the Florentins had charge of Charlotte. On noticing a black spot on the child’s body, they consulted an apothecary who diagnosed it as a bruise. They gave Charlotte a sleeping drug and called in a physician for a second opinion. The surgeon thought the ‘bruise’ was something more serious, possibly a tumour, and recommended an operation. It is entirely feasible that this was some sort of advance sign of the cancer that was to claim Charlotte at the age of thirty-five.
What happened next is unclear. The prince apparently agreed to the ministration of the surgeon, but whether he operated does not emerge. What is certain is that on their return from the country the prince and Clementina left Charlotte with the Florentins while they looked for new lodgings.86 These they found at the Hôtel Pologne. Charlotte’s parents returned to collect the child, now reported ‘much better’. Florentin was mortified to receive just twenty-five louis d’or for all his efforts, plus a pledge from the prince that he would not forget him when he came into his own.87
Florentin did not show his displeasure then. But when the prince asked to move back to his house from the Hôtel Pologne, and Florentin refused, Charles put two and two together. He accused Florentin of fomenting a false rumour that there was a hot pursuit directed against him simply to get him out of his house (there was actually some truth in the accusation).88 Not surprisingly, when Florentin in his poverty-stricken later years applied to the prince for relief (in 1767), he got short shrift.89 Charles Edward Stuart was a man one crossed at one’s peril.
All in all, the prince stayed in Paris from April to the end of September 1754. His presence there was not just to throw spies off his track and buy time until he decided what to do next. There were also financial considerations. The prince wanted to relieve his debts by selling off the bonds held by the House of Stuart in the Hôtel de Ville. As with all the prince’s financial projects, this one ended in fiasco, with the banker John Waters advising him that the transaction would take a year to complete.90
But a much more important reason for the prince’s presence in Paris was to seek a showdown with Earl Marischal. Ever since the collapse of the Elibank plot, Charles had been pestering Marischal for advice, and requesting meetings with him. In May 1753, when he was in Germany, he sent detailed instructions on the itinerary from Paris through Metz and Luxemb
ourg to a rendezvous at Frankfurt.91 Marischal ignored the invitation. Charles repeated the request through Goring.92 Again Marischal prevaricated. Finally, on 18 September 1753 he wrote to the prince. In an irritatingly patronising communication, Marischal stated that as he was the only person fully trusted by the English Jacobites, the prince should copy all his correspondence with the English party to him.93
Perhaps Marischal thought he had shaken off his bête noire. But any hopes of parting on terms of cool politeness were shattered by the Goring affair at the beginning of 1754. Despite Goring’s outburst over Clementina in June 1752, and his resignation from the prince’s service, Charles Edward had treated him with kindness. When Goring complained to him in October 1752 that he was destitute, the prince, then changing lodgings in Ghent, wrote back: ‘As long as I have a bit of bread, I am always willing to share it with a friend.’94 Once the prince had completed the six-month rental on the new house in Ghent, he repealed the invitation.95
Goring, however, remained on the sidelines as a free-lance, carrying out the occasional commission for the prince. He was sucked back into acrimonious correspondence with Charles Edward at the time of the prince’s severe depression in November 1753, just after Charlotte’s birth. The prince’s directive to dismiss all Catholic servants in his employ was triggered by anger at what he had just discovered of Clementina’s past. Since Clementina was a Catholic, by association all Catholics were tarred with the same brush. A particular sufferer from this directive was the agent ‘Grandval’ (Dumont), whom the prince dismissed in November 1753.96
The failure of the Elibank plot, his refusal to send Clementina away, the dismissal of his Catholic servants: there seemed no end to the prince’s capacity to alienate the English Jacobites. Finally he went too far. He sent an envoy to Marischal and Goring, as conduits from the English party, with a demand for more money. Since 1748 the prince had existed largely on contributions from his friends in Britain. The English Jacobites particularly resented paying their money for the prince’s subsistence to the agent George Woulfe, as he refused to issue receipts or even acknowledgments. They were now insisting on a conduit through Earl Marischal in Paris. The prince’s response to the proposed transfer was to ask for increased contributions. It seemed to Goring and Marischal that their countrymen had already done enough. When he received the new instructions from the prince, all Goring’s pent-up resentment gushed out.
Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) Page 56
