In such straitened circumstances, anyone that has Mr. Douglas’s interest at heart must make shift as well as they can … their zeal or credit seems very little not to have found some way of getting so little as to furnish for their journey hither.34
Cluny and Patullo finally made the trip, travelling via Compiègne and Strasbourg.35 Their meeting with the prince in Basle was not a success. Charles was stupefied to hear that nothing remained of the Loch Arkaig treasure.36 Even worse, Cluny had taken charge of a waggon-load of the prince’s most treasured possessions after Culloden, including a family heirloom of jewels among the gold plate. He now claimed never to have seen it nor to know anything of it.37 This lost plate and jewellery was to become a major obsession with the prince, dwarfing the neurosis over the Le Roy watch.
The prince was already angry when Cluny and Patullo added insult to injury by presuming to lecture him on his shortcomings, and in particular to discuss the recent calumnies spread by Marischal’s protégé Jeremy Dawkins. The reason the financial supply from the English Jacobites had dried up, Cluny explained, was that Charles had lost all credibility. He would have to mend his ways.38
Charles Edward reacted with cold fury. Referring to a ‘very surprising message delivered in a still more surprising manner’, he repeated that he would not be bullied: ‘Reason may and I hope always shall prevail, but my own heart deceives me if threats or promises ever can.’ On his critics he remarked, ‘I despise their low malice and I confess it below my dignity to treat them in the terms they merit.’39
Dismayed that he could make no more impression on the prince than Goring, Marischal or any of the others, Cluny saved his fire until he was well clear of Basle. After producing a detailed accounting of the Loch Arkaig money to vindicate his handling of the finances,40 Cluny sat down with Patullo to make a final appeal to the prince to see reason. He should abandon his debauched life, agree to be guided by a cabinet of advisers, and vigorously rebut the slanders of Dawkins and Marischal. In particular, he should lay to rest the canard that, as a man ungrateful for the best services, but unforgiving and vindictive in face of the slightest offence, he combined all the vices of the Stuarts with none of their virtues.41
This was an ably constructed memoir, and it is just conceivable that the prince might have taken it to heart. Unfortunately Cluny and Patullo spoiled their own case by going over the top. Shocked by what they had seen of the prince’s physical condition and his almost permanent inebriation at Basle, they now presumed to give him advice on his drinking: ‘If you likewise would be prevailed on to use a little green tea mixed with cream, in place of beer, to abate thirst, you would soon be sensible of the happy difference.’42
Cluny had gone too far. To the prince, this was the rankest impertinence. Here was a man who could give no satisfactory account of his stewardship in Scotland, and who had lost the precious casket of family jewels among the plate, daring to lecture him like one of Wesley’s temperancers. Cluny’s homily merely succeeded in convincing the prince that he was being singled out for special discriminatory treatment. This feeling of being victimised that Cluny kindled in the prince had singularly unfortunate results. The character sketch adumbrated in the Cluny/Patullo memoir became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Forgetting all the services that Cluny had done him, the prince henceforth hounded the MacPherson chieftain mercilessly over the missing valuables until his death in 1764.
All overtures from normal mortals had proved unavailing. It remained to be seen whether his father could do any better. In 1755 hostilities broke out between Britain and France in north America. By common consent, a general European war could not be long delayed. This fact, plus the channel to the prince opened by Edgar in 1754, gave James motive and opportunity to begin a sustained correspondence with his son. It would be an exaggeration to say that relations between James and Charles improved after 1755, but at least they were now in touch with one another on a fairly regular basis.
The exchanges revealed a thinly-masked mutual hostility, common in such fraught relationships between father and son.43 The correspondence opened with James’s request (on 29 October 1754) for a letter setting out the details of his son’s financial difficulties. At first the prince did not rise to the bait. He answered through Edgar that he needed no help with his ‘lawsuit’.44 James waited until his son’s 34th birthday, on 31 December, before penning a homily in reply. He reproached Charles for taking it for granted that Providence had blessed the young Pretender more than the old. He himself had spent a lifetime hoping for a Stuart restoration, but it had never happened. It could well turn out the same for Charles, yet he was neglecting to provide an heir. He attacked the prince’s so-called friends who ‘have driven you into a labyrinth out of which it will be hard to extricate yourself.45 When the prince replied that he intended to do nothing contrary to his honour, James pounced again. ‘Do you rightly understand the extensive sense of honour and duty?’46
James sweetened the pill in May 1755 by proposing that the two of them work together to get an alliance with France, now on the brink of declaring war on England.47 The last of James’s many messages rebuking his son for fecklessness at such a critical political conjuncture came at a bad time for the prince. He was already smarting under Cluny’s criticisms. This time Charles struck back at his father with a stinging rebuke. Reverting to the question of heirs, he declared vehemently that he would never have any. James’s own career, he added tartly, should have shown him the folly of begetting heirs. Why, all the world waited to see how James’s son would turn out. The result was that from 1719 to 1745 the Jacobite movement was moribund.48
This nettled James. The hostility between the two was no longer kept under wraps. Returning to his son’s financial problems, he asked what had happened to his much-vaunted friends. Finally he could not resist open sarcasm: ‘What you gain by your present system I know not, but you fairly venture losing the advice and assistance of everybody that is not in that great secret.’49
James determined to tighten the screws on his son. Significantly, the episode of sending back the dismissed Avignon servants took place at the end of 1755. James followed this with an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Sir John Graeme to go as his personal representative to talk to Charles Edward.50 But by a stroke of fate James was suddenly handed the most effective of entering wedges.
Out of the blue Waters made a bad mistake. Piqued by the continuing slanders about the prince from the English Jacobites, and annoyed with Charles for not deigning to reply to them, Waters set the situation before James. Without naming Clementina Walkinshaw, he laid the blame squarely at her door:
There is a woman with the Prince who is the author of all this mischief, and unless she be got away from him without loss of time, it is only too apparent that H.R.H.’s reputation will be made very black over all Great Britain, so, with submission, there is a pressing necessity for the king to attempt a cure for this rising evil and to persuade the Prince to remove from the place he is in, for the government in England, I am persuaded, knows where he is.51
This was indiscreet and a bad error. Charles Edward had warned Waters that in no circumstances was he to divulge to James where he lived.52 Now Edgar pounced. By return he conveyed to Waters the king’s desire to know where his son was living, adding (just in case Waters had not got the point) that Waters himself must know, since he was so certain the English government knew where it was.53 He further asked if the name of the woman in question was Clementina Walkinshaw and if there was a child.
This elicited something like a howl of pain from Waters. He was impaled on a hook of his own making. ‘You pushed me too far, though I see you will say I brought it upon myself; theory told me there is no serving of two masters; experience convinces me.’ Still wriggling on the hook, he tried to pretend that he corresponded with the prince only through a poste restante; his exact whereabouts were known only to a few intimates. But Waters did concede that the woman was Clementina Walkinshaw and that there was a female c
hild of the union.54
With fulsome apologies, Waters apprised Charles Edward of his gaffe. Feeling himself cornered, the prince let Waters know his terms for a full reconciliation with James. He was to dismiss O’Brien (Lord Lismore) and to distance himself from Henry (Charles could not bring himself to mention his brother’s name, but spoke of ‘his young priest’).55 There, for the moment, the correspondence halted, brought to a sudden stop by another of James’s severe illnesses.56
While all this was going on, and partly as a result of James’s getting too close for comfort, the prince decided it was time to move on once more.57 This was an abrupt volte-face, given his 1755 attitudes. Ill-health and lethargy kept him confined to Basle for the whole of that year. He flatly turned down all invitations to go to Paris, and lived as a recluse, penning the occasional reflection on contemporary events, such as the great Lisbon earthquake that famously aroused Voltaire from his dogmatic slumbers.58 ‘Too ill to travel’ was the perennial refrain (too drunk, his enemies would have said).59 The renting of a new home suggested a quasi-permanent residence in Switzerland.60
Yet in June 1756 Charles and Clementina quit Basle. Liège had been the cheapest place they had lived in so far. Therefore it was to Liège that they returned.61 For the moment Charlotte remained in Basle.62
After leaving Clementina at their lodgings at Chausée St Gilles in Liège,63 the prince immediately set out on another of his secret journeys. This time his destination was Lorraine, where he was to confer with ex-king Stanislas. Charles ordered his agent Colonel Hussey to meet him in Luxembourg, but Hussey failed to keep the appointment.64
The prince pressed on to Lunéville. He soon showed that, when he had a mind to, he had lost none of his old capacity to charm. Stanislas was much taken with him and promised to promote his cause with his son-in-law Louis XV.65
On his return to Liège, Charles Edward was dismayed to hear from Waters that he and Clementina had already been observed in that town.66 He considered moving on to another Flanders town, possibly Tournai or even Ghent – anywhere where it was cheap.67 The nearby garrisons ruled out the two towns, as mature reflection soon revealed to the prince. France was out of the question for other reasons. For the moment Charles was at a loss.68
Then word came through that he had been seen in Calais and Compiègne.69 The original ‘sighting’ in Liège, it transpired, was simply a lucky guess. Much relieved, the prince took a residence near the novitiate house of the Jesuits in Liège, on the rue de Sure de Hase.70 It was settled that he would spend the winter there.71
But political business soon called him away to Paris. The Seven Years’ War was now in full spate. Charles Edward was hearing a lot of encouraging stories about French intentions towards the Stuarts. An army, 50,000 strong, had already been assembled in the Picardy ports. Against his will, the prince felt constrained by the urgent pleas of his followers to go to Paris to take soundings.
In November 1756 he passed through Brussels en route to the French capital.72 He took Clementina with him but left their child behind in Liège.73 On the afternoon of 25 November he reached Le Bourget, and came into Paris later that night.74
In Paris he renewed acquaintance with his old ally the duc de Richelieu and discussed with him and Lally a possible descent on England.75 The consensus seemed to be that for the moment the conduct of the war in Germany held France’s exclusive attention. The time for a project to restore the Stuarts was not yet. In his best ‘I told you so’ mood, the prince returned to Liège.76
Until mid-1758 the prince thereafter scarcely stirred from Liège and its environs. He made one trip to take the waters at Spa in June 1757,77 but otherwise increasingly sought solace in the bottle.
His tendency towards chronic alcoholism raises interesting questions about the relationship with Clementina. That the prince rowed with her, beat her and made her a scapegoat for his disappointments was now common knowledge, even though the wilder rumours of his behaviour towards her were false.78 One of the marks of the true alcoholic – and the prince was already dangerously close to qualification for that description – is a rejection of sexual intimacy as a balm for the assailing troubles. From his heavy consumption of wine and spirits alone, we should be able to infer that, whatever merit Charles had originally seen in Clementina as a mistress, he no longer perceived it. It is surely significant, too, that there were no more children of this ill-starred liaison.
For all that, he retained a touching faith in her fidelity to him (in all senses) and scoffed at rumours that she was trying to raise money to escape his clutches.79 No doubt this residual fondness for her was at the root of the false rumour that he had married her.80 But the prince’s position was crystal clear. Although he would never marry Clementina, it was a point of honour with him not to cast her off at the behest of the English Jacobites.81 The more the English party clamoured – and clamour they did, increasingly and vociferously, to the point of protesting that they would not co-operate in any French invasion until he had dismissed her – the more adamant the prince became.82
Ironically, the prince did have marriage on his mind at the time, though for quite other reasons. Although his official stance was that he would never marry until after a restoration, increasingly severe money problems tempted him to make a wealthy match as a way out of his financial morass.83 His straitened circumstances made him particularly bitter towards Cluny, who now found his way on to the prince’s short list of prime betrayers (along with O’Sullivan et al.) for his faulty stewardship of the Stuart plate.84 When mention of Cluny coincided with a further malfunction of the dreaded Julien Le Roy watch, as it did in May 1757, the prince’s rage knew no limits.85
While his supporters at Versailles lobbied the court for an invasion, and the ministers put them off with extravagant promises for the future, the prince’s public life at Liège continued uneventful. In September 1757 he moved to a more private and secure country house just outside the town.86 The drinking continued, as did the steady trickle of delegations from Jacobites in France urging more energetic pressurising of the French court.
But by now Charles Edward had more immediate problems. The years 1756–8 produced a determined attempt from James in Rome to get his son to ‘see reason’. In a desperate efflorescence of eleventh-hour epistolary effort, James triggered a sustained debate by letter between Rome and Liège. To make sense of it, we must first place it in the context of the Seven Years’ War and then examine the sombre psychological undercurrents.
The late 1750s saw a three-cornered relationship between James, Charles Edward and the French. Until 1759 French aims were simply to use the Stuarts as a scarecrow against England. James, on the other hand, was determined to force Louis XV bit by bit into giving more and more overt support for his cause. Charles Edward’s position was one of detachment. He did not trust France and was willing to be involved only in a certain, guaranteed descent on England, not Scotland or Ireland.
The complicating factor was the prince’s relationship with his father. Charles Edward refused to marry, as his father urged, or to give up Clementina Walkinshaw, as the English Jacobites demanded. This meant that France could not count on the support of the English Jacobites, even if they enlisted the prince on their side. It also meant that the kind of French guarantees the prince wanted would never be forthcoming. A firm and binding contract, in the form of a treaty of alliance like the Fontainebleau treaty of October 1745, could be made only between monarchs. Until James abdicated, Louis XV could not sign such a treaty for, if James was, in Bagehot’s terms, the ‘dignified’ element in the Stuart dynasty, Charles Edward was the ‘efficient’ part. A treaty with James alone would not be worth the paper it was written on. But royal protocol prohibited a treaty with Charles Edward alone. James would have to abdicate and name his elder son as successor. But James in turn would do this only if Charles gave up Clementina Walkinshaw, promised to marry a suitable bride, and came to Rome to make formal obeisance and compose their differences.
The prince refused to do any of these things. The full extent of shadow-boxing, tail-chasing and vicious circling involved in French relations with the Stuarts in the late 1750s can thus be appreciated.
A prolonged examination of the correspondence between James and Charles Edward in 1756–8 would be a wearisome endeavour, but some account of their verbal duelling must be given. The thesis of unconscious resentment and hatred between the two cannot really be sustained without copious illustration.87
James opened his campaign in a curious way for one who claimed to want to conciliate his son. First he rebuked him for accepting a loan from Stanislas.88 Next, he wrote to Louis XV to complain about his son.89 This was an extremely curious thing to do for one who claimed to want to present a united Stuart front to France.
Charles replied to his father’s overtures in his laconic quasi-heroic style: ‘His situation is more than singular and had he not always Providence to favour him more than many, … he would long ago be drowned.’90
James never liked it when anyone other than himself played the stoic or martyr. Crisply he cut through this and urged the prince to work closely with France and to come to Rome to discuss with him a unified policy towards Louis XV.91
Feeling himself put on the spot, the prince consulted his Mephistopheles Kelly – now newly restored to favour. Kelly recommended neutralising James by spreading a story at Versailles that he had already abdicated in favour of Charles.92 Kelly followed this up by another piece of arch-Machiavellianism. After making it clear that James’s only importance to him lay in how soon he would die, Kelly recommended a campaign of attrition and procrastination. A euphuistic letter, full of filial submission, should be sent to Rome to shut James up.93 Further stalling could be effected by the dispatch of an envoy to the Palazzo Muti to discuss common policy towards France.94 Finally, when James had been played out far enough on the line, the prince should go to Rome as the dutiful son. By that time James would be so desperate for a rapprochement that he would give Charles anything he asked.95
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