Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (37 page)

It was clear to the foreign minister that Charles, as he put it, "had not a steady enough head for a considerable undertaking to be run according to his views." Still, he would be put in nominal command once the enterprise was ready to be launched. Until then Charles was little more than a nuisance, protesting the successive tactics proposed by the French and determined not to let them use him as nothing more than a bluff to force the British to make peace. He refused to lead troops into either Ireland or Scotland, he said; he would invade southern England and march on London or he would have nothing to do with the venture at all.

By mid-July of 1759 Choiseul had decided to land troops at Portsmouth, with a secondary landing at Glasgow. An extensive fleet of three hundred and thirty-seven ships carrying nearly fifty thousand men would be launched at night, protected by armed cargo boats. Preparations gathered momentum. Charles, his skepticism dissolved, envisioned the achievement of his long-deferred dream.

But the British struck first. In August the French Mediterranean fleet was severely damaged off Lagos in Portugal, while the decisive battle of Quiberon Bay south of Belle-Isle destroyed the invasion fleet and made Choiseul's scheme completely unworkable. British intelligence had discovered the plans, and the intransigence of the British prime minister, William Pitt, had ensured the French defeat.

Now, barely a year later, Charles was forced to confront a stinging personal defeat to parallel the military one. Just as he had had little or no control over Choiseul's invasion scheme, and had lost his chance when it collapsed, so he had been unable to control Clementina, and had lost her and Charlotte along with her. In the fall of 1759 he was fast approaching his fortieth birthday. His youth had run out, and his fortunes had never looked more bleak. Alienated from his father and brother, spectacularly unsuccessful as a father himself, thwarted yet again in the military arena, no longer idolized but repugned as a wife-beating drunkard, Charles faced his fifth decade depressed and alone.

Chapter 23

In 1765 James Boswell was in Rome, looking for a classical subject for a large historical painting he had recently commissioned. He had the idea to consult a fellow Scot, Andrew Lumisden, who since the death of James Edgar in 1764 had been serving as secretary to James Stuart at the Palazzo Muti.

Boswell was only twenty-five, a young law student with an exceptionally observant eye, enjoying his tour of the continent before returning to Britain to begin professional life. He was naturally curious about the Old Pretender, by now a shadowy figure remembered chiefly for having fathered his much celebrated son. But Boswell was wary: might his visit to the palace be construed as treason? Not if he avoided meeting the Pretender in person, and did not discuss politics, he assured himself in his journal.

As it turned out, his worries were for nothing. James, a feeble recluse who suffered from severe stomach pains and fainting fits and periodically went into convulsions, rarely saw anyone except Lumisden and his other servants. He stayed in his room, reportedly "in very great decay," resting and praying and, when necessary, receiving those few English visitors to Rome who remembered him. His pale, long face had become chalk-white and fretted with wrinkles, his full lips drooped and had no color. His sunken eyes, always gently melancholy, were sadder than ever as he grew weaker and weaker, knowing that unless some miracle occurred he would die without the consolation of seeing his elder son once more.

James had represented the Stuart claim to the British throne for nearly sixty-four years, a far longer time than any crowned monarch had held it. His life had so far spanned five reigns and part of a sixth, the reigns being those of his father James H his half-sisters Mary (with her husband, William of Orange) and Anne, his distant cousins George I, George II and, since 1760, George III. He had ceased to be an object of interest to the Romans, and most of the English too had forgotten him. The Jacobite exiles in Rome had dwindled to an elderly few who were still clamorously dependent on their aged benefactor's bounty, but James was no longer capable of dealing with them; he left it to Lumisden to distribute his charity and placate the importunate.

In fact, Lumisden told Boswell, for some time all "uneasy things" had been concealed from James, and he gave as an example a recent minor contretemps over the Duke of York. The Stuarts and their followers had always called James's second son Henry "Duke of York," and he was generally known in Rome as "Cardinal York." So when the Hanoverian Edward, Duke of York, brother of the reigning monarch George III, came to Italy and was accorded his royal title the Stuart duke was forced to complain. He took care not to let his ailing father know anything about the matter, however, as James "would have been much hurt." As it turned out, Henry complained to the Roman authorities about Duke Edward's reception, and the English envoy Mann complained about the honors shown to Cardinal York, and the incident ended.

Had James found out about the conflict over the ducal title, he might not have cared, for in his last years politics mattered little to him. His chief concern was for Charles.

For sixteen years James had not seen his son, nor had he known where to find him. Their correspondence had dwindled away to nothing on Charles's side, though James continued to send fatherly letters out into the void, admonishing his son to "rise out of his lethargy" and show "by his actions" that he was still a force on the European stage. "I shall take it for granted that in your present situation you are not only buried alive, as you really are, but in effect you are dead and insensible to everything," James wrote in 1762. He knew where Clementina and Charlotte were, for he had helped Clementina to obtain her lodgings at the elegant old Convent of the Visitation of Our Lady in Paris and sent her twelve thousand francs every year, in addition to paying the costs of Charlotte's education. But Charles continued to be elusive.

"O my Dear Child," James wrote plaintively, "could I but once have the satisfaction of seeing you before I die!" And in another letter, written a year before Boswell came to Rome, James queried his errant son: "Will you not run straight to your father? . . . Here is no question of the past but only of saving you from utter destruction in the future. Is it possible," he concluded, "you would rather be a vagabond on the face of the earth than return to a father who is all love and tenderness for you?"
¹

Lumisden confided to Boswell that he too wrote to Charles, as his predecessor James Edgar had, to urge him to come to his elderly father's bedside, but to no avail. The secretary took his guest on a tour of the Muti Palace, showing him drawings made by Charles as a boy, carefully preserved, and inviting him to return whenever he liked. Boswell and Lumisden became friends, and in the course of the former's sojourn in Rome he availed himself of the hospitality at the Muti a number of times. He also traveled to Frascati to see Henry preside at mass, exclaiming afterward that the cardinal was most "majestic and elegant" with the face of an angel.
²

In 1765 Henry and his father were on easy and affectionate terms, but this had not always been the case. When Henry first returned to Rome from France at the age of twenty-two, he had lived with James as before, but not as the dutiful son James wanted. Henry had developed his own tastes and habits, and was no longer inclined to spend quiet evenings with his father, reading aloud to him from the lives of the saints. Instead Henry preferred to give parties for his musician friends, and arrange for the singing of oratorios and other cultural events. James disapproved of Henry's companions, especially a young priest named Lercari, with whom Henry developed a strong and almost certainly homosexual bond.

The straitlaced James was horrified, and demanded that Henry dismiss Lercari from the household. Henry defied his father, and went on defying him even when James appealed to the pope and threatened to enter a monastery unless Henry did as he asked. The young cardinal was more stubborn than the aging nobleman. Eventually James asked his son to leave his house, and Henry obliged, warning his father that he would never speak to him again. There was a prolonged estrangement, but when after several years Henry's attachment to Lercari weakened, he made up the quarrel with his father. Still, Henry would not live with James again and kept a separate establishment.

In 1765 Henry was forty years old, popular with his flock at Frascati, influential in the curia, and extremely wealthy.
³
He held ecclesiastical preferments worth tens of thousands of pounds, chiefly in France but also in the Netherlands, Spain, and Mexico. While music was his passion, he also collected books—Bibles in many languages, classical works, many books in English—and by the time he died his collection had reached fifteen thousand volumes. To outward appearances at least, Henry was a fulfilled and happy man, unlike his older brother, and the only thing lacking to make his happiness complete was a reconciliation with Charles. As early as February of 1765, Henry had written to Charles in an attempt to persuade him to end the "disunion" that for so many years had "rendered them ... so useless to one another," Later in the year, as James's health continued to fail, Henry wrote again, and this time Charles, knowing that his father would not last much longer, was inclined to be warmly responsive.

"Your letter of October 30, my dear brother, and that joined to it have been sent to me," Charles wrote from Bouillon. "I am most sensible of all the marks of your good heart and of your attention to my interests." Charles assured Henry that he felt once again all his old "tenderness and friendship" for him, and hoped to express them in person as soon as possible. He would prepare himself to leave France immediately, as he was just as impatient to be with Henry as the latter was to see him again. "If I had the wings of a bird we would both be satisfied very soon," Charles concluded, calling himself "Your most affectionate brother, Charles P.R."
⁴

Of course, the reunion was bound to lead to complications of protocol. Charles's return to Rome would symbolize more than just a return to the Stuart family circle; there would be the question of his rank and privileges. Charles had lived incognito for many years, now he would be returning to public life in the one city where the Stuart court had always been accorded royal status. Moreover, as James's death was imminent, Charles would be returning, not as Prince of Wales, but as king.

Through Henry, Charles asked the pope to accord him the same "marks of royalty" that James enjoyed, along with other dignities and distinctions. Henry pleaded his brother's case, but lost. The pope's reply was that he would be pleased to see Charles again, and would have him treated according to his distinguished rank, but as to according him royal status, he neither could nor wanted to. It was a courteous but cold and utterly uncompromising reply. As far as the pope was concerned, James was the last Stuart "king." A decision had been made decades earlier not to continue to acknowledge any more Pretenders, and nothing had changed since then to cause that policy to be abandoned.
⁵

Apparently Charles decided not to let the question of his alleged regality stand in the way of his return to Rome, for he set out from Bouillon on December 30, 1765, the day before his forty-fifth birthday. He had decided, it seems, to drop the enduring resentment he felt toward Henry. According to the always hostile reports of Mann in Florence, he had been "very melancholy" since Clementina left him, and more inclined to seek solace in drink; it may be that his need for a family link of some sort was stronger than his old grudge against his brother. Then too, his sense of fitness, at least where his royal claims were concerned, was always strong. He was his father's successor, therefore it was fitting that he should succeed to James's palace, income and status as well as his title. And there was an additional reason for his decision, a very pressing one: he had no money left.

For years James had sent funds to Waters for Charles's use, but at some point these periodic allowances had ceased, and Charles had run through what capital he had. He could no longer afford to maintain his small personal household, plus his servants at Avignon, Paris and elsewhere. He expected to profit handsomely from James's death, and he intended to be on hand to receive his share of the estate when the time came.
⁶

James died on January 1, 1766, at nine in the evening. Henry was not at his bedside, but Lumisden was, and the secretary noted that his master died as he had lived, ''with his usual mild serenity in his countenance." No doubt he was at peace with himself and with God, and given his remarkably benign disposition, it may well be that on his deathbed he forgave his wayward elder son.

Charles heard the news of his father's death as he made his way southward. He would miss the obsequies, which were to be held at St. Peter's, but this was just as well. He instructed the messenger who brought him the news from Rome to tell Henry to prepare a royal welcome for him, and to get the Palazzo Muti ready for a new monarch. Either he was bluffing, or Charles sincerely expected that the pope and cardinals would soften their stance toward him once he was actually on the scene. Or he may have overestimated Henry's influence, as he was to do more than once in the years to come.

The journey was arduous, the mountain roads slippery with ice. Heavy rains and sleet led to delays and postponements. Somewhere along the way the coach in which Charles was riding had a serious accident, causing him to reinjure his sore and varicosed legs. On January 23, he finally reached the periphery of the capital and Henry met him at an inn on the Flaminian Way. The cardinal was all smiles and sympathy for his injured brother, and had him helped into his own elegant gilded coach for the remaining few miles into the city. No guard of honor waited at the Porta del Popolo to welcome King Charles HI, no papal envoy greeted him. The teeming, reeking life of the Roman streets had not been interrupted to make a pathway for his arrival, and the Romans who knelt and crossed themselves as the gilded coach passed them were paying homage to the cardinal and not his long lost brother.