Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Biography (5 page)

Possibly the arrival of a son temporarily inspired James as much as it did his followers, putting fire in his eyes and sparking his rather damp spirits with new hope. The news from England was particularly heartening in the spring of 1721, what with widespread bank failures creating havoc and turning more and more people against their Hanoverian ruler and his unpopular ministers. Jacobites in Britain and France began once again to plot and plan, and every post day brought fresh letters of encouragement to the Palazzo Muti.

Agents of the English government in Rome became concerned about the reviving hopes of the Stuarts. The most colorful of these agents was Baron Philip von Stosch, a thoroughly dissolute intriguer and sometime dealer in shoddy antiquities. In his dispatches to London Von Stosch tried to alleviate apprehension by claiming that the infant prince was sickly, that he "would not live very long." Even if he did live, Von Stosch said, he was likely to be a cripple, for his legs were reported to be "so turned inwards and distorted that it is very much in doubt if he will ever be able to walk."

The infant prince did have difficulty learning to walk, and his nurse had to help him, holding him with reins as his knees were too weak to permit him to walk unaided. When he was older, his weak knees were strengthened by a series of jumping exercises and by dancing. Apparently the exercises were effective, for another observer, more reliable than Von Stosch, reported that the youngest Stuart was soon "running about from morning till night," healthy and strong as could be.

Strength and stamina, coupled with strong-willed high spirits, were the young prince's earliest characteristics. As he grew older he added to these a far rarer and more valuable quality in a future ruler: charisma.

The Duke of Liria, Berwick's son, who encountered Charles when he was about six and a half, thought him "the most ideal prince he had ever seen, a marvel of beauty, dexterity, grave, and almost supernatural address." His manner and conversation were "bewitching," his charm infectious. There was none of his father's stiff correctness about him, no artificial politeness, no sense that he was playing a role he had been carefully coached to play by his elders. He was, quite simply, a naturally engaging young person whom those around him could not help but adore. That they were meant to adore him, to kiss his hand and bow when entering his presence, because of his rank among Jacobites as Prince of Wales, was almost an irrelevance. They were moved to pay him homage because of something far more compelling than rank, a force of personality that was ill-defined but unmistakable.

That unusual gifts and accomplishments should accompany this force of personality seemed perfectly appropriate. The prince grew into a precocious athlete and huntsman, with his own stable of little horses, his own crossbows and pistols, his own ceremonial armor. He was an excellent shot, his aim true enough to shoot birds off the roof and to "split a rolling ball with a bolt three times in succession." He was proficient at tennis and shuttlecock, was a skilled dancer and an apt pupil at fencing. "No porter's child in the country," wrote one of his tutors, "has stronger legs and arms."

By the age of six or seven he was speaking Italian, French, and English—the latter with a noticeable accent—and was reading and learning to write. He had a quick mind, but little aptitude for study, preferring riding and shooting and resisting his tutors' attempts at discipline. No doubt they were as susceptible to his charm as everyone else, and in any case the most important accomplishments in a future king were military, not intellectual.

The prince's earliest letter, written in a large Italian hand and showing a less than perfect mastery of the handling of pen and ink, was composed in 1727.

"
Dear Papa
," it began,

I thank you mightily for your kind letter. I shall strive to obey you in all things. I will be very dutiful to Mama, and not jump too near her. I shall be much obliged to the Cardinal for his animals. I long to see you soon and in good health. I am, dear Papa,

Your most dutiful and affectionate son, Charles P[rince].
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When this letter was written, James was in France, attempting to rally the scattered Jacobite forces and to gather the backing, political and financial, for another invasion attempt. George I had died in June of 1727, and James, now nearly forty, was dutifully upholding the family honor by protesting the accession of his successor George II and championing the Stuart claim.

But his heart was no longer in it, and, brave though he undeniably was, he was gradually succumbing to continual frustration. He disliked having to keep his court in Italy, far from the kingdom he desired to regain. He was weary of having to be constantly on the alert for fleeting opportunities, constantly having to rally his dispirited followers when they lost heart and fell to bickering among themselves, constantly having to keep one step ahead of the continental rulers on whom he relied for support. He had the unenviable task of making his cause appear to be theirs, of convincing them that it was in their interest to back him even though that would mean alienating the English government. And this he had to do, day after day, while situations changed and uncertainty mounted.

It was hard work, an uphill battle that he must have feared he was doomed to lose. In 1727 and 1728, he met with failure everywhere. The French court had turned its back on him. There was no way he could get to Scotland with a sizable force of arms and men. In Lorraine pressure from England forced the duke to expel him. In Avignon, where the pope ruled, more English pressure was brought to bear in the form of military threats and threats against English Catholics. In the end, the pope, Benedict XII, recommended that James return to Italy. By this time George II was secure on his throne and the prospect of James III ever ascending that throne was remote indeed.

James's failure was all the more bitter in that his cause had been weakened by an ugly personal scandal.

Clementina, unstable, asthmatic and more than a little childish, had decided that she had had enough of marriage. She and James had produced two sons—a second son. Prince Henry, had been born in 1725—but motherhood had not brought her sufficient compensation for a joyless union with a man she had come to despise. To her James was ponderous, dull, overly conscientious; in short, unendurable. Everything about him—his heaviness of spirit, his lackluster leadership, his close alliance with Protestants—galled her. Her dissatisfaction gave intriguers their opportunity, and she allowed herself to be persuaded that James was being manipulated by unprincipled advisers, chiefly John Hay, James's secretary of state, his wife Marjory Hay, one of her own waiting women (and formerly a close friend), and James Murray, Marjory Hay's brother and Charles's principal tutor. When James dismissed her friend and confidante Mrs. Shelton, Clementina was enraged. Impulsively she moved out of the palace and went to live among the Ursuline sisters at the Convent of St. Cecilia.

The principal difficulty in the marriage was simple incompatibility, for which neither party was to blame. But other issues arose to cloud and complicate the breach between husband and wife. Despite her initial acquiescence in James's decision to surround Prince Charles with Protestant attendants, Clementina had come to distrust them and to accuse them of subverting her son's faith. She also accused James of treating her badly, and of infidelity with Marjory Hay. Given James's scrupulous gentlemanliness, both charges seem far-fetched, and there is no surviving evidence to support either of them. Still, there was a great deal of gossip, and it made James look ineffectual and farcical, while drawing attention away from his increasingly desperate political undertakings.

Worse still, the marital scandal created strain between James and the pope and certain of the cardinals. There were angry confrontations at the Palazzo Muti, reproachful letters, tensions that drained James of time and energy.

"See, Madam, to what difficulties you expose me!" James wrote in exasperation to Clementina. "What honorable man will venture to serve me after the scenes you have publicly exhibited?"
³
His lofty regality had been tarnished, his pride wounded, his very income affected—for the pope informed James that his pension would be cut in half and he himself denied any further papal audiences until he agreed "to give satisfaction to his wife, and remove scandal from his house."

Eventually Clementina and James became reconciled and she returned to the Palazzo Muti. But the reconciliation was largely a matter of form, the damage had been done. No wonder James was a king without a country, people said. How did he expect to govern a kingdom when he could not keep order in his own household?

James and his family were in fact living on the margins of reality. He acted the role of king when in public, appearing at civic fêtes under a canopy of state, wearing his Star and Garter, surrounding himself with those who addressed him as king and doing his best to maintain the appearance of royal surroundings. He entertained the Roman nobility and as many visiting English as possible, serving them bountifully with fine food and wine (though he himself ate roast beef and called for English beer) and diverting them with music and polite conversation. He drank healths to the English ladies, discussed English laws and customs with impressive familiarity, even displayed a knowledge of the names and histories of the English aristocracy. Yet it was all a feat of imagination, for James had no real experience of England and very little of Scotland, and had met few of the English. His preference for roast beef and English beer was an acquired taste, a cultivated eccentricity that fooled no one into actually thinking he was an Englishman.

The pretense extended to everyone and everything around him. His followers might call him king to his face, but they informed on him behind his back, their loyalty easily compromised by promises of money or glory elsewhere. His guests might eat his food and drink his wine with affability but were privately skeptical of his claims. His lodgings, both the Roman palazzo and the summer palazzo at Albano, were spacious but empty, for James could not afford to furnish them grandly and what money he had went to pay his servants and rescue his fellow exiles from their own humiliating poverty. His carriages, the guardsmen of his retinue, his horses, his very clothing came from the generosity of others. He had nothing of his own, except the anxieties that lack engendered.

And there were other anxieties, created by the unsettling presence of spies. In the employ of the duplicitous Baron von Stosch were dozens of James's servants, who gave the baron regular and detailed accounts of what went on at the Palazzo Muti. Nothing, it seemed, escaped the baron's notice—not what was whispered in the servants' quarters, not which baths Clementina visited in order to promote fertility, not what punishments were meted out to the little princes when they were disobedient. Even the oldest and apparently most faithful of the servants might be recruited as paid informers, and this led James, his wife and sons to be constantly wary.

Among James's close acquaintances was Cardinal Alessandro Albani, a wealthy, worldly and discriminating man who was the pope's nephew and whose other relatives were frequent guests at the Stuart palace. Albani, like his colleague, Von Stosch, was in the habit of letting the British government know everything he could discover about James, his family and his plans.

No one could be completely trusted. Hence the need for constant circumspection, secrecy, the presumption that unfriendly ears were always listening. Letters and messages had to be written in code, and messengers watched. People and places were referred to by cryptic references known only to an elite few. False information had to be spread in order to throw the hounds off the scent.

And where there were spies, there might well be poisoners, assassins, gangs of thugs paid to harass and do harm. Italy had a long tradition of intrigue and violence, in some circles it was a way of life. No one was immune from its menace, no matter how powerful. Indeed, power was a magnet for violence, as James well knew. The dark, narrow alleyways of Rome were hiding places for colonies of thieves and brigands, men who waited their chance to rob prosperous tourists, murder priests and rape nuns. Such characters would not scruple to assassinate a Pretender to the English throne, or his sons. Not when every street had chapels and oratories offering sanctuary to criminals, where they could be neither pursued nor punished.

Rome was, in a sense, a fitting setting for the court of a Pretender, its antique pretense hiding a shabby reality. In the early eighteenth century Rome was a grandiose shell of ruins and parkland inhabited by a small population catering to hordes of tourists, most of them English. Immensely broad avenues stretched away across long distances, flanked by magnificent churches, villas and public buildings. Wide piazzas adorned by opulent fountains and towering antique statues drew crowds of sightseers, beggars, peasants driving heavily laden donkeys and idlers resting from the midday heat. The Forum, then known as the Cow Field, or Campo Vaccino, was a jumble of half-submerged arches, towers and columns through which livestock wandered. Weeds sprouted from the ruins, bits of fluted marble and carved capitals jutted from the dirt and mud underfoot. Tumble-down huts and cottages, some built from the ruins, leaned against monuments, their occupants lounging in the shade of patches of trees. Animals were tethered in the Colosseum, which was little more than a dilapidated dunghill.

Yet despite its dilapidation, the sheer scale of the city overwhelmed the visitor and lent grandeur to ordinary events. Buildings were outsize, monuments huge and imposing, as if built to accommodate giants. The stairways that led up the steep hillsides were wide enough for twenty people to walk abreast. Thousands could crowd into the enormous squares. The vast porticoes of the basilicas alone provided shade and a communal gathering place for hundreds, while the extensive gardens and fields swallowed up hundreds more. Rome was not only grand, it was solemn, the gravity of the ancient ruins compounded by the weighty majesty of the baroque. Across the grand piazzas, tall antique columns faced massive neoclassical façades, heroic statues looked out on monumental domes and scenic balustrades. Over all floated wide skies and, for much of the year, a mercilessly hot sun.