Bonnie Prince Charlie: Charles Edward Stuart (Pimlico) (6 page)

Much of the prince’s training at this time was of the outdoor or physical kind, especially in the use of weapons. In marked contrast to his brother at the same age, Charles was always the aspiring warrior. Just before the marital break-up, in August 1725, when James and his family were in procession in the Piazza Navona, Charles Edward could have been seen, carried on a dais, from which he would ‘shoot’ at onlookers with his crossbow,
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This was the shape of things to come. In Bologna he was taught accurate shooting with the crossbow and other weapons and proved to have a remarkably good eye. He soon settled into a vigorous masculine routine; only Lady Nithsdale as governess provided the feminine touch.
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A report from the royal secretary James Edgar in March 1727 conveniently sums up his progress:

The Prince improves daily in body and mind to the admiration and joy of everybody. As to his studies, he reads English now currently (sic) and has begun to learn to write. He speaks English perfectly well, and the French and Italian very little worse. He has a stable of little horses and every day almost diverts him by riding. Chevalier Geraldin is his riding master. He is most alert in all his exercises, such as shooting, the tennis, shuttlecock, and a gentleman in town has prepared a
caccia
of pigeons and hares to be shot by him this afternoon. You would be surprised to see him dance, nobody does it better, and he bore his part at the balls in the carnival as if he were already a man.
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Meanwhile 1727 seemed to herald some brightening of James’s fortunes. His half-brother Berwick’s son, the thirty-one-year-old duke of Liria, was appointed Spanish ambassador to Russia. A fervent Jacobite, Liria assured James he would do all in his power to induce the Czarina Catherine to throw Russian might behind the house of Stuart. The one obstacle in his path was the continuing estrangement between James and Clementina that so damaged Jacobite credibility. Liria proposed to call at Bologna on his way from Madrid to St Petersburg to see if he could patch things up. He arrived at Bologna at the beginning of May 1727.
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James was by now softening in his attitude to Clementina. He at last appreciated the grave damage the rift had done to his own cause. He was willing to give Inverness an honourable discharge. Dunbar had promised to turn Catholic to please the queen. The only condition
James
still held out for was the dismissal of the detested Mrs Sheldon.
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Liria asked permission to write to Clementina, exhorting her to return to her husband and family, arguing that no credible barrier to a reconciliation now remained. James agreed. Liria stayed in Bologna until 4 May, composing a carefully modulated appeal to Clementina. While he was in the papal state Liria struck up an immediate rapport with the young Charles Edward. Describing him as having a beautiful figure and almost supernatural cleverness, Liria was particularly impressed by the six-year-old’s intellectual potential.
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Charles Edward in turn responded well to this sensitive soldier-diplomat of a cousin. The seeds of his second successful relationship with an older male were sown.

Liria had originally intended to present his letter in person to Clementina in Rome, but this proved unnecessary. Suddenly James received word that Clementina was returning to Bologna. James vowed to let bygones be bygones.
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But 1727 had not exhausted its quota of surprises. Even as James digested the news of the queen’s return, dramatic tidings were received from England. George I had died suddenly. This was an opportunity James could not afford to miss. Sending his children into the country, he despatched an express to the Pope, giving him the overall responsibility for the prince’s education during his own absence. Then, at the end of June, he left Bologna for the north.
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He was to be away for six months.

From being without a mother for nearly two years, Charles Edward now found himself fatherless while his mother returned. It is perhaps not without significance that at the precise moment of his mother’s arrival in Bologna, the young prince should have been taken ill.
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We know little of Charles Edward’s relations with his mother during the second half of 1727. Clementina’s letters to the absent James about her children are curiously offhand and contrasted with the fussiness and overprotectiveness of James’s enquiries about them.
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It fell to Dunbar to reassure the absent king that Charles Edward still remembered him and continually asked about him, especially when the newspapers arrived.
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Meanwhile James’s dash for the Channel coast had ended in failure. The French, at this time in alliance with England, refused to allow him to set foot on their territory and applied pressure to have him expelled from Lorraine. Disconsolately, James fell back on the relative sanctuary of the papal state of Avignon. Here he wrote to Clementina to come and join him, leaving the children in Bologna.
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To
his fury she refused, alleging that she found it impossible to leave her children, but really because the French had threatened to arrest her if she tried to cross their territory en route to Avignon.
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There was another reason too. Clementina had still not dismissed Mrs Sheldon from her service. James made it clear that if the queen arrived in Avignon with that personage, he would take it upon himself to dismiss her formally in the presence of the papal vice-legate.
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But, such was the pressure being exerted on the Vatican by both England and France, it was already clear to James that he would have to return to Italy the following spring.
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It was time for James to return anyway. His absence led to a serious breach of hospitality by the Bolognese. Meeting the young Charles Edward on horseback at the gates of the city on a narrow road, a local priest refused to move over to the side of the road even when he saw the Stuart colours displayed. This insult was a serious embarrassment to the legate of Bologna especially after James had entrusted Charles Edward to papal care. The offending priest was immediately imprisoned.
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James returned to Bologna in January 1728, after tarrying for a few days sightseeing in Milan. The royal secretary Edgar, sent on ahead, found Charles Edward much changed (and to his mind greatly improved) after six months: ‘almost a man in his behaviour and carriage and at least two fingers taller than when I left him’.
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Yet, true to type, when his father arrived a few days later, his first instruction to his son concerned duty, not admiration: Charles was to write a letter of New Year’s greeting to Cardinal Gualterio.
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But if James hoped for a reversion to normal family life on his return, he was deeply shocked at the change in Clementina. ‘Neurotic’ would be too mild a word to describe her behaviour; religious mania comes nearer the mark. This is how James described her:

I proposed to her diverting herself in the Carnival, but she showed no inclination to it. She has taken no manner of amusement, not even taking the air, and when she is not at church or at table, is locked up in her room and sees no mortal but her maids and sons. She … fasts to that degree that I believe no married woman that pretends to have children ever did. I am very little with her. I let her do what she will.
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To cap all, Clementina persisted in seeing Mrs Sheldon, whom she had set up in an establishment elsewhere in Bologna, and would not listen to James’s plea for the return of his own favourites the Invernesses, now banished to Avignon.

What seems to have happened is that those who pleaded and cajoled with the queen to return to her wifely duty did their work too well. Taking her cue from her beloved St Francis de Sales, Clementina decided that marriage with James was a cross she had been called on to bear. Very well, the crucifixion would be complete. She would fast and mortify the flesh. It would seem that Clementina never really recovered from the depression following Henry’s birth. She was now in the grip of genuine mental illness. If ever the death instinct could be cited to explain human behaviour, it was surely the key to Clementina Sobieska from 1728 onwards.

Faced with this alarming development, James freely confessed himself out of his depth. It is clear that he resumed normal marital relations with Clementina, but after less than two months he found the strain too much. In the vain hope that Clementina could be argued out of her state of mind, he went to Rome to enlist the help of friendly cardinals.

The strain of living with a neurotic mother must have been considerable for an over-active child like Charles Edward. In May 1728, under Sheridan’s guidance, he wrote a well-known and very sad letter to his father in Rome, promising not to upset his mother by jumping near her.
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On his return from Rome, James tried vainly on Clementina the arguments that had been rehearsed to him in Rome. Now there was a further complication. Clementina was pregnant again.
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Fearful of the effect of this both on his wife and his sons, James sent his children to the country for the rest of the summer and left Bologna himself.
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It was a wise decision. As expected, the pregnancy was a difficult one. The queen complained of excessive pain and became convinced that she was suffering from an ectopic foetus.
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Hearing this, James returned to Bologna and hired the city’s best physician to be in constant attendance.
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By now under considerable stress himself, James decided to take his eldest son on a tour of northern Italy. They arrived in Parma on 10 June 1728, spent the 11th at Colorno and returned to Parma that evening for the opera, which the young prince greatly enjoyed.
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A few days later James sent Charles Edward out to Piacenza to pay a courtesy call on the veteran duchess of Parma, who was seriously ill.
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All in all, the trip was a success, and James expressed himself very pleased with his son’s behaviour.
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But he returned to depressing news at Bologna. The queen claimed to have miscarried at the end of July, hardly surprising given her way of life.
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The stress of life with Clementina now began to tell on
James
. Always prone to psychosomatic illnesses at times of extreme tension, he lapsed into a serious illness in October.
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The valetudinarian atmosphere in the Stuart court was contagious. In September Dunbar was given sick leave until spring 1729.
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John Paul Stafford, already confirmed as Henry’s governor, was given temporary charge of Charles Edward; the idea was that Stafford would get to know the younger prince while he tutored Charles.
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As if to prove the point that there was something ill-starred about the Jacobite household at Bologna, Stafford too immediately went down with fever.
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James, always one for taking the wrong decision at the wrong time, chose this moment to bring his two children back from the country.
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Apprehensive about the epidemic at his court, he did, however, arrange for an experienced physician to be in permanent attendance.
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The perfervid atmosphere was not helped by an announcement that the queen was pregnant again. This time there was total confusion over dates.
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Then in January 1729 secretary Edgar made the following report to one of his correspondents:

I am sorry to have occasion here to confirm to you that the queen herself, the midwife and the doctors have all been mistaken in thinking Her Majesty to be with child. Now it is very certain she is not, nor has been at any time.
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When a sense of chaos so clearly impresses itself across the centuries, we may well speculate what life in this hothouse of illness, rumour and uncertainty were doing to Charles Edward. All we know is that he spent most of the autumn days of 1728 playing golf, at which he became expert.
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Still James dithered about how to resolve his personal affairs. He had ennobled his favourites the Hays – they were now Lord and Lady Inverness – but Clementina had insisted on their banishment. He longed to recall Inverness, but feared that this might precipitate a second flight by Clementina.
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Yet since the Pope was now showing signs of greater friendliness after their dramatic quarrel over the queen, James began to nurture hopes that his affairs might take an upward turn if he took his court back to Rome and was publicly reconciled with the Pontiff. He decided on an exploratory visit to Rome. Such was James’s indecisiveness still that he even found it hard to decide whether he should travel to Rome publicly or incognito.
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Eventually he made up his mind and set off for Rome at the beginning of January 1729.
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On arrival at Rome, he had an audience with the Pope. It went
well
: Benedict even sent back a blessing for the prince who had refused to kiss his feet five years earlier.
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James decided to resume residence in the Palazzo Muti, intending his family to join him there in the spring.
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Feeling more settled in mind, and doubtless a little guilty about the uncertainty and chaos he had lately visited on his eldest son, James took the opportunity to write one of his effusive letters to Charles Edward, full of praise for the prince’s patience and his ‘mighty well writ letters’.
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Significantly, perhaps, the prince was at that moment once again in a low state of health. The departure from Bologna was delayed to enable him to get his strength up for the journey.
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To Clementina meanwhile James gave a hint of what he expected at Rome by writing that what his health needed now was not drugs but an absence of stress.
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