In unravelling the hidden allusions of Charles’s correspondence, I at first recognised Madame d’Aiguillon in Charles’s friend ‘La Grandemain.’ The name seemed a suitable sobriquet, for a lady with gros bras, like Madame d’Aiguillon, might have large hands. The friendship of ‘La Grandemain’ with the philosophe, Montesquieu, also pointed to Madame d’Aiguillon. But Charles, at a later date, makes a memorandum that he has deposited his strong box, with money, at the rooms of La Comtesse de Vassé, in the Rue Saint Dominique, Faubourg St. Germain. That box, again, as he notes, was restored by ‘La Grandemain.’ This fact, with Grimm’s anecdote, identifies ‘La Grandemain,’ not with Madame d’Aiguillon, but with Madame de Vassé, ‘the Comtesse,’ as Goring calls her, though Grimm makes her a Marquise. If Montesquieu’s private papers and letters in MS. had been published in full, we should probably know more of this matter. His relations with Bulkeley were old and most intimate. Before he died he confessed to Father Routh, an Irish Jesuit, whom Voltaire denounces in ‘Candide.’ This Routh must have been connected with Colonel Routh, an Irish Jacobite in French service, husband of Charles’s friend, ‘la Comtesse de Routh.’ Montesquieu himself, though he knew, as we shall show, the Prince’s secret, was no conspirator. Unluckily, as we learn from M. Vian’s life of the philosopher, his successors have been very chary of publishing details of his private existence. It is, of course, conceivable that Helvetius, who told Hume that his house had sheltered Charles, is the philosophe mentioned by Mademoiselle Luci and Madame de Vassé. But Charles’s proved relations with Montesquieu, and Montesquieu’s known habit of frequenting the society of his lady neighbours in the convent of St. Joseph, also his intimacy with Charles’s friend Bulkeley, who attended his death-bed, all seem rather to point to the author of ‘L’Esprit des Lois.’ The philosophes, for a moment, seem to have expected to find in Prince Charlie the ‘philosopher-king’ of Plato’s dream!
The Prince’s distinguished friends unluckily did not succeed in inspiring him with common sense.
On August 16 he defends the conduct of cette home, ou tête de fer (himself), and he writes a few aphorisms, Maximes d’un l’ome sauvage! He aimed at resembling Charles XII., called ‘Dener Bash’ by the Turks, for his obstinacy, a nickname also given by Lord Marischal to the Prince. Like Balen, he was termed ‘The Wild,’ ‘by knights whom kings and courts can tame.’ He writes to the younger Waters,
To Waters, Junior.
‘Ye 21st August, 1749.
‘I receive yrs. of ye 8th. Current with yr two as mentioned and I heve send their Answers for Avignon, plese to Enclose in it a Credit for fifteen thousand Livers, to Relive my family there, at the disposal of Stafford and Sheridan. I am sorry to be obliged oftener to draw upon you, than to remit, and cannot help Reflection on this occasion, on the Misery of that poor Popish Town, and all their Inhabitants not being worth four hundred Louidors. Mr. B. [Bulkeley] Mistakes as to my taking amis anything of him, on the contrary I am charmed to heve the opinion of everybody, particularly them Like him, as I am shure say nothing but what they think: but as I am so much imbibed in ye English air, where My only Concerns are, I cannot help sometimes differing with ye inhabitants of forain Climats.
‘I remain all yours.
‘15,000 ff. Credit for Stafford and Sheridan at Avignon.’
‘Newton’ kept writing, meanwhile, that Cluny can do nothing till winter, ‘on account of the sheilings,’ the summer habitations of the pastoral Highlanders. There may have been sheilings near the hiding-places of the Loch Arkaig treasure. On September 30 we find Charles professing his inébranlable amitié for Madame de Talmond. He bids his courier stop at Lunéville, as she may be at the Court of Stanislas there.
The results of Goring’s mission to England may be gleaned from a cypher letter of ‘Malloch’ (Balhaldie) to James. Balhaldie had been in London; he found the party staunch, ‘but frighted out of their wits.’ The usual names of the official Jacobites are given—Barrymore, Sir William Watkyns Wynne, and Beaufort. But they are all alarmed ‘by Lord Traquair’s silly indiscretion in blabbing to Murray of Broughton of their concerns, wherein he could be of no use.’ They had summoned Balhaldie, and complained of the influence of Kelly, an adviser bequeathed to Charles by his old tutor, Sir Thomas Sheridan, now dead. ‘They saw well that the Insurrection Sir James Harrington was negotiating, to be begun at Litchfield Election and Races, in September ’47, was incouraged, and when that failed, the Insurrection attempted by Lally’s influence on one Wilson, a smuggler in Sussex, which could serve no end save the extinction of the unhappy men concerned in them; therefore they had taken pains to prevent any. They lamented the last steps the Prince had taken here as scarcely reparable.’
Goring had now been with them, and they had insisted on the Prince’s procuring a reconciliation with the French Court. ‘Goring’s only business was to say that the Prince had parted with Kelly, Lally, Sir James Graeme, and Oxburgh, and the whole, and to assure friends in England that he would never more see any one of them.’ Charles was, therefore, provided by his English friends with 15,000l., and the King’s timid party of men with much to lose won a temporary triumph. He sent 21,000 livres to his Avignon household, adding, ‘I received yours with a list of my bookes: I find sumne missing of them. Particularly Fra Paulo [Sarpi] and Boccaccio, which are both rare. If you find any let me know it.’
Charles was more of a bibliophile than might be guessed from his orthography.
On November 22, 1749, Charles, from Lunéville, wrote a long letter to a lady, speaking of himself in the third person. All approaches to Avignon are guarded, to prevent his return thither. ‘Despite the Guards, they assure me that he is in France, and not far from the capital. The Lieutenant of Police has been heard to say, by a person who informed me, that he knew for certain the Prince had come in secret to Paris, and had been at the house of Monsieur Lally. The King winks at all this, but it is said that M. de Puysieux and the Mistress (Madame de Pompadour) are as ill disposed as ever. I know from a good source that 15,000l. has been sent to the Prince from England, on condition of his dismissing his household.’ [91]
The spelling of this letter is correct, and possibly the Prince did not write it, but copied it out. That Louis XV. winked at his movements is probable enough; secretive as he was, the King may have known what he concealed even from his Minister, de Puysieux.