‘She spoke to him of a certain miracle, of daily occurrence in her country. There is a family, or caste, which, from father to son, have the power of going into the flames without being burned, and who by dint of charms permitted by the Inquisition can extinguish fires. The Earl promised to surrender to a proof so evident, if he might be present and light the fire himself. The lady agreed, but the questadore, as these people are called, would never try the experiment, though he had done so on a former occasion; he said that fire had been made by a heretic, who mingled charms with it, and that he felt them from afar.’
This was unlucky, as these families whom fire does not take hold on exist to-day in Fiji, as of old among the Hirpi of Mount Soracte.
The Earl had no trouble with the Inquisition, being allowed to have what books he pleased, as long as he did not lend them to Spanish subjects. ‘His religious ideas were far from strict ... but he could not endure to hear these questions touched on when women were present, or the poor in spirit: it was a kind of talk which in general he carefully avoided,’—except among philosophes.[11] Hume tells us that the Earl Marischal and Helvetius thought they were ascribing an excellent quality to Prince Charles when they said that he ‘had learned from the philosophers at Paris to affect a contempt of all religion.’ It seems improbable that the Earl was more ‘emancipated’ than Hume, but his wandering life had made him acquainted with the extremes of Scottish Presbyterianism, with the Inquisition in Spain, the devotions of his King in Rome, the levities of Voltaire and Frederick, and all the contemptuous certainties of the Encyclopédistes. The Earl rather loved a bold jest or two, in philosophic company, and his mots were not always in good taste. As a Norseman’s religion was mainly that of his sword, the Earl’s appears to have been that of his character, which was instinctively affectionate, indulgent, and charitable. If he had neither Faith nor Hope, which we cannot assume, he was rich in Charity.
It is, perhaps, no longer possible to trace all the wanderings of the Earl after his brother entered the Russian service in 1728. In those years the exiles were mainly concerned about the quarrels between James and his wife, which had an ill effect on their Royal reputation in Europe. The Courts chiefly solicited for aid at this period were those of Moscow and Vienna. Spain did not pay her pension to James with regularity, and the Earl Marischal, then as later, may have suffered from the same inconvenience. This may account for his return to Rome, where he resided in James’s palace, about 1730-34. ‘He has the esteem of all that has the honour to be known to him, and may be justly styled the honour of our Cause,’ writes William Hay to Admiral Gordon, who represented Jacobite interests in Russia (Feb. 2, 1732). The little Court at Rome was as full of jealousies as if it had been at St. James’s. Murray, brother of Lord Mansfield, was Minister, under the title of Lord Dunbar, while James’s other ‘favourite’ Hay (Lord Inverness) was at Avignon out of favour, and had turned Catholic. The pair were generally detested by the other mock-courtiers. These gentlemen had formed themselves into an Order of Chivalry, ‘The Order of Toboso,’ alluding to their Quixotry. Prince Charles (aged twelve) and the Duke of York (a hero of seven) were the patrons. ‘They are the most lively and engaging two boys this day on earth,’ writes William Hay. The Knights of the Order sent to Gordon in Russia their cheerful salutations, signed by ‘Don Ezekiel del Toboso’ (Zeky Hamilton), ‘Don George Keith’ (the Earl), and so on. They declined to elect Murray, because he had ‘the insolence to fail in his respect to a right honourable lady who is the ever honoured protectress of the most illustrious Order of Toboso,’ Lady Elizabeth Caryl. A number of insults to Murray follow in the epistle.[12]
All this was rather dull, distasteful work for the Earl. He received from James the Order of the Thistle (‘the green ribbon’); but, except perhaps at Rome, he would not wear a decoration not more imposing than that of the Toboso Order. Writing to his brother, he drew a pretty picture of the little Duke of York, who was fond of the Earl, and used to bring his weekly Report on Conduct to be criticised and sent on to Keith, far away in Russia. Keith was asked to comment on it, or, if he did not, the Earl was diplomatist enough to do so in his name. Prince Charles the Earl seems to have disliked from the first. He had already, at the age of thirteen, ‘got out of the hands of his governors,’ the Earl writes, and indeed the Prince’s spelling alone proves the success with which he evaded instruction. But, to please the little Duke, the Earl sent for a sword from Russia. The Duke was a pretty child, and wept from disappointment when his elder brother, in 1734, went off to the siege of Gaeta, while he, a warrior of nine, remained in Rome.
The Earl disliked the tiny jealous Court; the impotent cabals, the priests who tried to convert him. Writing to David Hume long afterwards, in 1762, he said, ‘I wish I could see you, to answer honestly all your [historical] questions: for, though I had my share of folly with others, yet, as my intentions were at bottom honest, I should open to you my whole budget.’ When he wrote thus he had made his peace with England. Why he did so we shall try to point out later.
Always scrupulously honest (except when diplomatic duties forbade, and even then he hated lying), the Earl told his brother that he found the Jacobite Court at Rome no place for an honest man. He does not give details, but he seems to hint at some enterprise which, in his opinion, was not honourable. James, moreover, was sunk in devotion, weeping and praying at the tomb of Clementina. From this uncongenial society the Earl departed, and took up his abode at the Papal city of Avignon, where Ormonde now resided. He liked the charming old place, and thought it especially rich in original characters. By 1736, however, he had returned to Spain, where, as he said, he was always sure to find ‘his old friend, the Sun.’ News of the Earl comes through some very harmless correspondence, intercepted at Leyden, in 1736, by an unidentified spy.[13] Don Ezekiel del Toboso (Hamilton) was now out of favour with James, which, judging by his very foolish letters, is no marvel. He resided at Leyden, corresponding with Ormonde and George Kelly. George, after fourteen years of the Tower, since Atterbury’s Plot, had escaped in a manner at once ingenious, romantic, and strictly honourable. Carte, the historian, was another correspondent; but gossip was the staple of their budgets—gossip and abuse of James’s favourites, Dunbar and Inverness. In Spain the Earl officially represented James, but his chief employments were shooting and reading. His Spanish pension was unpaid (he had a small allowance from the Duke of Hamilton), and he was minded ‘to live contentedly upon a small matter,’ he says, rather than to ‘pay court in anti-chambers to under Ministers whom I despise.’ ‘I wo na gie an inch o’ my will for an ell o’ my wealth,’ he remarks, in the Scots proverbial phrase. A Protestant canton in Switzerland would suit him best, where a little money will furnish all that he requires. ‘I am naturally sober enough, as to my eating, more as to my drinking, I do not game, and am a Knight Errant sin amor, so that I need not great sums for my maintenance.’ A Knight sin amor the Earl seems usually to have been. He must have been over forty at this time, and he had not yet acquired his celebrated fair Turkish captive. The Earl, however, had not given up all hope of active Jacobite service. ‘I propose to try if I can still do anything, or have even the hopes of doing something.’ He had a ‘project,’ and, as far as the hints in his letters can now be deciphered, it was to remove James, or, at all events, Prince Charles, from Rome (a place distrusted by Protestant England), and to settle one or both of them—in Corsica!
The Earl was interested, as a patriotic Scot, in the hanging of Porteous by the Edinburgh mob. ‘It’s certain that Porteous was a most brutal fellow; his last works at the head of his Guard was not the first time he had ordered his men to fire on the people. I will not call them Mobb, who made so orderly an Execution.’
To this extent may Radical principles carry a good Jacobite! The Earl should have written the work contemplated by Swift, ‘A Modest Defence of the Proceedings of the Rabble, in All Ages.’
A quarrel with the Spanish Treasurer, who was short of treasure, ended in somebody assuring the official that the Earl was a man of honour, ‘who would go afoot eating bread and water from this to Tartary con un doblon.’ To Tartary, or near it, the Earl was to go, though he had been invited by Ormonde to Avignon. Till the end of the year 1737, Kelly and others hoped to settle Prince Charles in Corsica, with the Earl for his Minister. Marischal was expected by Ormonde at Avignon, in the last week of December, and thither he went for a month or two, leaving for St. Petersburg in March, to visit his brother. Keith had been severely wounded at the assault on Oczakow, and the Earl found him insisting that he would not have his leg amputated. The Earl took his part, and brought Keith to Paris, where the surgeons saved his leg, but where he had to suffer another serious operation. Thence the devoted brothers went to Barège, where Keith recovered health. He returned to Russia, leaving in the Earl’s care Mademoiselle Emetté, a pretty Turkish captive child, rescued by him at the sack of Oczakow, and Ibrahim, another True Believer. These slaves, says a friend who gave information to d’Alembert, were treated by the Earl as his children. He educated them, he invested money in their names (probably when he was in the service of Frederick the Great), and he cherished a menagerie of young heathens, whom his brother had rescued in sieges and storms of towns. One, Stepan, was a Tartar: another is declared to have been a Thibetan, and related to the Grand Lama. The Earl was no proselytiser, and did not convert his Pagans and Turks. It is said that he was not insensible to the charms of pretty Emetté.