Sempil was ever at odds with the Earl, who, says Sempil, ‘insists on great matters.’ French policy was to keep sending small supplies of money and men to support agitation in Scotland. The Earl did not want mere agitation and a feeble futile rising; he wanted strong measures, which might have a chance of success. ‘He can trust nobody,’ says Sempil, ‘and is persuaded that the French Court will sacrifice our country, if his firmness does not prevent it.’ The Earl was right; what he foresaw occurred. Sempil, however, was not far wrong, when he observed that the Prince was already engaged, and a little help was better than none. ‘I am sorry to see my old friend so very unfit for great affairs,’ writes Sempil. The Earl had ever been adverse to a wild attempt by the Prince, as a mere cause of misery and useless bloodshed. He probably thought that no French support and a speedy collapse of the rising were better than trivial aid, which kept up the hearts of the Highlanders, and urged them to extremes.
By October 19 the Duke of York was flattered with hopes of sailing at the head of a large French force. The force hung about Dunkirk for six months, doing nothing, and then came Culloden. The Duke was prejudiced against Sempil and his friend Balhaldie, and already there was a split in the party, Sempil on one side, the Earl Marischal on the other. George Kelly returned from Scotland, as an envoy to France, but Sempil would not trust him even with the names of the leading English Jacobites. The secrecy insisted on by Sir Watkin Williams Wynne, Lord Barrymore, the Duke of Beaufort, and the others was kept up by Sempil even against Prince Charles himself. This naturally irritated the Earl, and, what with Jacobite divisions in France, and French irresolution, Marischal had to play a tedious and ungrateful part. James expected him to join the Prince, but he, for his part, gave James very little hope of the success of the adventure.[21] James himself, with surprising mental detachment, admitted that the best plan for the English Jacobites was ‘to lie still,’ and make no attempt without the assistance from France which never came.
The Earl disappears from the diplomatic scene, on which he had done no good, in the end of 1745. He obviously attempted to settle quietly in Russia with his brother. But the Empress ‘would not so much as allow Lord Marischal to stay in her country,’ wrote James to Charles, in April 1747. Ejected from the North, he sought ‘his old friend, the sun,’ in the South, at Treviso, and at Venice. The Prince, in August 1747, wrote from Paris imploring the Earl to join him, for the need of a trustworthy adviser was bitterly felt. The Earl replied with respect, but with Republican brevity, pleading his ‘broken health,’ and adding, ‘I did not retire from all affairs without a certainty how useless I was, and always must be.’
At Venice the Earl entertained a moody young exile, who tells a story illustrating at once his host’s knowledge of life, the strictness of his morality, and his freedom from a tendency to censure the young and enterprising.[22]
From Venice the much-wandering Earl retired to his most sure and hospitable retreat. He joined his brother, who had now entered the service of Frederick the Great. He reached Berlin in January 1748. Frederick, asking first whether his estates had been confiscated, made him a pension of 2,000 crowns. Frederick loved, esteemed, sheltered, and employed the veteran, ‘unfit for affairs’ as he thought himself. No doubt Frederick’s first aim was to attach to himself so valuable an officer as Keith, by showing kindness to his brother. But the Earl presently became personally dear to him, as a friend without subservience, and a philosopher without vanity or pretence. In his new retreat the Earl was not likely to listen to the prayers of Prince Charles, who, being now a homeless exile, implored the old Jacobite to meet him at Venice. Henry Goring carried the letters, in April 1749, and probably took counsel with the veteran. Nothing came of it, except the expulsion from the Prince’s household at Avignon of poor George Kelly, a staunch and astute friend, who was obnoxious to the English Jacobites. Since 1717 Kelly had served the Cause, first under Atterbury, then—after fourteen years’ imprisonment—in France, Scotland, and as the Prince’s secretary. He had been Lord Marischal’s ally in 1745, but Rousseau says that the Earl’s failing was to be easily prejudiced against a man, and never to return from his prejudice. Kelly’s letter to Charles might have disarmed him. ‘Nobody ever had less reason or worse authority than Lord Marischal for such an accusation; for your Royal Highness knows well I always acted the contrary part, and never failed representing the advantage and even necessity of having him at the head of your affairs.... His Lordship may think of me what he pleases, but my opinion of him is still the same.’ There seems to be no doubt that the Earl had written to Floyd (whom he commends to Hume as an honest witness) to say that ‘from a good hand’ he learned that Kelly ‘opposed his coming near the Prince,’ and had spoken of him as ‘a Republican, a man incapable of cultivating princes.’ The Earl was ‘incapable of cultivating princes,’ and Rousseau esteemed him for the same. But it was under Kelly’s influence that Charles, in 1747, tried to secure the society and services of the Earl. He had been prejudiced (as Rousseau says he was capable of being), probably by Carte the historian. Years afterwards, when the Earl had disowned Charles, Kelly returned to the Prince’s household. He never had a stauncher adherent than this Irish clergyman of exactly the same age as his father. History, like the Earl Marischal, has been unduly prejudiced against honest George Kelly.[23]
II
THE EARL IN PRUSSIAN SERVICE
About the Earl’s first years in the company of the great Frederick little is known or likely to be known. Deus nobis hæc otia fecit, he may have murmured to himself while he refused the Prince’s insistent prayers for his service, and put his Royal Highness off in a truly Royal way, with his miniature in a snuff-box of mother-of-pearl. The old humourist may have reflected that men had given lands and gear for the cause, and now, like the representative of Lochgarry, have nothing material to show for their loyalty, save an inexpensive snuff-box of agate and gold. No, the Earl would not travel from Venice in 1749 to meet the Prince.
His name occurs in brief notes of Voltaire, then residing with Frederick, and quarrelling with his Royal host. Voltaire kept borrowing books from the Scottish exile, books chiefly on historical subjects. If we may believe Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, then at Berlin, the celebrated Livonian mistress of Keith caused quarrels between him and his brother, and even obliged them to live separately.[24] The Earl gave much good advice to Henry Goring, the Prince’s envoy at that time, and if he was indeed on bad terms with his brother (these bad terms cannot have lasted long), he may have been all the better pleased to go as Frederick’s ambassador to Versailles in August 1751. Thither he took his pretty Turkish captive, and all his household of Pagans, Mussulmans, Buddhists, and so forth. I have elsewhere described the Earl’s relations with Prince Charles, then lurking in or near Paris; his furtive meetings with Goring at lace shops and in gardens, his familiarity with Young Glengarry, who easily outwitted the Earl, and his unprejudiced tolerance of a perfectly Fenian plot—the Elibank Plot—for kidnapping George II., Prince Fecky, and the rest of the Royal Family. The Earl merely looked on. He gave no advice. His ancient memories could not enlighten him as to how the Guards were now posted. ‘What opinion, Mr. Pickle,’ he said to Glengarry, ‘can I entertain of people that proposed I should abandon my Embassy and embark headlong with them?’ The Earl had found a haven at last in Frederick’s favour. He was willing to help the cause diplomatically, to send Jemmy Dawkins to Berlin, to sound Frederick, and suggest that, in a quarrel with England, the Jacobites might be useful. He was ready enough to dine with the exiles on St. Andrew’s Day, but not to go further. When Charles broke with the faithful Goring in the spring of 1754, the Earl broke with him, rebuked him severely, and never forgave him. He had never loved Charles; he now regarded him as impossible, even treacherous, and ceased to be a Jacobite.
The nature of his charges against the Prince will appear later. Meanwhile, as the Prince had behaved ill to Goring, who fell under his new mania of suspicion, as he declined to cashier his mistress, Miss Walkinshaw, in deference to English and Scottish requests, as he was a battered, broken wanderer, sans feu ni lieu, the Earl abandoned him to his fate, and even, it seems, officially ‘warned the party against being concerned with him.’ After forty years of faithful though perfectly fruitless service, the Earl apparently made up his mind to be reconciled, if possible, to the English Government. Though his appointment as ambassador had been a direct insult to Frederick’s uncle, George II., the great diplomatic revolution which brought Prussia and England into alliance was favourable to the Earl’s prospects of pardon.