Pickle the Spy; Or, the Incognito of Prince Charles

‘I. S h a l. C o n q u e r.

‘3 w k y p t d b q x m f.

‘My name shall be John Douglas.

‘Jean Noé D’Orville & fils. A Frankfort sur Maine, a Banquier of that Town.’

The Prince may have been at Frankfort, but, as a rule, he was hiding in Lorraine when not in Paris or near it, and, as we have seen, was under the protection of various French and fashionable Flora Macdonalds. Of these ladies, ‘Madame de Beauregard’ and the Princesse de Talmond are apparently the same person. With them, or her (she also appears as la tante and la vieille), Charles’s relations were stormy. He wearied her, he broke with her, he scolded her, and returned to her again. Another protectress, Madame d’Aiguillon, was the mistress of the household most frequented by Montesquieu, le filosophe, as Charles calls him. Madame du Deffand has left to us portraits of both the Princesse de Talmond and Madame d’Aiguillon.

‘Madame de Talmond has beauty and wit and vivacity; that turn for pleasantry which is our national inheritance seems natural to her… But her wit deals only with pleasant frivolities; her ideas are the children of her memory rather than of her imagination. French in everything else, she is original in her vanity. Ours is more sociable, inspires the desire to please, and suggests the means. Hers is truly Sarmatian, artless and indolent; she cannot bring herself to flatter those whose admiration she covets… She thinks herself perfect, says so, and expects to be believed. At this price alone does she yield a semblance of friendship: semblance, I say, for her affections are concentrated on herself.. She is as jealous as she is vain, and so capricious as to make her at once the most unhappy and the most absurd of women. She never knows what she wants, what she fears, whom she loves, or whom she hates. There is no nature in her expression: with her chin in the air she poses eternally as tender or disdainful, absent or haughty; all is affectation… She is feared and hated by all who live in her society. Yet she has truth, courage, and honesty, and is such a mixture of good and evil that no steadfast opinion about her can be entertained. She pleases, she provokes: we love, hate, seek, and avoid her. It is as if she communicated to others the eccentricity of her own caprice.’

Where a character like hers met a nature like the Prince’s, peace and quiet were clearly out of the question.

Madame du Deffand is not more favourable to another friend of Charles, Madame d’Aiguillon. This lady gave a supper every Saturday night, where neither her husband, the lover of the Princesse de Conti, nor her son, later the successor of Choiseul as Minister of Louis XV., was expected to appear. ‘The most brilliant men, French or foreign, were her guests, attracted by her abundant, active, impetuous, and original intellect, by her elevated conversation, and her kindness of manner.’ [80 - Histoire de Montesquieu, par L. Vian, p. 196.] She was, according to Gustavus III., ‘the living gazette of the Court, the town, the provinces, and the academy.’ Voltaire wrote to her rhymed epistles. Says Madame du Deffand, ‘Her mouth is fallen in, her nose crooked, her glance wild and bold, and in spite of all this she is beautiful. The brilliance of her complexion atones for the irregularity of her features. Her waist is thick, her bust and arms are enormous. yet she has not a heavy air: her energy gives her ease of movement. Her wit is like her face, brilliant and out of drawing. Profusion, activity, impetuosity are her ruling qualities.. She is like a play which is all spectacle, all machines and decorations, applauded by the pit and hissed by the boxes… ’

Montesquieu was hardly a spectator in the pit, yet he habitually lived at Madame d’Aiguillon’s; ‘she is original,’ he said, and she, with Madame Dupré de Saint-Maur, watched by the death-bed of the philosopher. [81 - Correspondance de Madame du Deffand. Edition of M. de Lescure, ii. 737–742.]

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.’ [82 - D’Argenson confirms or exaggerates this information.]

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.

On December 19, the Prince, who cannot have been far from Paris, sent Goring thither ‘to get my big Muff and portfeul.’ I do not know which lady he addressed, on December 10, as ‘l’Adorable,’ ‘avec toute la tendresse possible.’ On November 28, ‘R. Jackson’ writes from England. He saw Dr. King (of St. Mary Hall, Oxford), who had been at Lichfield races, ‘and had a list of the 275 gentlemen who were there.’ This Mr. Jackson was going to Jamaica, to Henry Dawkins, brother of Jemmy Dawkins, a rich and scholarly planter who played a great part, later, in Jacobite affairs.

In 1750, February found Charles still without a reply to his letter of May 26, in which he made an anonymous appeal for shelter in Imperial territories. Orders to Goring, who had been sent to Lally, bid him ‘take care not to get benighted in the woods and dangerous places.’ A good deal is said about a marble bust of the Prince at which Lemoine is working, the original, probably, of the plaster busts sold in autumn in Red Lion Square. ‘Newton’ (January 28) thinks Cluny wilfully dilatory about sending the Loch Arkaig treasure, and Æneas Macdonald, the banker, one of the Seven Men of Moidart, accuses ‘Newton’ (Kennedy) of losing 8001. of the money at Newmarket races! In fact, Young Glengarry and Archibald Cameron had been helping themselves freely to the treasure at this very time, whence came endless trouble and recriminations, as we shall see. [83 - Browne, v. 66. Letter of Young Glengarry, January 16, 1750.]

On January 25 the Prince was embroiled with Madame de Talmond. He writes, obviously in answer to remonstrances:

‘Nous nous prometons de suivre en tout les volontés et les arrangemens de notre fidèle amie et alliée, L. P. D. T.; nous retirer aux heures qu’il lui conviendra a la ditte P, soit de jour, soit de nuit, soit de ses états, en foy de quoi nous signons. C.’

He had begun to bore the capricious lady.

Important intrigues were in the air. The Prince resembled ‘paper-sparing Pope’ in his use of scraps of writing material. One piece bears notes both of February and June 1750. On February 16 Charles wrote to Mr. Dormer, an English Jacobite:

‘I order you to go to Anvers, and there to execute my instructions without delay.’

Goring carried the letter. Then comes a despatch of June, which will be given under date.

Concerning the fatal hoard of Loch Arkaig, ‘Newton’ writes thus: —

Tho. Newton to —

    ‘March 18, 1750.

‘You have on the other side the melancholy confirmation of what I apprehended. Dr. Cameron is no doubt the person here mentioned that carryd away the horses [money], for he is lately gone to Rome, as is also young Glengery, those and several others of them, have been very flush of money, so that it seems they took care of themselves. C. [Cluny] in my opinion is more to be blamed than any of them, for if he had a mind to act the honest part he certainly could have given up the whole long since. They will no doubt represent me not in the most advantageous light at Rome, for attempting to carry out of their country what they had to support them. I hope they will one day or other be obliged to give an acct. of this money, if so, least they shd. attempt to Impose upon you, you’l find my receipts to C. will exactly answer what I had already the honour of giving you an acct. of.’

Again ‘Newton’ writes:

(Tho. Newton—From G. Waters’s Letter.)

    ‘April 27, 1750.

‘I am honored with yours of the 6th. Inst. and nothing could equal my surprize at the reception of the Letter I sent you. I did not expect C [Cluny] was capable of betraying the confidence you had in him, and he is the more culpable, as I frequently put it in his power to acquit himself of his duty without reproach of any side. Only Cameron is returned from Rome greatly pleased with the reception he met there. I have not seen him, but he has bragged of this to many people here since his return. I never owned to any man alive to have been employed in that affair.’

In spite of Newton, it is not to be credited that Cluny, lurking in many perils on Ben Alder, was unfaithful about the treasure.

Meanwhile, Young Glengarry (whose history we give later), Archibald Cameron (Lochiel’s brother), Sir Hector Maclean, and other Jacobites, were in Rome, probably to explain their conduct about the Loch Arkaig treasure to James. He knew nothing about the matter, and what he said will find its proper place when we come to investigate the history of Young Glengarry. The Prince at this time corresponded a good deal with ‘Mademoiselle Luci,’ that fair philosophical recluse who did little commissions for him in Paris. On April 4 he wants a list of the books he left in Paris, and shows a kind heart.

‘Pray take care of the young surgeon, M. Le Coq, and see that he wants for nothing. As the lad gets no money from his relations, he may be in need.’ Charles, on March 28, writes thus to ‘Madame de Beauregard,’ which appears to be an alias of Madame de Talmond:

The Prince

    March 28, 1750.

‘A Md. Bauregor. Je vois avec Chagrin que vous vous tourmentes et mois aussi bien innutillement, et en tout sans [sens]. Ou vous voules me servire, ou vous ne Le voules pas; ou vous voules me protege, ou non; Il n’y a acune autre alternative en raison qui puis etre. Si vous voules me servire il ne faut pas me soutenire toujours que Blan [blanc] est noire, dans Les Chose Les plus palpable: et jamais Avouer que vous aves tort meme quant vous Le santes. Si vous ne voules pas me servire, il est inutile que je vous parle de ce qui me regarde: si vous voules me protege, il ne faut pas me rendre La Vie plus malheureuse qu’il n’est. Si vous voules m’abandoner il faut me Le dire en bon Francois ou Latin. Visus solum’ [sic].

Madame de Talmond sheltered the Prince both in Lorraine and in Paris. They were, unluckily, born to make each other’s lives ‘insupportable.’

Charles wrote this letter, probably to Madame d’Aiguillon, from Paris:

    May 12, 1750.

‘La Multitude d’affaire de toute Espèce dont j’ai été plus que surchargé, Madame, depuis plus de quatre Mois, Chose que votre Chancelier a du vous attester, ne m’ avois permis de vous rappeller Le souvenir de vos Bontés pour Moi; qualque Long qu’ait ete Le Silance que j’ai gardé sur Le Desir que j’ai d’en mériter La Continuation j’espère qu’il ne m’en aura rien fait perdre: j’ose meme presumer Encore asses pour me flater qu’une Longue absence que je projette par raison et par une necessite absolue, ne m’efacera pas totalement de votre souvenir; Daigne Le Conserver, Madame a quelquun qui n’en est pas indigne et qui cherchera toujours a Le meriter par son tendre et respectueux attachement – a Paris Le 12 May, 1750.’

A quaint light is thrown on the Prince’s private affairs (May 12) by Waters’s note of his inability to get a packet of Scottish tartan, sent by Archibald Cameron, out of the hands of the Custom House. It was confiscated as ‘of British manufacture.’ Again, on May 18, Charles wrote to Mademoiselle Luci, in Paris. She is requested ‘de faire avoire une ouvrage de Mr. Fildings, (auteur de Tom Jones) qui s’apel Joseph Andrews, dans sa langue naturelle, et la traduction aussi.’ He also wants ‘Tom Jones’ in French, and we may infer that he is teaching to some fair pupil the language of Fielding. He asks, too, for a razor-case with four razors, a shaving mirror, and a strong pocket-book with a lock. His famous ‘chese de post’ (post-chaise) is to be painted and repaired.