Andrew Lang

“ However unimportant a secret may be, it is pleasant to know what all Europe was once vainly anxious to discover. In the revelation of manners, too, and in tracing the relations of famous wits and beauties with a person then so celebrated as Prince Charles, there is a certain amount of entertainment which may excuse some labour of research. Our history is of next to no political value, but it revives as in a magic mirror somewhat dim, certain scenes of actual human life. ”

“ From the gossip of d’Argenson we have learned that Charles was no longer the same man as the gallant leader of the race to Derby, or the gay and resourceful young Ascanius who won the hearts of the Highlanders by his cheerful courage and contented endurance. He was now embittered by defeat; by suspicions of treachery which the Irish about him kindled and fanned, by the broken promises of Louis XV., by the indifference of Spain. ”

“ There is nobody whatsoever I respect more as ye K. of Prussia; not as a K. but as I believe him to be a clever man. Has he intention to serve me? Proofs must be given, and ye only one convincive is his agreeing to a Marriage with his sister, and acknowledging me at Berlin for what I am.’ He adds that he will not be a tool, ‘like my ansisters.’
Such were Charles’s lonely musings, such the hopeless dreams of an exile. He had now entered on his attempt to secure Prussian aid, and on a fresh chapter of extraordinary political and personal intrigues. ”

“ Now, Sir, whether such a step as this will not tend more to diminish than augment your Credit in England I leave you to determine; I only beg of you, Sir, to give me timely notice that I may get out of the way of that horrid Bastille, and put our friends on their guard, I cannot but lament my poor friend Colonel H. who must be undone by it. Ld M. [Marischal] thinks it too dangerous a tryall of that man’s honour: for my part I shall not presume to give my own opinion, only beg of you once again that we may have time to shift for ourselves. ”

“ To understand Pickle’s career, the reluctant reader must endure a certain amount of actual history in minute details of date and place. Every one is acquainted with the brilliant hour of Prince Charles: his landing in Moidart accompanied by only seven men, his march on Edinburgh, his success at Prestonpans, the race to Derby, the retreat to Scotland, the gleam of victory at Falkirk, the ruin of Culloden, the long months of wanderings and distress, the return to France in 1746. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have to do with the back-stairs of diplomacy, with spies and traitors, with cloak and sword, with blabbing servants, and inquisitive ambassadors, with disguise and discovery, with friends more staunch than steel, or weaker than water, with petty jealousies, with the relentless persecution of a brave man, and with the consequent ruin of a gallant life.
To understand the psychological problem, the degradation of a promising personality, it is necessary to glance rapidly at what we know of Charles before his Scottish expedition. ”

“ Our intelligence must be extracted from ill-spelled, closely scrawled, and much erased sheets of brown paper, on which Charles has scribbled drafts for letters to his household, to Waters, his banker in Paris, to adherents in Paris or London, and to ladies. ”

“ On July 10, 1751, after a tremendous quarrel with Madame de Talmond, Charles wrote out his political reflections. France must apologise to him before he can enter into any measures with her Court. ‘I have nothing at heart but the interest of my country, and I am always ready to sacrifice everything for it, Life and rest, but the least reflection as to ye point of honour I can never pass over. ”

“ We can now follow and understand the changes in the singular and wretched development of the character of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. We get a curious view of the manners, and a lurid light on the diplomacy of the middle of the eighteenth century. We go behind the scenes of many conspiracies. Above all, we encounter an extraordinary personage, the great, highborn Highland chief who sold himself as a spy to the English Government. ”

“ Nothing, or nothing but the expulsion of Prince Charles from every secular State, had been actually settled. Nobody was really satisfied with the Peace. The populace, in France as in England, was discontented. Princes were merely resting and looking round for new combinations of forces. The various Courts, from St. Petersburg to Dresden, from London to Vienna, were so many tables where the great game of national faro was being played, over the heads of the people, by kings, queens, abbés, soldiers, diplomatists, and pretty women. ”

“ Romance, in a way, is stereotyped, and it is characteristic that the last romance of the Stuarts should be interwoven with a secret treasure. This mass of French gold, buried after Culloden at Loch Arkaig, in one of the most remote recesses of the Highlands, was, to the Jacobites, what the dwarf Andvari’s hoard was to the Niflungs, a curse and a cause of discord. We shall see that rivalry for its possession produced contending charges of disloyalty, forgery, and theft among certain of the Highland chiefs, and these may have helped to promote the spirit of treachery in Pickle the Spy. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Yet no man has, in disguises of his person, been more successful. We may grant ‘the grand air’ to Charles, but we must admit that he could successfully dissemble it.
About 1743, when a number of miniatures of the Prince were done in Italy for presentation to adherents, Charles’s boyish mirth, as seen in these works of art, has become somewhat petulant, if not arrogant, but he is still ‘a lad with the bloom of a lass.’ A shade of aspiring melancholy marks a portrait done in France, just before the expedition to Scotland. ”

“ On December 20, 1768, Charles had broken with Lumisden and the rest of his suite. ‘Our behaviour towards him was that of faithful subjects and servants, jealous at all times to preserve his honour and reputation.’ They had, in brief, declined to accompany Charles in his carriage when his condition demanded seclusion. Lumisden writes (December 8, 1767) , ‘His Royal Highness’ (the Duke of York) ‘thanked us for our behaviour in the strongest terms.’
We need follow no further the story of a consummated degradation. ”

“ Sullivan bring her to you here, or any where himself. The little man will carry your letter to him, as he has done it already I suppose he wont refuse you.
‘You sent a message for the pistols yourself, and as you had not given him the watch, he sent it, lest he should be accused of a design to keep it. We have no other Messages to send, since you have forbid us coming near you . . . for God’s sake Sir let me have an audience of you; I can say more than I can write.’
Thus, from the beginning, Charles’s friends foreboded danger in his liaison. ”

“ Charles, at first, was aggrieved. He wrote:
‘L. M. coming to Paris is a piece of French politics, on the one side to bully the people of England; on the other hand to hinder our friends from doing the thing by themselves, bambouseling them with hopes. . . . They mean to sell us as usual. . . . The Doctor [Dr. King] is to be informed that Goring saw Lord Marischal, but nothing to be got from him.’
The Prince mentions his ‘distress for money,’ and sends compliments to Dawkins, ‘Jemmy Dawkins,’ of whom we shall hear plenty. ”

“ I have twice, Sir, been turned off like a Common footman, with most opprobrious language, without money or cloaths. As I am a bad courtier and can’t help speaking truth, I am very sure it would not be long before I experienced a third time your friendship for me, if I was unadvized enough to make the tryall. No, Sir, princes are never friends, it would be too much to expect it, but I did believe till now that they had humanity enough to reward Good services, and when a man had served to the utmost of his power, not to try to cast dishonour on him to save the charges of giving him a recompense. ”

“ Such is the attitude of Frederick. He receives a Jacobite envoy; he listens to tales of conspiracies against his uncle; he offers suggestions; he will encourage treason sous main. In fact, Frederick behaves with his usual cold, curious, unscrupulous skill.
Frederick’s letters have brought us to May 1753, when Archy Cameron, in the Tower of London, lay expecting his doom. While kings, princes, ambassadors, statesmen, and highland chiefs were shuffling, conspiring, peeping, lying and spying, the sole burden of danger fell on Archibald Cameron, Lochgarry, and Cluny. ”

“ James himself, in youth, had not been a pattern of strict sobriety, but later middle age found him almost ascetic.
We have sketched a character endowed with many fine qualities, and capable of winning devoted affection. We now examine the rapid decline of a nature originally noble.
Returned from Scotland in 1746, Prince Charles brought with him a head full of indigested romance, a heart rich in chimerical expectations. He now prided himself on being a plain hardy mountaineer. He took a line of his own; he concealed his measures from the spy-ridden Court of his father in Rome ”

“ He says he has done what lays in his power, as Sullivan’s letter testifies, that his desires to serve you were sincere, for which you abused him in a severe manner. Believe me, Sir, such commissions are for the worst of men, and such you will find enough for money, but they will likewise betray you for more. Virtue deserves reward and you treat it ill, I can only lament this unfortunate affair, which if possible to prevent, I would give my life with pleasure. ”

“ We have now brought the history to a point (September 1750) where the Prince, for a moment, emerges from fairyland, and where we are not left to the perplexing conjectures of diplomatists in Paris, Dresden, Florence, Hanover, and St. Petersburg. In September 1750, Charles certainly visited London. There is a point of light. ”

“ Carlyle.
‘If you, who have never been in rich Cyrene, know it better than I, who have, I much admire your cleverness,’ said the Delphian Oracle to an inquiring colonist. Mr. Carlyle had never lived in the Courts of Europe about 1753; none the less, he fancied he knew more of them, and of their secrets, than did their actual inhabitants, kings, courtiers, and diplomatists. We saw that, in September 1752, according to Pickle, Prince Charles sent Archibald Cameron and Lochgarry to Scotland, with a mission to his representative, Cluny Macpherson, and the clans. ”

“ Modern police, in search of a person who is ‘wanted,’ spy on his mistress. Now the Princesse de Talmond, when out of favour at Versailles, went to certain lands in Lorraine, near her exiled king, Stanislas. In Lorraine, therefore, at Lunéville, the Court of the ex-king of Poland, or at Commercy, Bar-le-Duc, or wherever the Princesse de Talmond might be, Charles was sure to be heard of by an intelligent spy, if permitted to enter the country. ”

“ Tradition has vaguely bequeathed to us the name of ‘Pickle the Spy,’ the foremost of many traitors. Who Pickle was, and what he did, a whole romance of prosperous treachery, is now to be revealed and illustrated from various sources. Pickle was not only able to keep the Duke of Newcastle and George II. well informed as to the inmost plots, if not the most hidden movements of Prince Charles, but he could either paralyse a serious, or promote a premature, rising in the Highlands, as seemed best to his English employers. ”

“ Cameron your person ran an inevitable danger, if you staid where you then were, and gave as his opinion only, that the dominions of the Elector of Cologne and the Palatinate appeared to be the safest, by reason of those princes being in interests opposite to the Court of Hanover, but was very far from saying you would be safe there, or indeed anywhere. How is it possible a man of his sense could think, much less a prince like you, who have so many powerfull enemies, that any place could guard you from them? ”