Pickle the Spy | Page 6

Jacobite party in 1754- 1756, or rather with Hawke's defeat of Conflans in 1759.
Ours is a strange and melancholy tale of desperate loyalties, and of a treason almost unparalleled for secrecy and persistence. 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.
To begin at the beginning, in physical qualities the Prince was dowered by a kind fairy. He was firmly though slimly built, of the best stature for strength and health. 'He had a body made for war,' writes Lord Elcho, who hated him. The gift of beauty (in his case peculiarly fatal, as will be seen) had not been denied to him. His brow was high and broad, his nose shapely, his eyes of a rich dark brown, his hair of a chestnut hue, golden at the tips. Though his eyes are described as blue, both in 1744 by Sir Horace Mann, and in later life (1770) by an English lady in Rome, though Lord Stanhope and Mr. Stevenson agree in this error, brown was really their colour. {15a} Charles inherited the dark eyes of his father, 'the Black Bird,' and of Mary Stuart. This is manifest from all the original portraits and miniatures, including that given by the Prince to his secretary, Murray of Broughton, now in my collection. In boyhood Charles's face had a merry, mutinous, rather reckless expression, as portraits prove. Hundreds of faces like his may be seen at the public schools; indeed, Charles had many 'doubles,' who sometimes traded on the resemblance, sometimes, wittingly or unwittingly, misled the spies that constantly pursued him. {15b} His adherents fondly declared that his natural air of distinction, his princely bearing, were too marked to be concealed in any travesty. 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. Le Toque's fine portrait of the Prince in armour (1748) shows a manly and martial but rather sinister countenance. A plaster bust, done from a life mask, if not from Le Moine's bust in marble (1750), was thought the best likeness by Dr. King. This bust was openly sold in Red Lion Square, and, when Charles visited Dr. King in September 1750, the Doctor's servant observed the resemblance. I have never seen a copy of this bust, and the medal struck in 1750, an intaglio of the same date, and a very rare profile in the collection of the Duke of Atholl, give a similar idea of the Prince as he was at thirty. A distinguished artist, who outlined Charles's profile and applied it to another of Her present Majesty in youth, tells me that they are almost exact counterparts.
Next we come to the angry eyes and swollen features of Ozias Humphreys's miniature, in the Duke of Atholl's collection, and in his sketch published in the 'Lockhart Papers' (1776), and, finally, to the fallen weary old face designed by Gavin Hamilton. Charles's younger brother, Henry, Duke of York, was a prettier boy, but it is curious to mark the prematurely priestly and 'Italianate' expression of the Duke in youth, while Charles still seems a merry lad. Of Charles in boyhood many anecdotes are told. At the age of two or three he is said to have been taken to see the Pope in his garden, and to have refused the usual marks of reverence. Walton, the English agent in Florence, reports an outbreak of ferocious temper in 1733. {17a} Though based on gossip, the story seems to forebode the later excesses of anger. Earlier, in 1727, the Duc de Liria, a son of Marshal Berwick, draws a pretty picture of the child when about seven years old:-
'The King of England did not wish me to leave before May 4, and I was only too happy to remain at his feet, not merely on account of the love and respect I have borne him all my life, but also because I was