Chapter 11 - Page 2

same disposition to everybody.' Now all is changed, and a character naturally tender and pitiful has become careless of others, and even cruel.

The connection with Miss Walkinshaw was the chief occasion of many troubles. On January 14, 1754, young Edgar wrote from Aisse to his uncle, in Rome, saying that Clementina Walkinshaw 'has got in with the Prince, borne two children to him [probably only one], and got an extreme ascendant over him. The King's friends in England are firmly persuaded of this being true, and are vastly uneasy at it, especially as his sister is about Frederick's widow (the Dowager Princess of Wales), and has but an indifferent character. This story gives me very great concern, and, if true, must be attended with bad consequences, whether she truly be honest or not.' {254}

The fact was that, being now accompanied by a mistress and a child, Charles was easily traced. His personal freedom, if not his life, was endangered, and if he were taken and his papers searched, his correspondents would be in peril. On January 4, 1754, Dormer wrote, warning the Prince that 'a young gentleman in hiding with a mistress and child' was being sought for at Liege, and expressing alarm for himself and his comrades. Dormer also reproached Charles for impatiently urging his adherents to instant action. Goring, as 'Stouf,' wrote the following explicit letter from Paris on January 13, 1754. As we shall see, he had been forbidden by the French Government to come within fifty leagues of the capital, and the Bastille gaped for him if he was discovered.

Goring, it will be remarked, warns Charles that his party are weary of his demands for money. What did he do with it? His wardrobe, as an inventory shows, was scanty; no longer was he a dandy: seventeen shirts, six collars, three suits of clothes, three pocket- handkerchiefs were the chief of his effects. He did not give much in charity to poor adherents, as Goring bitterly observes. We learn that the English insist on the dismissal of Miss Walkinshaw. To discard Dumont, as Charles proposed, was to provide England with an informer. The heads of English gentlemen would be at the mercy of the executioners of Archy Cameron. To turn adrift Charles's Catholic servants was impolitic, cruel, and deeply ungrateful. This is the burden of Goring's necessary but very uncourtly epistle, probably written from 'La Grandemain's' house:

'You say you are determined to know from your professed friends what you are to depend on. I wish it may answer your desires, you are master, Sir, to take what steps you please, I shall not take upon me to contradict you, I shall only lay before you what I hear and see, if it can be of any service to you, I shall have done my duty in letting you know your true interest, if you think it such. In the first place, I find they [the English adherents] were surprized and mortifyed to see the little man [Beson] arrive with a message from you, only to