It has been said that the Prince sometimes exacted more state and ceremonial than seemed to suit his condition; but, on the other hand, some strictness of etiquette was altogether indispensable where he must otherwise have been exposed to general intrusion. He could also endure, with a good grace, the retorts which his affectation of ceremony sometimes exposed him to. It is said, for example, that Grant of Glenmoriston having made a hasty march to join Charles, at the head of his clan, rushed into the Prince’s presence at Holyrood with unceremonious haste, without having attended to the duties of the toilet. The Prince received him kindly, but not without a hint that a previous interview with the barber might not have been wholly unnecessary. “It is not beardless boys,” answered the displeased Chief, “who are to do your Royal Highness’s turn.” The Chevalier took the rebuke in good part.
On the whole, if Prince Charles had concluded his life soon after his miraculous escape, his character in history must have stood very high. As it was, his station is amongst those a certain brilliant portion of whose life forms a remarkable contrast to all which precedes and all which follows it.123 ↩
Charles Edward at Culloden. In his Note Sir Walter Scott gives, as he had given elsewhere (Quarterly Review, No. LXXI, and in the Tales of a Grandfather), the story about Lord Elcho and Charles at Culloden. It is a story which we would gladly think inaccurate; and inaccurate, or rather absolutely erroneous, it seems to be. Scott got it from Sir James Stewart Denham (whose father had been out in the ’45), and recorded it in his Journal for February 10, 1826. Sir James was the nephew of Lord Elcho, who left one copy of his Memoirs with Sir James’s family (says Scott), and one with Lord Wemyss. According to Sir James (for Sir Walter had not read the words in either manuscript), Lord Eleho exclaimed, when Charles did not head a desperate charge, “There you go for a damned cowardly Italian!” Indeed, the manuscript of Sir Walter’s Journal shows that Lord Elcho’s eloquence was even more florid than that which is published. Sir Walter adds that Lord Elcho “never would see Charles again.” Here, then, is the source of the tale; namely, a verbal communication from Sir James Stewart Denham. But Mr. Ewald, author of The Life of Prince Charles Stuart (London, ), has read the manuscript memoirs of Lord Elcho, the property of Mrs. Erskine Wemyss, and has not found this anecdote in their pages. In them, Lord Elcho tells a story of a conversation with Charles, held four miles from Culloden, after the battle. Lord Elcho says that Charles told him he would return to France; Elcho vainly asked him to remain, and collect his scattered forces. “Then I left him, fully determined never to have anything more to do with him.” (Op. cit. II 26.) This was written forty years after the event, and certainly is by no means evidence in favour of the anecdote recorded by Scott. Another copy of Lord Elcho’s narrative in manuscript (obviously an abridgment) the present Editor has seen in the hands of Mr. Douglas, publisher of Sir Walter’s Journal. It contains neither version of the story. In the Abbotsford Library, Press B, Shelf 9, is a manuscript copy of Lord Elcho’s Short Account of Affairs in Scotland, , 45, 46, which appears to correspond to that in Mr. Douglas’s possession, as does Lord Wemyss’s copy of the manuscript.
Home, the author of Douglas, in his book on the ’45, quotes an unnamed cornet of the Horse Guards who saw Sheridan remonstrate with Charles for remaining on the lost field, and saw Sullivan seize his bridle and force him away. But the most curious evidence which the Editor has met is that of Sir Stewart Threipland of Fingask, copied from his original manuscript by Mr. Robert Chambers, sent by him to Sir Walter, and now in the private library of Abbotsford. The singular thing is that Mr. Chambers does not quote the following text in his own “History of the Rebellion,” nor in his “Threiplands of Fingask.”
Perhaps it may be as well to quote the very words of Sir Stewart Threipland: “Just at this time,”—namely, as the ranks were breaking—“the prince called out to stop, and he would alight from his horse and return to the charge at their head. But a number of his officers got about him and assured him that it was improbable[sic] for him to do any good at present, for since the clans had turned their backs, they would not rally.” This report Mr. Chambers sent to Scott in , but Sir Walter does not quote it in his Note to Waverley. As to Lord Elcho’s vow never to see Charles again, Mr. Ewald shows that Lord Elcho accompanied the prince to Versailles on his first official appearance there after his escape to France. The authority for this statement is “the narrative in the Lockhart Papers.” —Prince Charles Stuart, II, 138
On the whole, it seems that Sir James Stewart Denham must have inadvertently given Scott an incorrect version of his anecdote. There is nothing to show that Charles was deficient in martial courage, much to show that before he became a dipsomaniac, and manifestly suffered from lesion of the brain, he was brave among the bravest.
In the Quarterly Review, , Scott himself defends Charles Edward against the charges of the Chevalier Johnstone, and those which are attributed to Lord Elcho. “The word of two private and disappointed men,” he says, “is not to be taken where it is contradicted by a hundred others, and seems to involve
