tasting delicate morsels offered them on silver trays by liveried servants.
Grand, dramatic, ultimately artificial, Rome provided the showy backdrop to Prince Charles's childhood. It was an environment which fostered fantasies and grandiose dreams of glory, extravagant living and bold bids for acclaim. Everything was theatrical, nothing mundane. Realism, intellectual rigor, even common sense were assaulted on every side by imagination and illusion, by the sense of timelessness and limitlessness. Such was the vivid, flamboyant urban stage which formed the young prince's conception of the grander stage of the world.
Chapter 4
In the portraits painted during his boyhood, Charles Stuart holds his head at a proud, confident angle, and his eyes—variously painted as warm brown or hazel— are alert and full of spirit. He looks like a healthy young animal, brimming over with vitality, bright and eager. To judge from these portraits, he possessed what his older contemporary Lord Chesterfield called "that living force of soul which spurs and excites young men to please, to shine, to excel." In his heavily embroidered velvet jacket, the Star and blue ribbon of the Garter across his chest, his curling bag-wig perfectly coiffed and powdered, he looks supremely self-assured—and without a trace of hauteur or arrogance.
Charles resembled his mother more than he did his father, and the similarity extended to personality as well as physiognomy. Clementina was mercurial and charming, though in the years following her formal reconciliation with James her mercurial charm was gradually transmuted into an eccentricity so pronounced that it must have left its mark on both her sons. She was by all accounts the sort of woman who compelled attention and attracted either intense love—as she seems to have done in her children and, overall, in her husband—or intense dislike. The pious poor of Rome, who were the frequent objects of her charity, looked on her as a living saint, and only the most irreverent of them suggested that her close relationship to the pope had anything other than religious devotion behind it.
Both his brooding, self-absorbed father and his increasingly reclusive, increasingly religious mother were proud of their elder son, but his radiant normality was out of key with their troubled psyches. James called him "Carluccio," Clementina's name for him was "Carlusu." Others in the household referred to him as the Prince of Wales, and visitors knelt when they met him and kissed his hand. He was accustomed to receiving deference wherever he went, even being granted the extraordinary privilege of sitting in an armchair during his audiences with the pope.
His brother Henry, who was just over four years his junior, was no real rival for Charles, though he too was a fair, good-looking child, lively and personable. The Italians called him "the little Duke of York," and his father was especially delighted with him, recording with pleasure how at the age of six Henry was a good shot and sometimes ''took the air on horseback at night after a day's strong fatigue." 1
“I am really in love with the little duke," he confided, "for he is the finest child that can be seen."
A second son was essential to ensure the continuity of the Stuart line in case something should happen to Charles, and no doubt more children would have been welcome. But Clementina, who weakened herself by excessive fasting and whose health was deteriorating year by year, produced no more sons. So the two boys kept one another company, Henry no doubt admiring and emulating Charles, dressed like his brother in velvet jacket and small curling wig, though accorded less reverence and involved in less ritual.
As heir to the English throne—which all true Jacobites believed him to be—Charles required an exceptional education. Surprisingly, he did not receive one. His principal teachers were the Scot Andrew Ramsay, a man of letters; the aging Irishman Thomas
Grand, dramatic, ultimately artificial, Rome provided the showy backdrop to Prince Charles's childhood. It was an environment which fostered fantasies and grandiose dreams of glory, extravagant living and bold bids for acclaim. Everything was theatrical, nothing mundane. Realism, intellectual rigor, even common sense were assaulted on every side by imagination and illusion, by the sense of timelessness and limitlessness. Such was the vivid, flamboyant urban stage which formed the young prince's conception of the grander stage of the world.
Chapter 4
In the portraits painted during his boyhood, Charles Stuart holds his head at a proud, confident angle, and his eyes—variously painted as warm brown or hazel— are alert and full of spirit. He looks like a healthy young animal, brimming over with vitality, bright and eager. To judge from these portraits, he possessed what his older contemporary Lord Chesterfield called "that living force of soul which spurs and excites young men to please, to shine, to excel." In his heavily embroidered velvet jacket, the Star and blue ribbon of the Garter across his chest, his curling bag-wig perfectly coiffed and powdered, he looks supremely self-assured—and without a trace of hauteur or arrogance.
Charles resembled his mother more than he did his father, and the similarity extended to personality as well as physiognomy. Clementina was mercurial and charming, though in the years following her formal reconciliation with James her mercurial charm was gradually transmuted into an eccentricity so pronounced that it must have left its mark on both her sons. She was by all accounts the sort of woman who compelled attention and attracted either intense love—as she seems to have done in her children and, overall, in her husband—or intense dislike. The pious poor of Rome, who were the frequent objects of her charity, looked on her as a living saint, and only the most irreverent of them suggested that her close relationship to the pope had anything other than religious devotion behind it.
Both his brooding, self-absorbed father and his increasingly reclusive, increasingly religious mother were proud of their elder son, but his radiant normality was out of key with their troubled psyches. James called him "Carluccio," Clementina's name for him was "Carlusu." Others in the household referred to him as the Prince of Wales, and visitors knelt when they met him and kissed his hand. He was accustomed to receiving deference wherever he went, even being granted the extraordinary privilege of sitting in an armchair during his audiences with the pope.
His brother Henry, who was just over four years his junior, was no real rival for Charles, though he too was a fair, good-looking child, lively and personable. The Italians called him "the little Duke of York," and his father was especially delighted with him, recording with pleasure how at the age of six Henry was a good shot and sometimes ''took the air on horseback at night after a day's strong fatigue." 1
“I am really in love with the little duke," he confided, "for he is the finest child that can be seen."
A second son was essential to ensure the continuity of the Stuart line in case something should happen to Charles, and no doubt more children would have been welcome. But Clementina, who weakened herself by excessive fasting and whose health was deteriorating year by year, produced no more sons. So the two boys kept one another company, Henry no doubt admiring and emulating Charles, dressed like his brother in velvet jacket and small curling wig, though accorded less reverence and involved in less ritual.
As heir to the English throne—which all true Jacobites believed him to be—Charles required an exceptional education. Surprisingly, he did not receive one. His principal teachers were the Scot Andrew Ramsay, a man of letters; the aging Irishman Thomas
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