BOOKS
TWO BOOKS ON THE JACOBITES.* TN these days of Wrath and shifting values it is consolatory to note that the tale heroic, like Keats's " Nightingale," is not born for Death, and that no repetition can stale its charm. This is the more remarkable when it owes its appeal, not to its literary form, bat to its initial qualities of Pity and Valour. Such, for instance, are the histories of Joan of Arc and Prince Charles Edward. Voltaire's formidable ribaldry could no more laugh the Maid out of her consecrated niche in the hearts of humanity than the latter-day follies of White Rose Leagues can turn into ridicule the epic of Prince Charles and his Highlanders.
If any proof was needed of the unfailing popularity of the Saga of the Stuart Prince, it would be found in the publi- cation of the twin volumes, The Jacobites and the Unions and The Forty-Five: a Narrative of the Last Jacobite Rising,2 by Several Contemporary Hands, compiled and edited by Pro- fessor C. Sanford Terry—volumes in all respects worthy of the author's reputation as the chief living authority on that period. Professor Terry's ingenuity is scarcely less admirable than his scholarship, for it is no easy task to piece together the actual words of. the various actors in the drama. Un- doubtedly, as the editor claims, it is the best method " to recover the romantic atmosphere which irradiates the story." But since Whig and Tory, true man and traitor, jostle each ether in these pages, much as they did in the Stuarts' councils and armies, to have welded a readable narrative out of such contradictory material is no small achievement.
In The Jacobites and the Union, with its account of the various " movements " of 1708, 1715 and 1719, the inquirer into historical detail will find much that is novel. To the general public the book will be chiefly interesting as affording an explanation—if explanation is needed—of the successive failure of the risings made in favour of the old Pretender. A Pretender who, when asked to select four or five com- panions to accompany him on a forlorn hope, includes his confessor in the party, is evidently predestined to failure. " When we saw the Person we called our King " [James VIII.], writes one of the Elder Chevalier's followers, " we found our- selves not at all animated by his presence, and if he was. disappointed in us, we were tenfold more so in him ; we saw nothing in him like spirit ; he never appeared with Cheerful- ness and Vigour to animate us : Our men began to despise him : some asked if he could speak : his countenance looked extremely heavy : he car'd not to come abroad among us Soldiers or to see us handle our Arms. . . . . I am sure the Figure he made dejected us."
" Look on this picture and on that ! " The Elder Chevalier was certainly not a " satyr." Hewes a comparatively respect- able mediocrity, born middle-aged, and peevish into the bargain ; while, on the other hand, Prince Charlie stood to the majority of his countrywomen, and to a fair proportion of his countrymen, as Hyperion's very self.
That it is the Adventurer, rather than his circumstances, that makes the whole difference between a hole-and-corner insur- rection and the High Adventure is shown in the description of the Prince at his first landing. " In about half ane hour," writes an eye-witness, " there entered the tent a tall youth of a most agreeable aspect, in a plain black coat, with a plain shirt., not very clean, and a eambrick stock fixed with a plain silver buckle, a plain hatt with a canvas string having one end fixed to one of his coat buttons ; he had blue stockins and brass buckles to his shoes ; at his first appearance .1 found my heart swell to my very throat." This is history. Yet hardly otherwise would Robert Louis Stevenson have introduced the hero.
When the " tall youth " speaks, the charm is consummated. For if Charles Edward had something of his. Sobieski grand- father's military talents, he had also inherited the ready wit of Henry IV.—that happy word which is a clarion-call to doubters and laggards. At his landing, with the cry of " I am come Home," he struck the right chord, the chord which he
• (1) The Jacobi/es and the Union : being a Narrative of the Movements of 1708, 1711, 1719. By Several Contemporary Hands. Edited by Charles Sanford Terry. Cambridge : at the University Press. ilOs. 6d.)—(2) The Fortg-Five : a Narrative of the Last Jacobite Rising. Same authors, editor and publishers. 18e. ed.]
maintained almost throughout victory and defeat, the secret of much of his power over the imaginations of a whole people.
No romance is complete without a heroine. Prince Charlie, not altogether unhappy so long as his foot trod the heather, must be esteemed fortunate in that it was Flora Macdonald who was cast for that part—Flora of whom Dr. Johnson said " that her name will be mentioned in history with honour if courage and fidelity be virtues." The artless if not unfamiliar account of her guidance of the Prince is indeed the gem of the book. In these simple records the noble figure of the steadfast girl, " a peculiar sweetness mixed with majesty in her countenance "—as a London contemporary described her —shines forth clear-cut against the glorious staging of perils encountered and surmounted amid a landscape of incom- parable beauty. And the Prince is not unworthy of " our lady," as he tenderly called Flora. Nowhere does he show to better advantage than watching over her slumbers in the row-boat or singing songs to cheer her when the storm runs high.
Flora undoubtedly saved the Prince's life. Six weeks later a St. Maio privateer, strangely misnamed l'Heureux,' bore the fugitive to France. Happily, in this volume, the curtain
falls with the weighing of anchor in Lochnanuagh. We are
not asked to exchange the vision of the " fair-haired laddie," who, if Fate had been kinder and allowed English guns to sink the boat, would have remained the young Marcellus of the Highlands, for the brutalized drunkard of the Palazzo Mull.
" I ance had sons, but now hae name, I bred them toiling sairly, And I wad bear them a' again And lose them a' for Charlie."
Let us think gently of the youth who could inspire such a song.
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