of her appearance as a royal bride in the old Stuart
palace.
And thus for nearly two years the love-comedy of
Vittorio Alfieri and the Countess of Albany was openly
played to the intense amusement of Roman society, and
to the apparent indifference of its clerical masters :
"they were free to see each other as much as they
chose ; to love each other as much as they would ; for
the Cardinal and the priestly critics seem to have gone
completely to sleep in the presence of this critical situa-
tion." l Paying visits and receiving compliments, holding
her nightly receptions in the Cardinal Duke's splendid
saloons, immersed in her adoration of Alfieri and of his
literary powers, at times riding with her lover over the
desolate, fascinating Campagna, and at other times
listening to or commenting upon his newly-composed
dramas, Louise led a truly ideal existence amidst the
most beautiful and sumptuous surroundings. A medley
of love, literature, pleasure and social success, the
Countess' gay career proceeded on its way unchecked,
until it reached its zenith in the historic performance
1 Vernon Lee, Life of the Countess of Albany.
154 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
of Alfieri's tragedy of Antigotie, wherein the author
acted the part of Creon, and the beautiful Duchess of
Zagarolo, the Duke and Duchess of Ceri, and other
prominent members of the great Roman Houses played
the chief characters. Given towards the close of 1782,
in the private theatre erected by the Spanish Ambassador
in his palace in the Piazza di Spagna, the brilliant crowd
attracted by this unique event included almost all the
leaders, priestly and lay, of Roman society ; whilst the
appearance of Louise, and the emotion openly mani-
fested both by herself and her lover on this occasion,
made a public and unabashed display of their intimacy
and attachment. The Roman world of fashion and
letters, highly diverted and by no means shocked,
laughed in its sleeve more than ever at this indiscreet
behaviour, which did not, however, elicit a word of rebuke
or caution from the clerical authorities. Nevertheless
the Cardinal Duke, absorbed in his daily routine of
business and leisure at Frascati, must by this time have
become almost the only personage in Rome not cog-
nisant of his sister-in-law's openly flaunted intrigue.
What was everyone's knowledge was apparently in this
instance nobody's business, and the unsuspecting Cardinal
Duke was merely watched from afar with a mild curiosity
as to how long the present condition of things would
last before he came to realise the equivocal position of his
brother's wife.
But this romantic friendship, that had so long been
amusing all Rome, was doomed, as might only be ex-
pected, to a sudden and dramatic ending. Towards the
close of March 1783, Charles was seized with a severe,
almost hopeless illness, upon news of which the Cardinal
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY 155
Duke, despite the strained relations that almost amounted
to an open breach between himself and his brother, at
once hastened towards Florence, but rested at Siena in
order to send a courier ahead to enquire if Charles were
yet alive. To his amazement, he now learned that not
only was the Chevalier still living, but that he had actually
rallied from his supposed mortal attack, so vigorous was his
constitution, despite the long years of fatigue, excitement
and excess. On receipt of this news, the Cardinal Duke
continued his journey to Florence, where over the sufferer's
sick-bed there was quickly effected a reconciliation, which
was all the easier to arrange since during his late illness
Charles had definitely cast aside his vague schemes of
heresy, and in consequence was once more surrounded by
priests sent him by the Archbishop of Florence. Pleas-
antly surprised by this obvious proof of his brother's re-
formation, the Cardinal Duke was naturally all the more
inclined to listen to his long list of grievances, including
of course his absent wife's conduct both before and after
her desertion. How far Henry, always impressionable
and open to adroit persuasion, came to believe in and
sympathise with his brother's version of the whole story,
it is somewhat difficult to judge ; for though he undoubt-
edly took extreme measures very soon afterwards to
separate his sister-in-law from her lover, yet, if we can
trust Alfieri's own account, it was the unanimous action
of the clergy, headed by the Archbishop of Florence,
rather than the personal inclination of the Cardinal, which
was directly responsible for this decisive step : —
" During his [Charles Stuart's] convalescence, his
brother stayed with him in Florence about a fortnight,
156 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
and the priests coming from Rome with the Cardinal and
the priests who had surrounded the invalid in Florence,
together decided that it was absolutely necessary for the
husband to persuade and convince his brother that he
could not and must not any longer allow the behaviour of
his sister-in-law in his own house in Rome." x
It seems, therefore, to have been the joint advice of
the many clergy collected together at the Palazzo
Guadagni, rather than a sudden outburst of annoyance
and anger on his own part, that now prompted the
Cardinal Duke — for the first time enlightened as to the
true nature of the arrangement he had so long condoned
— to act with an injudicious yet quite excusable haste.
Determined to arrest at once and for all his sister-in-law's
intimacy with Alfieri, the Cardinal Duke, "always im-
petuous and unreflecting," hurried back to Rome, where
he at once proceeded to an audience with the Pope with-
out first warning either of the guilty parties of his inten-
tion. Pius VI, after his excited visitor had unbosomed
himself of his terrible tale of Louise's deceitful and im-
proper conduct, professed to be greatly incensed ; indeed,
as head of a great moral organisation, he could hardly
have expressed himself otherwise, though in reality there
is no reason to suppose that he took more interest in
Madame d'Albany's private affairs than did the Grand-
Duke of Tuscany. But the wealth, the position, and
above all the spotless reputation of Henry Stuart were
held in high esteem at the Roman Court, so that when
the Cardinal Duke in his first flush of righteous indig-
nation demanded of His Holiness an order for Alfieri to
1 Vita di Alfieri.
.
PIUS VI
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY 157
quit the Papal States within a fortnight, the Pope, anxious
to please his important suppliant and wishing to be quit
of the whole troublesome business, at once wrote out the
necessary mandate and had it conveyed to the poet's
lodging in the Villa Strozzi. To his sister-in-law, by
whom he considered himself to have been duped and
made to appear ridiculous, he merely sent a messenger
with a curt command that all communication whatsoever
between Alfieri and herself must cease forthwith.
The news of Henry's sudden appeal to the Pope and
of its results, fell like a bomb upon the Countess and her
lover, living in their false paradise without a thought of
possible disturbance. But sorrow and indignation were
alike unavailing, and in order to escape the ignominy of
an enforced escort by the Papal police to the frontier, the
miserable and humiliated poet, after one last agonising
interview with his Psipsia, left the city with all possible
dispatch, to carry his egotistic griefs and his theatrical
tears to his good friend, Francesco Gori, at Siena : —
" It was the fourth day of May in the year 1783 —
which will always be and has been up to now my bitterest
remembrance — that I then removed myself from Her who
was more than half of myself. And of the four or five
separations from Her that I have experienced, this was
the most terrible to me, since every hope of seeing her
again was so uncertain and far distant. . . . And thus
I left my only Lady, my books, my villa, my peace and
Myself in Rome." x
Louise of Albany, hysterical with grief at this cruel
1 Ibid.
158 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
deprivation of her lover, and shame-stricken by the public
scandal into which the Cardinal Duke had transformed
her cherished friendship with Alfieri by his headstrong
action, remained behind to endure the blame, or — what
must have been even worse — the pity of the various ele-
ments of Roman society. For if certain leading members
of the priestly circles showed themselves ready to approve
the Cardinal Duke's severe methods, all the fashionable
world of Rome, the world that had assembled six months
before to hear and applaud Antigone > was as loud in its
denunciation of his conduct as it was full of sympathy
for Louise's misfortunes. Even Henry himself, his pur-
pose accomplished, was already at great pains to soothe
and conciliate his unhappy sister-in-law, in spite of her
late duplicity of dealing. Every attention that he could
imagine as likely to console her, he set himself to perform :
whilst certain letters passing between Louise and himself
at this critical period of grief, humiliation and reproaches,
go far to prove that he continued to regard his sister-in-
law with affection, and that Madame d'Albany, on her
part, although refusing to acknowledge herself in the
wrong, still looked upon him as her true friend and pro-
tector. The Cardinal Duke, for example, promises to
procure for the Countess some of the Stuart and Sobieski
family diamonds, an offer which the latter gracefully de-
clines, alleging that in the intended present she perceives
a clear desire to please, and that thereby she remains
perfectly contented without the jewels. Again, he de-
clares himself ready to provide accommodation for the
worldly old Princess of Stolberg, who after having prac-
tically sold Louise to Charles for purposes of political
intrigue, was now determined to visit Rome, in order to
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY 159
lecture her wilful daughter; this offer, also, Madame
d'Albany refuses. In spite of all his attentions, however,
the long anxious year of waiting in Rome under the
Cardinal Duke's tutelage, kindly indeed, but now become
strict, brought many trials to the Countess, all ignorant
as to what the near future might bring both to Alfieri and
to herself.
Shortly after the poet's departure, the Cardinal Duke
persuaded his sister-in-law to spend the summer months
in a villa not far from Frascati. Here the Countess,
a prey to uncontrollable and somewhat undignified
dejection, passed the long hot season in useless lamenta-
tions, in practising upon the harp (because Alfieri had
once expressed his admiration of this accomplishment)
and in writing hysterical letters to Francesco Gori,
bewailing the continued existence of " the man in
Florence, who still lives, and who seems to be made of
iron, in order that we may all die." 1 In the autumn,
Louise, but little soothed by her visit to the Alban Hills,
returned to the palace in Rome, still in complete doubt
as to the future, for Alfieri never wrote, and Charles gave
no sign of moving in the matter. But this period of
agitation and uncertainty was not destined to last long.
Her husband, now in better health and able to travel,
had had the good fortune to meet at Pisa in the autumn
months with Gustavus III of Sweden, travelling incognito
as Count Haga. So touched was the Swedish King by
the pitiable condition of mind and body in which he
found the once brilliant hero of Prestonpans, that he
applied himself to assist Charles, who eagerly and grate-
fully accepted the proffered aid. Besides obtaining for
1 Life of the Countess of Albany.
160 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
him small additional pensions from the French and
Spanish Courts, the good-natured monarch also induced
the Prince to renounce his futile political intrigues, and
— what was still more important — finally persuaded him
to put his own and his wife's anomalous position on
a proper footing. Proceeding to Rome, with Charles'
approval King Gustavus next interviewed the Countess,
the Cardinal Duke and the Pope on the subject of a
legal separation a mensd et thoro, and found all three
more than willing to listen to his proposals. With such '
tact and ability did the King act, that a final deed of
separation was drawn up on April 3rd, 1784, signed by
Charles and then ratified by the Pope. By the terms
of this agreement Louise was bound to reside in Papal
territory during her husband's lifetime, yet occasional
permission to leave Italy was promised her, and although
the Chevalier, in his letter to the King of Sweden, had
expressed a strong wish that she should no longer bear
his name, no clause to this effect was inserted ; in fact,
the Count and Countess of Albany now came to be
regarded legally as husband and wife living apart by
mutual consent. Financial arrangements, with which of
course Gustavus had little to do, took somewhat longer
to settle. The details are intricate, and it will be
sufficient to state here that the Cardinal Duke
(throughout life the general almoner of his brother's
family) showed himself generous and also practical ; the
Count, as usual, not a little mean and grasping ; and the
Countess so eager to obtain her full legal liberty as to
insist, very foolishly and unnecessarily, on surrendering
her pin-money, 3000 crowns a year, to her husband.
This altruistic benevolence (for it was the Cardinal
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY 161
Duke's rather than her own or her husband's income she
was offering) produced a mild rebuke from her brother-
in-law, who gave her in a letter some excellent advice
on the folly of parting with what little money she really
owned. This advice Louise was obstinate enough to
ignore, with the result that before long she was forced
to apply for assistance to the French Court. Fortunately
for her, Queen Marie-Antoinette listened to the Countess'
complaints with compassion, and arranged on her behalf
that an annual pension of 60,000 francs should be
allotted to Charles' wife by the French Treasury.
" Countess d'Albanie," writes Sir Horace Mann, " has
renounced everything to obtain her liberty ... so that
she does not now receive a shilling from the Stuart
family, and is only to receive a jointure of 6000 crowns
at her husband's death — a poor equivalent for what she
has lost." x Legally freed from her husband, and enjoying
a pension of her own from the French Court, Louise of
Albany was at last able to renounce the guardianship
and guidance of her brother-in-law, who on his side was
naturally glad to be released from so heavy a burden
and responsibility. Joyfully in May, therefore, Louise
quitted Rome, not to return for many years, and made
her way towards Germany, in order to spend the summer
at Colmar in Alsace, where "on August 17th, 1784, at
eight in the morning at the inn of the Two Keys," she
once more met with her poet-lover, " speechless from
excess of joy." 2
The many biographers of the Countess of Albany
reflect of course very severely upon the Cardinal Duke's
ruthless and somewhat blundering exposure of her
1 Letters of Sir Horace Maim. 2 Life of Ike Countess of Albany,
II
1 62 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
romantic intrigue with Alfieri. Indeed, we can ourselves
easily understand, together with Sir Horace Mann, how
his abrupt and artless method of dealing with the
difficulty must at the time have "exasperated all the
Roman nobility against the Cardinal, insomuch that,
instead of considering the delinquencies of the Parties,
their wrath is turned against the publisher of the
Scandal ; and they compassionate the situation of the
disconsolate Lady, who, I really believe, will marry the
Count a week after she becomes a widow ! " Never-
theless, the specious plea, sometimes advanced by
Louise's apologists, that Alfieri, whilst in attendance
upon her in Rome, simply ranked as the Countess'
"cavaliere servente," and that his attentions were fully
understood by society there, can be of no avail. The
peculiar office of " cavaliere servente," or " cicisbeo " — that
is, the platonic admirer and slave that each married
woman of quality was expected to attract to her service
— was of course thoroughly recognised in Italian polite
society of the eighteenth century ; but this social arrange-
ment depended only on the tacit consent of the lady's
husband, rarely, if ever, withheld. Now we know that
Louise of Albany was a runaway wife, and we know
that Charles vehemently and repeatedly protested against
Alfieri's intimacy with her in Rome; so that the former
" cavaliere servente," whose presence had been tolerated
according to the usual practice of the day at the Palazzo
Guadagni in Florence, had since in the eyes of the
Roman world taken a very different position as the
bosom friend and companion of a married woman living
apart from her husband. Under these circumstances,
Louise's tearful protestations of ignorance and innocence
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY 163
of wrong-doing, as expressed in her later letters to the
Cardinal Duke, sound false and hollow ; whilst on the
other hand it cannot be denied that Henry, having once
removed the cause of quarrel between himself and his
sister-in-law, showed himself most forgiving and generous
in his subsequent treatment of a woman who had
deliberately duped him during two whole years, in which
she had not failed to make every use of his wealth, his
protection, and the great name of his family.
Although numerous letters continued to pass between
the Cardinal Duke and the Countess of Albany for more
than a twelvemonth after the latter's departure from
Rome, and although Louise seems always to have
retained an affectionate remembrance of her former
guardian, there is no evidence to show that she and
Henry Stuart ever met again. Since the scandal of
Alfieri's dismissal, Louise had in her correspondence been
endeavouring to persuade her brother-in-law that she was
a misjudged and blameless woman, but all the arguments
and sophistry in the world could not conceal the obvious
fact that she and Alfieri had renewed their former
intimacy in a still more open manner. Nevertheless, of
the two solitary women with whom the Cardinal Duke
during his long life was brought into close touch — his
brother's wife and his brother's natural daughter — he had
without doubt a strong preference for the former, in spite
of her discreditable romance and her undutiful behaviour
towards himself. Years ago his kind heart had melted
with sympathy at sight of her, when, young, guileless
and enthusiastic, she had been brought as his brother's
bride to the palace of the Santi Apostoli, and the tender
feeling conceived for her at that moment, though sorely
1 64 HENRY STUART CARDINAL YORK
tried in later years, seems never wholly to have disap-
peared. Louise's natural charm of manner appealed
more strongly to his taste than the less tactful and
somewhat oppressive blandishments of Charlotte Stuart ;
so that it was only with the greatest reluctance that he
was finally induced to acknowledge her conduct as
undeniably guilty, instead of merely imprudent, as he
had hitherto affected to regard it. Indeed, it was
Charlotte, the Countess' rival in his affections, who, at
her interview with her uncle at Perugia in the autumn
of 1785, finally proved beyond a doubt to the unwilling
Cardinal Duke that his brother's wife was well known to
all the world as Alfieri's mistress.
Perhaps the poet's death, which occurred at Florence
some four years before his own, may have caused a
renewal of his old kindly feelings towards his once-loved
sister-in-law, for it is certain that he remembered her in
his will, Monsignore Cesarini soon after his death sending
to the Countess a painting and a gold watch, engraved
with her own cipher, which the Cardinal Duke had left
her as a small legacy. Madame d'Albany, in her letter to
the Bishop, gratefully acknowledges the receipt of these
trifles, and adds that she would have been quite content,
had her brother-in-law only left her a pin for a remem-
brance. 1 At the same time Louise keeps a sharp eye to
business, for after sending her sincere condolences to
Monsignore Cesarini on the Cardinal Duke's death and
on the consequent ending of a friendship of forty years'
standing between the two men, she shrewdly informs
him, as her brother-in-law's executor, of her full con-
fidence in his desire and ability to pay her jointure fully
1 Historical MSS. Commission Report.
THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY 165
and punctually. This jointure was, of course, the annuity
of 6000 crowns, to which under the terms of her legal
separation she had become entitled on Charles' death,
and which she continued to draw until her own demise
at Florence in January 1824, sixteen years and a half
after that of the Cardinal Duke. This charge on the
Stuart estate had naturally constituted a very heavy
burden on her brother-in-law's income after its reduction
by the political troubles at the close of the century ;
whilst after his decease almost the whole interest of his
realised capital was swallowed up in the payment of this
jointure, to the cruel deprivation of the many faithful
servants at Frascati to whom their late master had
bequeathed sufficient legacies, but who were left penniless
on account of Madame d' Albany's prior claim. Whatever
wrongs and indignities, therefore, Louise of Stolberg may
have endured at the hands of her husband in the far-off
years of her married life in Rome and Florence, she
certainly contrived to repay herself well for past injuries
out of the wealth and the prestige of the Royal Stuarts.
For during thirty-five years she found an intense, if some-
what vulgar, delight in posing as the widow of a deceased
king, drawing meanwhile the means necessary to main-
tain this show of mimic royalty from annuities paid to
her by the Cardinal Duke, by the Court of France, and
by the British Crown, all of which had been allotted to
her as having been the wife of a man she had first hated,
and then deserted.
CHAPTER VIII
CHARLOTTE STUART, DUCHESS OF ALBANY
1784 - 1789
" My heart is wae, and unco wae
To think upon the raging sea,
That roars between her garden green
An' the Bonny Lass of Albanie.
This noble maid's of royal blood
That ruled Albion's kingdoms three ;
But O, alas for her bonny face !
They hae wranged the Lass of Albanie.
We'll daily pray, we'll nightly pray
On bended knees most fervently,
That the time may come, with pipe and drum
We'll welcome hame fair Albanie ! "
WITH the withdrawal of Louise of Stolberg from
Rome, a period of rest from domestic strife
might have been expected to ensue, but such hopes,
however reasonable on the Cardinal Duke's part, were
rudely and suddenly dispelled by his brother's next
action. By a will drawn up during his severe illness in
the spring of 1783, Charles had already named as heir
his natural daughter, Charlotte Stuart, whom he had also
about the same time declared legitimate in a so-called
" Act," which was supplemented two years later by a
further declaration to the effect that she had been created
166
CHARLOTTE STUART, DUCHESS OF ALBANY 167
by him Duchess of Albany, and legitimised with the
approval of the Most Christian King ; that she was the
same child of himself and of Clementina Walkinshaw
that had been born at Liege and baptized there under
the name of Charlotte Johnson ; and finally, that he
never had had any other offspring, and in particular no
children by Princess Louise of Stolberg. 1 Some six
months prior to this second declaration, the Chevalier,
feeble, lonely, and on the worst possible terms with his
brother, whom he chose to regard as the champion of his
erring wife, had at last written to his neglected daughter,
begging her to come and live with him in Florence.
This tardy invitation, obviously the result of dire
necessity rather than of natural affection, was accepted
with joy and alacrity by Charlotte Stuart, who had
already passed the thirtieth year of a sad, monotonous
life, that had contained many cruel rebuffs from her
royal parent. Before quitting France, however, Charles'
daughter, on her father's urgent application to Louis XVI,
had first been granted the right to sit in the pre-
sence of royalty {le droit du tabouret), whilst a French
lady, Madame McDonnell, and a Jacobite nobleman,
Lord Nairne, were detailed to escort her in a style
befitting a lady of the first rank out to Florence, which
she duly reached in the first week of October 1784.
On her arrival she found her father in an almost
hopeless condition of ill-health. " Poor Count Albany,"